𝙋𝘼𝙍𝘼𝘿𝙊𝙓 𝙊𝙁 𝙉𝙀𝙀𝘿𝙄𝙉𝙂 ◈ [ 𝙃𝘼𝙇𝙁𝙔 ]

[Smoky.]

Smoky is a creature of urge and impulse. Instinct guides his paws, where conscience does not, and rarely does he cease to wonder whether that was more a virtue than a vice. Those intrusive, vague and obscure notions are in part, what compelled him to remain in this colony for as long as he has. There is safety in numbers, there is stability in camaraderie—intrinsic guarantees that the whole is stronger than the sum of its parts.

Something he's come to realise across this moon, is that not even this is true. Their collective is brittle, a mockery of itself, and has by now robbed him of the only justification he'd clung to in all the time he's spent here. He realises, now, how swiftly he'd abandon it all in pursuit of something better for him and his family. Nowhere within him is there an urge to see the colony's crumbling remains. To lay there with the rest of its ruin, once the wreckage finally caves in.

How long must they fester in this living decay? Chained to a corpse, resigned to rot alongside it?

Bronze-coloured eyes roll across the perimeter, tracing the first beams of moonlight through the forest canopy. Colony-mates are scattered in a flotsam about the camp, some tucking in for the night, some setting out to hunt in the wee hours. His line of sight seeks out and lands on the unmistakable presence of Halfy—instantaneously, there is relief puncturing that malcontent building inside.

His muscles spring into action. Without prompting, Smoky steps over into the reach of the gloom-ridden pines. On the way toward camp's boundary does he pass by his mate. Long enough to lock gazes with her, silently inviting her to follow.

⁂

"I don't wanna be a part of this much longer, Halfy." In a burst of hushed and delicate emotion, Smoky lets slip. He does not speak angrily when he glances at his mate. He never does. "I don't care for Fray. Don't care for this colony. We stick with 'em, they're just going to drag us down." And the tom knows he isn't alone in that regard. It isn't even a difficult choice to make whether or not to abandon these cats. The question is when, and where they might go from here.

Not with whom, though. Smoky is quick to stress that point. "I love you. I'll follow you anywhere you want. We go the other way. Doesn't matter where'n particular you lead me." A little twitch to his lip is suggestive of a smile that wants to appear there. All that escapes is a thoughtful and protracted sigh. "Just so long as we get somewhere safe, far away."

// @Halfy