I WILL NOT KISS YOU » open, joining

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    the world was beautiful. at least, they said it was.


    they said it was full of colors. full of felines and twolegs of different shapes and sizes. full of dogs and wolves and sheep and bears. full of different plants, the tiniest blades of grass and leaves, great oaks and baby evergreens.


    they said it was big. full of miles and miles of woods and twolegplaces, farms and cities, clans and thunderpaths. full of rogues and loners, forest cats and city cats. full of good and bad and all the shades of gray in between the two of them.


    to thebe, the world was black.


    she'd been born blind, and her parents had always told her that if not for the twolegs that cared for her, she'd be dead. they said a blind girl couldn't survive in the wold, that she'd be dead in a sunrise. so she'd assumed she'd stay with her twolegs for the rest of her life, and she didn't really mind. they were kind to her, they gave her good food and a nest close to the fireplace. she never went outside, as was agreed; they never let her out, and she never wanted to go out. after all, should she get lost, she'd lose her twolegs.


    but one sunrise, her twolegs had put her outside. she'd been terribly confused, and she'd tried to find her den once more, but she couldn't. the world was big and confusing, overstimulating. she couldn't tell up from down, and all the smells were too strong, overpowering her senses.


    she'd stumbled for what felt like moons, and eventually picked up things. how to make sense of everything, how to tell one thing from another. she learned the basics of hunting, but struggled to do so with so many variables. but she'd learned to survive, and that was more than she'd expected away from her twolegs. more than that, she'd learned about the clans. shadowclan.


    it was a dark clan, the world hidden from the sun. they'd learned to see better in the darkness, so she'd heard, and she'd learned to see despite it. to see with her hearing, her sense of smell. she'd struggled to find them, and after a time, she found a border she was sure was theirs.


    she was a pretty little thing, in spite of her... disability. off-white fur covered a petite, dainty little body, two dark almond eyes watched the world with a hesitance that came from not actually watching at all. she was lovely, in the sort of way that a flower growing in the crack of the pavement was. pretty because she shouldn't last, pretty because she did last. because her petals were dirty and torn, but she still bloomed and reached for the sunlight.


    thebe was just a bright flower in a dark world.

    [fancypost bgcolor=none; bordercolor=transparent; borderwidth=0px; width: 400px;font-size:8pt;line-height: 150%;][justify]it was true that shadowclan's land was darker. they hadn't earned their outfit's name from anything else. the light was low, casting the already dull scenery into an overlay of shaded muteness. hand in hand with the darkness brought on by the shadows of sentinel pines would be the ground. the patches of land were muddy and held plants of hues that didn't tend to be on the brighter side of the spectrum, all the while the puddles of water were nothing more than basins of liquid murk. nothing had much color.


    the cats, too, were nothing spectacular. tabbies, solids, bi-colors, and a few more. a majority were dark of color - snakehiss and moonflower pitch as the night, thornfang was the color of wet soil, and even raggedstar herself was a mottle of contrasting browns hues, some of which were bark and other which resembled dust. another large portion included white pelts with a little extra here and there- rosepaw had a few splashes of red on her snowy pelt, littlepaw's alabaster was interrupted by decorations of ebony, mistheart held patches of brown, and he himself was predominantly wintry with hints of gray.


    "bland" some might call it. and to an extent, yeah, it was. there was little variation in the landscape and the cats, too, were often less than eye-catching with their brilliance. however, that didn't much matter because each individual was different inside. some were bitter, some sweet, some a mix of both yet entirely new int their own right. the importance lied in what their looks were inside. physical appearances were trivial next to that.


    of course, the deputy could very well be biased. he had reason enough to lie about his train of though when he looked how he did. with two faces sprouting from a single cranium, he was wary to approach this stranger who bumbled about like a lost kit. she looked scared without seeming as if the feeling was registering. the scent of twolegs and a lifetime of easy living clung to her faintly, a life line that'd been let go long ago. her fur was a light shade, not quite white but not quite something else either. she seemed approachable enough.


    as he stepped towards the she-cat, he bore witness to no wounds that would suggest she was a danger. with that, he picked up his pace to a slow trot to close the distance that'd kept them apart. slower, slower, and finally the deformed tom came to a stop a foxlength away from the fem. how her chestnut luminaries stared blankly cued him in that she couldn't see which, in hindsight, explained quite a bit of her appearance. an exhale in, then he said, "hello. this is shadowclan territory, and i'm afraid you're trespassing. what's your business here?"
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    As per usual, the tabby tom couldn't help but poke his nose into other people's business. But keeping in mind Raggedstar's words when they had last approached a stranger - a kittypet in ShadowClan territory, of all things. Despicable. How could any cat be satisfied with such a life? It was the rush of adrenaline when the bulky tabby found himself in battle, the uncertainty of warrior life that kept him going. There was no guarantee that he would survive to see the next sunrise, but he still loved every minute of it.


