It feels like walking into a ghost town- in a way she really had, though, hadn't she? The Shipyard held a sun-warmed breeze that rolled over the shore while cracked and decrepit buoys rose and fell a short distance from the docks. If she closed her eyes, Dogflicker could pretend she had rolled back in time to last greenleaf. When she and her littermates had barely breached their first full season cycle, stuck to one another like a can of sardines. When all they worried about was catching the next fish and getting the best spot along the dunes to sleep that night. They always ended giving it up to Fox, anyway.
Squinting greens rest on the remnants of the collapsed shelter as she passed it, a cold eerie shudder crawling down her spine. Dog had hoped to come back here, one day. That she wouldn't need RiverClan or her littermates would finally get tired of it and come back home. She thought of it so much happier, then. Now she only saw it for the mess they had left it, how the Upwalkers left it, too.
"Figured I'd catch you here." Dogflicker mewed as she saw that familiar ticked pelt. "I've got something you need to know, and then I'll leave. I'll never show my face again, if you really want that, too." Dogflicker swallowed dryly, scuffing her paws against the pebbly sand.
ooc : — @Adder
tagged for sensitive content for discussing child death/shellkit
▵ chocolate/cinnamon chimera with high white, and green eyes
▵ littermate to foxtail and coyoteclaw
▵ mentoring ??
▵ mate to none ; peace powerplay allowed
▵ "speech"
It had been a while since his paws last brushed the shore. The hush of waves lapping against sand worked like a balm on his restless spirit. Any evidence of what happened at the gathering has been washed away for little good it does. He felt like a piece of wreckage, washed up from a violent storm. The salt in the air dries out his fur and stings his throat. He looks and feels more exhausted than he's ever felt before.
He sits upright, ears swiveling to the sound of something coming toward him. Adder slithers out from the wooden ribcage he's chosen to take refuge in. Let them come to him.
She sweeps toward him like an apparition, the sun forming a halo around the darkening of her silhouette. Dogflicker. He blinks slowly, eyelids stuck to the bloodshot orbs sunken into his skull. Had he been smart, he would've gone somewhere they didn't know about. Some hopeless fool he was, being pulled toward something familiar. There were only two places in the world that he's ever called home. Suppose I'm a creature of habit...
He watches, lidded amber eyes scraping over his former clanmate. Nothing about her seems to imply that she's there to attack him. Adder regards her with a withered caution. She has not denounced him yet, not like the rest were so very quick to do, but that does not earn her trust. Adder wouldn't expect her to give him any either. She knows what he's done by now. "Is it just you?" He stretches to search the beach for other signs of life. He wouldn't have been surprised if Pikestar changed his mind and sent a patrol to hunt him. That seemed like a coward's way of doing things.
Why come all the way to the shipyard just to deliver news? He doesn't know what she means to share with him, but the possibilities gut him all the same. Right away his mind goes to the kits, to Wavesong still recovering after the birth. "What is it you came here to tell me then?" He gulps, but there's nothing to swallow but air. The inside of his mouth is so very dry...
x
THE SPLINTERED MAST I'M HOLDING ON
WON'T SAVE ME LONG
x
ROGUE
✗ EXILE
36 MOONS
HE/HIM
✕ Chocolate ticked tabby w/ amber eyes. Peppered with scars. Deep gash across the right side of his face, exposing one canine slightly. Missing left ear. ✕ Deep gravelly voice that might unsettle others. ✕ Former RiverClan LifeGuard ✕ Peaceful and healing powerplay permitted. For other powerplays, DM. ✕ Fur smells faintly of blood and seasalt.
Adder regarded her with suspicion, they she does not blame him. After the number he had done on Pikestar... on his reputation, would it not make sense for those loyal to their feeble king to hunt for his killer? To Adder's luck, she is not of the sort. Still struggling to stand behind the tabby even now, with the blood-stained proof that he was really, truly, blessed by some star-forsaken path to lead them. They couldn't be faultless, though, could they? Dogflicker could never believe in a haven where everything was perfect and right. They wouldn't have let Pikestar die at all, then, right? Couldn't they have prevented Jinglemoon's loss of herbs, what stalled Shellkit's recovery?
"I'm alone, swear it." She promised quickly. "I left before anyone could see me... I didn't want to bring any trouble. This doesn't need anyone hurt than there already is... it's about Shellkit." Dogflicker swallowed with a grimace.
"She's not doin' right. Those... foxfaced ShadowClanners, Jinglemoon doesn't got the herbs to keep her afloat. I don't... It'd take a miracle for her to make it." Dog looked down at her paws, pushing her toes against the damp sand. A little one to be the victim of greed, she hoped whatever those stars did, they would never let a single one join them. If it's supposed to be true, that their souls would be taken their after death, she wouldn't want to see any beside her. Dogflicker would sooner find another place that didn't forgive such wretchedness.
"I just thought you deserved to know. As her father."
▵ chocolate/cinnamon chimera with high white, and green eyes
▵ littermate to foxtail and coyoteclaw
▵ mentoring ??
▵ mate to none ; peace powerplay allowed
▵ "speech"
The irony of Dogflicker suggesting a miracle might be the only thing to save Shellkit isn't lost on him. He watched a tom get up off the ground after having his throat ripped out. Now that was some miracle, if not a trick of the light or a hallucination caused by his deprived mind. Now he has to hear that they needed something like that to save his newborn daughter from a completely preventable tragedy? "The fuck are you even tellin' me? T-that what? My daughter's gonna die?"
Adder stepped forward, spitting seething words through bared teeth. "That's it then? All the talk Pikestar did during the gathering, and he still couldn't wring herbs from ShadowClan? What the fuck happened to asking the other clans for herbs? To hounding the monster whose warriors took from us until he gave in. Oh, and right if he didn't then dragging Juniperstar along to force his paw?!" Dogflicker wasn't the one to blame, but the news she brings is about as easy to digest as pieces of glass. How could he spare a single bit of gratitude for the messenger who told him something like that?
Exhaustion creases at the corners of his sunken eyes. "Y'know I told him talkin' wouldn't work. It didn't the first time, so why bother?" He thought—What the hell had he thought? That Pikestar would be true to his word for once? That maybe that if holdin' tails didn't work, he would finally step up? Well, once again he hoped like a fool and turned up disappointed.
Action was what they needed, what they always needed. He was so damned sick of repeating himself. Adder would bet ShadowClan had no intention of trading their herbs back to begin with. The more he thought about it, why were they bargaining with thieves to give back what they stole at all? The herbs were THEIRS to begin with!
His tongue flicks out to absentmindedly drag over his tooth. Then suddenly, he takes another step. His sour breath sure to brush her whiskers if Dogflicker doesn't back away to account for it. "What herbs? What does Jinglemoon need?" Some cats in RiverClan liked to talk about family, but wanted none of the responsibility that came with it. The only assumption he ever made about their role in his life was that they would take care of Wavesong and the kits in his absence. He'd been wrong to believe that anyone else but him could.
x
THE SPLINTERED MAST I'M HOLDING ON
WON'T SAVE ME LONG
x
ROGUE
✗ EXILE
36 MOONS
HE/HIM
✕ Chocolate ticked tabby w/ amber eyes. Peppered with scars. Deep gash across the right side of his face, exposing one canine slightly. Missing left ear. ✕ Deep gravelly voice that might unsettle others. ✕ Former RiverClan LifeGuard ✕ Peaceful and healing powerplay permitted. For other powerplays, DM. ✕ Fur smells faintly of blood and seasalt.
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