private waning sunset // downypaw

[cottonsprig]

She remembers the night Downypaw trudged home, following the hefty footsteps of Sootspot. The kitten's face had been downturned, sullen, and in truth Cottonpaw hadn't any inclination that anything would be wrong for them. She wasn't here to see Downypaw be chased by their very own mentor - she returned late, to lost lives and missing cats, to a job she must now fully assume even though it terrifies her so suddenly. Seeing Downypaw had no affect on her afternoon, unfortunately. The tunneler apprentice looked exhausted and covered in muck, just like any other day. Cottonpaw had turned her head.

It's in the late of night, that the medicine cat (should she even call herself an apprentice anymore?) notices Downypaw entirely. The other's mannerisms while 'asleep' mean nothing to a sweeping gaze - but Cottonpaw wavers a few moments. Downypaw's face is turned downwind, facing that of corpses left lying about camp. It's intentional, and if Cottonpaw squints, she can almost see the pressured, shaky sob of someone trying not to cry. She thinks of when her father died, the stunned tears she spilled, the way she is determined that sap must've slicked her paws and stuck them to the sandy underfoot, for she couldn't move. She feels something for Downypaw, however their grieving must be different from hers.

Downypaw... poor, poor Downypaw.

Days have passed since then. A vigil for the warriors that've defended their home, a gorge for the traitors who tried to take it. Cottonpaw almost wished that their bodies were left to be scavenged - maybe then she could gift them a proper departure. Their bodies will never be found now, and she knows it. Still, in the dead of night, she gathers a sprig of lavender into the rough of her tail. She skirts the pile of warriors and apprentices, sleeping soundly, and stands before Downypaw. Whether or not the child is fast asleep or wide awake, Cottonpaw nudges them to their paws. She motions to the tunnels, and escorts the younger soul into them.

While a tunneler no longer, Cottonpaw still utilizes what skills she learned to the best of her ability. They're not magnificent or well crafted by any means, but they make sure she and Downypaw are safe on their travels, at least. The tunnel departs a short distance from the gorge and Cottonpaw, usually chatty with fellow apprentices, has still yet to say a word. She knows she must be scaring the young apprentice, given her proximity to the leader and her mentor, but she feels the silence better suited for their mission.

She trails towards the gorge but stops a few tail lengths away. Her gaze falls over her shoulder and towards Downypaw, and finally, she speaks -

"Sit with me," an instruction, but spoken with a voice too soft to give it. She was not close to Lilacstem nor Larkfeather, but she can only imagine having lost her siblings in such a tragic way, and being unable to say goodbye. It hurts, and she is nearly an adult despite her name. A kitten such as the point... she can only imagine the struggle their heart feels.

She tugs the lavender from her tail, laying it near Downypaw. "I'm... sorry, we couldn't bury them," she whispers quietly, as if the fireflies of the snowy night would tell their secrets. "This is the best I can do for you," she continues.​

 

[downyfur]

Downypaw isn't asleep, but she's not quite awake either. They're so, so tired, even though they haven't done anything out of the usual. The apprentice is tired enough to collapse into a boneless pile of fur when Sootspot relinquishes them, but true rest never seems to come for them. They try their best to steady the veil over their eyes and catch what starshine leaks through the thinnest windows between their lashes. Downypaw tries their best to still their thoughts too, but it doesn't seem to be working. The dead eyes of Lilacstem and Larkfeather hang in the emptiness of their head, quiet and dim, like four alien moons.

Nudge. Blues flutter open, muted silver by the moon. She stirs, lips parting to tell off whichever one of her siblings had decided to bother her now, but then she remembers. Nudge. Downypaw's eyes snap open. The name of their medicine cat dissolves on her tongue.

They take another moment to study her, frozen in their position on the floor. Am I in trouble? The thought doesn't inspire the panic that it should. Maybe it was just the sleep still plaguing their bones, but they remember being far more terrified when Sootstar had threatened to demote them to kits. Blue shadows shroud her face, but the tufts of her ears and cheeks glow pale against the moon. Her intentions continue to elude them. She doesn't know if she'd be able to tell even in broad daylight.

For as inconsequentially kind as Cottonpaw is, she is still Sootspot's sister. Sootspot had made his motivations abundantly clear, and that he expected Downypaw to do the same. Is Cottonpaw the same, self-interested creature her brother is? She still isn't sure she should be following as closely in his footsteps as he'd like her to, but it seems to be the only reason she's alive and protected. After all, no one had cared to confirm whether their kin number among those at the Horseplace, even if their bodies weren't the ones cluttering the gorge.

They get up. They follow her. As much as Downypaw tries to give up on puzzling out the future, her mind continues to stubbornly conjure ideas. She's going to kill me, they muse as they walk through the gorse tunnel, taking advantage of their tunneler statures to slip through without rustling it. Why would they send the medicine cat apprentice to kill me though? If Sootstar or Sootspot didn't want me here, I think I'd already be dead. She doesn't hesitate when greeted with an unfamiliar tunnel either, only pausing the stream of thought to remember that Cottonpaw was a tunneler before a healer. I'm the smallest tunneler in camp right now...maybe that's it? They keep expecting to feel something─anguish, terror, hope, something─but nothing comes to them except endless rationalization.

