private turn me to ashes 🕷flintpaw

[Briarthorn]

.·:*¨༺🕷༻¨*:·. Her move to the warriors den had been mundane, silently she had formed a perfectly shaped nest in her place along the outskirts of the den, trying not to think too much of anything.
Sleep was still a struggle, a game of push-and-pull, where if she pushed too hard, sleep wouldn’t come simply out of spite. When it pulled her, however, it was a relief, and sweet nothingness soon followed.
Sleep was a sick, sick game.
Tonight, she had pushed too hard, forcing her eyes closed as a “screw you” to her subconscious, which ultimately ended in her getting up and walking away from her nest after spending half the night tossing and turning.
Camp wasn’t too eerie at night, there were still those that preferred to hunt under the dark sky, so she was not the only soul to spill into the camps clearing.
She was, however, one of the few that stayed where they had settled, silently watching clanmates slip in and out of camp. Her pupils are caught in a lull for a brief moment when everything falls still, when whispered chatter has completely fallen away. The quiet doesn't last long, not when something rustles nearby. The apprentices den spits out a familiar clash of ashen and ivory, his gait wary. Eye contact is made, and Briarthorn’s ears flick backward when Flintpaw begins an uncertain march towards her. Her expression pinches together, pupils narrowing into minuscule slivers, an instinctive response to being approached.
Her maw doesn’t part to speak, but her scathing expression is a silent ask. What do you want?
Flintpaw looks nothing like the kitten that used to jeer at her brothers and taunt her from afar, she looks weary now, battered. Well? Expectancy swells in the empty air between them.

‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎┌── ALL YOU HAVE IS YOUR FIRE ⋅ ࿏ ⋅ AND THE PLACE YOU NEED TO REACH ──┐‎

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  @FLINTPAW
  
  

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  BRIARTHORN ꔫ she/her, warrior of shadowclan, 12 moons.
  ⭃ slender, lean-muscled black she-cat with sharp hazel eyes & large ears.
  ⭃ daughter of Forestshade && Vulturemask ࿏ sister to Screechpaw && Sweetpaw
  ⭃ peaceful and healing powerplay permitted / / underline and tag when attacking
  ⭃ penned by Noor ↛ @toyangel on discord, feel free to dm for plots.
  

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[FLINTWISH]

Grief is such a great burden to carry. Flintpaw often feels helpless beneath the weight of it, despite the way it has followed his family around for his entire life and more. Maybe he had inherited Starlingheart's tragedies; maybe he was paying retribution for Granitepelt's bloody sin; maybe it was neither of those things, and StarClan simply needed a cat to unload their misery onto, and Flintpaw was the most fitting candidate.

He was never close to Nettlepaw. Never close to Ghostpaw either, for that matter, but somehow her absence hurts less, knowing that she might be alive. Or maybe Granitepelt killed her, or something else. He's not sure. He isn't sure that he wants to know, really, because as long as she might be alive, there is one less sibling that he can never reach again; one less sibling that will die before Flintpaw can really know them. When he remembers Ghostpaw, he remembers her white mask and navy eyes, her sugar-sweet ways of spitting venom, her theatrics as Granitepelt was cast away. Then there is her absence. It weighs less heavily than Nettlepaw's. Should he be ashamed of that?

When he remembers Nettlepaw, he sees warm cinnamon and ivory, a peaches-and-cream pelt with a smile and laughter to match. Had it all been a front? He isn't sure. It was hard to smile like that when Granitepelt was his father; harder still when he looked so much like him. At least Nettlepaw had had that luxury of not looking like him — and not looking like Starlingheart, either. He'd had every opportunity to forge his own path, and he'd really, truly started to. And then he'd died.

Sweetpaw had died, too. So had a lot of apprentices. Flintpaw knows he will graduate with a mere fraction of the cats who he had started out with, and he'll graduate late, for that matter. It's these ideas that torment him in the apprentice's den now. How is he worthy of a warrior name when so many of his peers hadn't received theirs? How come he, skillless, graceless Flintpaw, could graduate when cats ten times better than him could not?

