I CAN'T WAIT TO GO HOME ☆ open, gore tw

*:･ﾟ✦ STRONG GORE WARNING. THERE ARE GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS.

As the illness worsened and her state declined with every passing day, so too did Copperkit's mind deteriorate. Her life had blurred into an irretrievable blob of colors dancing just out of her reach, and every day was either spent engaged in fitful slumber or pushing away scrawny morsels of mouse, even when she knew she was hungry. She could not even stand the sight of food and imagining herself even ingesting a bit of bird made her stomach toss and turn with nausea. So her state worsened and then came the delusions, with fleeting images of strong, powerful owls beating away from her and flying to freedom, or little glimmers of her mother's face that disappeared everytime she moved towards the fake Cinderstream. Sometimes, she would even spot Foreststar prowling into the shade of the sage brush, even if the dark kitten had not seen the once-firm leader in a long time. She never could determine reality from hallucinations, and such a blur of the border made her current situation possible.

Now, Copperkit laid still, the faint rise and fall of her chest being the only indication of life. She was frail and bones pressed against her skin, along will tussled and ratty hair. Her fur had fallen out of care, and she didn't have the energy to even groom herself anymore. She only slept. Her memories flickered in the back of her mind, and the anemia dulled out nearly all of her senses. It was as if her body were asleep and her mind wasn't, especially when anyone tried speaking to her. She could barely muster competent responses, and was often asking herself where she was. It had been days since her last sign of life, aside from eating and breathing.

It was twitch. At first it was just an annoyance, and then Copperkit started to think about it. Perhaps a fly had landed there, or Honeystep's tail was tickling her. It was on her right eye, just under her brows.

It was an itch.

The she-cat hesitated, savoring her energy as she lifted her claws to her eye. Gently, she rasped against her eyelid, and found sweet relief from the nagging itch. It wasn't a second later that it returned double-fold. It felt even more aggravating now, so with more force, she dug her claws into the itch. Finally content with this, she let out a breath of reassurance. The itch was gone-- but just her luck, it returned like a flea in her pelt. Frustration filled her, unnecessary anger. Her life had been reduced to this. The most exciting thing of the day being scratching a good itch. This time, Copperkit made sure the itch wouldn't return. With gusto and a fire in her belly, she dug at the itch until there couldn't possibly be any sensation remaining.

She felt nothing anymore, and victory chimed deep within her chest. Lowering her paw, the darkness obscured her vision and she felt satisfied. She laid her head upon her paws once more and hoped to catch another wink of sleep, although she knew slumber was rare, and even when it came, it was restless and without dreams. Unbeknownst to her, however, her paws was now slick with her own blood and little pieces of crimson, stringy meat hung to her paw. All that was left of her right eye was remnants of flesh and nerves, and blood poured from it incessantly, sticky globs of molten-rock dripping from her face and scattering about her mossy nest. Now all that could stare back was a dark cavern, unseeing and without feeling. Copperkit didn't even notice it, and thus couldn't realize the irony of her future mentor being Pumpkinpatch.

>> Due to a much more dangerous strain of the disease having nested in Copperkit's body, it had slowly attacked her body, and since her immune system is nearly non-existent, she could not protect her nerves from being affected. The disease ate away at her optic nerve, and it had died a few hours before this event in the night. Since the disease had also affected the surrounding pain receptors, she did not feel the pain of scratching out her eye. So no more eye >:^)

*:･ﾟ✦ A soft, tiny voice came from a few lengths to her right, and Copperkit raised her head with a yawn on her lips. The blood threatened to drip into her mouth as she did so, but she quickly ceased the action in order to question Seiftkit. She silently wondered what he was doing, quizzing her so late at night, but she supposed it would be good to play along. Feeling her gaze swim with colors and seeing the earth shift from under her, she only barely managed a response. "What do you mean?" she wondered, feeling bile rise in her throat for some unknown reason.

She nearly vomited once she spotted her mother race into the den, but the dark kitten managed to keep calm and instead smiled feverishly at the gray feline, love glittering within her last remaining eyes. Once again, confusion replaced the compassion and she found herself intrigued as to what exactly everyone was looking at on her face. "Is there something on my-" her inquiry was cut short when she spotted Whitesmoke run his paw through the ground and lift up so, so that Copperkit could finally spot the reddish tinge of blood glinting in the weak moonlight. Feeling panic bubble in her throat, the frail, ashen kitten finally noticed the sudden darkness on the right of her face, and how as she moved her head, the darkness seemed always to follow. Pulling her paw up to her only remaining eye, she inspected her claws and felt the vomit climb her throat once more when she realized the unidentifiable substances on her paws was the remnants of an eye destroyed by her own paw. Gagging and choking on her own fright, she dragged herself from her wet nest with little recovery, and she could hear the blood slick and swell with every moment. One look back could see that the blood was now pooling where she had once been, and that her paws and face was slicked down entirely with thick crimson. Copperkit was unsure how much longer she could keep back her sickness.