IT’S A COVERUP | private

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    TAGS ✦ ✧ ✦ — With every sunrise that passed, the sun grew stronger in intensity and the sky grew a more vibrant shade of blue. It was much too warm now, Ravenpaw thought. Her black fur seemed to eat all sunlight that came in her direction and even just a few minutes without shade left her feeling parched and exhausted. While there were still a few new-leaf breezes to gust through the thick tussocks of reeds and riverside wildflowers, Ravenpaw found herself much more inclined to rest in the shade instead of sunbathing. In the recent days, Ravenpaw has a new shady place to explore; the Medicine Cat Den. Thorns constantly litter the floor from its situation beneath a thorn bush and the small pool that constantly laps at her paws serves to unnerve her with every tide that comes through.


    Of course, she would need to learn the herbs in the back soon so she could impress Larkthroat. Most of her day was spent in the back store, searching through the dried and wet herbs and trying to put names to things she had never even seen before. She wanted to learn what they were, what they did, where they were found, but as Larkthroat was nowhere to be seen, Ravenpaw took it into her own paws. She supposed the only way to know was by self-experimentation. With hardly a wince, she cut a line across her paw pad with her own claw, a calculating glimmer in her haunting yellow eyes. Carefully, she put a flower with bright golden petals in her mouth and began to chew it up to extract the innate healing juices.


    / -BLUEPAW-


    Kithood had been rough on Bluepaw. She'd nearly died on several occasions. Had it not been for RiverClan's caring touch, Doestar's milk, and Larkthroat's knowledge of herbs and the extra food he provided her with, Bluepaw would be dead. Yet, it seemed that the latter's help had been more of a hindrance than anything. Though he'd kept her alive, it had come at a price, perhaps in the morbid way he'd done so. Bluepaw had been weaned off of milk onto the meat of her own kind, she couldn't eat freshkill without gagging or vomiting, and she lived with the burden of her sins every day of her life, which had resulted in anxiety attacks and other psychological issues that were starting to arise. She hoped that she could repay for her sins as RiverClan's medicine cat apprentice. She could heal, she could learn, and hopefully, she could grow close to StarClan. Perhaps they'd give her answers. Or maybe they'd be silent, as they always were, she reminded herself.


    The past few days had, luckily, torn Bluepaw's mind off of such troubling matters. Instead of focusing on her meals, she was concentrating on her new position in the Clan, and that was to be trained as one of Larkthroat's successors. She was eagerly waiting on him to teach her a few new things, but for the timebeing, she'd enjoyed making her nest in his den, where things were much more quiet than the apprentices' den that she'd lived in for only a few short days before coming here. Exploring the herb stock was also very informative. She didn't know what each herb did, but she was determined to find out one way or another. There were only two things that put a damper on her mood over her new role. Larkthroat, first and foremost. The bastard was the cause of her distress, but Bluepaw was entirely dependent on him. Had he simply picked her because now he could keep her at a tail's length at all time? And Ravenki-- Ravenpaw. Her fellow medicine cat apprentice. The two often butted heads. But Bluepaw knew that she detested the slightly younger she-cat. Working with her would be a pain.


    Speaking of, the she-cat made her way into the medicine cat den to find Ravenpaw near the back, chewing herbs in her mouth. Bluepaw frowned and watched for a moment, before noting the smell of blood. She padded closer curiously, brow furrowed, and found the she-cat with a cut on her paw. Luckily, she hadn't seen how Ravenpaw had acquired the cut, or she might have been annoyed all the more. "What happened?" she asked. "Are you sure you're putting the right herb on that?" she inquired, catching a glimpse of the yellow flower in Ravenpaw's mouth. Well, it was the right color of marigold. Hopefully it was marigold.


