god this is all there is [open]

sandtail
six feet from the edge and i'm thinkin' maybe six feet ain't so far down

Sandtail liked the thought of swimming in starlight. He'd lived in WindClan all his life, and couldn't think of a time that he had thought swimming would ever be a good idea, but staring up at the sprawling expanse of stars overhead made him think he'd like to tread water in the sky. He thought he might like to drown in silverpelt, he thought he might enjoy the feeling of starshine diving into his open mouth and filling his lungs to bursting. It would be a lovely feeling, to choke on the souls of his ancestors. He could almost feel the earth tilting up and tipping, sending him hurtling forward face-first into the night sky. Where there were thousands of blinking stars and not an ounce of air to breathe, he wondered, was it like water up there? Would falling into it leave his pelt soaked with glittering stars and inky sky?

The warrior was drifting, as he was often want to do. He'd left his slumbering clan-mates behind in their dens, where they were surely resting now. He did not feel this was him sneaking out, but merely enjoying life as it were. He inhaled deeply, and imagined he could taste the darkness in the sky. It would be a lovely way to die, he was certain. A murder of the soul by the stars themselves.

At times he felt like his home was truly there, but then he'd taste the wind and feel the grass between his toes. His heart would ache and throb and fill with a deep unwarranted love for life. For the insects that crawled betwixt the blades and the birds that roosted in trees edging the moorland. Sandtail thought death to be beautiful, in its finishing ways. The soul escaping to a better place, hurtling itself through realms unfathomed and unthought of. He thought death to also be awful, terrible, inspiring in all its splendor as well as frightening. He thought that, when he finally faced death, he would cling to life with all four claws.

Oh what glory it would be to drown in the stars, to struggle and gasp for breath with silver dust flecking his muzzle. Sandtail's paws carried him on a lazy path, and he thought deeply of death. He thought deeply of life, and he thought of little else. Cared about little else, for there were few times when Sandtail allowed himself to fall into his thoughts.

Scent, a smell, the nearly sleepy thought chimed in his head. Sandtail's path paused, and his lazy gaze dropped from the stars above finally. A lonely feeling had welled up in his heart, and he was distantly stricken by how strange it was that things did not seem to exist at all when one was not looking at them.

"A cat?" Sandtail meowed quietly, there was a cat. She was not of WindClan, he could smell it on her. He padded toward her, a lazy drifting off of his course. His drowsy walk neither faltered nor picked up in pace, Sandtail was more curious than he was hostile. A cat in the darkness may have been a dreamer like himself, after all. "You're a traveler, a wanderer--hello, I'm Sandtail."

Though he called out to the cat in greeting, Sandtail did not quite raise his voice. It still possessed that sleepy tone to it, as though he had just woken from a deep slumber. "You're not supposed to be here, you crossed our borders."

notes: this guy gets a ton of internal exposition :/
wc: 582