private YOU'RE WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE — cottonpaw

[WEASELCLAW]

Perhaps Cottonpaw has grown used to awakening into silver-frosted forests in her dreams. Today, when she slips into slumber, she will open her eyes and start at the sticky darkness stretching before her. The air is heavy, sweaty, redolent with faint but overbearing scents of crowfood and bloated flesh. Somewhere, a river runs—but it’s slow, lazy tide is enough to drive one mad. The forest around her is shadowy and dense; every pawstep threatens to snag a foot in a patch of bramble, as though the forest wants to grab onto her and hold her in place.

And the foliage shivers. Blue eyes, otherworldly in the density of this darkness, pierce into hers. A slender tabby shape emerges from the brush. Once, in life, he’d been proud, fierce, but his scars have deepened in the Place of No Stars. Ribs are exposed to open air; his chest is almost concave, weakened from sickness. Had Cottonpaw not seen him move, she’d have thought him an animated corpse, perhaps.

“You,” the monster rasps, and it’s like the words are tearing their way out of his throat. “What do you have to say for yourself, daughter?”

, ”​

​

 

[cottonsprig]

While dreaming of StarClan is no longer infrequent, Cottonpaw does not recall a time that it's happened without the moonstone. Wolfsong has been blessed, time and time again, but she figures that the grace of his rank, not her lack of believing. She opens her eyes to a dimly lit world, and she does not believe it to be a place like their heaven or hell, but a nightmare she's to suffer through.

She stands, the air pressing uncomfortably against her well maintained fur. The world is distinct, with no uncertain corners or feathered edges. She feels as if she's alive despite the decrepit wasteland that surrounds her - perhaps the only thing that breathes here. Her blue gaze sweeps the landscape, and she settles on the brown tabby poised a foxlength or so away. Though he is different, and it has been many moons, Cottonpaw would decipher him from anything.

"Father...?" she whispers, and the sound of her own voice startles her. Her nightmares never held him, and even less did she hear anything more than silence. The tangibility of the realm freezes her to her place - and it's his turn. He speaks as if his throat is still raw from coughing, as if the fires have reached him and burned his tongue. Cottonpaw's eyes widen with the venom he spits.

"What do I...?" she blinks, and though she has a fast hold on fear, she takes a step forward. Her father was her mother's prize, but his sanity did not spiral with hers. Is Cottonpaw a fool for thinking that he wouldn't harm her? His little puffball, his youngest child? She has little reason to think otherwise. "Weaselclaw, you should be much clearer with me. I -" a pause, a stutter, "This isn't StarClan - it can't be... You wouldn't be so..." she thinks of Shrikethorn, Heathermoon. Each healed of their ailments, unlike Weaselclaw who seems to continue to suffer.

"Weaselclaw," she tries again, though the air here chokes her, "I'm confused. What's happening? What is this?"​

 

[WEASELCLAW]

“Father, you call me,” Weaselclaw rasps, slithering from the shadows he stands still in. He presses his flank to Cottonpaw’s for a moment, then begins to move, half-circling her from behind. She looks every bit like her mother—and it enrages him, rather than igniting him with the pride it had in life. “But when your mother needed you most, what did you decide to do?”

Weaselclaw tears away from her, a smile crackling his muzzle into shattered sneers. This isn’t StarClan, she murmurs, and he can hear the fear accompanying her beating heart. “No,” he answers her, his tail whipping behind him lazily. “You’ll find no stars in this Dark Forest.”

With a jerk, he pounces, so that he is once again squarely in front of her. Weaselclaw’s eyes are frenzied now, too-blue, too-surreal, like the burning surfaces of too-close stars. “You, you who I named, who I cherished—you have betrayed your mother, and so, you have betrayed me. What do you have to say for yourself, Cottonpaw?”

And, one by one, his claws unsheathe and sink into the dank forest earth.

, ”​

​

 

[cottonsprig]

He grows closer, and for a moment his thin frame graces her side. Cottonpaw resists a shiver, the chill in the air only compounded by the jutting of his bones as they briefly knocked against her. He's different - so terribly different that even though Cottonpaw knows she lives and breathes in this world, she wants to believe it a lie still. Weaselclaw wouldn't speak to her as if she were born in the waters of RiverClan. He would hold her, praise her, cherish their fleeting moments together once again. He speaks sharply, his tone like the daggers at the ends of his paws; he speaks of her mother, and she cannot respond. Cottonpaw does not know how to justify her inaction.

He says that stars do not exist there - that the muck and depth surrounding her is all they see. She pities her father, and whatever other souls must have been damned here. She thinks again of her StarClan companions, of their worries, their signs - but before she can make the proper connection, Weaselclaw launches towards her. He stands before her like a crazed predator, playing with prey he's cornered. She moves on instinct, the step she took forward now taken away again. Another follows backwards, and she stares back at her father - at her eyes - as they seem to hunger for justice.

"I - Father, I did not," she rebuffs, swallowing. "She was not herself after you left us. You must've seen -" can they see? Does starlight give their ancestors the ability to see through the clouds to their kin, and thus without any, this Dark Forest is blind to the Clans? She swallows, "She was growing sick with grief. Cats were dying by her command, Weaselclaw - she wasn't well," she all but admits that she betrayed her mother. The young adult that she is still craves approval from her parents - approval that she will not be gifted now. She steps backwards again, in sync with her father's steps.