    TAGS ✦ ✧ ✦ — Ravenpaw only winced silently as she ground her new cut into the dirt at her paws, hoping to confirm her suspicion about the flower by inducing infection on purpose. The gravel and rocks stung but Ravenpaw powered through it, gritting her teeth hard and chewing the flower faster. With a large frown plastered upon her face, she spat the poultice out and onto her paw and rubbed it into the cut, gritting her teeth even more as the sting increased twofold. She struggled to ignore the painfully bitter taste of the flower, up until she noticed Bluepaw staring out of the corner of her eye. Ravenpaw turned to her reluctant coworker, forcing an eerie smile to her face, although she hovered her paw in the air gingerly. Personally, she thought Bluepaw asked too many questions instead of critically thinking and finding the answer herself. Ravenpaw suppressed a sigh at this line of thinking.


    "I guess we’ll figure out soon, won’t we?" she responds cryptically, purposefully neglecting the chance to answer Bluepaw’s first question. Instead, the she-cat grabs a dock leaf from the store, skilfully wraps it around the poultice and her paw, and moves even further into the dark recesses of the medicine den. The shadows curl around her, taking her in like a lost princess.



    Bluepaw watches with a withering expression as Ravenpaw grinds her paw pad into the dirt. She did it on purpose, didn't she? I should have known. She's always doing morbid experiments, Bluepaw thought to herself, eyes narrowing in annoyance as she pictured the sliced up mouse from her first encounter with the strange, dark she-cat. Something about Ravenpaw was very haunting and it unsettled Bluepaw. Perhaps it was why she disliked her so much, even if her tendencies were annoying.


    "I guess so. I just hope you didn't waste herbs. Can't you just wait for Larkthroat to tell you which herb does what?" she asked. Bluepaw thought that learning on one's own was beneficial in some cases, but when it came to wasting her Clan's materials, she thought better of it. In this instance, she'd rather their mentor just show them instead of letting them figure it out for themselves.


    TAGS ✦ ✧ ✦ — Bluepaw was right. Ravenpaw was weird. While most might try to cover it up and camouflage themselves among the ‘normal’, Ravenpaw embraced her strange mannerisms and fully expressed it in her day to day life. The black she-cat realised that ostracism was simply par for the course and she faced the strange looks with a firm, strong face. Ravenpaw had been thought worse of when she was outside of the clans so she had adequately steeled her heart upon making it into the interior. Some might say she didn’t even had a heart anymore, rather she just discarded it because it didn’t serve a scientific use to her. Perhaps that was her worse character flaw.


    Where Ravenpaw had melted into the shadows there was only the ever present yellow eyes, sunken deep into her face and owlish in nature. She blinked at Bluepaw once and thumped her long, whip-like tail against the sand covering the floor of the medicine den. She repeated this action twice more out of compulsion. If Bluepaw peered hard into the dim half-light, she could see that Ravenpaw was smiling now. "Sometimes you must think for yourself Bluepaw. If you are reliant on Larkthroat forever, what happens when his light flickers out?" she queried innocently, flicking a long ear. She seemed to know more than she should, even despite being clueless. She was merely making assumptions, albeit she was unaware of the darker plot beneath Larkthroat and Bluepaw’s relationship.



    Bluepaw's withering expression seemed to die out entirely when Ravenpaw mentioned the probability of Larkthroat's demise. She stepped closer and found the other she-cat smiling. Does she know something? the gray she-cat wondered, feeling her heart leap into her throat, pounding violently. She swallowed thickly, trying to make it seem as though she had nothing to hide. It was quite possible that Ravenpaw would be exposed to the ruse going on between the medicine cat and a few of the younger members of RiverClan if they weren't careful. It made the she-cat all the more wary of her new denmate, for she knew Ravenpaw was not stupid in the slightest. She was very perceptive, and she just might figure it out someday.


    It took her a moment to realize that Ravenpaw had asked her a question. Perhaps a rhetorical one, she wasn't sure. Nonetheless, she probably wasn't expecting Bluepaw to answer her. Maybe walk away instead. But the young she-cat was perplexed by her question. What would she do without their mentor? How would she eat? The thought of Larkthroat dying had once relieved her, even if she only entertained the idea deep down, but now it terrified her. Without him, she'd starve to death, or she'd be forced to find food on her own, and Bluepaw didn't think she could kill - at least, not the type of prey she ate anyways. She hoped that before Larkthroat died, she would be successful in weaning herself off of cat meat and onto freshkill or else she'd be in a whole new world of trouble.


