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breaking fasts [ruststar/open]
rainpaw
WindClan
Posts: 11
Rank: apprentice
Age: six moons
Gender: agender
Mentor: nectarfang
Played By: pumpkin
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Post by rainpaw on Jun 21, 2015 18:24:39 GMT -5
rainpaw never felt so alone as when she was in the center of the windclan camp, surrounded by her clan as they went about their daily routines. the slender cat had chosen to rest beside the leaders den and from that position she tracked the movements of her clan with disaffected copper eyes - the lazy stare of a well-fed hawk, who was uninterested in striking those below but unable to ignore her instinct to follow the movements of prey. she watched as a she-cat took a mouse from the freshkill pile and her own stomach twitched with hunger. she knew better than to approach and take something from the pile, however - her mentor had yet to take her out hunting and as such she had not fed the elders. she had no right to take food from her clan.
she rose to her paws and lifted her head. had ruststar left her den yet? it was still early in the morning and the sun hadn't quite peeked over the horizon. she could see the first few rays of the dawn now, painting the sky in pinks and oranges. soon, ruststar and willowblaze would be assigning patrols and the camp would truly explode into activity. for now, it was a dull hum of life - cats waking and eating their breakfast, sharing tongues and rousing kits. rainpaw watched it all and slowly left her position beside the den. she approached the pile and selected a small rabbit - a little unwieldy for her to drag, even at its small size - and slowly began to drag it back to the leaders den.
she dropped the rabbit and stepped back.
"ruststar." she called, ears alert and eyes focused on the darkness of the den. "i brought you food."
she had no real reason for doing this. perhaps it was out of a desire to please the leader. she knew that ruststar wouldn't give her any extra favor just because she brought her a rabbit - and rainpaw couldn't say that she wanted anything from the leader. rainpaw didn't want anything at all. she stepped back, considering leaving before the reddish she-cat left her den. ruststar likely didn't want to see her.
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Post by ruststar on Jun 21, 2015 20:05:38 GMT -5
early mornings were one of the few times that ruststar could still catch time to herself since becoming leader, though 'time to herself' usually just meant dozing in her warm bed, and she was frequently loathe to get up when it wasn't time for her usual "go look threatening on the skyclan border" expedition. today, ruststar was awake at a decent time, but she was not up, persay. if it wasn't for the voice of rainpaw trickling into her den, ruststar might have just stayed in bed for another hour and claimed she was "strategizing". with a languid stretch and a little groan of pleasure at the movement, the she-cat slowly slunk from her bed, sticking her head out from her den with sleepy eyes before spotting the rabbit and rainpaw. "'morning," she yawned, flexing each of her forepaws before finally moving to where the apprentice sat. eating an entire rabbit by herself wasn't an unheard of move from ruststar, but seeing as it was scarcely past dawn and rainpaw was an apprentice, ruststar was pretty sure she hadn't eaten yet either.
call her a terrible excuse for a leader all you wanted, but ruststar wasn't so low as to eat an entire rabbit by herself while an apprentice stared hungrily on. "you hunted yet?" was her first question, followed very shortly by, "no? well, want some? i'm not going to stand on ceremony, so.." She shrugged towards the rabbit, crouching down to begin tearing into the rabbit's neck and shoulder. it was cool, from last night's hunt most likely, but the lack of warmth did not bother her. the elders would need the warmth the dawnpatrol and morning hunters brought back, but ruststar was still young and a little cold food was tolerable. "...your mentor taking you hunting today?" she finally asked after several long moments spent chewing her meal. by now, the edge of her hunger had come off and ruststar was feeling full enough to spent a few minutes catching her own prey before convening with willowblaze to continue planning the best way to expand their territory.
"you do a good job hunting for an apprentice," she added, hesitation coming out more akin to indiference, and ruststar didn't seem to realize that her compliment was more backhanded than she had intended.
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rainpaw
WindClan
Posts: 11
Rank: apprentice
Age: six moons
Gender: agender
Mentor: nectarfang
Played By: pumpkin
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Post by rainpaw on Jun 21, 2015 21:42:59 GMT -5
"good morning, ruststar." rainpaw droned dutifully. there was a new alertness to her eyes as ruststar pulled herself from her den. her gaze roamed over ruststar's russet pelt, lingered on the way she moved as she roused herself from sleep. rainpaw was incomplete and she knew it, born without the special something that made cats special. the thing that set them up among the stars, that made them different from the prey they ate and the predators that hunted them. she knew that ruststar had what she lacked in spades. she was chosen by the stars - and when rainpaw looked at her she felt something that tasted as bitter as bile in her mouth. something that even a cat as emotionally stunted as herself could name.
she was envious. envious because ruststar was chosen by those up above and rainpaw doubted that she would ever walk among them. doubted that she would ever see her mother again. there was something wrong with her. she accepted it in the way she accepted all things - without protest. she allowed her envy to eat her up inside, because she knew that she was not worth the time of another cat. better to suffer in silence. better to remain quiet and polite where she would bother no one at all.
