WHILE IT IS RIFE, WHILE IT IS LIGHT ✦ grave visits

[DOEBLAZE]

It's nearly upon her; a moon out, is the guess she'd hazard. Her throat is scratchy, her voice hoarse with the plunder of her last visit—still she walks. Each pawstep punches a small print, cuts a soft blue shadow into the starkness of the snow, empty of blood. Colored only with harmless indigo shadows.

The eyes she watches the pines with are not clotted with tears or blinded by fury. Nor are they empty, dead as a field in leafbare; they are green and summer-alive, shining with fondness. In lieu of her usual bundles of wildflowers, she has a twig snug in her maw, clustered with an abundance of sun-gold berries. She'd thought it fitting.

" I hope we didn't disturb you too much the other day, " she murmurs affectionately as she settles the stick down, blinking the tiredness from her eyes. Dawn is milky in the sky, most of SkyClan just beginning to rouse; stark crimson ribbons of the sun are piercing the clouds. She had strewn this pink-lit earth with salt, then scraped it away, seeded it and herself with iron. Now it is a place caught in between, the scene of a crime and the grave of a lover.

Still, when footsteps crunch on the snow, she jumps. Her fur ripples wolfishly along her spine, and the loose angles of her body go hard. At the sight of a Clanmate's face, she sighs out a column of steam and resettles the proud tilt of her shoulders. It's not often she has neighbors this early. Thoughtfully, she murmurs as she meets their eye, "Are you here to visit someone? "

​

 

[TWITCHBOLT]

He'd never been a good sleeper. It was what convinced him Quillstrike really must love him, most days... when he fidgeted and squirmed in their shared nest, pressed against his side, eventually rousing most earlier than others, and yet he was never kicked away. His nights were fragmented things, and had been since birth. Dreams were so often blood-soaked that he barely remembered them, anymore- had gotten better at convincing himself they weren't real, too.

He didn't know what drew him to the dead, in times like this ... it felt like the right thing to do, to let his paws settle on the earth, ground himself in memory to draw him further from what was false. And the mounds needed neatening up, churned-up snow upon them... he too was surprised to find Doeblaze, and startled when she did, bicolour pelt brambling. He settled in tandem, though - met her pride with his usual frayed-thin compassion.

"Mmm- most mornings I make the rounds." Oh, it sounded neurotic, didn't it? Obsessive. And - surely not the sort of thing a deputy did, swiping paws over the graves, murmuring barely-anything to the dead, tending. No, he should have been... organising, he supposed, thinking about tactics and politics, and-

All of it got done, though, and he still found time for this. Silly ritual... silly, but maybe it meant something to those who were cradled in the dirt. Even if it was just the tiniest glow of approval, smiling upon him. He murmured his destination as he jittered over to it- to her. "I ff-find Daisyflight first. I thhh-think it means more for her, because she's... not really there..." He patted the dirt. Did that sound- wrong? Her body wasn't there, that was what he meant... her kindly spirit glowed in the sky, he knew that for certain.

He didn't have to ask who Doeblaze was here for. Even if he hadn't known it was Blazestar's grave she stood over, he knew her.​

penned by pin ✧​