    "Well..." she started, trailing off for a moment just to assure herself that she was being paranoid and Ravenpaw truly knew nothing of the dark immoral acts that had occurred here in this very den. "I would hope that time does not come soon. Larkthroat does have a lot to teach us. Sure, we could learn on our own, I suppose, but it leaves more room for error. We could end up doing more harm than good, so it's best to have him as a guide." Besides, I don't trust you experimenting with herbs on our Clanmates anyways, Bluepaw added silently.


    TAGS ✦ ✧ ✦ — Triumph washed over Ravenpaw violently as she watched Bluepaw’s expression fall slack. Had she struck a chord? Malicious curiosity made her heart beat fast as Bluepaw went through the motions, a low chuckle passing through her tiny body upon seeing the panic flicker clearly in the she-cat’s diamond clear eyes. Ravenpaw stood from her lying position, spotting a butterfly had nestled close nearby in the deep, solid darkness. The dark and the light danced in an everlasting tango, shadows shifting and falling with every ladder rung the sun surmounted. Ravenpaw began to hum an ominous tune as she placed a claw on the butterfly’s thorax and trapped it there, using her other claw to deftly cut off a wing. The butterfly struggled wildly against her grasp but exhaustion soon took over it’s body. It was still alive when she cut off the other wing, but it’s life was slowly sniffed out as the immense pain affected it.


    "Well, death doesn’t quite care if it comes at a convenient time or not," Ravenpaw murmurs ominously, holding the butterfly’s wing up to the sun as it filtered through the thick thorn barrier. "Larkthrost could die any day now. His life is fragile," Ravenpaw meows, and she tears up the wing suddenly, letting the organic pieces flutter to the ground. "And I’m sure death is on his heels by now. It’d be in your best interest to find some curiosity."



    Bluepaw lowered her haunches to the ground and sat, watching Ravenpaw's face as she chuckled. Apparently Bluepaw wasn't very successful in hiding her emotions. She'd have to do better, especially around the other apprentice. Fear and pride both made Bluepaw want to be as secretive as possible. The less Ravenpaw knew about her, the better. Regarding her secret, most definitely, that was the best policy. As she was thinking this, Bluepaw noticed that her denmate had trapped a butterfly and she watched with a frown as Ravenpaw severed the wings from the creature's body. It was alive through the whole thing. How unnerving... sickening... Ravenpaw was. As if Bluepaw was any better.


    Trying not to let her thoughts drift to where they usually always ended up, Bluepaw straightened her shoulders and looked away from the dead insect. "What makes you think Larkthroat is going to die so soon, anyways?" she asked, wondering if it was because he had chosen two apprentices instead of one. It was rather unheard of.


    TAGS ✦ ✧ ✦ — Slowly, methodically, Ravenpaw cut easy patterns into the wing of the butterfly. She let her claw follow the lines of the unique design and cut along the crease until she had a hundred evenly coloured pieces scattered at her dark, nimble paws. She defied the soft new-lead breeze gusting through the den and began to sort the tiny pieces into common colours, finding an odd thrill in the organisation. Every color had its group and no group had an outsider. If a piece did not fit into her groups, she discarded it into the bushes, tapping her paw three times along the way. She smiled upon realising all the pieces were sorted and moved on to the next wing.


    “A cat like him is bound to have a dirty history and a mountain of bad karma," she responded, a chilling still going over her movements. “I’m sure there are a pawful of cats raring to sink their claws into him. Unfortunate," she finished, going back to cutting at the wing nimbly. She began to hum a tune entirely of her own creation, a high-pitched sound that went up and down in frequent, unexpected intervals.