TW: Sensitive Content Private Dark Forest ShadowClan FACE STAINED IN THE CEILING ✦ cicadabuzz

[PUMPKINGLOW]

Their dream is anything but nice when they lay to rest, drifting off. The sky is black, a heavy lack of stars compared to their ethereal part. Blood follows the forest floor in trails, left behind from various cats passing through, the trees are tall and dead and dying. There is no fauna, no flora here to be seen, to make a shitty place pretty. Rot and the metallic scent of blood covers the land of eternal torment, to an outsider it may be overwhelming, but its all Pumpkinglow has known for... well, however long she has been here. There is no sun, no moon to keep track of the days, no light, just the long-dead rise and fall of Russetstars chest to keep her company. She watches, still, dearly departed from her beloved, from her everything, but information fed to her was more than any presence Pumpkin could provide... She knows her role, pulled the strings in life, will continue to do so in death.

Now, Shadowclans medicine cat is a peculiar little thing, and thats exactly why shes here in their dreams. Mysterious, and that is exciting. For her, for her, for her, for her. "Cicadabuzz, right?" Pumpkinglow's voice is a rasp, eyes squinted as she rounds out from behind a tree. She looks horrible, and she knows it, can feel it as her throat oozes never-ending blood down her chest unto her paws. "I've watched you." she blinks like an owl, suddenly too interested in them as they step forward to sniff them. They smell like something new, like the living and something too far in the back of her mind stirs. A memory, maybe, of what Russetstar smelled like when they had been alive, entwined in the leaders den, inseparable. Shes watched them, and the medicine den looks too similar to what it had been in life. She could point out where exactly she had talked to their medicine cat at the time to explain her fake signs and exhilaration runs down her spine at the thought of it. She had not been caught in life, she has no shame in death. She wonders, does the leaders den look familiar as well, or has their presence been scrubbed out like it had been mold?

"Have you met Fleecefur?" for now, she scopes them out with a broken purr that sounds more gurgled coming from a shredded throat. "She's the one that told me about the resurrection of the clans... And then there you were!" her eyes crinkle in mirth. How much do they know? What have they been told? More, more, tell me everything.

@cicadabuzz

 

[cicadabuzz]

CICADABUZZ, 29 moons / shc + med. cat
a SH cinnamon tabby/chocolate tortie chimera w/ black eyes
parent to deathberrykit, hemlockkit, mistletoekit ; mentor to magpiepaw
a reserved, pragmatic healer driven by duty rather than sentiment

Cicadabuzz stands still. They are no stranger to nightmares, but this place—this place is not a dream at all. It is rot and memory, twisted into a shape they've brushed against more than once in sleep. There is no gentleness here. Just death that lingers. Blood, decay, and intent. They do not flinch when Pumpkinglow emerges. Her appearance is ghastly, but Cicadabuzz has seen death in many forms. The bleeding throat, the filmy eyes, the haunted voice that croaks with too much knowing—they study her as they would study a festering wound. Not with fear, but with grave calculation. "Yes," they reply simply, when asked their name. Their voice does not echo here. It simply is, quiet and unshaken.

They do not move away when she sniffs at them, even though her closeness brushes the edge of what most would call unholy. They allow her to linger, to press her curiosity against their skin like frostbite. Her blood stains the earth in thick droplets, but Cicadabuzz's paws do not lift. They are rooted. Observing. "You watched," they murmur, the words like dry leaves blown across a clearing. "Then you know what I tend to. You know I do not flinch from rot. I do not look away when something festers." Their gaze slides over the landscape, taking in the atmosphere. Her questions are tangled and strange. Fleecefur. Resurrection. Cicadabuzz blinks once, slowly, their expression unreadable. The dead see too much—but they often understand too little.

"I do not trade in dreams," they say at last. "I trade only in truth. The dead should rest. You do not." Their gaze—sharp, measured—settles on her shredded form. "I wonder what you still seek in this place. There is no glory left to pull from bones. No audience here but shadows." They tilt their head slightly, fur dusted with the scent of wild mint and dry sage even in this dark world. "What resurrection do you imagine? What do you believe the clans will become, if death is only a door left ajar?" They recall their conversation with Fleecefur—a boon taken, cooperation given—and give Pumpkinglow an examining once-over.