[fancypost borderwidth=0px; width:450px; text-align:justify; font-size:8pt; font-family:tahoma; line-height:120%;]They'd gone.
Not anyone in particular, but they'd gone - and it was exactly as though everyone around him had left at precisely the same time because, rather than a whole flood of sensation, everything had been.... null. There was nothing. Even if there was, there was only the faintest echo of what it had been; the dark had never been frightening to him before when it had been all he knew and furthermore everything else was loud enough on its own that they painted their own pictures in his head without any need for eyes at all, the breeze bending around the figures of others to denote their presence and the sound of their breathing even if they were a field apart coming across loud and clear. The scent marks from yesterday lingered just as strong, painting vivid tracks like a winding Marauder's Map of all his Clanmates' activities. When everything else feels vivid enough to burst on your tongue, that in itself is seeing. Everything around him gave him his own position on the world's axes: 'you are here.'
Winter hadn't needed his eyes because everything else already compensated for it, so when he lost that 'everything else' it was only natural that he would .... freeze.
In summary: they were gone, the superpowered ears and nose and mouth he'd had, and while he still had ears and a nose and mouth, like prosthetics, Winterchills felt through them approximately nothing. Cats felt better than humans but humans probably felt less than nothing from how blank it felt now. If he could smell his siblings, the trail felt long gone - he could hardly feel the own ground beneath him when he stumbled up, initially crouching with his ears pinned back and simply TRYING for so long to make out at least something; anything but the nebulous nothingness of the only thing he'd ever seen. He could only make out staggered breaths he took an agonising while to realise were his, and after about an hour he stood and, after a lull, walked.
Maybe he should have expected it somewhere along the way. His siblings had varied from the rambunctious sort to mild and dry as the leaves her steps conjured to, well, Springblossoms - flowing and clashing with their discordant energies bouncing over to group after group, forever curious but just as quickly dismissive. Nowhere that could truly shape up to fit all four of them in one; not deities, but Winter trekked ice after every step and shivered with keeping his natural emission of frost around himself and Autumn had walked before him with leaves curling from her paws to then curl into brown dry ones, and Summer had practically glowed with his own natural volume and direct comments as much as Spring had boggled the mind with effortless aplomb, and they'd been searching. For a home.
They'd scarcely stopped for a breather, Summer loudly calling the shots and bringing them all to a halt whenever he flopped onto the ground and wheezed for sustenance. Winter hid it but he was tired, too - they were all tired. They rested. They all cared for one another in their own flippant, flap-of-the-hand manners, accommodated for one another, slowed down subtly so they would all match in pace in a solid line of quadruplets, all exactly physically identical (save for the eyes) but unable to be more different if they tried. However, they didn't coddle each other - imagine if they stopped every time Summer called for a bathroom break, whenever Spring split off to go after a rabbit, Autumn lagged and Winter numbly started to drift off. That was the point of having ultimate trust in one another: wherever one went, all the others would follow, and no one would need to look behind themselves to make sure.
In that last sentence, you could tell what the kicker was - couldn't you?
Lost: Winterchills. Brown tabby, average height and weight, glassy pale eyes, prone to slouching and brushing his whiskers against things, natural expression permanently forlorn.
Reward: ...an IOU.
Stopping, randomly, almost uncertainly if you could be uncertain with the permanent slight grimace as Winter had, the tom slowed his steps. He stayed like that momentarily, uncomfortable and listless, before sighing a small puff of visible condensation. Even in a desert he'd probably be cold. "Winterchills," he said, tentatively certain that he really was smelling traces of - civilisation. Placebo was a nasty thing and his - normal scent glands, so detracted from what they had been, weren't working wonders. "...Is anyone here?"
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