Private sword & a sparrow ──✩°｡⋆⸜ serpentberry

[juniperstar]

juniper

finding a moment of clarity in the haze of tumultuous heart and fevered head was like wading through tar. every sunrise meant another chance to move on and still she could not pull herself up over the cliff edge- could not release a white-knuckled grip that ached through exhausted arms. what familiarity to take comfort in was far too little and stirred new fears... new reasons to grieve. shadows broken by splashes of dawn light wrap tightly around a fragment of what they'd lost.. and what they still stood to lose again. it had been no secret that Serpent was pregnant when the Colony had fractured in two and Juniperstar had lost sight of Sable's intentions without realizing... not until he had decorated himself in the stains of berries crushed between his teeth.

the tide moves with the moon... rushing to watery shores as soon as it has set. they loom like an unwelcome phantom, uncertain of their place beside her, uncertain of how much blame was hers to carry. her voice is hardly above a whisper, unwilling or afraid to wake her should she be sleeping... best not to disturb a bear ignorant to the prey at the mouth of its den after all. "Serpent..?"

it felt unfair to speak her name, like laying claim to something that no longer belonged to them. stolen. the spotted cat swallows past the dryness of her mouth, listening for the tale-tell lift of her head... searching for the gleam of accusatory stare. "I don't know if I can do this..."

it could be easily misconstrued to reference her new-found position of power... the star-shaped nails that dug into her pads to pin her there. it hid a meaning to something far more daunting... something she couldn't run from like she could run from leadership if she really wanted to. her skin still holds tight to every ridge of her ribcage but does not sink at her hips where it aught to for someone so haggard and hungry.

Thornstar's voice still cuts a decisive path through her life- a damnation and a warning both.

──✩°｡⋆⸜ ✮

• juniperstar leader of thunderclan nine lives remain

  ignore me

 

[serpentberry]

True to parenthood, the methodology of survival is entirely reliant on the little dependent souls. Some days she never sees the sun, some days she must oust herself into the wild to save her claws from committing atrocities. They need her, she cannot run for long because she is their life, she is all they need and more - her wants, her needs, her wills and delusions... are all wayside in nature. They do not matter in the moments she is occupied. She is mindless and feral, conducting herself to the bare minimum as necessary. One would say that it is not only parenthood that shackles her bones to her flesh, but grief. The unsullied sadness that drains her energy more than her blind children do; Rowanpaw does all she can, listens to her soft spoken instruction and cares in the spaces she cannot. Yet still... she appears a fragment of the molly she had been.

He's gone. Much more, he had visited her in the depths of the night, his fur braided with the stars and galaxies. He named her for her persistence, for her strength, her unbending want to make the world fit for her children. And here she is... a shell, a hollow husk, just barely trying to make it day to day.

Her kits are nestled alone, the den she's chosen now amply insulated. Rowanpaw has been sent to check on some injuries, leaving her, largely, to her own thoughts. Herbs fold over her paws, her stores terribly small compared to what she was used to within the colony. The voice of a friend is near indiscernable from the breeze that follows her, and her tail clips the ground suddenly.

There is vague, vague understanding. Juniper had done what any self preserving cat would've. She ran, fleed like prey from a predator. She thieved the very stars to ensure her own livelihood and then gathered the courage to admit every folly her paws could gather. In front of her newly born children, she breathed the news as if it alone had cut a star out of the fabric of her skin. Serpentberry thinks that it is then where her memory ends; then, where she struggles to stay conscious in the world that changes before her. Her kits are named without her input (though, maybe she had encouraged them; through nonsense and tears, had she begged for something to call them?) and she is left a widow to nearly orphaned kittens.

Her gaze ticks, a look over her shoulder. She never did observe Juniperstar for the wounds the other may have contracted, both during the battle and shortly thereafter. Is there a part of her that hopes they hurt? That they would compare to the aching hole in her chest? Juniperstar lost a lover, too, but how easy would it be for her to flee into the others arms and abandon her loved ones once more?

Her tail twitches again and she shifts her weight, leveling her gaze at the meak leader they are now to follow. One she is to guide, somehow, through their shared misery and her own dissatisfaction. "I don't know if I can do this..." Juniperstar all but pleads for support. Red, teary eyes widen slightly at the admitted fear and worry, taking it for face value at first - and fire burns on her tongue. She feels as if she may explode and the only measure that holds her to her position is the sleeping puddle of kittens not so far away.

