Private Dark Forest ShadowClan fear the night again ] houndbelly

[cicadabuzz]

CICADABUZZ, 27 moons / shc + med. cat
a SH cinnamon tabby/chocolate tortie chimera w/ black eyes
parent to deathberrykit, hemlockkit, mistletoekit
a reserved, pragmatic healer driven by duty rather than sentiment

Cicadabuzz knows this is a dream before they even open their eyes.

The air is wrong. It clings to their fur like damp cobwebs, thick with the scent of rot, the iron tang of something long dead. The earth beneath them is colder than stone, yet it yields slightly under their paws, as though they stand upon something that is not quite solid. They rise slowly, blinking into the gloom. The world around them is suffocating in its darkness, the shapes of trees twisted and skeletal, their branches clawing at an empty sky. There is no moon. No stars. Only shadow, stretching endlessly in all directions, thick as brambles. A heavy silence lingers, pressing in from all sides. It is the kind of silence that is not natural—the kind that comes when even the wind dares not breathe.

Cicadabuzz does not shudder. Does not recoil. Fear is a wasted effort, and they are not the kind to surrender to it. Instead, they exhale through their nose, steady and slow, and let the weight of this place settle over them like a pelt too thick for greenleaf. Their claws flex against the strange, yielding earth. This is a dream. Only a dream. And yet, the stillness is not empty. They are not alone.

Someone is watching them.

They do not turn immediately, though every instinct prickles with the knowledge of another presence. Instead, they tilt their head slightly, ears angling toward the quiet weight of unseen eyes. The air is thick with it, the almost palpable sensation of waiting, of expectation. Whoever lingers in the shadows has been anticipating their arrival. Cicadabuzz finally moves, deliberate and measured, shifting their gaze toward the darkness beyond the twisted trees. Their breath is calm, their heartbeat a steady rhythm beneath their ribs. They have never feared the unknown, only the foolishness of ignoring it. They say nothing. Words feel like they would shatter in this place, brittle as dead leaves beneath a careless paw. Instead, they wait, letting the silence stretch, letting the unseen presence decide how to bridge the space between them.

This is their dream. But it does not belong to them, and the one who waits in the shadows knows it.

@HOUNDBELLY

 

[HOUNDBELLY]

↟ ⋆｡° If there is something to be said for the devil you know, it can likewise apply to the hell with which one is acquainted. The Dark Forest and its labyrinthine corpses of trees, its complete and utter pitch, it's still, dank, festering air, are all Houndbelly has known for many endless moons. There is a comfort to be found it in, the same comfort to be found in entrails that will forever drag through the leaflitter and filth: it can be relied upon. She can trust that the trees will always decay rather than bloom, that the shadows will hide her rather than expose, that the air will pool in place and not carry her scent to foes. It did not make it pleasant. It merely made it known.

That is why, perhaps, she has yet to follow Fleecefur's direction to explore the plane of the living. She has stolen glimpses, peered through the thinnest part of the afterlife's sharpened briars as the colour point had promised to exist, and not found one fragment of the world beyond to be familiar. Shadowclan takes a different shape. Battles take different forms. Families take a different heartbreak. All unknown. All tempting. Curious.

She could not bring herself to visit. Not yet. Not when her son still did not walk by her side nor in the world of the living; not when her enemies did not rot by her side nor in the soil beneath the living. Rather than slip through the gap in the thicket, risking her own fur and heartache and guts that might become ensnared in the passage, she had found her own way to examine what shape the world now wears. Those who stalked the twilighted trees with her had cast themselves from one plane to the next - Houndbelly had tugged an individual's mind to join her within her own realm. It was not easy. Her cardiovascular system bore the cost, lungs heaving, heart pumping unending supplies of blood, severed veins and open cavities pouring crimson into the slurry of dark beneath her paws. But it was achieved, and Houndbelly enjoyed a canine satisfaction at the fact.

"There you are," she crooned, stalking around the medicine cat to settle within their line of sight. She smiled in a practiced, warm, matronly manner, as she looked over the living apparition before her and noted the particulars of their manner. Unhurried articulation. Life and death intertwined in their fur. The dark in their eyes that perfectly marries the dark smeared on their soul. Houndbelly's thick tail swept to cover her paws, but not her death wound - she did not wish to insult Cicadabuzz's intelligence by hiding the exceptionally obvious. "I worried you might never visit me. You must rest more, lest you wear yourself thin."

