- Oct 17, 2022
- 454
- 78
- 28
cw: mourning, reference to past deaths
MAYBE I'D BE A SAINT IF I WEREN'T ————————————
There have been murmurs, lately. Ever since he was made lead warrior alongside Cindershade, in fact: whispers of manipulation, of blackmail or of nepotism, depending on how positively inclined towards their leader the speaker felt at the moment. They are few – fewer than he'd have expected – but persistent, hissing in his ever-attentive ears, and Snakeblink has, this once, chosen flight over miserable eavesdropping.
Surely, he is better liked now than he's ever been. He has Cicadastar’s trust; he is now one of the clan's lead warriors. He has an apprentice who respects and perhaps even likes him; some of his clanmates go so far as to enjoy his presence; if he's not mistaken, Ashpaw has actively sought it out once or twice. He's not doing too bad for himself, all things considered, especially compared to the crushing loneliness of the previous leaf-bare. Yet he cannot think past these vindictive rumors, the little jabs of cats who either ignore his discrete presence or do not care that he is listening in on their poor opinion of himself.
He cannot escape the limits of his own character: there is no achievement great enough to have others forget that he once mentioned, at length, what he'd do as leader and how he might set out to take the position for himself. Idle ambitions and voiced concerns over the ease with which one could take his friend's lives, tragically misinterpreted.
It happens more often than he'd like. Snakeblink, having not been gifted with an innate sense of ‘the right thing to say’, learned everything he knows by very deliberate imitation or observation — seeing what others say to him and what they said to each other and setting out to mimicking it. It's not a perfect solution: he tends to be over-familiar with those well-liked near-strangers that he knows only through their friends, while the subtleties of friendship elude him entirely for a lack of proper personal experience to draw from.
Some things, though, he has perfected: attentiveness and care chief among them.
He had no shortage of examples there — as he learned how to love from the way his family loved him: tangibly, quietly, with touch and acts of care. Are you hungry? Are you cold? Where does it hurt? What can I do? Let me feed you. Let me keep you warm. I’ll take the pain away. I can help; let me help. I'll do anything.
This way of caring has not always made him popular: it tends to be overbearing and invasive, which few appreciate, and rarely welcomed from the near-stranger that Snakeblink is to many of them. But what else is he supposed to do with all of the parts of his heart that are only there to be given? It's all he knows to do.
”Not that I don’t understand their irritation,” he muses aloud around a mouthful of trinkets, ”But I wish they would cease seeing ulterior motives in what is, when it comes down to it, very straightforward affection…”
There is no one around, but he has an audience in mind as he walks through the tall weeds and murmurs his every thought. Here they are, curious: What do you think you’re doing, Snake?
”A full cycle of seasons has turned since mom’s death — it’s only natural to mark the occasion. We used to do it together, remember?”
The chorus of his dead siblings hums, some in recognition. Brook Newt and Tree Frog lived long enough to see this ritual: walking through the riverlands, gathering trinkets that their lost relatives would have liked while sharing stories of their lives. Keeping their memory alive as a family. Pond Turtle was too young when she died, but then again it’s been so long that her voice is barely more than a vague and imprecise whisper in Snakeblink’s imagination: he doesn’t know what her reaction would be, if she were really there. Maybe she’d say it’s morbid. He remembers her being quite fussy about these things…
(It’s a habit he picked up in the lonely days after Salamander’s death, last leaf-bare, when talking to the dead was better than not talking to anyone at all. It’s been moons since he last did it — since Riverclan founding, at least.)
As macabre as it is, he finds the process soothing. He remembers his mother talking about their father as they picked up sprigs of mint and river-smooth pebbles, the way her voice would stutter when it came to talking about Turtle, gathering empty snail shells for Newt, the two of them huddling together as they reminisced about Frog. There’s a lot of love to be found among the well-worn grief. Even in her absence, the process of repetition connects him to them.
”A rock shaped like a leaf for you, Turtle, and colorful shells for Newt… Frog, I’d have brought you eggshells, but it’s so early in the season, the moorhens haven’t started nesting yet. I got you this feather instead…”
He nudges his little pile of treasure together and frowns, considering. He doesn’t have anything for Salamander. He’s never had to do this without his mother before, let alone for her: he’s not sure what she’d like as a memorial.
