Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2019 18:40:33 GMT -5
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Dustclaw
Dustclaw could feel the snow cracking beneath his leaps and bounds, lungs screaming as he tore through StoneClan territory. I have to find Flintfang! The brown tom's heart skipped as he saw shadows in the distance, though the vultures took flight as soon as he came close. It made sense. Not many would want to be outside on a day like this. Snow continued falling, making his travel slower, his legs burned from the strain of deep snow and fear.
Fear that his brother would perish because of his cowardly escape.
Dustclaw justified it as getting help, but the black shadow whom Mothflight was so unfortunate to come across sent chills clawing up his spine. The tom flailed through the deepening snow, hearing his brother's cries in the distance and seeing the camp not far ahead. He screamed for help, though no one came. Dustclaw kept pressing towards camp anxiously.
Something wasn't right.
Dustclaw felt a cold loneliness engulf him as he entered the camp. It was deathly quiet.
"Help! Someone help, Mothflight is in trouble at Sun Stones!" He let loose a pained yowl, frantically running from den to den.
Nothing. No one.
Snow began filling the camp with intensity. Mothflight's wails had stopped. Dustclaw spun around, a familiar voice filling his chest with dread.
"You abandoned me." Mothflight choked sadly, his white fur bloodied and his body mangled as he lay dying in the center of the empty camp. "Why-" His brother gurgled. "W-why did you leave me?"
Dustclaw felt tears moisten his face, though his paws were frozen in place from shame, from fear.
Dustclaw's eyes shot open, the familiar warmth of the warriors den quenching the cold horrors of his dreams, though his dead brother's words and the image of his broken body lingered in his mind as he sat in darkness. He couldn't sleep without guilt and grief ripping him apart by morning, leaving him lifeless on patrols. It all felt like a nightmare that he would eventually wake from. Dustclaw had grown much more quiet since his brother's death, and the look on Flintfang's face when his older brother left for the mountains sent him wallowing in an endless abyss of emptiness. He hates me. Dustclaw thought in the darkness. He blames me for it, and he's right.
It was his fault. He shouldn't have left Mothflight alone with the two LightningClanners, not even for a second. Getting help was something a scared apprentice would do, not a full-fledged warrior. Dustclaw had regretted himself every day since seeing his brother's crippled, crimson stained body at the Sun Stones. How was it that Mothflight, the most innocent and lighthearted of all of them, had met his demise in such a way?
No matter how often he tried to justify himself, Dustclaw always came down to the same conclusion: if it weren't for his cowardice, Mothflight would still be alive.
The soft breathing of his clanmates calmed his racing heart and tempered his loneliness, though a glance at where Mothflight's nest once lay made him grow cold. The tom pulled himself to his paws and slipped through the maze of his resting comrades, accidentally stepping on one of their tails.
"Sorry." He murmured, slipping outside.
He had never felt so lonely in his life: losing all of his kin so quickly made him question his reasons for living. Contributing to the clan was important, though what was the point? Why continue giving and giving for a life that had only ever taken the things he held dearest?
Dustclaw laid down in the shadows of a secluded corner of camp, face wet from the strangling, suffocating, and inescapable sadness of mourning.
The day was about to begin, though he just hoped that today would be the day it would all end.
STONECLAN - WARRIOR - 24 MOONS
Word Count: 647
Tags: Taxx
Notes: At this point, Mothflight is dead and Flintfang has already left StoneClan...
Tags: Taxx
Notes: At this point, Mothflight is dead and Flintfang has already left StoneClan...