He spots Briarthorn outside the warrior's den. When they were kits, he'd looked down on her and her littermates. It seems only deserved that she might do the same to him now, their fates ironically reversed. Anymore, though, he sees her more as a friend than anything — not that he'd admit it. Friendships seemed doomed to end in ShadowClan. Still, he approaches, mismatched eyes weary and imploring.

"Hey," Flintpaw greets, seating himself alongside her, tail curling neatly around his white-dipped paws. "I wanted to ask you something. Um...."

His eyes dart towards the earth between them, and then to his own paws. There's really no good way to word it. Maybe bluntness is the best practice: "did you and Sweetpaw get along? Like, were you close?"

As he speaks, he pictures cinnamon fur.

𝐌𝐘 𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐋 𝐁𝐄𝐂𝐀𝐌𝐄 𝐀 𝐇𝐀𝐌𝐌𝐄𝐑 ✧ 𝐈 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎 𝐅𝐄𝐄𝐋 𝐁𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑

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  — flintkit . flintpaw . flintwish
  — he / they / she ; warrior of shadowclan
  — short-haired solid blue tom with low white and blue/green heterochromatic eyes
  — "speech" ; thoughts
  — chibi by sixbane, signature by dreamydoggo
  — penned by meghan

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[Briarthorn]

.·:*¨༺🕷༻¨*:·. The pieces are quick to fall into place when Flintpaw sits awkwardly next to her. Briarthorn can’t help but wonder, is this an odd picture to see? It’s an odd picture to be in.
A shadowed chin tips upward as realization makes something icy ripple along her spine. They had never been close, life together began with Shadowclan not being big enough for the both of them. Then, Flintpaw nearly died, his father was ousted as a murderous maniac, her mother mutilated. Yes, all terrible things that had bit by bit earned the small sliver that existed of Briarthorn’s sympathy, only shown in rare moments of quiet kindness, the lack of bristling when the other was near. Then, Nettlepaw had been killed. Then, Sweetpaw was suddenly dead. Now, they shared something with one another, not that it sparked any sort of warmth in the air between them. Briarthorn knows that if given the chance, she would trade Flintpaw’s life a hundred times over for Sweetpaws, though she supposes it’s not much when the warrior knows she would let all of Shadowclan die if it meant being able to bask in her brother's presence once more. Does Flintpaw feel so strongly? She wonders.
"We got along but no, we weren’t close." Not in the way that someone pictures a pair of littermates. Sweetpaw had always been one of Briarthorns responsibilities, her project, forging perfection in the secrecy of her mothers shadow. He was hers to protect, he didn’t belong up in the stars that her eyes have trailed up to. "Not like we were supposed to be, I think." Her barbed tongue gives a sharp click to the end of each of her words, as though ready to turn hostile at any given heartbeat. "Which hurt more?" Tact never a skill the ebony warrior bothered with, when hazel eyes churn to the other they are analytic. "To lose." Perhaps, if hearing Ghostpaw’s choice to willingly leave had been more agonizing than Nettlepaws fate… Briarthorn could find something to be grateful for.

‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎┌── ALL YOU HAVE IS YOUR FIRE ⋅ ࿏ ⋅ AND THE PLACE YOU NEED TO REACH ──┐‎

• 
  
  
  

• 

• 
  BRIARTHORN ꔫ she/her, warrior of shadowclan, 12 moons.
  ⭃ slender, lean-muscled black she-cat with sharp hazel eyes & large ears.
  ⭃ daughter of Forestshade && Vulturemask ࿏ sister to Screechpaw && Sweetpaw
  ⭃ peaceful and healing powerplay permitted / / underline and tag when attacking
  ⭃ penned by Noor ↛ @toyangel on discord, feel free to dm for plots.
  

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