private WHERE IS A LONG NEEDLE? — thriftpaw

[BLUEFROST]

Sometimes, when Bluepaw wakes in the morning, she feels her paws are not thickly-crusted with mud, but sticky with unknown viscera. She wakes from troubled, shallow dreams, groggily lifting white forepaws to her face to inspect them. They are clean. They are clean, and they are white still, not tainted red, not stained crimson with the filth she’d drawn from the tortoiseshell’s body. She is confused by these dreams, because in her day-to-day life, she is not troubled by what she and Thriftpaw did. They had defended their home. They had taken back what rightfully belonged to WindClan, and there is no shame in that, nothing to hide from.

But then why—why is she pestered so? She stirs awake from a nap in which she barely rests, her claws shivering and aching and unsheathed when she wakes. She’s clawed at some of the feathers lining her nest, and she opens tired green eyes to stare dully in surprise.

They feel sticky. Clotted. Not with soil, but with flesh.

“Thriftpaw,” she murmurs, spotting his pelt across camp like a sunspot. The Clan bustles busily around them, reinforcing the few dens they guard, the gaps in the gorse fence lining their home, bringing in fresh-kill or organizing patrols. But for the moment, in their little corner, they are alone and unseen. “A word? I am having—” She stops, wondering. She stares first at her paws, paws that feel and look clean again, and then at his own. “I am having the strangest dreams. About the filth we rid our territory of,” she whispers, her tail curling around her body.

[ @Thriftpaw ]

, ”​

​

 

[Thriftfeather]

Thriftpaw twists like an owl to Bluepaw's voice. His own worries don't fall away, not entirely, but they quiet with the promise of something else to focus on. Thriftpaw is slow on the uptake, doesn't understand why Bluepaw is telling him about dreams until it slots into his mind that she's seeking—comfort, advice?—something from Thriftpaw. It's always been his impression of Bluepaw that she wouldn't look down to avoid his eyes, and she wouldn't quiet her voice out of anything other than practicality. Seeing her now, Thriftpaw wonders if it is the Bluepaw in his mind who is wrong, or the one before him.

"Dreams don't need to mean anything," Is Thriftpaw's response, automatic. He frowns, tries again, and says not unkindly, "But it, but it makes sense that you'd be dreaming of... of that."

He doesn't include himself in dreaming of that. Thriftpaw knows he should have more feelings on the matter of what him and Bluepaw had done. If he sits in his thoughts, if he allows himself, he would likely have countless. He'd be angry at Bluepaw for calling on him to help, for one, and he'd be angry at himself for those unfair feelings, knowing he would have aided her regardless. But Thriftpaw has gotten good at not dwelling on things, or he is too busy dwelling on his past to allow anything new into his head.

"How are they—I mean, what's so strange about them?"​

WINDCLAN APPRENTICE ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 9 MOONS ✦ TAGS​

 

[BLUEFROST]

Bluepaw regards her friend with some impatience as he tells her dreams don’t have to mean anything. “Of course they do, or else why have them?” She says, voice low but curt. “Just because I am not Cottonpaw does not mean my dreams have no value.” For just a moment, a shadow of distaste darkens her features, though she is quick to smooth them, to allow the light to touch her again. The white tip of her tail begins to twitch.

After a moment of open staring, she continues, “You have not had a dream about that? I dream of cutting her,” and her voice lowers until it is a hair above a dulcet whisper. “I dream of hitting her, over and over, and when I wake my paws feel sticky. Filthy.” She shudders—it is clear this is the part that bothers her, the sensation of imaginary gore clinging to her paws and pelt, moreso than the content of the dream itself. “I do not feel things in my dreams, normally. Is that not strange?” She blinks, confusion gleaming in half-lidded green eyes.

, ”​

​

 

[Thriftfeather]

Bluepaw snaps at him. It's a small thing—her words become clipped, and beneath her usual veneer of careful neutrality is a twist of something raw. It's a small thing, over as soon as it's begun, and Thriftpaw feels it all like a weight over his shoulders. His whole body gives a half-motion from where he sits, too small to become anything more than a tension in his back and the sudden resting of his long tail to his flank.

"Sorry," It's been long enough now since he's had one of his talks with Ghostwail—he's almost forgotten how sorry he truly is, "I meant to say that my dreams don't mean anything."

