YOU ARE WHAT THEY'RE FEEDING ON — practice

[JAYPAW.]

The sun has barely crested the horizon, yet Jenko has already risen.

He's positioned on the outside of the makeshift camp, a spot that is typically secluded from the judgmental eyes of the others. As secluded as one could be on the open moors, anyways. A ball of moss sits before him, a couple of fox-lengths from his reach. Jenko's misaligned eyes do not leave the target, lanky figure pressed against the ground. He's been watching the warriors of the moors from day one, observing every hunt with frigid determination to copy their every move. Now, he's broken it down into three steps. Analyze, approach, and annihilate. The three A's of hunting.

Okay, maybe annihilate is an extreme word to use, but Jenko finds it much more satisfying when each word begins with an A. Analyze, approach, and kill just does not have a nice ring to it.

Step one, analyze. He imagines the mossball to be a prey animal, unaware to his presence. It would forage among the tall grass, snuffling for seeds or roots or insects. It does not notice him, and so he can proceed.

Step two, approach. Shadowing the crouch of the hunters, Jenko stalks forward. It's rigid, each muscle too tense, clearly the work of an inexperienced cat. Closer and closer, his crossed eyes remain trained on the target. But in the midst of focusing too hard on perfecting the motions, he forgets to observe his pathway. A brittle stalk of grass crunches underfoot. Jenko hisses in frustration, straightening up. His prey would've fled by now. Another failure.

His tail lashes. He wouldn't stop until he gets it perfect.​

 

[SOOTSTAR]

It wasn't very leaderly to relish in the failures of your soldiers. But to Sootstar, Jenko was no soldier, no warrior nor clan-mate of hers. For he was her jester, so was his sister and any other kittypet that she had so graciously allowed into her home. Soon enough they'd be gone, this life was far too tough for them.

"Oh... I'm sure you'll get it next time!" A sweet, faux encouragement that dripped with toxicity, she sees the determination light in his eyes. She wants nothing more than to stomp it right out. "Perhaps it's time you go home though... maybe help our old pick their ticks off rather than scare more of our prey away?"

With every word she says, she wears a smile, looking directly into the eyes of the tomcat. A bully she was, and she knew it. Yet for a kittypet she did not care, no one should. It was a kindness to show them as swiftly as possible this life was not for them, perhaps with Sootstar's words Jenk would run back to his twolegs before he was slain. ​

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[Hunts Pheasants]

Under the easy dawnlight, Hunts Pheasants couldn't help but notice the kittypet stalking a mossball. At first she assumes it to be play, as a kitten might do, for it is her understanding that kittypets often continue such things well into their adulthood. But this kittypet, Jenko, is practicing-- which Hunts Pheasants doesn't realize until he steps on something unseen, loud enough to give a brittle crunch, and stops his pursuit.

The encouragements offered soon after settle heavy in Hunts Pheasants' guts. Some leader, Hunts Pheasants thinks-- cannot help herself but to think.

She doesn't say a word as she approaches, only jerks her head in a sharp motion to draw Jenko's attention, and then drops into a hunting crouch, just as Jenko had been. She shakes herself, a familiar movement to loosen the tension in her muscles, slightly exaggerated for the benefit of her demonstration. Hunts Pheasants steps with precision, her hindlegs landing in the pawprints left by her forelegs, leaving a single-file line in her wake, head so low that her shoulder blades form ridges on her back.

When Hunts Pheasants comes to a stop, she crouches lower, bad eye narrowed until she could make sense of where the mossball lays. She shakes again, then launches herself. The whole of her body straightens in the air, forepaws stretched in front of her, forelegs stretched behind. She lands with a force enough to displace the mossball, but her quick reflexes trap it beneath her paws before she could even think to try, and on instinct alone she takes the mossball in her mouth then shakes it as if she were killing a mouse.

The mossball drops at her paws, and Hunts Pheasants rises, dry grit falling from her underbelly. She comes to a stop besides the kittypet then tips her head towards the mossball, a quiet demand for him to try once more.

windclan warrior | brown tabby tortoiseshell with low white spotting | one blue eye & one white-eye | tags​

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[VULTUREMASK]

He didn't get it why the kittypets tried so hard to prove themself here. Didn't they get it already?. They would never become one of them. It simply didn't lay in thier blood. Leech for one would never accept them to be a part of them. He wonderd if Sootstars sole reason to allow the kittypets to live with them was to humilate them like she currently was doing to this kittypet. Well, he didn't really care. He would join in with a snort, his eyes narrowed as he glared at the seal point. " Why don't you just give up already?. You are not fitted for this life." Leech were just being honest, and the sooner Jenko understood he was chasing an impossible dream the better it would be for them. Not everyone could get what they wanted in life. Sometime you just had to give up on the dream while still having any dignity left.

Hunts Pheasant had a different approach to this though, one that actually encouraged the kittypets dream further. Leech would watch her with bemusement as she tried to teach this kittypet how to stalk correctly. It would earn a huff from the young tom but he did nothing to interfere her lesson. If she wanted to waste her time and breath on a lost cause then that was up to her. All she would do in the end was to make the soft-paw fall even further when he one day woke up realising all his efforts had been for nothing. You couldn't change your destiny. No one could. So why try so hard for when nothing would come out from it in the end?. Oh well, it was thier fall not his.


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[honey]

Venom was spat from both Soot and Leech, and with a slight scowl the medicine cat made her way over. She had watched Jenko try to do his best, and Soot and Leech were over here grating at her ears.

"Don’t." she warns Leech lowly as she approaches, an irritated growl rising in her throat. "Are you guys just gonna berate the poor guy instead of helping? Such clanmates you are, sacre bleu!" she does not care what Sootstar says as she rolls her shoulders back and approaches Hunts and Jenko with a huff. It makes her angry, being trapped in a clan full of bullies. Could Starclan pick anything else?

Well, it couldn’t be too bad. She had Pollen, and Sunshine. She would not have them if she were not in Windclan.

"Try to do it just like Hunts did, mon ami." she encourages gently, eyes soft as she brushes her tail against the ground. "Failure means improvement, remember that." she had never been a kittypet, had been born with a feral instinct, these things came naturally to her and perhaps all of the other cats here- but Jenko was trying, and that was enough to earn her pride.
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"speech"​