TW: Sensitive Content son, you were born to die scared / galepaw

[foamkit]

{$title} tw: drowning, mentions of near-death

When they had been given the chance to leave camp, Foamkit had thought the river was only a puddle deep. He had felt so secure being clutched and supported, and it had been a balm to his apprehension. The camp had fallen silent in the long yawn of midnight.

The water was so pretty.

In the faint, twinkling light, he had seen it full and well. He had swallowed the glittery stars, the colorless river. The water was so pretty. Foamkit wondered if his lungs looked like constellations now.

Beginnings of leaf-fall twirled like ribbons around him, his faint heart still beating even though he was the water now. Dead leaves pirouetted into the stream, then like a billowing dress, not yet brittle, they were sent swirling into the current. He was tiny enough to be them, and just as much a promise of cold.

He wasn't stupid — well, maybe. He had heard cautionary tales of cats drowning, even adults so towering and big that they seemed to make rivers look like rivulets of rain in their crossings. But like any tale, a shroud of fiction cloaked his discernment. Stories only told so many details. They couldn't even breathe in reality's same air.

If they could, he would know exactly what dad looked like, who he was.

A long line of dark bubbles escaped his mouth, his chest working through the torrent, a last squeeze of air. The bubbles were in the shape of an apology. He was so sorry, and his mama and his siblings would never know. Over it all – he sobbed because of this inconvenience. The grief and the funeral herbs that would be spent on him. How tongues once combing soothingly over his fur would pretty his hair for the grave. Foamkit did not know where his tears and the river began.

His consciousness finally stumbled.

@Galepaw

 

[Galepaw Galepaw]

—————————————————— Rocked by an endless motion ✦

The screech of birds is what ushered in the tom's sudden dive.

It had been an uneventful night, in an uneventful life, one that was not meant to know the clutches of death so early. He had bent to the kit's every whim and wish, and of course, who was he to forbade it? Who was he, one that was formed by nights such as these, to prevent them? Who was he to coddle, to hold something so gently, as though it feared it may break? Foam was delicate, and thin, and curled at the edges as he was. Wild fur, wild eyes, it was all the same to him, though perhaps it was some form of projection the way he saw these things in little Foam. Of course he'd coax it along, whisper words that were not encouraging, but formative. Lessons that he'd learned himself, and ones that Foam would surely benefit from. Surely, a head start would only be a strengthening thing. Surely, the water would not take him all the same.

It was not meant to be dangerous excursion, and Foam was not meant to mirror him so. It didn't take long for the mistake to occur, it was as easy as the misplacement of little white paws as Gale turned away. It was as easy as blue eyes being drawn to a nest of strangely shaped herons, reddish in the neck with bodies that didn't quite fit. Galepaw gazed upon them in silence, studying the downy feathers of chicks in his hidden spot tucked away in the reeds and the rushes... but he could only delight in such little things for so long as the still bodies of the birds suddenly stiffened, straightened, and snapped to a sound just by the river. A desperate mewl, a yelp for help, and suddenly Gale was bounding through the grasses. Suddenly he flew, dove like some great bird, and the nest which he became preoccupied with scattered.

For a moment, the only sound in the night was the rushing water, as though the world had forgotten what ordeal was going down—until, with the great splashing of water, a large blue head broke the surface of the river. Within his jaws was clasped a ragged scrap of fur, white as the moonlight that washed over them, and sodden as the day he was born. Gale slipped through the water as though born for it, splitting the twinkling surface in twain until he slithered upon shore. There didn't seem to be much urgency in his step, nor a raised nature to his fur, but his pupils were thin. With gentle, graceful steps, he slunk away from the deadly brook, away from a death he had grown far too acquainted to.

Foam was laid in a bed of rushes, and for a moment the tom looked as though he were a star. Something holy, touched by death, and yet peaceful. It could almost believe he were sleeping, and so believe he did. After a moment of curious regard, the pale apprentice leaned in close, pressing his cool pale nose to the small cat's chest. There was a flitting there, like some killdeer with a false wound, and Gale would not believe it otherwise. This was a lapse in time, a momentary step outside of the natural ways of life, and nothing more. And if it were to be something more, something familiarly concrete and final... So it goes.

"Wake, little thing." He muttered quietly, urgently, melodically. It was a simultaneous call to action, a gentle request, and a plea to some higher thing. It was not sure which it wanted answered, if it were to be answered at all. "This is no night to die."

—————Whether truth or just a story

It's not up to you—————

• 
  Galepaw
  ✦—Riverclan Apprentice | 11 Moons
  ✦—He/They/It
  ✦—"SPEECH", 'THOUGHTS', ATTACK
  ✦—A fluffy high white lynx point with curled ears and deep blue eyes
  #87878E #BAB2AC