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Post by Fawn on Sept 14, 2014 17:29:49 GMT -5
⇒Medicine Cat of LightningClan⇐
“Bring more burdock root.” Rookfrost refrained from addressing his former apprentice by his new, supposedly earned Medicine Cat’s name of Snowheart. It felt as if a watered down mixture of honey and tree sap were being shoved down his throat every time he reached the cusp of saying it aloud; Clan cats and their sentimentality. What purpose would the suffix of ‘heart’ even serve? It must have been meant to signify the fluffy white tom’s sickeningly compassionate nature and insane desire for everlasting peace and good will towards all. Names were not meant to be created on the basis of feelings , they were meant for the sake of accuracy, to tell one another apart and thus avoid any unnecessary confusion; personalities could change, but certain physical characteristics were difficult to alter. Snowpelt would have been more appropriate. Of course, Medicine Cats seemed to have a particular gift for flowery, absurd naming practices – he could not recall any sensations of joy or happiness or approval when he had finally been named Rookfrost. The unusual suffix likely had something to do with the paleness of his eyes, rather than the unhindered iciness of his personality. Those that met him likely associated it with his particular preference for reticence and his lack of forbearance, but there was little he could do or cared to do to change the opinions of others.
It wasn’t exactly inaccurate.
The night-black healer cast an equivocated eye to the back of the cat he’d been obligated to instruct, the vast recesses of his mind (for some peculiar reason) drawn to the subject of Snowheart and his infuriating kin. Business was, without question, slow, for he jealously withheld his attention save for only the most pressing or interesting of topics. Snowheart was not worthy of an analysis; he had gleaned as much from the earliest moons of their unpleasantly didactic relationship, and analyzing was all that Rookfrost found himself capable of when it came to those he was forced to call Clanmates. The tall black stalks of fur at the tips of his ears brushed against the den roof as he exited, sunlight spilling across the dense sleek-looking pelt – as black and shiny as the carapace of a large (and likely malevolent) beetle – the warmth of the rays unable to penetrate his skin, missing the opportunity to thaw the edges of his heart.
Casting the same disinterested stare around the camp interior, Rookfrost wiled away his boredom in the only outlet he had – by mentally dissecting those around him. None were safe from the scalpel-sharp scrutiny of the LightningClan healer, and he skillfully wielded an intangible blade, cutting into flesh and carefully separating tendons without the intention of repairing the damage (fictitious or not). He envisioned himself delicately removing Icewhisker’s tongue from his mouth, and he relished in the vision of slowly severing Blazepaw’s spinal column with the knowledge that he would never again walk into his den – broken down into nothing more than a slobbering, incontinent mess.
Rookfrost drew a paw over his mouth and eyes, brushing away any leafy remnants in a movement so fast and so precise, it was easy to forget it had happened at all. Out of the shadow-furred feline’s peripherals walked Firesky, Mapleheart and Juniperpaw returning from a patrol; as they passed him by and he offered something resembling a curt nod to Firesky (despite his view of her being rather apocryphal), Rookfrost indulged in a little harmful daydreaming – though nightmaring seemed the more appropriate name for it. Before long, the deputy was without a few crucial organs, Juniperpaw had been so graciously relieved of her limbs, and Mapleheart had been reduced to something skeletal – finding her far more interesting without flesh and fur than she could ever have been while living.
Perhaps if the entire Clan were a bunch of animate skeletons (perhaps then they’d have a use for such silly sentimental names, what with a shortage of distinctive physical characteristics), Rookfrost would have earnestly enjoyed his station.
No wealth no ruin no silver no gold. Nothing satisfies me but your soul.
Word Count: 667 Words
Tags: None
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2014 13:46:11 GMT -5
only a crack in this castle of glass
Dull fur and dead eyes were the most notable characteristics of the warrior-aged apprentice, as he lay in a small pile at the edge of the camp. Lightless golden eyes watched cats come and go, moving on with their lives and leaving him behind.
He hated them. He envied them.
Weaselpaw hadn't been the same since leaf-bare, when the illness that swept the Clans had nearly taken his life...again. It was his second true brush with death, and he hadn't walked away unscathed. Alive, yes, but no longer whole.
While everyone was moving on and healing, he was still as he was, his body seemingly refusing to return to health. He was still thin, bony, and underweight, and no amount of prey seemed to change that. He couldn't attempt to build muscle, either, as no cat seemed willing to allow him out of camp. By now he was used to the stares and whispers, the expectations of his death and the surprise at his survival.
He should be dead. Everyone knew it, even him. How had he, the weak, sickly shadow of a cat, survived, while cats stronger and healthier than he had gone to join StarClan? He sighed and shifted his head on his paws, gazing out in a new direction.