    But here and now, this situation seemed quite tame. Another cat crossing into clan territory. It didn't matter whether or not she knew where she was, this was still a matter that needed to be dealt with. Approaching the loner and ShadowClan's deputy, he kept quiet for once, staying close by in the event things turned bad.

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    one heartbeat.


    no, two.


    testosterone.


    pawsteps, close and far, others probably lurking in the woods.


    the feline took a wary inventory of the setting, of the felines surrounding her. she turned her gaze, rather light in itself but dark in contrast to the fur surrounding it, to the location of the closest mass of heartbeats and hormones, doing her best to guess where the eyes might have been, which landed her eyes a good two inches from his right ear.


    "ah - yes, good. i was worried i got lost, i was told it was a primarily pine forest, but this certainly isn't the only place with pines, and it's such a strong smell that it could overpower oaks easily, and i'd hate to end up at the wrong clan, that'd be just a dis-" she recognized that she was off topic, she got off topic far too often. "sorry, i'm rambling. i've been trying to work on that.


    "my name is thebe, and this is where i was hoping to end up. i'm looking to join? i'm, uh, i'm blind but i'm not entirely useless. i know how to hunt, though maybe not very well. and i can smell and hear things twice as well as other cats, i could tell you how many cats crossed this very spot today, and how recently this tree was marked, and that there's a tom watching, in the tree's behind you. i'm good with kits too, they tend to find playing with my lack of eyesight fun." rambling again. she shut her mouth then, ears pricked in hopes that he would reply promptly.

    [fancypost bgcolor=none; bordercolor=transparent; borderwidth=0px; width: 400px;font-size:8pt;line-height: 150%;][justify]her eye flit towards him, though missed by only a tad. the deputy almost shifted himself to what would be her line of sight did she have one but decided against it. he didn't want to make her feel self-conscious or upset her by indirectly pointing out her disability. twoface wasn't insensitive towards others like that. instead he simply kept his own gaze trained upon the ivory fem.


    an amused spark played in three eyes of pale zenith as thebe spoke. she had a lot to say - a nice differentiation from his clanmates who could often be short of words. when the she cut herself off, a slight raise of the ridges above his eyes were the only reply she got despite being unable to receive the movement.


    "you don't have to tell me what you're good at," two assuaged, his head turning to glance at boulderstrike who had joined them. an expression of mild surprise over took him. perhaps her lack of sight could prove more useful than either had thought. the unseeing girl might prove a useful partner on hunting trips, or even a tracker of sorts.


    turning back to her, he would then say, "i'll take your word for all that you've said. you'll have to prove yourself regardless; the clan needs to see your capabilities in action. for now, we can accept you in and start you on some easy duties. does that sound good?"
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    Boulderstrike had also been surprised when the she-cat actually knew where he had been standing, but he didn't bother trying to hide it. It wasn't like she could see, anyway. Padding towards them, he stopped by his deputy, nodding to him before returning his attention to the blind feline.


    "Hunting is one thing, Twoface, but if it turns out she can't defend herself against an attack then she's as good as dead," he meowed, before addressing the she-cat. "You will have to learn to fight, to protect your clan from threats like dogs, badgers, even other cats. I'm not going to try and make things seem nice and perfect. Life as a clan cat can be dangerous and unforgiving. You have to be ready for the bad as well as the good. Do you really think you're ready?"

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    thrill filled the felines chest at the tom's words, and she couldn't hold back the rather loud sigh of relief that escaped her lips. easy duties, she fancied, she wouldn't find terribly easy; but the feline was given a chance and she'd do her best with it.


    at the next tom's warning, thebe found herself hesitating. not at the prospect of joining a clan, but at the thought of fighting. how could she fight if she couldn't bloody see? she didn't say this though, to afraid of being removed immediately after being accepted. instead, she smiled at the tom.


    "well, i suppose there's always something to learn. i'll just have to work hard on picking out scents - if i can figure out where the enemy is, i don't see why i couldn't at the very least defend myself from an attacker, if not take the offensive." she suggested, shrugging her shoulders and praying one of the two agreed on the fact and didn't think about the difficulty of learning as much.