The pair emerges, not into a proper burial ground, but a few tail-lengths from the gorge. They glance towards Cottonpaw, gaze uncertainly neutral. Before they even muster the courage to speak, she does. "Sit with me." A command─no, an invitation. They obey with uneasy silence. Cottonpaw's freckles dot her muzzle like snowflakes, and they wonder if she's lived through a Leaf-bare before. They think about how cold the bodies must have been, to have snow settle on them and never melt, like they were rocks and not cats. Would a fish eat a cat, if it could? The thought feels insane and bizarre.

Cottonpaw always smells faintly like lavender, especially these days. It's why they hadn't noticed the sprig of it tucked into her tail until now, as she pulls it out and settles it carefully before the both of them. Her murmur rings loud as church bells over the hidden torrent of water and the soft cackling of moorland behind them. "I..." It feels like the first thing they've said in moons. "...for...for me...?" It hits them like they'd fallen into the gorge, and all their careful reasoning flies away from them in the plunge.

The lump in their throat swells and bursts. Tears come slowly at first, mere droplets sprung from a leak in their gaze, but soon they come rushing out like everything else, greedy for release. "I...!" Her ribcage had held her heart in a vicegrip for days, and Cottonpaw has just pried it out with the jaws of life. They sob so hard it hurts. Their ribs feel like they're splaying open with the force of their grief, bones unfurling into the pit of their stomach and dragging it forwards like a hook. "Th-th-th-they j-just..." Downypaw gasps, staring furiously at the single lavender stem. "I-I-I-I-I...I-I c-couldn't...!"

They don't know what they want to say, only that they want to say something. They want Cottonpaw to know they cared, that Lilacstem and Larkfeather mattered, that they've never felt so lonely before. That they feel like the intensity of their gratitude could kill them, that they hate just spluttering and opening and closing their mouth like a dying fish. Without warning, Downypaw aims to press themself into Cottonpaw's side and continue crying there, into lavender-scented fur that should've been their kin's.​

 

[cottonsprig]

Does she expect them to cry? In truth, Cottonpaw does not know what she expects. She knows so little of Downypaw and all they are, that initially, she accepts the confusion and silence and figures that that is enough. After all, the two cold colored cats would sooner be doomed in their emotion than to be vindicated. Yet the child weeps - as if a thread pulled to taut is broken, Downypaw cries and trembles, and all Cottonpaw does at first is loosely drape her tail around the other's smaller form. She wants to be a source of comfort, yet in all of her life, she's never seen it properly.

It's sudden, the other surging forward to embrace her side. Cottonpaw flinches at first, sucking in air through her nose until the coldness of it hurts. But the kitten continues to cry and she relaxes, pulling her tail firmer around the other. "Shhh, shhh," she tries to hush the other, partially to comfort, but mostly to hide their whereabouts. The medicine cat watches the rapids below them, ears swiveling to listen to the world beyond them. She hates at this is what she's come to - hiding the seal point in the midst of a quiet storm, just to properly grieve lost family. She hates that her home has come to this at all.

"Downypaw," she breathes, only when the apprentice has quieted a bit, "It's cold out here." The statement, though blunt, is said with simple, trying care. She finally turns her gaze down to the other, "We have to go back soon, or someone will be suspicious. I..." its her turn for her jaw to slacken, words fumbling in her mind as she tries to find the right words to say. "We'll figure this out, okay? Just... wait for me," in the moment, it's a silent decision to return the kitten to her family in the horseplace. The long term idea flutters behind her eyes - (Should I go too?)

Cottonpaw stands, "Stay in the medicine den," another command, though she feels firmer in it this time. "Your paw is sprained, yeah? I need you to rest it. Sootspot will understand - a tunneler with a sprained paw is no use, after all." The medicine cat apprentice hopes Downypaw understands, ear flicking as she motions them away.​

 

[downyfur]

For better or worse, Downypaw doesn't notice the stiffness of their suddenly-chosen comfort. In this kinless new world, they're just glad to have one at all. If they were in better spirits, they would laugh at the idea of whimpering like this into Sootspot's side. Cottonpaw tries to shush her above hitching shoulders. A twisted ear is acknowledges her efforts, and soon she turns her sobs inward, matting the older apprentice's cygnet-like fur with tears and snot but, more importantly, muffling them.

For a moment she pretends she is not Cottonpaw, stranger in all but importance to the clan, but rather her mother. She closes her eyes and imagines calico fur in place of gray, but when she breathes in again the illusion is lost. If Brightshine had been sent out on that patrol instead of Cottonpaw, maybe she wouldn't feel so...muddy. All the time. These days she's just some wretched, bedraggled creature, shuffling beneath a neverending sun and dripping out a little bit of herself with each step. But if Brightshine had been on that patrol, where would that have left Cottonpaw? They cry about how selfish they are for that too.