The dark form of the medicine cat caught his eye, and his ears pricked forward ever so slightly. They shared the same coat color, but Rookfrost's was much more glossy and well-kept, while Weaselpaw's was dull and lifeless, just as he was. He watched the healer with interest in his eyes, as Rookfrost's cold gaze swept over the camp.
The distant healer had intruiged Weaselpaw since his first trip to his den, and he felt drawn to the dark cat. He wasn't sure why, but something about Rookfrost was different, and that difference, that quality that set him apart from the rest of the Clan, intruiged him, made him curious, made him want to know more.
Weaselpaw rose slowly, his thin frame trembling slightly with the effort. He stepped forward to walk across the camp, his pace slow, though he struggled to put off an air of strength. He knew he was failing, though, for strength of will did not present an outward appearance, and he could not override the frailness of his body.
He paused a short distance away from Rookfrost, suddenly unsure of what to say or do. Why had he come to stand before him? He knew he had to do something, though. There was no way he could walk away, knowing that there was no way he hadn't drawn Rookfrost's attention.
"Rookfrost..." He took a breath, trying to put words and ideas together in a short span of time. "Is there anything I can do? I feel so useless. I need to do something, before I completely fall apart." The words came out in an exhale, rushed out before Weaselpaw had a chance to change his mind. He glanced up at Rookfrost and quickly averted his eyes, shifting his weight from paw to paw nervously, preparing himself for the rebuke that was sure to come.
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Post by Fawn on Sept 15, 2014 19:21:10 GMT -5
⇒Medicine Cat of LightningClan⇐
The slowness of the underweight black tom’s movements – as if his body had been cruelly aged far past its prime over the duration of leafbare – provided enough of a warning that he was coming over. Rookfrost held his ground, mentally rinsing his cutting tools and squeezing the blood out of his fur, not that anyone looking at him could somehow see the incriminating evidence of his nefariousness lurking just behind his eyes. As if gazing at StarClan’s chosen representative of poor health and frailness of body, icy gray pools settled into the wide amber stare of the cat whose name he could not remember. Shrewpaw? The cat was well past the age for graduating into warriorhood, but Rookfrost had found the young collector of health ailments to be scarcely fit for apprenticeship, let alone anything more physically demanding.
At the sound of Weaselpaw’s inane plea for Rookfrost to somehow find him a purpose, the true Rookfrost behind the mask of neutrality snorted, an acerbic response spilling into the forefront of his mind though it was wholly left unsaid. You could die. Physical exertion of any kind will more than likely result in you actually falling apart, or at the very least internal organ failure, and as grotesquely fascinating as such an occurrence would be to one of my nature, I am obligated to suggest against it. No cat, including Rookfrost who had been at the front lines of their war against greencough (a war upon which his only other ally was that irritatingly benign offspring of Dovesong) had anticipated Weaselpaw living long enough to stand before him with such a passionate desire to be a functioning member of Clan life.
Rookfrost narrowed his eyes. He did not operate on hope, he had not even a scintilla of concern for the sorrows and sufferings of the living (their emotional sufferings were both difficult to understand and liable to make him turn up his nose to their petty heartfelt plights), so when a quiet, considering voice inside his head suggested healing Weaselpaw of his apparent afflictions, Rookfrost did not reel back in shock. It was not out of any nonexistent vein of kindness that he offered to do so; it had much to do with his boredom as well as a desire simmering beneath his skin to prove his own prowess as a healer, even if none but the coldness of the stars and his own icy heart were present to witness his triumphs.
Without a word, he slipped into the underground of his – pardon, their den – and returned after a few indifferent heartbeats with a bundle of herbs in his mouth. A combination of daisy leaves, chamomile, burnet and sorrel, he set the leafy parcel down in front of the frail creature, gesturing with a single precise movement of paw. ”Eat. Then come with me.” Statement succinct as it was authoritative, it was clear that Weaselpaw had no choice in this matter; he would eat the strengthening herbs and then abscond from the busy hive of Clan life and into the fresher, spacious environment of the moorlands. ”Your bedding. How often is it changed?” Observing with an impatient eye, one of the first things that Rookfrost had learned in his early moons of medical training was that illnesses had a way of lingering in moss and other bedding that was not changed frequently. While he wouldn’t chalk that down to being the reason for the apprentice’s declining wholeness, he was willing to wager a good chunk of it had to do with stale bedding and a lack of fresh air to clear out the sinuses. The sickness was likely still pocketed somewhere in Weaselpaw’s body, and only dipping the tom in some sort of antiseptic paste would ever convince Rookfrost that he was truly in a position to recover.
But that would be messy and a waste of herbs for one small, insignificant creature in a world full of small, insignificant creatures; this one was meant to be particularly ephemeral, but fate had decided to wink at him and make him reevaluate his hypotheses on the assumptions made towards Weaselpaw. Perhaps the tom’s lifespan could be expanded.