She stares. She stares, her maw partially open, as if everything may spill out incoherently instead of succinctly. Eventually, she offers an even,

"You must."

Serpentberry twists her body entirely, facing that of her leader without hiding much of her at all. "It is too late to decide you cannot handle hard decisions, Juniperstar." She blinks, and easy as rain does tears linger in the rims of her eyes. They narrow to slivers, as if to halt the train of sadness from making trails down her cheeks again.

"I did not get a choice," she reminds her friend, and her voice edges sharply, as if any syllable will throw her back into her grief with ease. "It was taken from me, that night you two hurried to Highstones. The night..." her voice breaks but fury spills in the revealing pieces, "I must raise three kittens, now, fatherless, on only stories where their father persevered before. I have to look forward to - to questions. Where is he, Momma? Why didn't he stay? Did he not -" her voice cracks and she grinds her teeth, "Did he not love us? I have to tell them that he made hard decisions, Juniper. Hard decisions that cost him his life. You?" She's standing, her paws pressing down the softened grass as she prowls to her friend, uninhibited by the distance, sickly with pain and suffering.

"You must. You no longer have a choice." She stands measures from her leader, incapable of seeing her own visage, broken into the morsel of the queen she was sunrises ago. Serpent will persevere, will outrace this horrible shade of the femme she's become. But for now, Serpentberry presides, as if the additional moniker holds her to her grief ridden skeleton. "You took that from yourself."

But it is now - now, where she intends to spin on her heel, to walk away and leave the spineless molly in the entranceway to watch her whip-like tail slash and cut. As she pulls from Juniperstar, however, she notices; it's the slightest glimmer of understanding, the morsel of difference. Perhaps its a gift from StarClan itself, burried in her new law as presiding medicine cat. Or perhaps she's more perceptive in her wallowing filth, looking for anything to latch to and dig her claws in. But this -

Anger does not melt. It folds, hides beneath a viperlike tongue and waits to be summoned. Sympathy is not a friend, held at a distance but the closeness is still felt. Her expression twists, her spine straightens.

"You're not talking about... leadership," she says with no ounce of surprise. She swallows thickly, her nose wrinking as she thinks of all she's said in the new light of context - and tells herself that the anger was necessary. Juniperstar does not get handled with softpaws because she decides, time and time again, to be so blind and foolish. "Speak with me plainly, Juni," the gentle moniker is said without the gentleness it usually holds. Terse, quick, she tilts her head as if she is looking around a boulder, "Tell me why you're here, truly."

 

[juniperstar]

juniper

there are obvious signs of the muscles tensing, coiling in preparation to strike. her tongue doesn't flick to taste the fear, the heat of her body... it doesn't need to. their proximity for seasons past informs Serpent in a way like recognizing the grooves in one's own paw pads. it is innate now, thoughtless, easy. recognizable in the tilt of tufted ears, the way the whites of her eyes ring a widened stare. tiny tells, all on display like flashing lights that point and blare a guilty verdict. they both understand the same thing and though no one will say it so blatantly, Juniperstar suspects it behind every sorrowful glance. you killed him.

her claws had never once craved malicious paths through Hawthornes pelt, had never lifted against him in threat and still the burden of his loss rests on her shoulders. in this space she is not welcome to her grief... twin sets of chocolate dusted fur entangled through years of friendship- stripped bare and left a carcass of insignificance when pitted against a romance doused.

hard decisions... her maw twists into a grimace, already regretting her admission. it has not been read correctly, has become a split-open underbelly for paws to dig into and shred and whatever remains in sight. there is little love left in the clipped, correct syllables of a name too new to cling to. it is a willful neglect.. a separation. her teeth slide against each other, vision cowering towards the floor as viper strikes lunge after her lack of freedoms, criticize her flimsy spine. please stop... but any chance at protest dies in her throat. a body riotting against her- a punishment endured for the crime levied against her. abandonment. never minding that her odds would've been nonexistant... that even if she'd stayed and exchanged blows it wouldn't have brought him back.

questions of kittens too tiny to speak or even conceptualize their father are brandished as a sword tip pressed against pale furred throat- Juniper almost wishes she'd just use her teeth instead. it would be quicker. "I know," she whispers. for every story Serpent would get to tell, his Junebug could tell two... they'd toddled together, learned to hunt together, confessed with beating hearts the objects of their hearts desires and shoved eachother headfirst into those pursuits. "Of course you like her... She's an adventure- Go get her."

