oneshot we reap what we are due || training

[loampelt]

---

Loam has been apprenticed for nearly a moon before her mentor decides to confront her.

Thymefoot isn’t an imposing tom. He’s shorter than her by half a head and has a storm-gray pelt, dark enough to be mistaken for black in a low light. He’s almost difficult to take with any amount of seriousness when he speaks to Loam, head tilted upwards as if balancing a feather on the rise of his nose. He isn’t imposing in the slightest and yet, when he speaks to Loam with a scolding tone she almost recognizes, she cannot help but shrink.

“You’re good at being patient,” Thymefoot says, but not like a concession.

He’s looking at Loam as he speaks, that same tip to his head that makes Loam wish she could laugh. Sat at his flank, Loam can only manage a chest-aching shame.

“You’re as quiet as any natural born marsh cat. I’ve yet to see you misjudge a single pounce.”

Had he had any other tone, these words would be taken as praise. Thymefoot rests his paw, almost gently, on a plump mouse. She’d had it, right there in her fangs.

“You have a real talent for what so many others consider to be the hardest parts of hunting, and yet you haven’t made a single kill,” Thymefoot notices Loam’s divided attention and shifts his paw to block the mouse from her view. Guiltily, Loam looks back to Thymefoot’s disapproving face.

“I should be able to brag that my apprentice hunts on par with Siltpaw and Forestpaw, and instead I have an apprentice who catches a mouse just to play with it, and that’s on the days she bothers to show up,” Thymefoot moves his paw again, this time to look at that mouse himself. Its back is riddled with punctures– Loam’s work. The two, nearly invisible marks on its neck are Thymefoot’s doing.

“...Wasn’t playing w-wuh-with it,” Loam says, and means it.

Loam hadn’t been playing with it. She’d caught it, she’d had it, but it wouldn’t stop squirming and Loam couldn’t get a good enough bite on it to kill it. The mouse had wriggled right out of Loam’s mouth and Thymefoot, who had been watching from the nearby brush, had finished what Loam had started, much cleaner than Loam ever could have.

“You weren’t playing with it?” Thymefoot has gone from that scolding tone of his to something that sounded truly angry, “Then what is all of this then? We don’t– we don’t do this to our prey. What you put this mouse through was cruel, and you’re trying to say it wasn’t you?”

That isn’t what Loam was trying to say at all.

She huffs and looks away from Thymefoot.

It’s the wrong thing to do. Thymefoot’s body jerks as if startled awake and his previously calm tail twitches from tip to base.

“This isn’t a joke,” Thymefoot snaps, but Loam never said it was, “You need to start taking your training seriously. Tomorrow, we’re meeting here, and you’re killing your next catch right.”

–​

Loam doesn’t meet him the next day.

–​

“Loampaw,” Thymefoot snaps, and Loam rolls her eyes, “Where were you?”

“About,” She snaps back. She’d lost her way, but it isn’t like Thymefoot cares, “And my n-nuh-name is Loam. L-lu-like this: Loooaaamm!”

“Don’t roll your eyes at me. You’re in ShadowClan, and you’re an apprentice. Your name is Loampaw.”

Loam rolls her eyes again, and fights a smile at Thymefoot’s angry gasp, “It’s a t-tuh-tic.”

“It is not!” Thymefoot is right on that. He’s so angry that even his cheeks have fluffed.

“Is s-suh-so! Happens every t-tuh-time you ta-tuh-ta– speak,” For good measure, Loam rolls her eyes once more, “S-ssss-see that? Didn’t even t-tuh-tell m-my-my eyes t-tuh-to duh-do that. Just happened.”

Thymefoot storms away from Loam then, tail lashing. He doesn’t leave from Loam’s sight, but its a near thing. Whatever he’s saying to himself is too muffled for Loam to understand beyond the occasional utterance of her name, often followed by a string of creative curse words. Loam sternly tells herself to remember some of those; they’re bound to be useful later.

The place Thymefoot has dragged her to is everything the marsh is supposed to be. The soil is dark and strangely pliant, and there is a vague dampness about everything that leaves Loam chilled without truly wetting her pelt. It would be a nice place to sit and think if the company were better. That reminds her– Loam’s own company has started to get quiet.

“Done?” Loam shouts, and doesn’t suppress her grin when she hears a curse loud enough to startle a raven into cawing from somewhere in the canopy above.

–​

Loam is late for training again. She stumbles into the clearing around the burnt sycamore and glances about until her eyes land on those of Thymefoot.

“Late again,” Says Thymefoot. He’s seated on one of the wide roots of the burnt sycamore, paws tucked close to the thicker fur of his belly to better keep warm. There isn’t something frustrated in his tone today, rather he sounds tired.