But Bluepaw goes on. With her voice so low, Thriftpaw needs to lean closer to chase the sound. He can see what she describes easily enough; imagines her covered in mud-dark blood that pulls her fur into spikes. He can see the rogue well enough as well, reduced to scraps of fur and out-turned flesh, like days old carrion. Even in his mind's eye, he turns away from that image, attention back to the Bluepaw here and now. That isn't how it went.

They hadn't gone that far.

"I've told you about my dreams," Thriftpaw says, only to realize he hasn't. Not actually. His own voice is lowered to match Bluepaw's tone, "I dream of—of then." He jerks his head backwards as if indicating something behind him, some nebulous part of his past—he knows Bluepaw remembers, "Sometimes I dream it goes differently. Most of the time it's..." Unchanged, he thinks, but can't get the word out. It's something he's seen, so it's something he dreams of.

"It's—I don't know what's normal in a dream," Thriftpaw continues, "But I feel in mine, too." He touches a hesitant paw to his torn ear. It had been the worst pain he had ever experienced, once. He wasn't able to stop himself from yelping. Now, he could spend a day treading on a splinter without noticing, "Do you feel it right now? On your paws?"​

WINDCLAN APPRENTICE ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 9 MOONS ✦ TAGS​

 

[BLUEFROST]

She snaps at him, and he apologizes almost instantly. “Sorry,” he says, “I meant to say that my dreams don’t mean anything.” Bluepaw gives Thriftpaw a frosty look that begins to melt the longer she stares at him. “Very well. I’m sure you did not mean anything by it.” She exhales. Speaking of Cottonpaw is like pressing a paw into a wound, so she curves around it, letting herself slip into the moment. Thriftpaw must lean close to hear her—their muzzles are only a mouselength apart, as though the secrets they share are enough to condemn any who hear.

“I’ve told you about my dreams,” the golden tom says. Bluepaw nods, remembering—Ghostwail. “So is this to say… you dream of things you want to remember? Or things you feel you have to remember,” she says. She watches a paw brush the slice in one ear, and she pins her gaze to that motion, briefly hypnotized by it.

“Do you feel it right now? On your paws?” She snaps out of it, meeting Thriftpaw’s gaze. “Now? I—well, no, I do not. It seems to… go away, the longer I stay awake…” She lifts a paw, holds it between them like an offering. Tilted upright, the pads are a blushing pink, looking sunburnt from the thorough cleaning she’d given them upon waking. She exhales—a soft sound, like a feather falling. “I do not want to wake with her blood on my paws, anymore than you want to wake with—” She frowns. With screams in your ear. She does not know how to finish her sentence, so she doesn’t—and the fragment lingers, shimmers like light.

, ”​

​

 

[Thriftfeather]

Want and need are not—should not be—monumentally different words. Thriftpaw moves his tongue over his teeth as if tumbling those words in his mouth, parsing what it is Bluepaw is asking. He should only want what he needs and need what he wants: it should be wrong to ask for anything more than that. The difference between pale and white. He doesn't like Bluepaw's question, and he doesn't like that he lacks an answer. Neither, he thinks, just a dream—anything more and Thriftpaw would need/want to dwell on it rather than dismiss it.

"Do you really think—do you think dreams actually mean something?" Thriftpaw asks instead, uncertain of himself, but doubtless in Bluepaw's opinion.

She explains how the feeling fades with wakefulness and Thriftpaw nods as if he is receiving an unexpected answer. Daylight has a way of making dreams less real. Like warmth to dew, they cannot linger beneath the tangible. Then, Bluepaw presents him with her overturned paw, pristine and real. He can imagine what it is that Bluepaw feels—felt—easily, despite that. He shows his own, crisscrossed with thin white callouses and pockmarked in all the places where grit has made a home.

"Sometimes I feel like my ear is still bleeding," Thriftpaw stops, simply to breath, and watches as his toes flex as he speaks; his claws unsheathe and resheathe with the motion, "When I first wake, I mean. It was worse when I was small." His paw relaxes and his claws disappear once again. Thriftpaw settles it back onto the ground, "Now I dream it more when—when something reminds me of it." He doesn't say how everything has a way of reminding him of it; his mind fixed on a single point in time. The right shade of sunset could shake him apart if he isn't careful.

So stop thinking about it, is bad advice. He dutifully doesn't say it, even when he knows those are the words that ring in his head when he catches himself dwelling. "It's good to remember that—I try to remember that the feeling will pass," Thriftpaw says instead, wavering.​

WINDCLAN APPRENTICE ✦ GOLDEN TABBY TOM ✦ 9 MOONS ✦ TAGS​