private you have my eyes | smogmaw

[Laurelgrin]

it hits my head and I feel numb✧—————————————————————————————
Blood relations are a strange concept for the blue tom to wrap his head around. Well to some extent, Halfpaw was his sister through and through, there was no question of it. The boy was one of her many fans, but then he thought of Thornpaw, she was also his sister, his littermate even, and yet it just didn’t feel the same. There was his older siblings too, Garlicpaw at least seemed to like him but the rest of them were more like expectations rather than living cats.

Naturally blood relations came back to one point, and this family started at Smogmaw and Halfshade. His living father and dead mother. Although until recently they both had been dead. Smogmaw had been off saving the clans, and a light sleeping Laurelkit had heard the mumbles of concern from the warriors around him. They had whispered the word orphan in those still nights when only the cough of half dead cats had broken the silence.

The word didn’t carry much worth until Windclan declared it over him and Halfpaw, then they were rescued, they were saved from such a horrid label. The queens of the moors played with them, they loved them, that’s what they implied. In Shadowclan they were Halfshade’s orphans, in Windclan they were going to be the best warriors on the moors.

Laurelpaw’s foot squished into not yet frozen mud as he walked across camp. Looking down at the footprint left by his now muddy paw he felt torn. He felt like he still was just the same orphan as he was before. Then he saw the one thing proving that he wasn’t, Smogmaw, the deputy, his father. He froze. He didn’t look scared or anything, he just never knew what to say to his father. It’s hard to think of a stranger as the cat you are supposed to rely on the most.
my body's looking wrong✧——————————————————————✧penned by WriteAboutRadish
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[smogstar]

Forgive the immediate plunge into macabre imagery, but there looms a ghastly specter in the midst of Smogmaw's direct lineage. It's impossible to overlook, hovering above each successive litter, circling over bi-coloured and grey-toned pelts in its untiring haunt, whispering incessantly, though it whispers louder for the newest brood:

Halfshade is gone. It is a rare eternal truth, impervious to debate or doubt. Her spirit has crossed beyond the veil, her body rotted and reclaimed by the wilds.

The bi-coloured and grey-toned pelts constantly crossing in and out of his sightline taunts him with how real her absence is. Halfshade, whom he revered so deeply, who in her beauty blessed him with the new lives he treasures so greatly. Applepaw, Garlicpaw, Swanpaw, and Ashenpaw covered substantial ground on the trail to maturity, and carried her imprint in every action they took.

The later three—Halfpaw, Thornpaw, and Laurelpaw—could not share in such fortune, having emerged into a world where their mother's light had already flickered out. Not to mention that their arrival marked the end of a love story, not the beginning. Smogmaw cannot cast his gaze upon them without noticing an ugly counterweight teetering over his joy for their being here. They represent the unkind finality of Halfshade's legacy, no matter the tenderness that Smogmaw would like to uphold for her sake.

Though there dwells a warmth in his tone when he greets Laurelpaw today, it is marred by a certain reservation, an intangible and instinctual avoidance to which Smogmaw doesn't consciously register—"Hey, squirt." A gentle huff plays along his lips, all while they coil into the vaguest semblance of a smile. Notwithstanding the fragility in his mannerisms, Laurelkit remains a light in his eyes. "What's got you out 'n about today? Mentor have your chores cut out?" ​