private WEAVERS, WEAVING, NOTHING — SUNSTAR

──ᨒ↟↟ᨒ↟ᨒ↟↟ᨒ── The moors choke, coughing smoke into the sky while the fire drags its hungry, serpentine belly closer to WindClan's camp. Wolfsong has but one eye, and the skewed world he sees is all flame. He has always likened Sunstar's pelt to the very same colors that lick razed trails through the grass with a barbed tongue, colors that he was abandoned to, burning with a dog and the leg it prised. Wolfsong had not waited to hear more than that from stricken faces, and the nightmare he wanted so desperately to dismiss as naught but a meaningless dream has grown flesh and hunted his mate through a forest of flickering heat.

He is not thought or feeling, neither fear nor desperation; he is panting breaths and hurtling paws, squinting eye and thrashing heart. A beast of instinct, wrought and molded by years of devotion fierce and tender.

Somewhere buried in meadow soil are the bones of a rabbit, split and shared and sanctified by the oath given life over sinew and marrow. Though its face sneers and teeth gnash, the fire cannot swallow what the wind has already carried far beyond the moorland edges: "love me, I love you."

Pelt singed, muscles burning, eye blurring, he leaps— and lands beside Sunstar, Sunnvar, lifebringer, heartsblood. The dog's stench sears his nostrils. "Come with me," he rasps in a hundred different voices: the whole child, begging to play; the bloody-faced thing demanding he teach; the grinning fool inviting mischief; the lover murmuring in the dark; and all of them Sunstar's.
78133981_OgqdbQiOYIHTMTk.png
WOLFSONG of WINDCLAN FORMER ROGUE TURNED MEDICINE CAT. 42 MOONS, HE/HIM, NPC X NPC. MATES WITH SUNSTAR (07/05/2023). BIOGRAPHY, PINTEREST, & PLAYLIST.
  • ★★★☆☆ WOUNDS: You're (mostly) in safe paws. You'll know if he's less experienced if he asks for your permission to try a treatment. No wound can scare him away from knowledge.
    ★★★☆☆ INFECTION: He can prevent most infections. If you feel feverish, let him know; he'll hum thoughtfully over herbs and sniff your wound before saying, "With your blessing..."
  • ★☆☆☆☆ ACHES & PAINS: If you complain to him of pain, he'll ask where. If it's a headache, you'll likely feel a bit better. For anything else, "Try this, if you'd like, and tell me how you feel."
    ★☆☆☆☆ BROKEN BONES: At best. he can ask you to remain lying down in the den. He may try to distract you with conversation while he considers what herb to feed you.
  • ★★★★★ TRAVELING HERBS: Going somewhere? No worries; Wolfsong knows just what you need to stay hale and healthy during your journey. The rest is up to you.
    ★★★☆☆ KITTING: Thanks to Starlingheart and his own pregnancy, he's better prepared for the arrival of kits, but any complications will need a little faith and a lot of luck.
  • ★☆☆☆☆ POISONS: It's best if you avoid eating anything unfamiliar to you— it's probably just as unfamiliar to Wolfsong. The best he can do is offer you yarrow and sit with you.
    ★★☆☆☆ ILLNESS: If it's white or greencough, you'll likely recover. Otherwise, prepare for odd concoctions and the usual request that you consent to a little trial-and-error.
 
His flight from the stars was a comet's tail — he rests here, still burning from the descent. A crater of his own making, alone to rot and to fizzle. His gaze is half-lidded, vacant, and distant. He searches a world he can no longer see. The cat that leaps at him through the flames is the ghost, not he. Ellisif, the one that should not be here. There is no recognition from him and to him. Only slowly heaving sighs give sign of life at all. And then, distantly, a murmur of noise. What might have been words were his tongue not so thick.

StarClan had gifted him life anew. The blood surrounding the gaping wound of his limb has thickened and dulled. As he shifts, twitches, it parts from the sight. As if he might lean upon it and stand. Without urgency, yet he stumbles. A shattered stump hits the grass and pain like glass shoots up his veins. Like he had placed a thorn between his pads and kicked down hard enough to pierce through to his core. Clarity hits his eyes with the cramping misery. "Ellisif," he rasps. His smoke-choked throat proves an obstacle he has every intention of forcing through. And as his gaze opens, flames are reflected in the ocean blue.

Behind him, the wall of orange creeps further and further away. The route towards camp. Towards home. Bizarrely he does not consider it as such for a moment. His home is in the mountains, beneath his father's worry-weighted heart. As a kitten, perhaps, or the young warrior he had once been. He is not himself. They are young again, blood-splashes and burnt, as the beast's jaws clamp down upon his friend and he plunges his claws into what weakened flesh he could find. But he would not save him as he once had. Instead, he is miserable and small, and even a king must need to be saved.

Sunstar does not speak his assent, but he finds the quaking limb that remains and stumbles only once, leaning unquestioningly into an unfailing shoulder.
EpC61GT.png

  • OOC.
  • Iw56kmg.png
    SUNSTAR. WINDCLAN LEADER. 
    ——– AMAB HE - HIM - HIS ╱╱ 4+ YEARS OLD.
    NPC x NPC. MATE TO WOLFSONG; FATHER TO ONE LITTER WITH HIM. MENTORING RIVEPAW.