Snakeblink paces up and down the streambed, nosing at and discarding shiny rocks and weeds buzzing with insects. Nothing fits what he has in mind. He wishes he could pick up some of the water and bring it back: Salamander never loved anything as much as she did the river.
No, that’s not right. She loved them, didn’t she? That's part of the problem.
(If she had loved them less, she might have been able to outlive them more easily.)
Greencough certainly didn’t help, but Salamander was a warrior in her prime when the illness got to her. Leafbare would not have weakened her so much, but the loss of three of her kits? Oh, the grief had been eating her from the inside out for so long, magnified by each death. It’s no wonder she slipped away before a full blink of the moon. Snakeblink sometimes thinks, unfairly, that she chose to die: that she preferred wasting away to the risk of seeing him die next. She didn’t care that by doing that he would be the one left behind, all alone—
The well-worn, bitter thread of thought snaps as his eyes fall on a hint of pale purple half-hidden by tall grass.
Water speedwell, he thinks, pushing his head through the cluster of weeds. The name echoes with another voice: his mother, naming plants to him as they walked along the river bank.
He can almost see the scene: Tree Frog and Pond Newt had been splashing through the shallows, scaring every fish in the area, while Salamander pushed the speedwell closer to the ground so he could see it better and smell its sweetness. He’d asked, what does it do? and she had only laughed and said, nothing, but it's beautiful. She loved plants of all sorts, for some reason she was never able to communicate. Now that he knows about the medicinal use of some, Snakeblink understands her fascination, but back then he couldn’t wrap his head around it. If it doesn’t do anything, what’s the point?
Must it have one? It reminds him of her. That’s enough for him.
Carefully, he puts his teeth around the stem, severs it and walks back to the rest of his tiny hoard. The river laps at this short fur as he curls around his offerings, placing the flower at the center and laying his head near it. When he’s done here he’ll push them into the river and watch them be carried by the current. But for now, he sighs, half-content and half-weary, and noses at the brittle snail shells.
”A lot has happened since the last time we did this,” he murmurs. Have they been watching from Starclan, he wonders? Ah, well, it doesn’t hurt to keep them updated anyway. ”Where shall I begin? Ah, I do believe I should start with Riverclan: there was little of note before...”
Surely, he is better liked now than he's ever been. He has Cicadastar’s trust; he is now one of the clan's lead warriors. He has an apprentice who respects and perhaps even likes him; some of his clanmates go so far as to enjoy his presence; if he's not mistaken, Ashpaw has actively sought it out once or twice. He's not doing too bad for himself, all things considered, especially compared to the crushing loneliness of the previous leaf-bare. Yet he cannot think past these vindictive rumors, the little jabs of cats who either ignore his discrete presence or do not care that he is listening in on their poor opinion of himself.
He cannot escape the limits of his own character: there is no achievement great enough to have others forget that he once mentioned, at length, what he'd do as leader and how he might set out to take the position for himself. Idle ambitions and voiced concerns over the ease with which one could take his friend's lives, tragically misinterpreted.
It happens more often than he'd like. Snakeblink, having not been gifted with an innate sense of ‘the right thing to say’, learned everything he knows by very deliberate imitation or observation — seeing what others say to him and what they said to each other and setting out to mimicking it. It's not a perfect solution: he tends to be over-familiar with those well-liked near-strangers that he knows only through their friends, while the subtleties of friendship elude him entirely for a lack of proper personal experience to draw from.
Some things, though, he has perfected: attentiveness and care chief among them.
He had no shortage of examples there — as he learned how to love from the way his family loved him: tangibly, quietly, with touch and acts of care. Are you hungry? Are you cold? Where does it hurt? What can I do? Let me feed you. Let me keep you warm. I’ll take the pain away. I can help; let me help. I'll do anything.
This way of caring has not always made him popular: it tends to be overbearing and invasive, which few appreciate, and rarely welcomed from the near-stranger that Snakeblink is to many of them. But what else is he supposed to do with all of the parts of his heart that are only there to be given? It's all he knows to do.
”Not that I don’t understand their irritation,” he muses aloud around a mouthful of trinkets, ”But I wish they would cease seeing ulterior motives in what is, when it comes down to it, very straightforward affection…”
There is no one around, but he has an audience in mind as he walks through the tall weeds and murmurs his every thought. Here they are, curious: What do you think you’re doing, Snake?
