raining from my eyes // p, rosepaw

Rosepaw couldn’t help herself. Nearly everyday she made the arduous trek through miles of coniferous woodland and rough terrain to reach the long stretch of thunderpath, and although she couldn’t pinpoint exactly why, perhaps, like Stormpaw, it had to do with her sense of loneliness and mourning. The smell of deep black tar and monster fumes conjoined together to form a toe-curling, pungent smell of unpleasantness in her nose, wiping away every trace of vole tracks or herbs to be found in the area. Across the way she had often seen strangers go about their daily business; hunting, gathering herbs, checking borders, but few dared to go so far as the thunderpath itself. It was well-renowned for its reputation as a deathwish, for only the stupid and over-confident dated to pass without first taking the necessary precautions. So many cats had been broken and flattened here, so many widowers and orphans had been made because of this dangerous landmark. Rosepaw only came here for the relative silence of being alone aside from the occasional roar of a monster as it came hurling down the thunderpath, but even more bewildering was when she spotted a stranger standing atop the long black pathway. His fur was the colour of wheat wavering on a warm day, his eyes the colour of sage hidden deep in the woods, but his heart seemed cold, his gaze even icier.

Her paws prickled with heat as she saw him, concern springing into her eyes. The earth began to rumble around her with terror, her ears ringing as she heard the first signs of a monster flinging itself down the thunderpath. Rosepaw supposed this was the only use of her emotions, the ability to move beyond her measures of capability simply because she cared too much to fail. With a pivotal movement, she stepped forwards and up to the edge of the thunderpath, her whiskers quivering with her urgency. "Excuse me," she called out to him, feeling the vibration underpaw grow and grow. "There’s a monster coming. You should move," she advised, but her signature tranquility was absent from her voice. In fact, her voice wavered and her paws twitched and she glanced this way and that as if the monster might come pealing down on him at any moment. Her head froze as she spotted the big, ebony paws of a monster in the distance. The rumbling rose to a fever pitch now, shaking her legs and forcing her heart to pound faster and faster. It’s big, yellow eyes cut through the early morning mist, sending a cold shiver coursing down Rosepaw’s spine. She looked back to the cream-coloured tom, voice louder this time. "You have to move, now."

She spent too much time talking. The monster ran faster and faster, and the tom would have only a few seconds to kick his legs into gear and remove himself from the path of the reaper. Understanding now what she must do to clear her conscience, Rosepaw lurched forwards and attempted to grip the tail of the stranger in her mouth and tug him back, away from the edge of oblivion.

/ no worries!! Sorry mine is so short, I’m mobile for the week :^)

With one strong tug on his fuzzy tail, the strange, starstruck tom stumbled back with clumsy paws and his eyes hidden to the world. He had squeezed them shut as if embracing the darkness, accepting that the end was nigh and that the deep, dark coldness of death was bound to take him soon, but with the roar and eventual fade of the monster in the distance, it became clear that he was still alive. The breeze licked his fur as he opened his eyes slowly, feeling the vibrations fade and the pungent scent get fainter. Rosepaw stood, her paws also tingly but her eyes hard and cold, her face apathetic, and her mouth a straight line of tranquility. She looked like a saint, standing there as if there was nothing wrong with her, as if she were perfect, but the outside was an elaborate ruse. She knew what it felt like to be alone and scared, to hate the real world so much it would be easier to passbook into the land of the dead than continue living. Such was why she could relate to him so much.

He said hi to her, awkwardly, unsure how to act after she had saved him from a flattened spine. He stumbled over his words and looked around from one side to the other, his gaze rolling from place to place before finally settling on her. He tried to give an explanation for his actions, what exactly he was trying to do, but from the cold, dead state she witnessed on his face when he stepped into the thunderpath, she knew he was dead long before his paws ever touched the only black tar. Rosepaw shook her head quickly. "Stop," she commanded of him, flicking her ear and raising her head, a deeply personal glimmer in her striking blue eyes. "You don’t need to explain yourself to me. I don’t know you nor your story. I only know that you are alive and standing here right now, and that’s all that matters. Nothing I can say can relieve whatever happened just now."

Rosepaw’s words hug heavily in the air, like clouds just before rainfall. An awkward silence punctuated by the chirping of birds and the rustling of wind through the leaves fell close after her sentence, but Rosepaw was the first to break it. She offered him a smile, the smallest, tiniest quirk of her lips, so subtle it barely even existed. "But, if anything, I believe introductions are in order," Rosepaw paused, sniffing the air deeply. "You are a Thunderclanner, are you not? I am Rosepaw of ShadowClan, pleasure to make your acquaintance, although sadly in such... Dire circumstances."

He ran his paw over his head, her words evidently having done more harm than good. She could feel the heat and electricity flickering from his fur, the hot shame boiling just beneath the surface, the embarrassment of being caught and saved for that matter and the fright of having been so low to have been in such a situation in the first place. Rosepaw has felt the same thing before, the self-hatred after being caught engaging in self-destructive activity she knew she shouldn’t have been engaging in. In her case she needed no saving, only a wakeup call and the idea that it was okay to have emotions and it was okay to feel them without shame or anger. Perhaps if those words had fully sunk into her, she might’ve laughed at how this sunset-hued stranger’s head fur stuck up like streaks of lightning over his skull. But she didn’t, she merely stared, dead-eyed and apathetic, a shell of a kitten a long time ago. Traces of that youthful joy could still be seen flickering in her blue eyes, the debris of playfulness and stubborn joy. He flicked his ears and quivered his whiskers and Rosepaw returned her mind to the conversation, briefly flicking her ears as if tossing away strands of a memory still clinging to her dappled fur.

He called himself Stormpaw, an apprentice of ThunderClan. On first thought, she thought his name was inaccurate, that the sheer golden colour of his fur could never match up to the deep gray destruction of a tropical thunderstorm, but then she saw his eyes. There was a stir in his pale green eyes, and then she saw the storm, and Rosepaw knew he was called Stormpaw for a reason, whether hidden to her all-seeing eyes or not. She settled where she stood and quickly flicked her thinly-furred tail over her paws. He said that she had a large vocabulary and Rosepaw nearly let out a loud, bitter laugh, but she wisely controlled herself. She briefly wondered if he could see through it, if he could see through the massive wall she built around herself not only to protect her heart but also to intimidate all those around her and make sure they didn’t dare get close in the first place. She couldn’t believe she had done it without trying once more, even trying to intimidate a cat she knew was absolutely no threat to her at all. Upon realising that the habit had grown into second nature for her, Rosepaw felt her gut sink and her stomach churn with dread. She realised suddenly that she had only pushed everyone away from her after her mother died because she was scared. Rosepaw resisted another temptation to laugh bitterly. So much for being emotionless.

"It’s okay. Cats think I should be held accountable for a lot of things," Rosepaw murmured in response, rocking her head from one side to the other. "I guess they think I’m more mature than I really am. You know, big words and everything. I don’t remember exactly when I learned it all. I think when I became an apprentice I got very...quiet, and much more eager to learn and listen to everything. Is that...strange?"