    TH ╱╱ A LARGE, SCARRED CHOCOLATE AND WHITE ROSETTE TABBY TOM WITH SEAGLASS EYES
 
──ᨒ↟↟ᨒ↟ᨒ↟↟ᨒ── Later, it will strike Wolfsong intimately that he did not find Sunstar alive, that without StarClan's blessing he would drag free a husk from the fire's maw and know it swallowed what he could not grasp hold of between his teeth. But he is Sunstar, and he is alive, and Wolfsong's croaked birthname is the clearing sky after a storm, the sprout of fresh grass through snow. They may not be free of the danger yet, and the damage left will demand much of their strength, but he can no more leave Sunstar here than he can grasp clouds between his paws.

The same instinct which fed Wolfsong's flight brings him to Sunstar's side, braced against him so that he might leverage as much of his weight as his legs can carry, and there is no weight too great.

"Come," he says again, and nothing else. No assurances that his mate will be safe, that they will see their children for many moons more. The only promise he can make is that of his shoulder and eye, which guide them both through the suffocating smoke to painstakingly outpace the fire's hungering border, though only just— the heat laps at his tail, which is to say nothing of Sunstar's. Wolfsong grits his teeth until his jaw threatens to split.

He does not pray, does not offer StarClan perpetual fidelity or remind the mountain spirits that he remains a warrior who should die only in battle. It his fallibility that has taken Sunstar's leg, his life, and he will not beg on his own behalf when this is what he alone wrought.

They half-stumble, half-shove through the withering curtain of tall grass at the pool's edge, and he wets his paws supporting Sunstar into it. Perhaps they will both die here. Wolfsong has but the once to suffer, but his mate nine— eight lifetimes.
78133981_OgqdbQiOYIHTMTk.png
WOLFSONG of WINDCLAN FORMER ROGUE TURNED MEDICINE CAT. 42 MOONS, HE/HIM, NPC X NPC. MATES WITH SUNSTAR (07/05/2023). BIOGRAPHY, PINTEREST, & PLAYLIST.
  • ★★★☆☆ WOUNDS: You're (mostly) in safe paws. You'll know if he's less experienced if he asks for your permission to try a treatment. No wound can scare him away from knowledge.
    ★★★☆☆ INFECTION: He can prevent most infections. If you feel feverish, let him know; he'll hum thoughtfully over herbs and sniff your wound before saying, "With your blessing..."
  • ★☆☆☆☆ ACHES & PAINS: If you complain to him of pain, he'll ask where. If it's a headache, you'll likely feel a bit better. For anything else, "Try this, if you'd like, and tell me how you feel."
    ★☆☆☆☆ BROKEN BONES: At best. he can ask you to remain lying down in the den. He may try to distract you with conversation while he considers what herb to feed you.
  • ★★★★★ TRAVELING HERBS: Going somewhere? No worries; Wolfsong knows just what you need to stay hale and healthy during your journey. The rest is up to you.
    ★★★☆☆ KITTING: Thanks to Starlingheart and his own pregnancy, he's better prepared for the arrival of kits, but any complications will need a little faith and a lot of luck.
  • ★☆☆☆☆ POISONS: It's best if you avoid eating anything unfamiliar to you— it's probably just as unfamiliar to Wolfsong. The best he can do is offer you yarrow and sit with you.
    ★★☆☆☆ ILLNESS: If it's white or greencough, you'll likely recover. Otherwise, prepare for odd concoctions and the usual request that you consent to a little trial-and-error.
 
One step to another, and Sunstar forgets the loss that still throbs and aches. He moves as if to put his weight upon a missing limb — his chin falls to the water, his belly quick to follow, and he hisses through his teeth as the shallow water of the sun-warmed pool meets the wet wound of flesh and bone. His heart leaps up to his throat at the sensation of falling, and remains there with the pain of half-catching himself upon one limb. Achingly, awkwardly, he stands again, and places himself back against Wolfsong's shoulder. There is nothing there to betray him. Like the mountains of memory, his safety is unmoving.

"Yes," he assents belatedly. Come. Wide eyes watch the fire wither and split apart. Against the warm stones it falters. Against the water, it spits and fizzles. A curtain of red begins to creep closed around them, but before them, he sees a path through. He does not know who he is now. A leader of nine lives, a warrior of one. He had not died honorably. He had not remained dead as he should have. The protector and protected, they step forward as one. Sunstar limping and leaning, Sunnvar guiding. Both halves of who had been see the same way through.

Cool water is a harsh relief against the heat that had singed his fur but they cannot linger. The murmurings of twolegs become louder, closer, and they stumble and splash through to the opposite side of the pool. His hobbling will limit them both. His chest heaves with the effort it takes to simply stay aloft for this long. It would be best if he urged Wolfsong ahead — eight times to suffer, yes, but eight times to live compared to the one that he must hold so dearly. But Wolfsong would not abandon him this way, and he dares not try.
EpC61GT.png

  • OOC.
  • Iw56kmg.png
    SUNSTAR. WINDCLAN LEADER. 
    ——– AMAB HE - HIM - HIS ╱╱ 4+ YEARS OLD.
    NPC x NPC,. MATE TO WOLFSONG; FATHER TO ONE LITTER WITH HIM. MENTORING RIVEPAW.

    TH ╱╱ A LARGE, SCARRED CHOCOLATE AND WHITE ROSETTE TABBY TOM WITH SEAGLASS EYES
 
  • Crying
Reactions: WOLFSONG