Perhaps.
No wealth no ruin no silver no gold. Nothing satisfies me but your soul.
Word Count: 696 Words Tags: Amber
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Post by Deleted on Jan 3, 2015 22:21:39 GMT -5
Weaselpaw waited in silence under the scrutiny of Rookfrost's gaze, feeling his skin prickle with anxiety. After what seemed like an eternity, Rookfrost moved silently into his den, returning moments later with a bundle of herbs. "Eat. Then come with me."
Obediently, he lowered his head and chewed the herbs, swallowing hard with the bitter taste still on his tongue. A few quick bites was all it took, and he looked up at Rookfrost expectantly. Without a word, Rookfrost moved, and Weaselpaw followed without question.
They left the camp and ventured into the moorlands, where the grass grew taller and brushed at their sides. They walked a ways, before Rookfrost spoke again. "Your bedding. How often is it changed?"
Weaselpaw thought a moment, then looked up at Rookfrost. "Not as often as the others'. They all clean out their nests together, helping each other, but no one ever helps me. They share the moss they bring in, but I have to get my own. That's the worst part of it, getting my own moss. If I didn't have to do that entirely on my own, it would be easier."
He looked down at his paws, still walking with the medicine cat. He was a cat alone, unwelcome and unwanted, and there were times when he honestly and seriously considered moving out of the apprentices' den and finding a spot at the edge of the camp to make his nest. A part of him always reminded him that the weather wasn't always beautiful, and that any amount of cold or wet would shatter his immune system and pave the way for another serious illness to take root. So he remained in the furthest corner of the apprentices' den, where they all gave him a wide berth and track of unclaimed land between him and the nearest nest, and the nests furthest away from him were prime real estate.
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Post by Fawn on Jan 5, 2015 20:30:14 GMT -5
⇒Medicine Cat of LightningClan⇐
Fixing two icy gray eyes upon the diminutive form of Weaselpaw, he cared nothing at all for a good 2/3rds of his story; it wasn't necessary to state what Rookfrost supposed was unfairness about whether or not Weaselpaw had any help with his bedding from his denmates. It didn't bring back any waves of nostalgia concerning the healer's own time in the apprentices' den; he had long ago filed away those memories as irrelevant, and never discussed his back-story with anyone, living or dead. "Make a new den in the outer edge of camp," Rookfrost's mechanical mew accompanied a subtle flick of black ear tufts as he walked the fragile tom into the fresher, wetter air in the open territory. What Weaselpaw needed was isolation; he didn't have any qualms about making the apprentice feel even more unusual in comparison with his peers; Rookfrost wasn't a youth counselor, he was a healer of extraordinary talent and an in-ordinarily small amount of patience for human emotion. An ant had more regard for Weaselpaw's depressingly abysmal social life than Rookfrost did.
Identifying the small brown shape coming towards them as an apprentice - and one that seemed less irritating than some of the others, though it was only by a small margin - Rookfrost hailed Mudpaw to the side with a swift tail-flick. "Take his bedding out of the apprentices' den and bury it, far from here." The stocky youth glanced at Weaselpaw, gave a curt nod, and trotted back into camp. No effort was made to watch and see if his instructions were followed to the letter; it wasn't as if he had accrued a reputation for being a pushover. Not to mention, wielding the 'power of the stars' seemed to grant a medicine cat with a certain level of command that few, not even leaders, could often argue with. Much less the feline equivalent of a pupae, barely even 12 moons into its existence.
In the idle silence after these orders, Rookfrost leafed through the minimum accrued knowledge he had in regards to Weaselpaw and his state of health; a tiny inkling of a memory made itself known in the neatly organized, alabaster halls of the healer's mind, and he could at last recall that Weaselpaw had been born sickly. The fact that he had lived this long was a medical absurdity. It was entirely possible that Weaselpaw had some sort of parasite living inside of him (it had long ago occurred to Rookfrost that if a cat could get fleas on the outside of their body, there was no telling what could infect a cat on the inside, though he had yet to prove this theory) that kept him in such a weakened, feeble state. He contemplated this with a narrowed stare, coming to an eventual stop.
"You have been sick since kithood," a brief pause indicated the healer would allow himself to be corrected, and then he continued. "What sort of care-provider was your mother?" Often times, kittens wouldn't always survive as a direct result of the mother being inadequate in some way.
No wealth no ruin no silver no gold. Nothing satisfies me but your soul.
