you gotta show a little backbone || frostbite

[betonyfrost]

Betonyfrost wakes to snow.

Her eyes open slowly and her head rises with a visible effort. The world is weighted and out of focus, or perhaps it is Betonyfrost who is weighted, or her eyes that are weighted. Yes, that’s it. Her eyes are weighted. She rasps her tongue over white gums and blinks, bleary, and blinks again, only this time her eyes do not wish to open.

This isn’t right, Betonyfrost thinks, distantly from herself.

Her head rises from the snow— when had she let it rest?— and she tries to tell her folded and coiled body to unwind, but her paws move at the same speed as her sluggish heart and the clouds in her head are too numerous to remember just how she is supposed to coordinate her many limbs. Betonyfrost falls twice before she stands, shedding powdered snow as a disturbed overhang sheds dirt.

"Damn it— damn it all," Betonyfrost slurs, but without any kind of bite; all her heat has left her.

Paws beneath her, Betonyfrost struggles— think! —to remember what she'd set herself to do. She glares to clanrock, certain in the haze of her mind that this is somehow Pitchstar's fault, but even that thought is a thin wisp of smoke. Parts of her are numb, and other parts screech and ache with every point of contact they have with the world. She remembers she is cold, just as she remembers that such a thing is a strange thing to remember. The cold doesn't bite her so harshly, not as it should.

Betonyfrost stumbles into the warriors' den more than she walks, and pauses at the mouth of it for only long enough to recall that she has been disallowed from this. That's why she had been out: because she was supposed to. Did Pitchstar intend for her to die? But it doesn't matter, if Pitchstar wanted Betonyfrost dead she'd force him to do her the kindness of killing her himself.

She must be a sight to her clanmates, the skin of her ears a bruise-blue and her nose gone colorless. When she steps, she catches the bright berry red of her pads and nearly mistakes it for blood. But such things do not matter at the moment; Betonyfrost just needs to get warm. She'll feel better then, once she's warm. It is hardly warmer inside, but Betonyfrost finds her warmth in sprawling atop her clanmates, pressing her cold pads into what she is certain is someone's gut.​

shadowclan warrior | blue mackerel tabby | 16 moons | tags​

 

[FLICKERFIRE]

There's no love lost between Flickerfire and Betonyfrost. She's always been sure the blue tabby's been some sort of weirdo, and every day Flickerfire is forced to interact with her, she proves that a little more. The situation with Pitchstar's bratty little sister was funny to her, nothing more than a game, and she'd really only laughed at Betonyfrost's punishment because Smogmaw had. It had been funny, at least a little.

The ramifications of such a punishment in leafbare had escaped Flickerfire. She's not worried about Betonyfrost; she's not worried about anyone, really, but herself. Her stomach is like a yawning black hole threatening to crush the rest of her Clanmates in its gravity. Her lean frame has wasted to pitiful proportions cloaked in rough black fur. Why should she care about Betonyfrost, the kit-hitter?

And yet, when the blue she-cat stumbles into the warrior's den and breaks her penance, Flickerfire stares at her. Horror dawns slow over her features. "What'n the hell's wrong with your ears?" Betonyfrost doesn't look like herself, even -- she's like a reanimated bit of roadkill, uncomprehending the scarlet color of her paw pads, the bit of maggoty mealiness that is now her nose.

Flickerfire physically shies away from her. "Stay away from me. I don't want whatever you got," she says in a flat, matter-of-fact tone.​

 

[CHILLEDSTAR.]

she was reaping her punishment for sure. whether pitchstar counted on this to happen, or not, it didn't matter. betonyfrost should have thought about that when she decided to hit an apprentice. some spiral she was going down, and all she to show for it was cold injuries. whatever the hell they were called. the sound of betonyfrost's yell pulls them from their thoughts, and they stand, walking and taking their place beside flickerfire. they angled their head slightly downward to look at betony, only breathing out one word.

"shit."

they grunted for a moment before turning to look around before clicking their tongue angrily.

"go see starlingheart. and no, its not up for discussion. fucking go."

for fucks sake, of course this had to happen. with cold like this, who knew how many herbs that the medicine cat had. now they had to be used. fucking fuck. starclan, you could bring even the strongest cat to the brink of insanity. they cursed the starred cats silently, before just lashing their tail, waiting for betonyfrost to move... how ironic her name was now.