her paws tuck tightly under her, crouching into a ball as if the wind might be strong enough to pick her up and whisk her away. there is a silence... and it is the only break she gets to find some bravery enough to look for her friend's stony stare boring into her.

what relief she would've hoped for to be called Juni again is doubly bladed by the tone which calls it. flat. it lacks the affection Thornstar had given her in his death- it frustrates her endlessly. to know he who actually bled and died is more forgiving than those that did not have to witness it. those who lived and would have the chance again to see him and honor him. and still she is the enemy- is it because she is closer to reach than Sable? in the absence of his killer the association is the next most satisfying option?

agitation boils with shame, a simmering pot of remorse... a healthy dose of self pity for the position she finds herself in. she would not have agreed... not if she knew what scarlet coated snow would line the floors. but there was no undoing any of it. desperation sinks in, a hungry need for someone to validate her experience, to agree that it is miserable and that she doesn't deserve what fate has lined up so neatly and cruelly for her.

"No... I... I wasn't talking about being leader. I wouldn't abandon everyone... I wouldn't humiliate him like that." the fact it needs saying is its own kind of wound, one that stings the corners of her eyes. "I don't want to do this alone... I just want my friend Serpent."

the bridge of her nose wrinkles with distaste, as if swallowing down bitter medicine. "Hawthorne... Thornstar... didn't just name me Juniperstar. He told me... I'm pregnant." she could remember when the tortoiseshell in front of her found out... the excitement that bubbled out of everyone that knew her and loved her. in another life Juniper could've had that too. but not this one. not this one... "Please don't leave me to do this by myself... Even if Sable loves me he's..." made his choice..? done too much harm? abandoned me?

"I don't know what to do..." it's too much... too much all at once to bare and sift through and answer to. her chest aches.. her head throbs... the scratches that nick the back of her legs and wind down the base of her tail feel like nothing in comparison.

──✩°｡⋆⸜ ✮

• 
  

  juniperstar leader of thunderclan nine lives remain

  ignore me

 

[serpentberry]

She doesn't need to say it; to voice the shared thought would hurt them both more than to know that its agreed upon. Serpentberry does not think logistically, does not care for the statistics and possibilities. All she knows is that her lover - the tom who stopped everything in her life and gave her tenfold more to look forward to it - died. Juniper had not. She would not wish death on her friend. Perhaps much of her would have this much untapped rage and upset if the circumstances were flipped. But they wouldn't know. They'd never know the true outcome of a different end, for they are too busy just trying to survive this one.

Serpentberry stays idle, stays to her paws whilst the other sinks, pathetically, to the ground. Juniperstar's sides bow out slightly, her paws hide beneath her chest. The medicine cat cannot help but tense her jaw and finally look away, as if guilt for being so angry is finally drifting into her veins. Again that vague sense of understanding rings. Behind walls of fatigue, rage, despair - she hears a chime of want. A want to hold the other and be held, a want to drop the sword she holds and simply cry like her friend does. A want to be so freely weak where she is forced to be strong. "I know." Of course you know, the snipe builds on her tongue but blows out with a tense sigh.

Her demand is met with eyes meeting. Serpentberry does not waver. Her heart does not heal with Juniperstar's treasured promises; her claws, still sheathed, do not score the ground either. She is haphazardly neutral in the other's admittance - at least, until,

"I just want my friend..."

Everything that wants to break inside of her, everything that's already shattered and smeared across the ground, moves to rebuild and blow over again. Her chest thumps something painful and she grimaces, and instead of being softened by the longing, her instinct is to bite. It's Serpentberry now. She's seen him; braided with the cosmos, she's seen him. And he knows. He knows her crimes, and he's forgiven her - yet here she is, unrelenting to Juniperstar, who glimmers with a starlight of her own. Her nose twitches.

She stares long at chocolate fur. She blinks, as if doing so will suddenly assuage the grief and give her a passage to full and complete understanding. Her eyes open and see her friend with copious guilt and shame of her own; yet Serpentberry's frustration remains strong.

The medicine cat grasps her own rage and forces it somewhere in the bowels of her tumultuous emotions. Someone else undeserving will witness the storm that wails inside of her. Juniper has weathered enough for this day.