"If I could have helped her, I would. But she was too far gone for herbs to fix. I -" a pause, her ears twist back, "Without you, Mother decided that the world was sooner to burn than to thrive. You must understand that madness like that could not stand to lead..." a queen who loses her mate may make the same decision, but at least they do not have the power to condemn dozens of lives. Cottonpaw falters in her next step, "I'm sorry, Father. I am," she says.​

 

[WEASELCLAW]

His daughter’s mouth opens, and blasphemy falls from her lips. She spins a tale that ruffles Weaselclaw’s fur like a scorching greenleaf wind, a wind that batters him back and sends heat rushing through his limbs. He peels his lips away from his teeth, exposing them to the root. “Liar!” His tail whips behind him, frenzied as a disturbed adder. “She was not sick with grief—she was always strong and proud! You, you were the blind one!” Weaselclaw shreds the ground beneath his claws; his blue eyes are wild now.

But her last words—I’m sorry, Father, I am—are like salve on his wounds. The tabby closes his eyes, remembering how tiny Cottonpaw had been at her birth, her coronation, the way her fur had fluffed up against his tongue. He remembered her gentle paws pressing into his flank, tumbling over themselves as she followed him around camp. He remembered helping clean the dust from behind her ears, remembered the worry in his heart when she’d slipped first into the tunnels and then into Wolfsong’s den.

When he opens his eyes again, his breathing has relaxed—somewhat. “Sorry is not good enough, Cottonpaw,” he murmurs, and now there’s raw grief edging his voice like stained lace. “Sootstar would have never given up on you, had you been true to her and her cause. How can I trust that you have not given up on me? You know I would have followed her to the end.” Unlike with Addervenom, with Moorblossom, the tabby’s voice has almost softened in the face of his favored daughter.

, ”​

​

 

[cottonsprig]

Angrier, angrier - Cottonpaw imagines this is how Smokestar saw her father, moments before he took the RiverClanner's eye. Liar! He shouts, and Cottonpaw tries another step, but her paw finds itself wretched in muck, disabling her ability to escape. (She wonders, in a quiet, drawn out moment, if she was ever meant to escape him.) He declares she was blind, that her mother would've never fallen from grace. Cottonpaw wishes to cry out that she had - but instead...

Her apology tumbles out of her mouth, sincere and fearful. His expression takes many long beats but it softens morsel by morsel, feral eyes blinking away his frustration, gums sheathed yet claws still arcing into the earth beneath them. "I'm sorry," she repeats, even when he says that it is not enough. Cottonpaw feels it is all she has to give. Her tail lashes as she tries to pull her paw free. He speaks, though she does not take his minutely softened tone as a means of freedom. This isnt her father - this is some... twisted form of him. Like Sootstar, before she fell.

"I..." she starts, but she cannot find words so easily still. It's like the air here is meant to suffocate the inhabitants, she hates it. "I never stopped praying for you, Father. I prayed that the stars would treat you kindly, that they would've received Sootstar despite her wrongdoings. I... I see that they could not do that..." does she falter, then, in her belief and trust of her ancestors? How can she, when one of her ancestors stands before her, ill and decrepit - nothing more than a corpse given the ability to breathe again?

Will she regret this?

"There must be something I can do," she whispers, pleading. "StarClan chose me - they speak with me. Please, let me try. There must be something -" she cuts herself off, swallowing thickly.​

 

[WEASELCLAW]

"I'm sorry," she says, and she is—Weaselclaw can feel her sorrow lapping at his paws like turgid waters. "I never stopped praying for you, Father." He lowers his head, resting it atop his daughter's like the crown she never could have borne. "The stars have forsaken me, just as they have forsaken your mother. I promised her long ago I would follow her into the blackest of forests. And you should know that I always keep my word."

He peels away from her now, wariness glinting in soulless blue eyes. "StarClan speaks with you," he repeats, tasting the wretched words on a half-rotted tongue. So be it. "Cottonpaw, would you meet me here again—would you walk beside me in this forest a second time? Our time together..." His heartbeat is loud in his ears, the pressure in his head like a red balloon, "...is coming to an end."

, ”​

​

 

[cottonsprig]

Cottonpaw withholds a flinch. His chin rests against her crown and though she can feel the edges of his jaw, she remains still. She tries to think, instead, of how she wished she had one more moment like this with him. She detests that it's here (wherever here is,) after he's admonished her for following safety and claiming her mother wasn't sane before her death... but if she presses happiness into the situation, she can withstand it for moments longer.

"... I'm glad she has you," Cottonpaw whispers back. She does not say much with regards to the stars and how they've shunned her parents. Her prayers have fallen on deaf ears - or maybe her prayers never reached them at all. He pulls away from their short embrace and she stills, watching him with still wary, still watery blue eyes. StarClan speaks with you, he confirms. She nods, and with his following inquiry, her mouth is dry again. It's like a dream with StarClan - fading around her, despite her loose grip to hold it in place.

"You've called me here," she says, almost too firmly. "Should you need me, Father, then call me again. I'll be here." Maybe she's too non-committal. Maybe her fear is still tangible as though she's still uncertain and fearful of the man before her. Regardless, she offers him her permission with a slight incline of her head.​