 

[cicadabuzz]

CICADABUZZ, 28 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 watches her, unblinking. She steps into view like something rising from the depths of a still, black pool—slow, deliberate, as though she has all the time in the world. Perhaps she does. Cicadabuzz does not react to her words, nor to the smile that drapes itself across her face like a borrowed pelt. It is warm, but warm in the way of fresh carrion beneath greenleaf sunlight—rot reaching straight to her marrow. Too deliberate, too measured. A practiced warmth, calculated rather than instinctive.

They do not return it.

Instead, they tilt their head slightly, their expression a careful, unreadable mask. They take her in, from the smooth cadence of her voice to the way she seats herself with an air of familiarity, as if they are old acquaintances sharing a moment of quiet conversation rather than two spirits standing at the crossroads of dream and death. Their gaze lingers briefly on the ruin of her stomach, the gaping wound she does not bother to conceal. A statement, then. A challenge. Cicadabuzz does not rise to it.

"I did not come here by choice," they say at last, their voice as soft as wind through dry reeds.

It is not a rejection, but nor is it an acceptance. Their tail flicks, stirring the thick air around them. They can feel the weight of this place pressing against their fur, wrapping around them like a second skin. It is not a place for the living, but it is known to them now, in the way all things must be known once they are seen. Houndbelly's presence carries that same inevitability. "You worked to bring me here." Another fact, stated without inflection. No anger, no fear. They do not ask why. They do not need to. There is no such thing as idle conversation in a place like this, no words spoken without purpose. Houndbelly has done this for a reason. And Cicadabuzz waits. They are a cat of few words, but that does not mean they are without curiosity. They wish to see what she makes of their silence, how she chooses to fill it. Every cat reveals something in the spaces between what is said and what is not. And if Houndbelly wishes to play the part of the host, then let her speak; let her fill the shadows with her words.

They have never feared the dark.

 

[HOUNDBELLY]

↟ ⋆｡° This reaction, Houndbelly thought, was already an indication of how much has changed since the blood flowing throwing her veins circulated anything but misery. In her own time, the presence of the dead had elicited something more from the living they bestowed their presence upon. Reverence. Awe. Defiance. Such interactions were known of but never expected, and something from that combination always caused some recognition to ripple through the living and tinge their voices when they spoke of it. Had the living been so separated from the dead to rob them of such reactions? Or was it merely Cicadabuzz and their nature that permitted such a non-reaction? Whatever the answer, she had the question's scent, now - it was only a matter of time before she caught it.

Soft as the medicine cat's voice is, they speak louder than most else in the darkened plane. Without birds to sing, breeze rippling leaves, or ambling of paws, the words need only compete with silence of the occasional distant shriek or groan. It almost renders their tone normal. Appropriate. Fitting, for the space they find themselves in. "I suppose not," she conceded, the easy tilt further indicating her agreement. An old impulse of kindness rose on her tongue to point out that Cicadabuzz could likely leave, if they so wished, and she simply tucked it into the niceness of her smile instead of speaking it aloud. Enough conspired against her that she need not speak against her own interests. She would not encourage the living to leave, not when, as they observed, she worked so hard to bring them here.

"You'll forgive me," she soothed, not a request nor an assumption. The words are said casually enough to pass as a turn of phrase should they let it. Yellow eyes, plaintive in shape, remained fixed on Cicadabuzz to gauge what the other will allow to linger undisturbed. Testing the waters as one might palpate a wound. "I didn't wish to interrupt your duties. From what I have glimpsed, you are dreadfully busy, even for a time of relative peace. This," she gestured to the trunks surrounding the pair, the greater forest beyond, "Is both my working and my compromise."

She sighed fondly, noting that the initial strain of dream visit had ebbed. Gore dripped at a regular pace; air pooled long enough in her lungs to become stale. Houndbelly ached as she so often used to after battle, satisfaction and greater strength sure to follow from the exertion. "Where are my manners? My name is Houndbelly." The dip of her head was more filled with greater intent, a sign of respect, a protection of her own vulnerable throat. "I am so very pleased to meet you."