#scabdrip

Previous: https://www.tumblr.com/residents-of-the-darkforest/731013518657191937/the-sick-kits?source=share

=========================

Magpieshine wondered how many times a heart could break before its shattered remains became too brittle to piece back together. As a ‘paw, she would have expected not often, maybe just once, yet now every time she so much as spared a glance in the direction of her youngest siblings, she felt her heart squish into cold shards that pierced her chest and throat, choking it and making her hold back sobs. 

She never got to meet her little brother, Lionkit. He was buried before she was able to return to the Eye-Out Thorns once she was told of the situation. Part of her was grateful for that–she would have likely only seen his skeletal remains. Still, it pained her that she did not have the chance to see him. He was buried in the main den of the family, where her parents, Grousemane, Hootpetal, Alderstar, and Myrtlewing sleep. Uncustomary for many, but the family wanted him as close to them as possible.

Magpieshine gazed around numbly at the faded-green plants in the den around her. The family had relocated briefly to Myrtlewing’s medicine den with the three still-living kits. 

The tiny bundles were incredibly thin, even when they were coaxed to eat–which often took a good part of the day to do. It was hard enough finding herbs in good enough condition to be of use, even harder still to actually have the kits swallow them down. 

Magpieshine shuddered, seeing every rib of Sunkit as he stretched beside Hootpetal, who lay curled in the nest with them, encouraging them to suckle. Alderstar and Grousemane stuck as close to the kits and Hootpetal as possible. Perchclaw and Stonefern, like Magpieshine, had hardly taken their eyes off of the little ones. It was only because Myrtlewing warned against raising their  temperature with too much body heat that they didn’t curl around the kits as well.

Magpieshine doubted she had ever seen Myrtlewing so attentive before. He rarely ever removed his eyes from the kits, his nose always close enough to sniff out any changes immediately, and when he did move, it was to check on Hootpetal. Hootpetal thankfully didn’t catch the sickness, but ever since they moved to the medicine den, she had completely refused to leave the nest. Her fur was ruffled and in clumps. Still, she wouldn’t move. Alderstar was at her head now, grooming the fur along the side of her neck and gazing sorrowfully at his kits.

Archwing, Willowcloud, Wolfpool, Scabdrip, Redmask, and pretty much everyone else in the family had occupied themselves with gathering anything that was needed. Archwing, Magpieshine’s nephew and Myrtlewing’s grandson and former apprentice, had taken after healing, and was the one to gather needed herbs while Myrtlewing stayed in the den. 

Magpieshine frowned, thinking about her kin. The last time she had seen him, he had been panting, appearing as if he were about to drop. It was in the den and right back out with him. She didn’t think he had taken a single break from gathering herbs since the kits had been born prematurely. His littermates realized this too and chose to help, but without his experience, they weren’t always successful. 

Redmask and Scabdrip busied themselves with catching minnows or convincing–perhaps with teeth–StarClan cats to give them food to give to Hootpetal to strengthen her and her milk.

Willowcloud, Spottedtooth, Buzzardblaze, and Aspenlight would take turns collecting moss for water, while Wolfpool, Dusksong, Falleniris, and Waspbeak would search for it to change the bedding. Myrtlewing had told them that it was important to change the nest of a sick cat frequently, as it may hold some of the illness. It made sense, Magpieshine thought, seeing how much the kits’ tiny noses and mouths dripped with phlegm, though in the back of her mind she was admittedly surprised to know that Myrtlewing could actually be quite the knowledgeable, attentive, and caring medicine cat after all his murders. Then again, these kits were his as well–even if they were only Hootpetal and Alderstar’s biologically. Magpieshine herself hadn’t even been any of theirs until she was six–seven? moons old.

They are good parents. She felt that shattering again, the crackling and splintering of her heart. They don’t deserve this. The kits don’t deserve this.

She didn’t remove her head, but scented Archwing return again. She watched as he passed some yellow-orange berries to Myrtlewing. Myrtlewing still kept his eyes fixed on the kits as he chewed and Archeyes left again. He was already lowered on the ground. Coating a claw in the poultice, he gently opened Marigoldkit’s jaw. Magpieshine’s heart–shattering still–sank to the pit of her stomach as she saw that her sister didn’t protest, didn’t so much as lift a paw against him as Myrtlewing tried to get her to suckle his claw and gulp the medicine down.

It was a long time before he was able to manage it, and it was really only because the herbs got stuck on her tongue that Marigoldkit could do it at all. Myrtlewing looked like he was about to collapse with exhaustion, but he moved on right to Peonykit and then to Sunkit.

Yet even then, Myrtlewing didn’t shut his eyes. Magpieshine could see the dark lines beneath them, so clear she was surprised his face didn’t droop with their heaviness. Rising to her paws, she padded to his side and nudged him. “You need to rest.”

“I can’t afford it,” he told her simply, and it sounded like he was attempting to overpower a yawn.

“You can’t afford working yourself to death either. What good would you be to the kits if you’re too tired to focus on anything?”

“I can rest later.”

“She’s right,” Alderstar spoke up, his voice soft as Hootpetal began to snore beside him. “They need you at your best.”

Magpieshine frowned. Alderstar’s eyes looked so red, even where his sharp pupils didn’t touch. “I can watch them,” she offered. “While dad’s sleeping.”

Alderstar gave her a small smile. “Are you sure, dear? You may not know what to look for.”

“Any changes,” Magpieshine decided, thinking back to watching her father work. “Raising or lowering temperatures, struggling to breathe, struggling with anything more than usual.” She looked to Myrtlewing. “I will help them as best as I can, but if they really need you, then I will wake you. Swear it.”

Myrtlewing seemed hesitant. He frowned, grumbling. “Alright, fine. But you wake me if there’s anything at all, okay? If they’re fussy, if they’re too quiet, if they so much as sneeze, you wake me, got it? I can lose sleep but I cannot lose another kit.”

Magpieshine had to shut her eyes for a moment, willing the tears not to fall. She needed to be focused now, not emotional. She could cry later when her siblings didn’t need her. Opening them again, she met her father’s eyes. “Deal.”

================

Taglist: @ambitiousauthor @wills-woodland-warriors @starfalcon555 @frightnightindustries @liberhoe @umbranoxs

AMAZING YCH RESULT BY THESILVEREDSERPANT ON DEVIANTART

OPEN YCH | This Oughta be Fun by TheSilveredSerpent on DeviantArt

She even kinda has cheek bones which her sister and her mama inherited from Myrtle!

A DJ JJSNKWKAJSJHHJJJSKSK

How could Crowsage say no to this face?

—

taglist: @ambitiousauthor @starfalcon555

Fungichomp: oh hi new little ones

Fungichomp: *sees Falleniris drop them off and realize they’re from that family*

Glassriver -- Houndtooth

Pagrusrose -- Bella-May

Mylingrain -- Blightrain

Racemeflight -- Redjay

Tendrilgnat -- Scabdrip

Poppyswarm -- Whitebriar

It, of course, changes many times so that the best lessons can be taught to everyone, but these are their main mentors and who they are with the majority of the time.

Bella-May may not have lived as a warrior, but she has been in the DF long enough to understand the gist, and again, there's always other mentors to teach the basics while she can teach some more complicated lessons.

--

They did not trust anyone but family. The reason these particular mentors were chosen was because of how brutal, efficient, or intelligent they could be (and to give some of the family other than the main poly some spotlight).

================

@ambitiousauthor

Not taking over their body as in jumping into it, more taking over their mind from across the border.

Maybe their and the Starclan cat’s eyes glow during this

This also makes it easier to kill them, no sneaking across needed.

——

And should they have different abilities? Maybe one (I’m thinking Scab) can do this while the other can see prophecies that Starclan sends?

Bloomwhisker flinched back, blocking his throat. But it quickly dawned on him that the scenery had changed. No longer did he have Fringesong lunging at him, he was alone in a forest rank with the scent of blood. The trees were massive, littered with countless claw marks with roots the size of Bloomwhisker’s head twisting out of the ground like gnarled fangs.

He was surrounded by a cluster of sharp-edged boulders. He could feel them beneath his paws, rough and scraping even though he barely moved. Puddles of crimson-red mud–or what he hoped was mud–filled the hollow gaps in the stone.

As everything set in, sights, and sounds, and feeling, Bloomwhisker realized where he was. It wasn’t long after that that a tune reached his ears, a sing-song whistle like birdsong, only with a strange slowness, and as if the tongue was snagging in all the wrong places. It made Bloomwhisker’s hair stand rigid along his suddenly very icy spine.

He whipped around in time to see two surprisingly small warriors–apprentices?--leap onto one of the boulders. They stood in such a way that Bloomwhisker wasn’t entirely sure that one wasn’t the shadow of the other, movements so synchronized it made him dizzy. But one was spotted brown and black with yellow eyes, and the other was dark with a darker back and some spots, with blue eyes surrounding slitted pupils so intense that they had Bloomwhisker backing up until his back hit the wall of another large rock.