"you look well." she spoke to the source of her envy. she didn't feel much for ruststar aside from that maddeningly persistent emotion, which refused to leave her to her comforting emptiness. but she knew that ruststar was her leader and that she would serve said leader to her death.
or at least until another came along.
ruststar's invitation came as something of a surprise to the apprentice. she showed this with a slight widening of the eyes - being invited to eat with the leader was an honor she didn't expect. "please." she said. she watched as ruststar began to eat, and then leaned her own head down to tuck into the hindquarters of the rabbit. she looked up, muzzle bloody, as ruststar spoke. "yes. then i think we will practice battling."
the compliment surprised her. backhanded though it was, rainpaw took it. perhaps she was starved for the approval of another cat. she had been a disturbing kit even before the loss of her mother and gorsefang - though he favored her - had never been the demonstrative type. "thank you, ruststar." she said. there was a long moment of silence after that.
"you are bad at compliments, ruststar."
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Post by ruststar on Jul 1, 2015 0:06:02 GMT -5
To others, Rainpaw might have been a downright creepy kid — hardly demonstrative, with a tendency to follow orders with blind devotion — but it went without saying that Ruststar was not most people. Instead of feeling of-put by the blandness of the greeting, as though Rainpaw was simply stating what was necessary instead of out of a genuine will to greet her leader, Ruststar was secretly a little relieved that someone else was bored by some of the niceties required by common courtesy. Much of the time, it seemed to Ruststar that she had really missed out on a lesson when she was younger— but what bothered other members of her clan and those she was interacting with, was that she was uninterested in making up said lesson. What was the point, after all, in learning how to be prim and proper when it simply wasn't necessary?
Another leader would have given more weight to sharing her meal with an apprentice, but Ruststar didn't quite see the significance; she understood only that it was pretty shitty to gorge yourself in front of someone who wouldn't eat for several hours at the earliest. The compliment, generic as it might have been, seemed to give the Windclan leader some pause; she visibly hesitated, not entirely sure how to respond, before rolling her lean shoulder and saying with affected nonchalance, "Thanks?" For all her carefully orchestrated confidence, the slight uptick in her voice still marked the response as a question, a casual check to make sure she'd responded appropriately.
All the same, her gift or favor or simple fairness evoked a reaction, however slight, in Rainpaw and Ruststar fought to remain neutral as she saw the same brief joy in the apprentice's eyes that Sparrowpaw had shown those many, many moons ago. No matter how long it had been, her heart ached deeply and she took a deep breath to steady herself against the tide of emotion. She missed Sparrowheart, and there was nothing that would bring him back to her— not even his presence when she'd died the first time or his guidance through her Star-touched dreams. To keep her mind away from the pain, she tucked greedibly into the rabbit and purred a brief acknowledgement when Rainpaw elaborated on her mentor's plans. "Good. Might see about getting all you apprentices to spar, see how you're all coming along," she added to the noncommittal purr. What she did not add in was that she wanted to see them practice to live vicariously through their proud mentors.
It wasn't hard to see how Rainpaw's perfectly polite rebuke flabbergasted Ruststar, for not only did she freeze, but her ears turned back in embarrassment. The she-cat looked unsure of what to say, and she held her tongue for painfully long seconds before saying, a little weakly, "Well, I don't get in any practice giving them." It was plain to see that the leader felt awkward, for she shifted uncomfortably next to the mostly eaten rabbit carcass, and after another second of awkward silence, she added, "Sorry?"
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rainpaw
WindClan
Posts: 11
Rank: apprentice
Age: six moons
Gender: agender
Mentor: nectarfang
Played By: pumpkin
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Post by rainpaw on Jul 1, 2015 0:49:01 GMT -5
"you're welcome, ruststar." rainpaw answered, daintily cleaning blood from her muzzle with one slim silver paw. she didn't seem to have taken notice of the fact ruststar was questioning her - or perhaps rainpaw simply didn't care. in fact, that was looking more and more likely as the seconds ticked by and a single copper eye lifted to focus on ruststar with a piercing gaze that sought to tear ruststar open and find the little bits and pieces that made her up. her gaze remained fixed even as ruststar went back to her meal, pupil twitching back and forth to watch the way ruststar's jaw worked, the way her throat bobbed as she swallowed down flesh.
she nodded as ruststar brought up the possibility of sparring with other apprentices. she wasn't certain she could defeat any of them - with the sole exception of her brother. sedgepaw thought too much. he ran away from conflict. she could beat him, at least. but as certain as she was of that, she found herself unsettled by the thought of actually fighting her littermate. it would no doubt please her father to see sibling pitted against sibling, to see his favorite triumph.
but did rainpaw want to win that fight?
she folded her ears back. it didn't matter if she wanted to win. pleasing her father came first.
"i will ask nectarfang." she thought that her mentor would likely agree to ruststar's idea. nectarfang liked to fight. she liked a lot of things that rainpaw didn't understand. that was okay, though. it wasn't rainpaw's place to understand them - so rainpaw didn't bother to try to understand them.
rainpaw lowered her paw to the ground as ruststar stared at her. she blinked at the she-cat, her ears slowly raising to catch the words of the leader. she expected to be shooed away, as was typical when she made a faux pas - but it seemed that ruststar was capable of surprising her. that wasn't a surprise in of itself. ruststar would not be leader if she was predictable. the other clans would have done away with her by now. she looked down to her paws.
"why are you apologizing to me?" she asked. her tone suggested boredom, and her slumped shoulders echoed this - but she kept her gaze firmly focused on her paws and her tail unwaveringly wrapped around her paws. rainpaw was uncomfortable. she didn't understand why someone would apologize to a cat as insignificant - as expendable - as herself.
especially a cat like ruststar.
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