She folds before the other, her paws clasped over one another. Her eyes remain half-lidded, obscuring the morsels that would only unsettle her friend further. "... I'm pregnant." It's news, no doubt, but the struggle Serpentberry must face to maintain the rest of this conversation does not allow her a glimpse of glee nor a drop of hatred. She, too, begins to think of a world where she would cheer for her friend, where they would giggle about names and plan days where their litters could play. Her expression shifts slightly only because she thinks of moons ago, when she was only just so round, so like Juniper, and she jested that the other ought to have kittens too, one day.

So much has changed. Too much has changed.

"I won't," she says. Her voice is too soft, but genuine, and she leans forward to rest her forehead against Juniper's. Sable can have his behind handed to him time and time again by the cats of ThunderClan; his love isn't worth a rat's best pile of dung if this is how he brutalizes it. Thinking of him makes her sick, and with that vitriol, she can't help but say, "He's gone, Juni. But I'm here." (Her heart begins to freeze over. She realizes with the gentleness of wave crashing to shore that she wants much of the same. She begs for reassurance behind bars of fiery anger; she wants for the very companionship that she eagerly chases away.) It's easy to be here for Juniper. Serpentberry realizes atop everything in this mess, that although Juniper may be petal-soft and cotton-like - although her eyes may be inhibited by the clouds themselves and her mind perhaps even poisoned by someone she loves...

Juniperstar is someone easy to follow. Easy to love and cherish; easy to obey, for obeying is not a demand that will face consequence, but entirely a willful act by those who stand around her, never beneath.

Her jaw tenses again and should the other not shift away, Serpentberry shuffles closer. She intends to hide every bit of her expression in the fluff of Juniper's shoulder. As volatile as she is, she would hate to lose a friend in the molly simply because she can't control her unwieldy emotions.

"Everything is new," she murmurs, pressing her cheek now to the other's shoulder, but facing her gaze outwards and away still. "I'll be the trial run, here. With Leaf, and Rattle, and... Thistle," the final one comes with a push, good-natured teasing though she doesn't entirely show it. "You'll just follow my lead. It won't be easy... I have a feeling it never will." Honesty is the only thing they have now. Serpentberry curls closer should the other allow, the tears that once remained in her eyes now cresting her cheeks in slow marches, one by one. "We can get through this -" lonely motherhood? Clan-life? The loss of their partners? More? "- together. With everyone. With each other."

 

[juniperstar]

juniper

the miasma that sifts between them gives and takes in its viscosity.. tangible and thick where she promises understanding. that the questions she must answer would be answered even with a sire living and well somewhere in the depths of murky and mossy grottos. where is he? does he still love me? why didn't he stay? he is gone. it hardly matters anymore. he chose himself over them. it is a far more selfish and brutal character than Thornstar, who sacrificed and loved and gave willingly his whole self. dying with a smile... compared to the tuxedo's wicked grimacing when things did not go his way.

her pupils fall to her own paws, swimming in the reality that would soon find her. it would not be a question of if... not for either of them. and admitting it does not ease the knot in her chest like she had hoped it might. it would be easier if Serpent just cut it off now- sunk poison into the veins and let it bubble out of her mouth in painful finality. no more tortoiseshell fur to bury herself in familiarity... the last tether of Thornstar to be severed.

"Could you already tell... was I the last to know?" her lips quiver towards a frown, wondering if she'd been blind the whole time and just how much she'd missed. did she deserve the position she was handed, knowing how blinding the path had been without starlight making it brighter and more obscured?

but she is not carved away, not culled like the sickly lamb she ought to be. instead, there is a promise. an assured companionship. her chin rests gently atop her head like a crown of briars... familiar, yearned for but stinging under the assumption it isn't deserved. he is gone. willingly in a way Hawthorne's absence wasn't.

at least... at least there is still something left to cling to. someone who knew them, understood them, had shared similar hopes and giggled about mutual dreams. she does not flee from what half-hearted comfort is offered, turning to bury her nose into a sun and shadow mane gratefully. she does not soften... jagged edges left from the cracks and fractures of an heart not yet mended (could they even hope for that? either of them?). Juniperstar refuses to comment on it, to beg for more of Serpent than she is already giving, resigning herself to this tiny victory.

"New... and strange... do you think it'll ever feel normal," they ask in hushed breaths against her neck. "I won't let you be alone either... you don't have to learn everything by yourself." together. a warm guarantee- "We'll be okay," goes repeated, a terrified bid for it to be made true by saying it enough.