Somehow, this is what makes Loam feel guilty.

“Sorry,” Loam mumbles, “I-eee-uh got lost.”

Thymefoot stretches into standing and pads to meet Loam. He touches his nose to her cheek– no matter how angry he gets at her, he always greets her the same way.

“Is that so?” Thymefoot asks, only after he catches Loam’s eye, “Its always the same. You got lost, you forgot.”

It’s easier when Thymefoot is angry. Whatever this is makes something unpleasant squirm in Loam’s gut.

“We don’t need to be at odds all of the time, you know,” Thymefoot continues, “I just wish you’d be honest with me every now and again.”

Protest raises in Loam’s mouth and escapes before Loam can even think about it, “I-ee-uh am!” and then, at Thymefoot’s scoff in response, Loam mumbles and indignant, “M-mu-most the t-tuh-time I-eee-uh am, anyway.”

Thymefoot opens his mouth as if to respond, and then that very same mouth snaps shut. He’s looking at Loam with an appraising eye now, and Loam shifts uncomfortably in place. Loam hadn’t asked be involved in any of this. She’d just gotten lost, and ShadowClan had been kind enough to take her in or cruel enough to try to bend her into a shape she couldn’t hold. Whatever Thymefoot is looking for, Loam isn’t certain if she should be hoping he finds it or not.

“You mean that?” Thymefoot asks at last, “When you say you got lost, you mean it?”

Loam nods, as sincerely as she can manage.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Thymefoot says, mostly to himself, “We’ve been here a dozen times. You’d learn the way.”

But he doesn’t sound doubtful.

“Can anyone really be that forgetful?” It’s muttered so low that Loam is certain that those were words not meant for her ears.

She looks down and swallows.​

---

tags ∘ shadowclan apprentice ∘ solid black with hazel eyes ∘ curled front foot ∘ 6 moons​

 

[loampelt]

---

Thymefoot is angry again.

He’d walked with Loam earlier, showed her the way to promising hunting grounds, and in a low voice as to not frighten off the prey he had reminded her of landmarks he’d already shown her. Thymefoot had even praised Loam after she had caught a scent that he had not noticed. She had been feeling good about this trip– had nearly believed that maybe the two of them really didn’t need to be at odds with one another.

Then Thymefoot had angled his ears towards the rat that Loam had scented, and Loam’s heart had plummeted in a way she hadn’t realized it would. He’d nodded towards it, less of a command and more of a go ahead, and Loam had done everything right up until she was scrambling to get that rat to hold still. It was the same thing again, and once more it was Thymefoot to catch the rat when it limped out of Loam’s grasp.

“What happened?” Thymefoot asks, and Loam realizes that yes, Thymefoot is angry, but he is trying very hard not to be, “Are you– is it that you are hesitant to kill something?”

“Couldn’t hold oh-on,” Loam sits at Thymefoot’s flank and smooths the fur of her chest.

Thymefoot doesn’t respond immediately. Loam recognizes his thinking face, and allows his silence. The rat is in worse shape than the mouse had been. This time, Loam tried to hold on to it with her claws.

“I want to test something,” Thymefoot says, and Loam nods, “Bite that twig.”

He points to it with his nose, and Loam obliges. She bites it— whatever kind of wood it is thin and willowy, and looks to Thymefoot with a mix of apprehension and confusion.

“Bite it hard enough to snap it,” Thymefoot adds.

Loam regrips the twig and tries again, clamping down until she feels it split in her mouth.

“You were grinding your teeth,” Thymefoot observes. He walks a circle around Loam, “Do it again, but don’t move your bottom jaw side to side.”

Had Loam been doing that? She grabs one of the halves of the twig and tries again, this time careful to not grind her teeth.

The branch doesn’t break.

“Bite down as hard as you can,” Thymefoot doesn’t sound frustrated, not as he had before. Loam’s ears fold against her neck regardless. She is already biting down as hard as she can!

“That’s enough,” Thymefoot says after a few more moments. Loam drops the twig, and worries she had done something wrong. There are divots on the twig in the shape of Loam’s mouth, but it hadn’t split. Thymefoot isn’t paying Loam any mind at the moment, and instead casts his gaze about before it lands on the rat at his feet.

“Take a bite of that rat,” Thymefoot orders, “I want to see how you eat.”

Loam hesitates, and Thymefoot nods his head toward the rat, “Go on, you won't be in trouble for it.”

Once more, Loam obliges, feeling awkward with Thymefoot watching her so closely. She lays beside the rat, places a paw on it to keep it in place and then tugs a chunk of meat free from its abdomen.

“Stop,” Thymefoot says, just as Loam is swallowing, “You did it again, grinding your teeth on it instead of clamping down. Try again, but like this.”