Eventually, her shuddering sobs peter out. She hadn't noticed it becoming so cold; her gums are numbs and her paws are buzzing with static, but they might be the consequences of one circumstance over the other. Regardless, they nod when she tells them they have to go back. Not home, wherever it is, but just back.

When she tells her to wait for her, she doesn't get it. There was nowhere to go. Too tired to puzzle it out themself nor convince themself of the reassurance on principle (something that the medicine cat apprentice herself doesn't look entirely sure of), they nod again.

Slowly though, she regains herself. The order to stay in her den is a clue. But I don't have a sprained paw... The protest dies on an exhausted tongue. Sootspot's words echo in their ears, though this time surely not for their intended purpose. Smiles didn't always mean affection, just as mouths didn't always mean what they said. They gather that, for some reason, she wanted them away from their mentor. Their mentor, her older brother and lead warrior: undoubtably one of Sootstar's, at least made out to be. "...'kay," they murmur, because while they still don't get it, feigning obedience was better than questioning her at the moment.

They rise to their paws when she does, blinking back towards the tunnels. The silence of several paces is broken with a meek, "Cottonpaw?" Blue-shadowed eyes linger on the dead grass beneath, but they continue, as quietly as they can: "A RiverClanner...she mentioned you. Before...before they left. When we were splashed." Another few steps. "Why?" She feels like Cottonpaw, for all she's given her tonight, would once again deign to give this an answer too.​

 

[cottonsprig]

Cottonpaw doesn't take the time to ensure that her new companion understands her entirely. In truth, she hardly comprehends herself. Just as surely as the snowflakes fall and become one with the ivory landscape does her mind rattle and shake, ideas melding together, tripping, dying and reviving. Consequences consume her, either those of action or inaction, and her silence fuels her paws to begin walking away, leaving behind the sprig of lavender.

It's not long after they depart, blue eyes settling on the mouth of their previously abandoned tunnel, when her name is murmured again. A voice hoarse from choking on sobs, yet curious - she wonders if moons ago, when her own paws were that small, if her tones sounded just as soft and worriless. She pities Downypaw much more than she pities herself, for the child has much to worry about, and plays a game of distraction.

Her ears fold down at the mention of the Clan just across the way. She neglects to look back over her shoulder, but she cannot help the way she presses her lips together. All of what she can say about their bordering Clan is too much - of fear, of vengeance, of hostility, maiming. The scar crossing her eye stings for a moment and she tells herself that the cold has caused the irritation.

"Hmm." Cottonpaw hums, and it's almost a tune of finality. The discussion is an unwanted one, but the child deserves something of an answer. If RiverClan wants to remind them of her wrongdoings... "When I was... around your age, I think? Smokestar pulled me onto the bridge. He was Smokethroat, then," the she-cat muses, her tone soft as to avoid the ruing flare, "He would've taken my eye, like my father did his, if not for the fight that day. I got away, though clearly not untouched..." She trails off, pausing in front of the cavern before them, before looking down at Downypaw again.

"They're just trying to scare you, if they mentioned anything about me," she decides, "Don't worry about them."​

 

[downyfur]

Cottonpaw doesn't like this question. Downypaw understands, childishly as she does. They don't like being reminded of their own mistakes, though that wasn't to say they thought whatever RiverClan did to Cottonpaw had been a mistake. A mistaken decision, maybe, but a decision all the same on the part of their neighbors.

"Oh, okay. Smokethroat..." she murmurs, rolling the foreign name on her tongue. It'd been a...moon? Ago that she'd witnessed the return of patrol to Highstones, drunk on the slaughter of a to-be god. That had been Smokethroat, and at the time they'd felt their stomach curl at the thought of one man being ripped apart like a rabbit to a wolf pack.

Now, as the scar over Cottonpaw's eye flashes silver in the moonlight, they're still not sure if they feel differently. She still doesn't enjoy the thought of anyone at all dying, whether it be Cottonpaw all those moons ago or her would-be maimer. Lilacstem, Larkfeather. Hummingbirdheart and Lynxtooth. They are as dead as they would have been if they had been slain by enemy claws, but it'd been WindClanners who had felled them in the end. They don't know who it is they should hate, if they were to hate anyone for committing crimes like these. She feels like she should despise RiverClan though, and that's what matters.

"I'm...glad they didn't," they breathe. Cottonpaw's father had been...Weaselclaw? A cat who had died before they even left the nursery. Heavy Snow would do the same for them, they think. He would protect them from dangers like Smokethroat, just as he had with the rogues, just as every parent should. They weren't here now though. Downypaw isn't sure whether it was their parents that had failed, or them.

Cottonpaw reassures them that they're just trying to scare them, to which they respond, "Okay," and begin their descent into the tunnels after her.​