Word Count: 520 Words Tags: Amber
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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2015 1:27:22 GMT -5
He gave a small half-nod to acknowledge Rookfrost's instructions to move, though the night-black healer didn't see as he called Mudpaw toward them with a silent motion of his tail. Weaselpaw met Mudpaw's eyes only a moment before looking away, but turned his head to watch him leave. What would it be like to be a normal apprentice, to not have to worry about nearly dying after a simple training session? Without having to focus constantly on how he breathed, to be able to hunt and fight without fear of dying at the claws of an enemy he couldn't fight back against?
Rookfrost spoke again, and he tuned back in, flicking his ears forward and up to pick up the words. "What sort of care-provider was your mother?" His mother? Why would Rookfrost want to kn-- oh. Did he think his mother had anything to do with this? Was he accusing her of not taking enough care of him? Weaselpaw's fur began to lift up as he fixed the back of the healer's head with a glare. His mother had always taken care of him. Always!
"What sort of question is that? Do you think she wasn't good enough?!" He tried to keep some of the anger out of his voice. Tried, but failed. How dare he insult his mother like that! A more rational part of his brain told him that Rookfrost was speaking objectively, seeking information, but Weaselpaw took it as a personal blow, an insult against his mother. He glared daggers at the healer again, before cooling down slightly. "She always took care of me. I was her first and only, how could she not?" He looked down and away, knowing his mother had always done her best, and loved him more than anything in the world. "And my father always made sure we had the best prey he could find. So no, if you think they weren't good enough, you're wrong. They always took care of me." And it was true. Weaselpaw had nothing but fond memories of his parents, who had both died in the battles against StoneClan, leaving him more truly alone than he had ever been.
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Post by Fawn on Feb 5, 2015 9:09:02 GMT -5
⇒Medicine Cat of LightningClan⇐
Ah. Realized the black healer, as the scrawny petri dish of an apprentice spoke up in tones of defense and anger. He should not have asked Weaselpaw that question and expect him to answer objectively; it was, Rookfrost had observed, extremely difficult for family members to separate themselves enough from their kin to look at them with an outsider's perspective, free of any obscuring emotions that might make moments like these a regular occurrence. If he wanted a proper response, it would require speaking with some of the queens who had been around at the time of Weaselpaw's birth and the first 6 moons of his development; that was more unnecessary social interaction than Rookfrost could willingly stomach, but if Bubblefang's behaviors as a queen became crucial to fixing Weaselpaw's condition, then he would shoulder the burden of trying to make sense of these mundane,emotionally-affected, mentally obtuse creatures he shared a Clan with. As carefully and as silently as he did any sort of dissection, the words of Weaselpaw were severed in the icy eyes of the medicine cat, a quick, efficient process that involved separating the trivial from the potentially useful; his father had provided adequate sustenance for his offspring and his partner. Weaselpaw's answer did not outright go into his mother's rearing methods, but he could pick up on what was implied with the passionate words of "She always took care of me. I was her first and only, how could she not?"
With no desire to discuss a mother's ability to abandon her own offspring to the mercy of the wilderness, Rookfrost again regarded the underweight, perpetually ill specimen before him. IT was entirely within the realm of possibilities that whatever condition Weaselpaw had gotten since kithood had been lying dormant in his mother, whether anycat had realized it or not. What had been a possibly endearingly diminutive she-cat could very well have been an internally compromised she-cat that had yet to awaken whatever was in her body that was already wreaking havoc upon her son. Neither apologizing nor clarifying why he needed to know this information in the first place, he proceeded to the next logical question on the forefront of the healer's brain. "Was your mother an adequate weight throughout your kithood and apprenticeship, or did she appear thin?" This question was worded with no less antipathy than the first one, but Rookfrost was inwardly wondering if Weaselpaw was going to take offense to everything he said, feeling a spark of annoyance for all this pointless outpouring from a cat who could scarcely catch his own prey without dissolving into a coughing fit. Being defensive of one's mother was regarded as noble and the proper thing to do; in the depths of the healer's cool, machine-like mind, he could acknowledge pairing the term 'noble' with such an endeavor. Showing respect to the one who gave you life (he always hated that phrase, life was not given, it was an effect that resulted from one very specific cause) was not something he readily practiced, owing to the deceased nature of both his parents, but it certainly wouldn't surprise him that other cats would.
Sometimes it was even appropriate, when another took it upon themselves to insult something you cared deeply about. Now was not that moment; if Rookfrost had wanted to insult Weaselpaw's mother, then it would not be with questions, it would be with the cold, hard truth which, Rookfrost had discovered, tended to leave a heavier mark than a mocking inquiry. "Consider your answer carefully." There was a chilly warning surrounding these words like a winter fog, inferring that the healer would not tolerate any more of these passionate defensive cases when he was not, at the moment, insulting anyone.
No wealth no ruin no silver no gold. Nothing satisfies me but your soul.
Word Count: 627 WordsTags:Amber
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