// @STARLINGHEART . tag <3
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[ NOBODY ELSE MATTERS, GIRL ]​

 

[betonyfrost]

Betonyfrost stares at Flickerfire for a long moment, mouth slightly ajar and completely noncomprehending. Her… ears? She licks her paw and tries to run it over one of her ears, just to check on it, but misses twice— three times?— before her paw finally finds it. Strange, like touching someone else. She can feel her ear on her paw, but not her paw on her ear. Betonyfrost should be concerned.

Her head drops to her paws, now folded beneath her chin, and her eyes flutter.

Whatever Flickerfire has to say next is lost to Betonyfrost. She makes the sort of noise one might while giving a distracted agreement. There had been a time Betonyfrost would have cared, deeply, for whatever Flickerfire had to say. Betonyfrost thinks she still would care, if she could just remember to listen, but her eyes are too heavy and all that snow must have filled up Betonyfrost’s head— she just can’t keep a thought.

"Aren’t— isn’t—?” Even knowing what she is saying, Betonyfrost can hardly understand her hushed words, "Aren’t you… cold?"

Betonyfrost is cold, she remembers.

When her eyes open next— had time passed? had it been long? —its Chilledgaze to speak to Betonyfrost, tone sharp with what Betonyfrost’s battered heart wishes was worry. They want Betonyfrost to go to Starlingheart, but that would require Betonyfrost to leave the warrior’s den, and what little protection it provides.

The thought that Pitchstar wanted Betonyfrost to die like this already feels like a distant memory. Dredging it up now coils something tight in Betonyfrost.

"Don’t kill me too," Betonyfrost mumbles, more a plea than a command, but stumbles to her paws all the same.

But Betonyfrost cannot help her nature, and her nature is that even now— even like this, she needs to push for what she can get. She needs to want, "Walk with, couldn’t…? Could you walk with me?"​

shadowclan warrior | blue mackerel tabby | 16 moons | tags​

 

[TEASELPAW]

Quiet discussion drifted from the mouth of the warrior's den- though a lot of it sounded like swearing. Where boredom overtook him, bickering beckoned his fickle attention span; between him and another, or anyone else. This was not just any sort of argument- in fact it was barely one at all by the sounds of it, but Teaselpaw's curiosity caught the better of him as he wandered over. As sunset eyes adjusted to the shade of the den, Betonyfrost's state of a face soon too settled into focus.

It was lucky he did not flinch too far, at a risk of snagging one of his ears on the brambles; she looked a wreck. Swollen, greyed- like a curse had been put on her by the leaf-bare. She looked like a dead tree... or just dead. "Jeez," he murmured, slowly backing away, shock ill-hidden on his ivory features. For once- for once he'd succumb to the acceptance that his sister was needed here more than him. "Uhhhh... Starlingheart?" he called, lava-plume eyes flickering a frantic search around the snow-dressed camp for a sign of his shadowy sibling. ​

PENNED BY PIN​

 

[Starlingheart]

She flinches when she hears her brother call her name, recoiling like she has been hit. Her family has not been supportive since she had taken the mantle of Medicine Cat. Actually, it was the opposite. Whatever rift that had opened between them when their mother had passed only seemed to widen with her new title. This was not something she had asked for. Sure she had agreed to Bonejaw's proposition of training her but just that. She had agreed to be an apprentice, not to be thrust into this role with little to no say in the matter, not to have her siblings seemingly resent her.

Hesitantly she emerges from her den to see Betonyfrost walking towards it and for a moment, she is puzzled. Her green eyes take in the silver molly's scrawny form, appraising her for what could be bringing her to her den. That's when she sees it. Her ears. "O-ooh St-stars" she murmurs quietly to herself. Some twisted part of her is glad Betonyfrost is suffering in this way. A dark voice in her head murmurs 'that's what she gets for hitting my sister' but she feels bad the second it enters her head.

She has never seen something like this before. Too young she is too young to know. This is her first leaf-bare, was this normal? Was this something that happened in the cold hungry moons? Cats ears just fell off? She does not know and she is too afraid to ask, fears of her clanmates driving her out for being incompetent run through her thoughts and turn her limbs cold. Is there even anything to do other than treat for infection and pray? Betonyfrost better hope so.

She wads the newly made nubs in cobwebs and chewed up marigold. When she is done she steps back to look at her work. Worry and self-doubt flickers in those round green eyes of hers but she just nods. "C-cooome come suh-suh-seee see me if-if it g-g-gets whir-worse" really what else was there for her to do?
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