Thymefoot leans down and takes his own bite from the rat, the way Loam had thought she was. His teeth sink effortlessly into its flesh, and there is hardly a strain when he pulls a hunk of fat off of its thin bones.

“Like that,” He says again, and pushes the rat toward Loam.

Like that, Loam thinks, and goes to take her own bite from the rat. She is hyper aware of the way she moves her mouth as she does, and finds that yes, her bottom jaw does seem to want to move back and forth to dig into the meat. When she focuses on simply trying to force her teeth into it, she finds them unable to sink in with force alone.

“Enough of that,” Thymefoot says, before Loam has even managed to take her bite. She sits up then, blinks at Thymefoot’s closed off face.

“Let me see your teeth,” He orders, and remembering something, Loam corrects, “M-muh-my fangs,” before she pulls her mouth open.

Thymefoot looks for a long time, occasionally telling Loam to tilt her head one way or another. Eventually he sighs, and Loam takes that as him being done with his inspection.

“I don’t understand. Your teeth— your fangs look fine, but you bite like an elder whose sharp points have gone dull.”

Loam doesn’t think it is meant to be an insult, but she wrinkles her nose at Thymefoot regardless.

“Last test, I promise,” Thymefoot says, “Bite my paw.”

The look Loam must give Thymefoot is withering, because he barks out a laugh loud enough that Loam’s tail poofs. Still, Thymefoot’s paw is lifted from the ground, and despite the ridiculousness of his request, he doesn’t take it back.

“Just like the rat, Loampaw. You aren’t going to be in any trouble.”

“‘ts L-luh-loam,” She mumbles back, but once more obliges.

This time, Loam doesn’t need to be told to not grind her fangs. It feels different biting something alive, Loam can feel the subtle shift of bone as she bites down, the way Thymefoot’s skin tenses and jumps at the contact.

“This is as hard as you can bite?” He asks.

Loam huffs through her nose and rolls her eyes. How exactly is she supposed to respond?

“Hold on for as long as you can,” Thymefoot gives Loam a short moment to prepare before he twists his paw at the wrist, and slips easily from Loam’s grasp. She is left with her mouth hanging open, staring at Thymefoot as he inspects the thorn-shallow punctures she had made. Blood beads from the spots, but doesn’t drip.

“Training’s done for the night,” Thymefoot says after a long moment of scrutinizing his paw. He sounds distracted, “You can finish that rat if you’d like, or take it back to camp.”

Loam couldn’t take it back to camp with two bites taken out of it, and she doubted her peers would be to keen on her getting to eat while they had to offer their own catches up to the elders and queens. She clicks her tongue at Thymefoot until he looks her way. Loam’s are you stupid? face is well practiced and rarely misunderstood. Thymefoot blinks at her and then down at the rat, before realization dawns on him.

“Right,” Thymefoot says, “We can finish it now, and you can chew on some grass to get the rat-stink out of your breath before heading back to camp, and then we will never mention this to anyone. Deal?”

–​

“I know you don’t like moss duty but you still need– don’t walk away from me while I’m talking to you!”

–​

The following days see Loam occupied with the sort of duties that amount to busywork. She isn’t taken on patrols or shown different ways to crouch. Loam hardly sees her mentor, except for in passing. He tells her that he’s figuring something out. Loam hadn’t known something could be both a relief and a disappointment.

Loam catches Thymefoot talking with the elders on multiple occasions. They all go quiet when Loam is nearby.

–​

“Something new today,” Thymefoot says. He sounds nervous.

Loam wonders if she should be nervous too.

“Say my name,” He looks at Loam apologetically, and Loam scoffs.

“T-tuh-thymefoot,” Easy.

“Say it again: Thymefoot.”

Loam realizes what this is then. She sighs, “T-tuh-tuh-thymefoot.”

“Thymefoot.”

“’Foot. There, n-nuh-no stutter,” Loam doesn’t want to play this game again, “Can we d-duh-do something impo-portant now?”

That apologetic look doesn’t leave Thymefoot’s face.

“How about this? Copy my expression,” Thymefoot says, and then the absolute idiot that he is, he sticks out his tongue.

Resigned, Loam sticks hers out as well.

–​

Loam had the quiet fear that Thymefoot’s new idea of training was having her make different expressions and say his name all day. For two days, it’s all he has her do. On the third day, he finds some semblance of balance between the two. He shows Loam the best way to shove an attacker of herself and then has her open her mouth as wide as she can while he counts to ten, or he has her track down a dove and then try to touch her tongue to her nose while he’s the one that makes the kill.

At the end of each training session, Loam’s jaw aches more than any of her muscles.​

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tags ∘ shadowclan apprentice ∘ solid black with hazel eyes ∘ curled front foot ∘ 6 moons​