"Do you-... He won't leave this alone... Will he?" Sable had known his lack of restraint... could they actually be sure it would be fine, experimenting aside? her head aches with the gymnastics it must do to justify his obsessiveness- they are just as much his right as hers, his bloodline... what right did she have to withhold that from him? he hadn't hurt Smudge... she'd watched him flee that battle the moment she'd cried out- could someone driven to murder over prey be a good parent? was that not a perfect measure of his willingness to make sure they were healthy and fed?

──✩°｡⋆⸜ ✮

• juniperstar leader of thunderclan nine lives remain

  ignore me

 

[serpentberry]

She, usually touch adverse with those around her, is glad that she has sunken to Juniperstar's level, grateful that she hides her face in soft chocolate fur. For there is a level of comfort that they both bear in one another, a singular thought they share - that in this moment, they are but stand ins for what the other misses. Perhaps it is entirely Hawthorne, entirely the tom that they both tethered to for days and moons. Perhaps Serpent leans closer only because if she squints hard enough, she can pretend the light bouncing off of chocolate fur turns it pale and silver; that she is held by her lover, not her friend. And in return, Juniperstar can take her shadow-dark fur and tense frame for what it is, and pretend that he is here too.

They do not have to say it; do not have to confirm that in the moment, they could very well be wishing another rested in the place of the opposite molly. Whether it is true or not matters so little, for reality will always reign and conquer. Sable is not in the forest, and Hawthorne is not of this realm.

There is more to her relief that Juniperstar cradles her and they rest simply within one another's embrace. The other's feather-trembled question meets a flicking ear, and green eyes fall to the wayside. "Could you already tell?" She is cryptic in the way mollies who weren't allowed to speak are. Juniper's tongue dances around subject matters, carefully picking words to not stir fire in Serpent, and yet a flame burls in her chest simply because she wants to be direct - and then it tapers, a dangerous flare still to behold, but it flickers in a cage for she wonders how much of her relationship with Sable was with love rather than complacency. Serpent blinks once, twice, and with the inquiry that she cannot entirely decipher, she murmurs back, "No."

Surely, surely - if she is speaking of her pregnancy, her lover and his defiance, of the stars themselves or whatever may now rest beneath their paws... there will always be more after her to learn. Surely this will bring her reprieve. Serpent still fears that it may not.

"We'll be okay," comes the new mantra, directly after fretting that their normal will never feel as such. Serpent shifts her weight to stop from shaking her head. Their lives have completely uprooted, torn to ribbons that they are now forced to sew back together with the stars and the past. Normal is no longer a beast they can befriend in the depths of night, when their senses are clouded and they reach for something to ground them. Them, as they are, as they will be - it will never be normal. It will always be new and scary. But she can't say that to Juniperstar. She can't say that to Juniper.

But she presses. Oh, Juniper, how she wants for fear and distress, rather than lying in a false sense of comfort for a few silent moments. At least she pushes for Serpent to say the hard words, so that she may witness them rather than spur her own tongue in pain. Serpent figures that it is inevitable, the worry that festers in her friend. It would've troubled her, too (and in a distant way, it does. Bloodlines no longer rule their way of living, but will Sable end his bloodlust for his enemy when it comes to the paws of his children?) Regardless those morsels of life will be born, gasping for air, crying for milk, and the news will reach Sable in whatever bog he's entrenched himself in. It's fair for Juniperstar to fear, even if Serpent wished they had a moment of peace instead.

"... No," she says, ultimately, merely repeating her tone from before. "You know him better than I do, Juni. And I know..." Serpent trails, her jaw tensing. A long pause as she tries to find the words that'll serve in this moment. "I know that he has love for you. You..." didn't die that night. A rage reborn dies on her tongue, and she clenches her eyes shut. Be it Sable's command or her own quick-footed action, she had been spared. Serpent redirects her thoughts. "You have to do what you can to protect yourself. To protect them. He will be no different than a hungry hound if he catches scent of his own blood." Her tone has settled into something quiet, but stern still. Stiff and edged, but wrapped with warmth and hope. Her tail whips at the ground, "Should we... should you, Juniperstar," a minor correction, a reminder of power and ability, "Station guards around camp through the night? Who knows when he will return," because it is not an if to her.