”A full cycle of seasons has turned since mom’s death — it’s only natural to mark the occasion. We used to do it together, remember?”
The chorus of his dead siblings hums, some in recognition. Brook Newt and Tree Frog lived long enough to see this ritual: walking through the riverlands, gathering trinkets that their lost relatives would have liked while sharing stories of their lives. Keeping their memory alive as a family. Pond Turtle was too young when she died, but then again it’s been so long that her voice is barely more than a vague and imprecise whisper in Snakeblink’s imagination: he doesn’t know what her reaction would be, if she were really there. Maybe she’d say it’s morbid. He remembers her being quite fussy about these things…
(It’s a habit he picked up in the lonely days after Salamander’s death, last leaf-bare, when talking to the dead was better than not talking to anyone at all. It’s been moons since he last did it — since Riverclan founding, at least.)
As macabre as it is, he finds the process soothing. He remembers his mother talking about their father as they picked up sprigs of mint and river-smooth pebbles, the way her voice would stutter when it came to talking about Turtle, gathering empty snail shells for Newt, the two of them huddling together as they reminisced about Frog. There’s a lot of love to be found among the well-worn grief. Even in her absence, the process of repetition connects him to them.
”A rock shaped like a leaf for you, Turtle, and colorful shells for Newt… Frog, I’d have brought you eggshells, but it’s so early in the season, the moorhens haven’t started nesting yet. I got you this feather instead…”
He nudges his little pile of treasure together and frowns, considering. He doesn’t have anything for Salamander. He’s never had to do this without his mother before, let alone for her: he’s not sure what she’d like as a memorial.
Snakeblink paces up and down the streambed, nosing at and discarding shiny rocks and weeds buzzing with insects. Nothing fits what he has in mind. He wishes he could pick up some of the water and bring it back: Salamander never loved anything as much as she did the river.
No, that’s not right. She loved them, didn’t she? That's part of the problem.
(If she had loved them less, she might have been able to outlive them more easily.)
Greencough certainly didn’t help, but Salamander was a warrior in her prime when the illness got to her. Leafbare would not have weakened her so much, but the loss of three of her kits? Oh, the grief had been eating her from the inside out for so long, magnified by each death. It’s no wonder she slipped away before a full blink of the moon. Snakeblink sometimes thinks, unfairly, that she chose to die: that she preferred wasting away to the risk of seeing him die next. She didn’t care that by doing that he would be the one left behind, all alone—
The well-worn, bitter thread of thought snaps as his eyes fall on a hint of pale purple half-hidden by tall grass.
Water speedwell, he thinks, pushing his head through the cluster of weeds. The name echoes with another voice: his mother, naming plants to him as they walked along the river bank.
He can almost see the scene: Tree Frog and Pond Newt had been splashing through the shallows, scaring every fish in the area, while Salamander pushed the speedwell closer to the ground so he could see it better and smell its sweetness. He’d asked, what does it do? and she had only laughed and said, nothing, but it's beautiful. She loved plants of all sorts, for some reason she was never able to communicate. Now that he knows about the medicinal use of some, Snakeblink understands her fascination, but back then he couldn’t wrap his head around it. If it doesn’t do anything, what’s the point?
Must it have one? It reminds him of her. That’s enough for him.
Carefully, he puts his teeth around the stem, severs it and walks back to the rest of his tiny hoard. The river laps at this short fur as he curls around his offerings, placing the flower at the center and laying his head near it. When he’s done here he’ll push them into the river and watch them be carried by the current. But for now, he sighs, half-content and half-weary, and noses at the brittle snail shells.
”A lot has happened since the last time we did this,” he murmurs. Have they been watching from Starclan, he wonders? Ah, well, it doesn’t hurt to keep them updated anyway. ”Where shall I begin? Ah, I do believe I should start with Riverclan: there was little of note before...”
——————————————————————————————————— so god damn lonely
-
“You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?”
― Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God
-
— Snakeblink • he / him. 37 ☾, riverclan warrior
— a sleek, skinny tabby with long ears and a scar over his right eye.
— gay, not actually evil, penned by @Kangoo
Last edited: