[Semi-Advanced, Open] All Very Vague

This is an archived version of FeralFront. While you can surf through all the content that was ever created on FeralFront, no new content can be created.
If you'd like some free FeralFront memorabilia to look back on fondly, see this thread from Dynamo (if this message is still here, we still have memorabilia): https://feralfront.com/thread/2669184-free-feralfront-memorabilia/.

    Falling out of a tree was really a terribly cold way to wake up, especially if you happened to be sleeping over a river. In retrospect, it probably wasn't her best idea; the yowl of surprise was cut off as she landed in the shallows, wallowing until her paws found the sandy bottom, from where she tugged herself onto the bank.


    Ember was a small, dusty black cat, mottled through with orange specks- small being the operative word, as she was about eight moons, but could of passed for five, with an abnormally short tail. On the bank, she shook herself, going about cleaning the water off as she attempted to recall her dream. It'd been something important, but she couldn't...couldn't quite remember. There was just light. Light and smoke, and some other cat, there was another cat there, but she just didn't quite catch it before she forgot, like the sun dissolving mist over the water.


    Not that this seemed to be happening, it was cold, and she was hungry, but the dream wasn't the only thing that escaped her memory. In all honesty, Ember hardly remembered a thing before a few days ago, where she had woken up, sprawled at the base of a tree. Hunting was scarce, and she got the feeling she hadn't really eaten much before she woke up either. Perhaps this was why she didn't notice the new scent, or perhaps she was still drowzy from just waking up, but it wasn't until a bush rustled that she looked up, green eyes wide, searching through the early morning haze to find the source of the noise-


    "Come out where I can see you." That may of been threatening- from a larger cat. From her, it was just a scared nearly-not-a-kit speaking, backing up until her paws hit the water again.

    With a sudden jolt, Dusk blinked his eyes open at the sound of a loud splash from the nearby river. His ears turned in its direction, listening intently. What was all that ruckus? the tom thought drowsily, letting out a yawn as he stood up on his paws with a small stretch. The sun had barely started its ascent above the horizon, leaving the air cold and the ground covered with soft dew. He was somewhat protected from the elements with his makeshift bedding, but nevertheless Dusk wished he had a thicker pelt.


    The tom wasn't grown to be an adult cat yet, but he wasn't as small as an aged kit. His size lay somewhere in-between; average for his age of about nine moons. Dusk took a quick moment to lick down a few rough spots in his charcoal-black fur before padding forward towards the river. He grabbed a scent in the air quite quickly- another cat; it seemed to have been hanging around for quite some time.


    He slowed to a stop under the cover of some undergrowth, gazing along the riverbank. His bright amber eyes caught sight of a small she-cat standing in the sand, completely soaked from head to tail. Looking carefully, Dusk could probably count a few ribs pressed against her pelt. She must not be from around here... he wondered; the tom knew the land somewhat well, sustaining his own hunger and needs. Dusk grew alarmed at the she-cat's sudden demand, watching her eyes scan over him.


    Cautiously he stepped out of the cover into the open, trying to not seem too threatening as he noticed the obvious size difference. "Relax, I'm friendly" Dusk mewed gently as the she-cat stepped backwards. "Are you all right? You look as if you haven't eaten in days."

    Relax, he's friendly, she mimicked in her head, though it wasn't as if she had separate voices in her mind. It was more like...like his words echoed, taunting her briefly, as she tried to work out whether or not she was going to believe him. In the mean time, she shook herself vigorously, trying to get the water from her pelt, but only really managing to get a few tufts to stand at awkward angles now. Like a bell, something clicked in her mind-


    When was the last time she spoke to another cat? She couldn't recall, it could of easily only been a few days- or perhaps she'd never, but no, her dream told her otherwise. Still, here she was, staring wide-eyed at this other being, like her words were torn away from her. Torn and flung into the air- Ember shook her head, trying to clear a sudden memory of herself, a half-image, before it slipped away again. Always slipping away, something had clicked into place, she'd been flung like her words, but the memory hadn't quite fit, so it left.


    "Fine. I-I'm fine." Finally, she'd managed to say something. It'd taken too long, and she was aware now that she was speaking very loudly still, and cleared her throat, fidgeting at the ground with her paws. Paws. She suddenly seemed very interested in her paws, though was still watching the other carefully, but of course, she just wasn't sure anymore, she wasn't sure of quite a few things. And then, of course, she didn't want to say that she hadn't eaten, his assumption was true, because then he could assume she couldn't hunt- which she could.


    "I'm fine." she muttered again, quieter this time. "A-and sure I've eaten. I mean, th-there's water right there." As if this made sense, as if she only needed water to survive. Wouldn't that make things so much easier? Of course, then, she assumed, she'd of woken up in a desert, to make things that much harder for her. "Why? A-Are you alright?" Relax, he's friendly,

    "I'm uh, just fine..." He tilted his head to one side, confused. His mind questioned whether or not the she-cat's response was genuine. She obviously did not seem fine at all. In fact, the she-cat portrayed herself as... crazy? Insane? Dusk couldn't find the right word to use, but he knew that something was wrong. "Are you sure you're fine? You seem a little sick to me..."


    Dusk didn't mean to sound too harsh or rude- he was only just trying to help. He rarely saw other loners in the area, or at least ones that stuck around. The tom slowly stepped forward, towards the she-cat, a worried look settling in his gaze. He watched as she fidgeted around with her paws and shake her head. "Can you tell me your name?" Dusk eventually asked after a slow moment of quiet awkwardness.


    It seemed silly, in his mind, to ask "can you?" anything. But he wasn't sure if the she-cat was quite okay in the head. Or if she was sane at all.

    ”I’m not sick.” She grumbled, mostly to herself. She felt a bit sick, honestly, a combination of an empty stomach, and nerves at the moment. She did seem to of calmed down some, having gotten her volume under control. Still, as the tom stepped forward, she visibly tensed, though was unwilling to step in the water again. Out in the air, and as small and thin as she was, she’d begun to shiver slightly, though she was doing her best to hide it.


    There was several different decisions whirring about her mind- suspicioun, common sense telling her that she shouldn't trust a strange cat. Then her own feeling, that it probably wouldn't do any harm, and she didn't feel like he was a particularly bad cat, nothing offsetting about him. So, after another drawn out silence, she started to speak again.


    "Ember. My name is Ember, and I'm not crazy." She did recognize that she was acting strangely, and her nerves were settling down enough for her to clear her mind. She still had an odd way of speaking, like it was half-way to herself, "Y-you...I mean...oh fuff-ears. What's your name? Do you live here?" She asked finally, still fidgeting, as if ready to bolt like a startled rabbit. Fuff-ears felt like the right thing to say, though she wasn't sure where she would of picked it up.

    "I am Dusk; it's nice to meet you, Ember," he replied in a soft, friendly way. "And yes, I do live here. Eh, sorta..." Yes, the tom had been living in the area for quite some time, since he was a bit older than a kit. Dusk thought back to those old days. The days where he fled into the forest, feeling alive and free at last. Where he learned how to hunt and survive in the wilderness. A vast, open world was ready for him to explore. But...


    Something was missing. He thought about that missing thing from time to time, whenever he took a walk or an afternoon snooze in the warm sunlight. And he couldn't pinpoint what exactly was missing. The void sat in his heart, the key to filling it lost somewhere out there. Hopefully he would find it one day.


    "I'm guessing you're not from around here," Dusk continued on, his amber orbs scanning over the black she-cat, like a personal inspection. His gaze gleamed with a subtle hint of curiosity on who she was and where she's been. "Where do you come from?" he asked, deciding to take a seat on the soft sand. The first few rays of sunlight appeared in the morning sky.

    He wasn't particularly threatening, so as he sat, so did she, as if taking a cue. She was having a difficult time reading his expression, and she wasn't sure if this was just because she didn't know, or if he was simply a harder cat to 'read'- not as if she had experience. With her tail wrapped around her paws, she pretended to be warmer, almost convincing her body of it, until she gave into shivering slightly once more.


    "I don't think I'm from around here- see, if you don't remember me, I'll just...say I'm not. It probably wouldn't do any harm." She spoke quickly, chattering the words out as if they'd run away if she didn't say them fast enough. It felt like this was a nearly valid concern, as her mind would flit from one thing to the next in the blink of an eye, a flicker of something she'd try to hold onto, and then she was back into reality, having a conversation that she had to keep track of.
    It was really, very confusing.

    Dusk blinked with a puzzled expression appearing on his face. The she-cat's words made it sound as if she didn't know where she was or how she ended up here! "You're not making much of any sense to me," he admitted somewhat bluntly with a subtle sigh. But of course, his curiosity in the she-cat only grew more. "And you didn't answer my question- where do you come from? Twolegplace? The Big City?"


    Strangely enough, he'd been to both of those locations. The tom shuddered at the very thought of his past as events popped into his mind. Twolegplace, his old home as a stray. He remembered eating the strange brown pellets the Twolegs put out for him from time to time- he couldn't decline free food! Everything would have been fine and dandy, until they took him to the Big City.


    Dusk shook his head sharply. He didn't want to think about it now. Not now, not ever.

    "M-maybe I should explain," she muttered, what was left of her tail flicking slightly- it hardly wrapped to her first paw. She was still a bit unwilling to tell this cat anything, but there was that little bit of hope that he could help her, some how. That did bring up the wonder of how he could help her, she didn't know enough to really help even herself, it was ridiculous, all of it, absolutely ridiculous.


    "I forgot. I-I mean..." she took a deep breath, standing up again, as if she was considering bolting, "I mean, I woke up a few days ago. I-I don't know what happened before that." She felt like she was choking the words out, like she really did not want to tell him this, but was still making herself. It made her realize that maybe she didn't really want to remember everything- or anything, though the flashes of memory persisted, just that one event, a dream she couldn't remember.


    "You've forgotten?!" He let out a slight gasp, amber eyes growing a bit wider. "That's... strange. Very strange." Dusk had heard of amnesia, where cats would lose part of their memory. But all of it? He could hardly believe it. "You don't remember a thing at all?" he went on, unsure of any solution. "And you just woke up here for no apparent reason?"


    Now his curiosity was definitely intrigued. Who exactly was this she-cat? How did she lose her memory? So many questions filled Dusk's mind. But he didn't ask anything immediately. He knew better than to go about his curiosity willy-nilly; he had learned from his mistakes. Instead the tom waited for the she-cat to continue and explain on her own, hopefully to get some answers.

    "I-I'm sure there's a reason..." she blustered, still fiddling with her paws, or pausing to attempt to groom the fur on her shoulders into some semblance of order. Ember was aware of exactly how scruffy she looked, out of sorts- "Can you stop looking at me like that? Y'look like an owl. And- I mean, I remember some things. L-Like my name. And what owl's are, and- uh, other stuff." She still wasn't entirely sure how much she wanted to trust this cat, or what she should be saying.


    Ember felt like she was being scrutinized, a dark spot on a snowy field. Anything could happen, a beast could swoop down from the sky, or something could come tearing out of the water. It was at this thought that she moved over, trying to find a space that wasn't moving any closer to Dusk, but farther from the river. This placed her back at the base of the tree she'd originally fallen from, stepping in an awkward sort of side-shuffle.


    [[Yo sorry for disappearing there, had a sports thing to get off to]]

    "Oh... my bad." Dusk hadn't noticed his sudden intense staring, and took his amber gaze off the she-cat. "It's just... you act so strange. And I hate not knowing why." Out of the corner of his eye he caught the she-cat starting to move to the side, and the tom quickly backed away a few pawsteps. The loner couldn't predict what she was up to.


    "So, you have no memory of your past," Dusk confirmed, biting his lip and thinking. "What in Silverpelt are you going to do now?"


    /I understand

    A couple of strangers, unsure of where they stood with each other. That's all they were, and the she-cat saved that knowledge for later, just a thought to consider. "Uh- I dunno, honestly," She mumbled, glancing down at her paws again. After a pause, her stomach growled slightly, and she fidgeted, shrugging- "Probably find something to eat first."


    Hunting was something she wasn't exactly...skilled at. She almost caught a frog once, but it'd squirmed out of her paws, as she had hesitated, unsure exactly how to go about killing it. Along with this, she was hampered with an unwillingness to go far from the tree, far from the riverbank, she wasn't entirely sure why, but it felt uncomfortable. Besides, if she was missing from somewhere, wouldn't it be best to stay in one spot? Not that anyone had come looking for her, or that she expected someone to.

    "Something to eat? I can help with that," Dusk mewed, starting to pad away back to where he appeared from. With a quick glance back, he said "Don't go anywhere! I'll be just a moment." The tom took off at a jog through the undergrowth. His pawsteps brushed against the grass softly, and before long he reached his destination. The tom's bedding, still a bit wet from the morning dew, was fashioned in the carved out trunk of a tree, providing an overhead shelter. Dusk didn't know who or what made the hole, but he thanked them.


    A rabbit hop or two away from his bedding a patch of broken up dirt hid underneath some leaves and twigs. He dug for a moment before reaching a small storage pile of fresh-kill. The corpses weren't meant to last long, maybe a day or so, before it became crowfood. But the only thing the loner had time to do was hunt. So that's what he did- half of the sun's time in the sky was spent trying to survive. Grabbing a small vole, the tom quickly headed back to Ember.


    He pushed through the bushes once again and took the fresh-kill to the she-cat. "Here you go," Dusk mewed through a stuffed jaw, dropping the vole at the cat's paws.

    She was honestly a little unsure what to do- Ember had full intentions of attempting to hunt for herself, but obviously that wasn't going to happen. Backed against the tree as he approached, she didn't really have anywhere to go, not that he seemed particularly threatening. In fact, she was calming down quite a bit, from her little scare in the river, and even seemed to be shivering less, though she wasn't as relaxed as to take her eyes off the other cat as she crouched down, tucking into the vole.


    Convincing herself to eat slowly was a hard task, and as she got about halfway through, she made herself pause- "Did you want some too? I don't need the entire thing." She offered, nudging the half-eaten vole towards Dusk. There was just some sort of etiquette, like something engrained into her head that she was supposed to share a meal, especially if it'd been given to her like this.

    "Oh, no thank you," the tom mewed as he shook his head. To be honest with himself, Dusk didn't have the greatest of an appetite at the moment. Mostly because he'd woken up earlier than expected. "I'm not that hungry right now." He pushed himself up slowly, stretching his legs some more, before walking around a bit. He didn't want to sit awkwardly in front of Ember while she ate, and he had to think.


    Something was clearly wrong. Dusk stood silently at the water's edge, staring at his reflection. It makes no sense... no cat just appears somewhere with a sudden case of amnesia. But why? The answer was there somewhere, fuzzy and out of paws' reach.

    "Oh," Ember glanced down at the vole, and then back up at Dusk, as if his reaction had left her unsure on how to continue her actions. With a slight shrug, and a mumbled "If you're sure..." she went back and finished the vole fairly quickly. Watching him still, she washed her face, and stretched, dragging her claws down the trunk of the tree.


    "So." She padded over to stand next to Dusk at the edge of the water, disturbing the surface with a dab of her paw. "What's- er, what'cha thinking of?" She asked cautiously, leaning forward and craning her neck to attempt to see his face. Maybe it was nosey of her to ask, but Ember was fairly curious, as she was certain it involved her. Had it not, wouldn't he of just left? Wouldn't that be the next reasonable course of action?

    Dusk raised his head, his gaze shifting to Ember as she padded over next to him. "Oh, nothing really," he lied, "just wondering what I'll be doing to prepare for leaf-bare." The tom tried to avoid making eye contact with the she-cat, feeling her staring at him as a bit awkward. He bit on his lip slightly, his mind's gears working, until an idea popped into his head.


    "Hey Ember..." the loner mewed a bit quietly, "what are you going to be doing now? Like you said, you don't remember where you come from, and have no idea how you ended up here... What is your plan, exactly?"

    "Leaf-bare." She echoed, processing this for a moment. It wasn't that she didn't remember, she had a sort of inkling, a feeling that she knew. Nothing solid though, nothing she could hold onto, every time she tried to remember something particular, it slipped away, like looking at a dim star in the sky. But she knew Leaf-bare was cold, and that food was scarce, and with her already rudimentary hunting-skills, she was going to have a rough year.


    "I haven't thought 'bout a p-plan too much, honestly." She mumbled, looking down at her paws briefly, before leaning out over the water, stretching out one paw as if to try and reach as far out as she could, which happened to be precisely what she was trying to do, for no reason in particular, other than it gave her something to do. "I kind of remember a little. I-I mean, I feel like I'd know, if th-there was someone I needed to find. O-Or maybe they'd find me," Maybe that was why she'd hung around the tree, hoping that someone might come by looking, or maybe she'd just been too frightened to go any farther than she needed to. "There's not really a...a small group of cats, or anyone you know of living in the area?"

    "A small group of cats?" Dusk thought for a moment, trying to remember if he'd heard anything about such a group. "I remember bumping into three or four wild cats a few moons ago. They were part of some clan, I think. Don't know the name of it, or where they were from. Said they had a mission to accomplish, and if I followed them my fur would be clawed out." The loner shrugged. He liked his black fur right where it was.


    "I think they were traveling from the east, so if you're interested in finding them, that's the place to start. But I would be careful," Dusk warned, giving his serious gaze to Ember. "When I was a kit, I heard stories of those groups of wild cats. Apparently they eat their defeated enemies down to the bone. Or something gruesome like that.