He jumped away when laughter sounded above him. He whipped around and saw a she-cat, definitely older than the two, but very similar in appearance to the black-and-white cat. Her eyes were multicoloured, one of them icy like the dark cat.

She raised her chin into the air and sniffed, shaking her head while smiling. “It’s been too long since I’ve smelled such terror, and we’ve only just started talking. Take it in, girls, you’ll miss it when it’s gone.”

That only served to make Bloomwhisker’s heart thump harder. He turned again, to the side this time, and slipped on one of the puddles. 

“Graceful,” a new voice chimed in. Bloomwhisker looked up, eyes bulging out of his thrumming skull. A brown tom with lighter forelegs stood on the highest rock, standing with his pads on the pointed stone as if it didn’t bother him at all.

“I–uhm, uh…” This was a trick, a joke. Bloomwhisker knew what to expect, Nettlefrog had warned him. “Where’s Ferndoe?” The kind she-cat. She was supposed to meet him, she meets everyone.

“Sorry, spotty,” the tom grinned. “We’re the welcome committee today.”

========================

--There’s no way Myrtle will just stop killing. But killing cats in Starclan, though he’s done before, is way too complicated, and he can’t do it often. If he kills soemone in the Dark Forest, cats throw a fit.

But if he kills someone new, too new for anyone to really be bothered by it beyond disgruntled annoyance? Most cats here are murderers, after all--they’re not going to be shocked by more murder.

--Aw, and look! He decided to bring his daughter and grandkits! He does kill with others, it was just their time today. Scab and Blight are young apprentices at this time.

--Yes, Fallen questions why she’s so evil, but she still does evil things.

--Bloomwhisker’s story is very vague, all I know is that they and another friend, Nettlefrog, were doing evil stuff at the same time. Nettlefrog died first and was visited by Ferndoe before going into Bloomwhisker’s dreams and telling him about it. 

That’s why Bloomwhisker expecting Ferndoe to greet him.

--Bloom is spotted, which is why he’s called ‘spotty.’

===========================

Taglist: @starfalcon555 @wills-woodland-warriors @elementaldeityoffood

He was a murderer. He was a murderer with a body count of two cats, yet he had never felt such intense, dizzying fury as he did today. His entire body burned so hard that he trembled, stomping to and fro, unable to still. 

“I’m glad you are-uh-okay with being with toms, now,” he had told his mate as they rested beneath glowing mushrooms together. “I don’t know if I ever said it, but I’m glad you’re comfortable with me now.” They had been mates for moons--no, years now. He had suspected from the beginning that his love may not be into males, and was pleasantly surprised when they became a poly with their older mates.

He had never wanted to say anything, worried it would make things weird or awkward. Now, he finally felt comfortable enough to say it in passing. He didn’t mean to say it, even then, but he saw the blue light reflecting in his mate’s amber ones and it broke from him.

His mate’s fur had stiffened. Then, “It…it wasn’t because you’re a tom. I mean–yes, realizing I had feelings for you was new, but….it was something else.”

“What?” he had asked, heart sinking.

He had been seeing red ever since.

At last, he was able to think clearly. Coming to a decision, he padded through the trees, searching for the landmarks that others have mentioned. He gathered the fish, then followed different landmarks until, at last, the twins’ scent caught his nose. They were always together, that was no surprise. Scabdrip was purring as Blightrain groomed her fur.

“Eh-em.” He pushed down the fear that pricked in his paws. There were more important things to worry about.

Scabdrip blinked open an eye. “Oh, a visitor! Did you stop by to chat, or do you have a vendetta?”

He dropped the minnows onto the ground. 

“Does he have enough?” Scabdrip asked, eyes closing again. 

His heart began to pound. The price was two minnows, one for the both of them, and he had caught an extra to be on the safe side. Would it still be enough?

Blightrain paused her grooming. “He brought three.”

“Perfect! Enough for Willow’s cough.” To him, she explained, “she’s been feeling unwell. The extra fish will do her good.” She rose to her paws and moved it aside, then picked up the second and swallowed it down. Blightrain took her time with hers, even if it was incredibly small, licking her lips when she was done.

His fur began to prick impatiently  by the time Scabdrip finally asked. “Now who will have the honour of joining us, Foxfire?”

Foxfire met her eyes, returning rage too powerful to allow him to flinch at the icy pupils. “Foxbreeze.”

=============================

@starfalcon555

--No real need to keep his name hidden until the end, but fun anyway.