when the world wasn't so small [ frostmoth ]

[lavenderpaw]

She can still feel her heart thrumming beneath her skin, the blood rushing in her ears. It all happened... so quickly. She had slipped away from Frostmoth and met up with a few like aged cats at the gathering. With the comfort of her sister, she laughed and teased, maybe even made new friends. And then the shouting happened. It blurs from there.

Lavenderpaw looks down at the water. She's half expecting it to start running red at any point, given how much blood was spilled in the woodlands. She knows she watched Pikestar die, yet the image hadn't burned into her mind's eye like she thought it would. She knows she heard her mentor exile Adderfang, yet she still expects to see him on the next patrol. She was there when Pikestar took his first breath again, but not a moment has lodged into her mind. The facts mean nothing, and if she were any more infantile, she may even believe that none of it had happened at all.

A line of scales flash in the water, and Lavenderpaw lets it go.

"I didn't like it," Frostmoth can't be too far from her, brooding in the way he does. The apprentice doesn't look to see if he's caught the fish she let swim pass, nor if he's caught anything at all. She keeps her eyes on the water; she waits for red. "Do we have to do that again, Frostmoth? What if... Hawkstar asks for your life next?" The shade of worry in her eyes does not fade so quickly, akin to a flash of scales beneath the water, eager to have fangs fastened into every etching. She doesn't let him see that her skin itches with worry, that her heart's beat is so tangible that it keeps distracting her.

"Or Hazecloud's, or Lichentuft's, or Smokewreath's - what's stopping her from asking for them all?" Lavenderpaw feels more anger in the moment, and then her tone drops, a morsel of fear entering next, "What's stopping Adderfang from coming back, and trying again?"

 

[Frostmoth]

Frostmoth finds that he is lowest on the list of cats that shouldn't have had to see Pikestar die and revive at the gathering. It had not even occurred to him until it was far too late that Lavenderpaw had been there, too. Guilt weighs a heavy stone in his stomach. All the promises he'd made are were like a house of cards collapsing in quick succession. Lavenderpaw had been so excited to go meet new cats from different clans, just to have the entire experience dashed on a rock at her paws. In some ways, he feels that he failed Hazecloud and Lichentuft, too. Their daughter had come home physically unharmed, but what could be said for the effects on a fresh apprentice at seeing such horrifying events?

Frostmoth is trying to keep Lavenderpaw's spirits up. Although she insisted she already knew how to fish, the pair are lingering on the bank of the river. Lavenderpaw is concerningly silent though, and doesn't seem to be hunting as much as she is just staring down into the water. Fish move past her line of vision, but Frostmoth pretends not to see. "I know," the reply comes slow and soft "I'm sorry." He heaves a sigh through his nose. "I have to attend gatherings as Pikestar's deputy, but I won't make you attend them if you don't want to go," Frostmoth scowls. Some StarClan cat, so they said, had asserted that it was a rule they had to meet on the full moon. Though he supposes he is in no place to be doubting StarClan and their laws.

At her assertion about Hawkstar, Frostmoth turns to face her completely. "She won't," Frostmoth assures Lavenderpaw. He had left the gathering just as Owlbark had been accused of killing a SkyClan cat to attend to his own set of traumatizing events, so it hadn't been until later that anyone had told him what happened. Were there any clans that were capable of being civilized? At the very least, he has to respect Juniperstar for what he heard she did. Though the whole show seemed entirely unnecessary from what he'd heard. "And... I trust that Pikestar would not allow it," He presses his mouth into a line. What he does want to say is that he would have never recklessly killed an intruder and left them to die on their side of the border, but he leaves it unspoken.

"Adderfang won't come back," Frostmoth thumps his tail against the ground, as if trying to shake his apprentice out of the snowball forming in her mind. "What he and Pikestar had was very... Personal. He cares more about his children and their safety, and he knows that they are safest here. Without him coming around," he assures the apprentice, but finds that he is partially reassuring his own anxieties, too. Frostmoth turns eyes back to the river avoidantly, and points a white-tipped paw at the water. Scales flash near the surface. "Has Hazecloud showed you how to catch the fish who come closest to the surface like that?"

OH, MY GOD ★ MAKE ME IN YOUR IMAGE

• "SPEECH"
• ★ FROST — he/him, riverclan deputy, 21 moons
  — penned by carat, feel free to ping or dm for plots!
  — longhair black and white bicolor with blue eyes
  — peaceful powerplay ok! all interactions ok!
  
• penned by carat!