private TURN AWAY — cherrypaw

[SLATE]

The great feline gets to his paws with a light huff, having just finished devouring a juicy bird in the corner of camp. He could seldom focus on anything without sating his appetite first — mealtime was one of his most cherished times of day for such a reason alone. Amber eyes float around the bustling clearing before landing on a certain young tortoiseshell she-cat. Training sessions with his apprentice had not been the same since the journeying party returned — not that the two necessarily had the best relationship prior, but now a tension hung in the air between the pair like fog clinging to the shoreline. Words had gone unspoken since the incident in the mountains, though it was not difficult to guess how Slate felt about it all. He doesn't feel the need to remind Cherrypaw about what happened, not now anyway.

"Cherrypaw," Grunted the lead warrior as he padded toward the exit of camp, blocky head tilting upward. "Hurry up. We're leavin'." Slate was not too happy with his trainee, but he was still expected to teach her and sculpt her into a fully-fledged warrior by newleaf. It was bad enough that her actions already reflected poorly onto him and he'd be damned if he couldn't shape Orangeblossom's daughter into a capable warrior, either.

₊ ⋆ * ⊹ ₊ ☾ —— 𝙞 𝙬𝙖𝙩𝙘𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙤𝙤𝙣

• @Cherrypaw

• 

• 

  ✰ SLATE
  —— he/him; lead warrior of skyclan; former rogue
  —— bisexual; single; not looking
  —— hulking, scarred charcoal-black colored maine coon with amber eyes
  —— "speech", thoughts, attack
  —— link to full tags; @ on discord for plots.
  —— penned by beatles

​

 

[Cherryblossom]

Cherrypaw's head neither snaps nor lags at the voice of her mentor, and annoyance doesn't immediately follow like it once did. Rather than crash right on the heels of a gaze aflame, it traipses after it in quiet recognization like a guilty dog, eyes up but head low. "'kay." She allows herself a quick stretch, daintily sliding both paws out and letting her stomach glide into the floor, before nonchalantly pursuing him.

These days they don't talk much, not like they used to, at least. For some reason, Cherrypaw finds herself missing the days when she'd snark Slate's ears off and watch him grind his teeth into dust. Now it's just quizzes and answers, and commands and critique, and nothing in between. "What are we doing?" she asks, because if there was one thing she never stopped doing with the dour beast of a man, it was questioning him.​

 

[SLATE]

The lead warrior strides forth with purpose, unlike in the past when he practically dragged his paws whilst taking Cherrypaw out of camp. He still does not bother to meet the young tortoiseshell's gaze, his amber gaze fixed on the path ahead as they move in the direction of the training grounds. "More battle trainin'." He answers simply. A couple of beats pass before he flicks a torn ear and says, "I've only got a few moons left to make a warrior outta' you. I don't need your mom thinkin' I can't teach her kit how to fight." Not that Cherrypaw didn't at least know some basic maneuvers by now, but now it was time to kick things into gear and sharpen her skills. If she was going to be successful, fighting had to come as an instinct to her. It needed to be something that she didn't even have to think about; something she could do skillfully and quickly.

Once the pair reached the Sandy Ravine, Slate padded forward and turned to face his trainee, settling into a battle-ready stance. He eyes the she-cat observantly; she has grown quite a bit since they've first been assigned to one another. She might even outgrow Orangeblossom at this rate. "Your move." This time, Cherrypaw is left to decide. Slate usually tended to go first, even taking her by complete surprise at times, but this time he wanted to see how she would approach her attack.

₊ ⋆ * ⊹ ₊ ☾ —— 𝙟𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙨𝙩𝙪𝙘𝙠, 𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙤𝙬 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙖𝙡𝙤𝙣𝙚

• 

• 

  ✰ SLATE
  —— he/him; lead warrior of skyclan; former rogue
  —— bisexual; single; not looking
  —— hulking, scarred charcoal-black colored maine coon with amber eyes
  —— "speech", thoughts, attack
  —— link to full tags; @ on discord for plots.
  —— penned by beatles

​

 

[Cherryblossom]

She doesn't mind learning combat as much as she does hunting. One could even say she was beginning to enjoy it, especially now that she was roughly where the average cat would stand with Slate instead of half of his height. Instead of stubbornly clinging to him, she allows her gaze to follow his, unconsciously tracing through the well-worn route to the Sandy Ravine. "I can fight," she mutters petulantly, but in a way that posed no real argument. She just wanted someone to acknowledge that she could, and she herself was the only one who would at the moment. If she couldn't fight, what then?

Cherrypaw gently twists her paws into the sand, trying to grasp as much traction as she could in the forgiving substrate. She didn't expect Slate to offer her the first move, but she supposes it didn't matter, in the end. A reaction was just another kind of decision, only with less time. Given a theoretically infinite amount of time to plan her move, Cherrypaw would act on her first choice rather than squander it all with thought. She feints to the right, then darts to the left with a swipe towards his left leg. It wasn't a move that would hinder the tom in any way, but more like a probe. How aggressive was he today, how fast, how defensive? It was so much easier to be reactionary.​