PYRITE PROMISES — joining

Her home had been a desiccated expanse of bald rock and brick-red sand. Vegetation was lean. Shade from the withering sun was virtually non-existent. Were she to descend into the confines of the canyon, however, would transport her to another world. Cottonwoods leaned gracefully over drifts of flowering prickly pear. Tall grasses swayed in the breeze. The ephermeral blooms of sego lilies peeked from the toes of ninety-foot stone arches, and canyon wrens called back and forth in plaintive tones from a thatch of scrub oak. High above the creek a spring seeped from the cliff face, irrigating a growth of moss and maidenhair fern that hung from the rock in lush green mats. Mice knew how to hide in the tiny clefts of rick dug into the towering stone precipice that was the canyon wall, but as she always did, Wanderingriver had adapted to her surroundings and constructed a way to feed herself and nourish her body. The canyon had not been her only home however; she found home in many places, like in the waving golden grasses marveling in awe of an erupting geyser, or in the voluminous, snow-capped mountains that seemed bigger than life itself. Wanderingriver had left her mark in many places, a ghoul that forever roamed the earth, and would continue to do so even after she laid down to rest in the great wilderness. Even so, her paws had never touched the clans, despite her feverish fanaticism and glorification of simple society.

The loneliness had finally gotten to her. While she tried to convince herself that she could live off the land all by herself, eventually her need for contact and interaction had infected her mind and her paws got itchy. The canyon was certainly a beauty to behold, but as she camped just along the trickle of water at the thin bottom for weeks or moons, she found that her lust for adventure would act up again and force her to move on to bigger, greener pastures. The she-cat that showed up on RiverClan border was a wild one; her fur was windswept like prairie grasses across the savanna, and her eyes, green as the springy grass she stood upon, twinkled with a certain lust for something larger than life, something she could not possibly reach with her corporeal body. While she was not clean, well-groomed, or tidy in any way, she presented herself as some kind of a saint, a cat that had still lived despite the terrible cruelties fate had inflicted upon her. Muscles rippled just below her short fur, and they settled as her legs dipped below her into a seated position. There, she waited. The sun was just coming up over the great, tree-tipped horizon, straining over deciduous woods and basking her with an early-morning chill. The land, flat and unassuming, stretched out before her in waves of gently waving green grass nourished by the wet soil and plentiful rain. Wanderingriver basked in the glory of it all and breathed in the new air. It was a new day, she told herself.

It was a tepid morning, a certain lukewarm quality in the air that would no sooner evolve into the kind of heat that could be seen dancing in wavering in stagnant air. For now, however, the day was still recovering from the chill of the night and little dewdrops clung to the edges of flowers and grass, falling to the earth as the breeze waved through them. The cotton grass and sundew shook, then parted, and a cat, black as the night, strolled through the breach. She was large, larger than any cat Wanderingriver had ever laid her eyes on, and her eyes were mesmerizing. While one was a rich amber color, the other one's pupil had grown gray from blindness and seemed to hold constellations and stars within. Wanderingriver smiled out of habit, and her face, previously slack ad unassuming, contorted and crinkled to accommodate the quirk of her lips. "Was hoping to stay here for a bit," came her response, a slow, raspy drawl made rough from disuse. "I'm Wanderingriver. I can hunt and defend myself, and I won't be a burden," she continued, in hopes to emphasize her sustainability. She knew clan cats were inherently suspicious and wary of outsiders, and so Wanderingriver did whatever she could to seem harmless; she pushed her shoulders forward, smiled a calm, almost lazy smile, and waved her tail as if it was following the gently hovering winds across the wetland.

The breach in tall asphodel parted once more, and another cat padded through, with orchids and butterwort catching in his voluminous fur. Another habitual smile appeared, and she tipped her head to the side as she watched him; a sinuous cat beneath all the fur, and with his chest heaving and puffing from an exercise in stamina. Even seeing him do it also made her paws itch, and Wanderingriver found herself struggling not to indulge an incredulous urge to gallivant all across the wetlands and draw too much attention to herself. It was obvious she was agitated, by the shift of her paws and the knead of her claws into soft, damp soil. She expertly obscured them with tall cotton grass. "Hello," she greeted him, her jaw slack. "Nice to meet you Ryepaw. I'm Wanderingriver."

// honestly me

Even when Wanderingriver thought the sprightly green brush could no longer fabricate anymore ghostly apparitions of RiverClan cats, another came through, yet this one more ghastly looking than the previous few. Of course, Wanderingriver was not one to judge; every part of her, whether it be the places where fur could no longer have regrown, or where fur has returned white against a backdrop of sunset, Wanderingriver saw each scar as a story waiting to unfold. In curiosity, Wanderingriver leaned closer in, and the intrigued danced in the dazzling green of her eyes. Her face, once more slack out of habit, stretched to allow the brimming smile once more. This RiverClanner, Ashpaw, was very nervous. Eddies of anxiety bubbled just below her fiery red fur, and her chest seemed to ebb and swell with every pump of her heart. Wanderingriver listened to the nervous shake of her voice as she desperately searched for something to say, and tipped her head as she grasped onto every conversation topic and held tightly enough to make her knuckles white. "Hey, it's okay," the strange vagrant reassured Ashpaw with a long flick of her short-furred tail. "I think you're doing fine. Nice to meet you Ashpaw, thanks for the compliment."

Of course, unknown to the clan cats there, her foaming fanaticism and reverence of simple clanlife had culminated and re-birthed itself with a single comment on her name. Wanderingriver had spent weeks in the refreshing shade of an overhanging crag made of brick-red rock, her mind swimming with idea after idea for a new name. With great deliberation, she had named herself after the calm, gently flowing trickle of water that had carved out the narrow, five-foot wide canyon, but it had not been the only time she went by something new. Her life was a long stretch of pseudonyms, fake names, and false identities, so many one after the other that even she could't recall the last time she had heard her birth name spoken to her. Every new place came with a new name, and every new sight to see came with inspiration for a new individual. The praise of her name made her cream-colored chest puff out and her milky paws cease their shuffling, if only for a few moments. She raised her chin slightly but looked directly to Ashpaw once more, finding amusement in her mindless babbling about fish, dead fish, and everything in between. She seemed akin to a brook, unaware as to where she was to go, but managing to end up there all the same. "Well, I'll eat anything," she responded easily, a jovial, easy-going air set about her. She quickly winked at Ashpaw. "'S long as it keeps me going."

/ashpaw i would die for you