Private Territory d is for dangerous // stoatpaw

[SABLESTAR]

Graduation is coming soon.

The thought trickled through while his eyes fixed on the young molly, tracking her movement patterns while she stalked through the muggy brush. It poked him like the pointed edge of a stick, ready to snap with the tension it drew. As pale fur basked in moonlight to her favor, Sablestar remained shrouded in the dark, silent as the world around her.

Stoatpaw is no longer the cat that once barely reached the curve of his tail. As he addressed her he no longer tipped his nose down to speak, and he certainly could not bear the weight of her on his shoulders like he once had while half-buried in the mud. She was too old for stories of lost kin turned to frogs. She had seen blood, she had tasted violence, she had endured survival in all that silence.

She walked beside him now with her prey buried behind them to pick up later. He no longer had to direct her, the action came as easy as blinking and breathing. Her jaws already parted to find another trail without his lead, his guidance all but ingrained in every twitch of her muscle.

Sablestar stopped suddenly, taking a deep breath as she looked at him expectantly. "Have you ever lied to me?" The bicolor asked simply, anticipating no certain answer but a truthful one.

this heart beats cold like the devil his own

• @Stoatpaw
  "mew"
• 

  SABLESTAR— he/him ･sixty moons ･leader; shadowclan ･penned by gonkpilled

  a black and white tuxedo with dark amber eyes

 

[Stoatstream Stoatstream]

——————————————— Together, we'll make our way home ✦

Out here on a hunt with Sablestar tailing her, it always felt like she was a different cat now under pressure. Where once she would collapse under the weight of it, want or run or hide like a coward, something had shifted. While she hadn't been all the best apprentice these last few moons, she made damn sure to take every last lesson of Sablestar's to heart, and while she didn't much agree to some of his desicions with the council or the like, his teachings as a mentor were more than she ever hoped for looking forward to being apprenticed.

The frightened husk of a little kitten had been left behind, for better or for worse, she finally began to feel worthy of her upcoming assessment, following the awful argument preceding her punishment in her trial run. Sablestar did not even utter a word to her, and she had picked up the scent of some unsuspecting quail off in the distance, just as he trained.

But as she dug her claws into the mud below, preparing to begin the stalk ahead to capture the thing, Sablestar summoned her attention. She looked to him, not with the sulking demeanour she had been dragging around, but rather the confidence he had been drilling into her training lately.

"Have you ever lied to me?"

It took her by surprise, he had been quiet so clearly something had been on his mind. She barely let the cool night air carry off his words before she replied in the same, simple tone he took.

"Of course I have. What sort of question is that?" Stoatpaw spoke, incredulously, the edge of a laugh in her voice at the absurdity of it. "It would be a blatant lie if I said I hadn't. I'll admit, lies of omission are a bad habit I've been trying to shake." She spoke with a hum, taking a moment to breathe the air again, face falling as the smell of quail grew fainter.

She began to walk towards the smell and continued to talk as she did. "I mean, you know I spent most of my time in Shadowclan omitting my lack of hearing, that is a lie of itself. The one I regret most of all." The ivory apprentice recounted, simply, tracking delicately through the pocosin. "I've omitted to you nights where I did not stay out training alone as I should have, in favour of telling you I had a poor night of hunting." She tutted to herself, before stopping in her tracks and turning back to the bicolour, her usual flat expression unwavering.

"I won't lie to your face and say I never have, and I can't say I won't ever lie again. But then again, everyone does; it's inevitable. I don't doubt you haven't lied to me or the clan before." Stoatpaw's face broke into a smile, as she shrugged without worry. "Though I certainly know better than to lie as I had in the past, it's only ever hindered my progress to becoming a warrior."

Whatever this strange conversation was, she would much rather continue to track that pesky bird off wherever it was, but maybe Sablestar had something bothering him that drove the question to the forefront.

——— While you were sleeping,

Everything changed at once. ———

• 
  Stoatpaw
  ✦—Shadowclan apprentice | 11 Moons
  ✦—She/Her
  ✦—"SPEECH", 'THOUGHTS', ATTACK, PAWSPEAK
  ✦—A slender white cat with faint lilac markings and blue eyes.
  #96d5f1/#50BBF0
  
  ⤷ Written by Phoenix ​

 

[SABLESTAR]

It is a far greater sense of relief than he expected, hearing her reply only with honesty. Sablestar would not have expected a saint for an apprentice, not in a place like ShadowClan, not with a mentor like him. Stoatpaw already felt the heat of dishonesty when she decided to hide away her deafness from the Clan, dispelling any belief that she was someone of pure virtue. The matters of her lies were not of interest to him as much as simply hearing how she would respond. If she felt he must know he would already, and he would not betray the trust they had built to have this conversation so quickly.

Stoatpaw does not disregard it, however. She gives meager details to her excuses and laments hiding her inability to hear from her Clanmates. She assumed the same upon him and she would be right, in a way. Sablestar hid many things from the Clan, for the better of course. There were some secrets he refused to reveal, even if the Clan did not wholly believe whatever half-spun lie he gave, the words would not come from his maw.

"Everything I've said to you, you has been the truth." Beyond the blanket of his ranks, apart from the amalgamation of bodies and ranks, he hadn't. Not that it truly changes anything.

"Does it feel different, when you lie to me? Different from your friends, or your father." Sablestar continued to push with gentle pressure, like a paw sinking into the mud. "It can feel so easy, as if the truth were impossible to say."

this heart beats cold like the devil his own

• "mew"
• 

  SABLESTAR— he/him ･sixty moons ･leader; shadowclan ･penned by gonkpilled

  a black and white tuxedo with dark amber eyes