try until you can't • shrikold

{Shrikekit}
{F}{seal lynx point, black paws}{6 moons}

{in character}

When Shrike had first been brought to the medicine cat’s den, there’d been no way of knowing how slowly she’d heal — that days would stretch out and fold back into each other until Shrike herself lost count. Going so long without any true movement was taxing on musculature; so Shrike had been prescribed daily physical therapy.

It basically amounted to one of the meds manipulating her injured forelegs, with her moving the mostly-healed hind legs as much as possible at all other times. When sunhigh had come and gone, it was time. The timing was born of her determination that as few cats as possible would hear her pained keens in the early days, and now it had settled into a routine. She was slowly getting back the ability to flex all her paws and stretch each limb (within reason), but it would be a long while before she was fully functional.

A sound behind her made her jerk — an aborted attempt at turning to see who it was. The wound on her shoulder affected a surprisingly large number of other non-directly-shoulder-related movements. She’d just have to wait until they came to where she could see.

{out of character}

coldpaw sorry for how long it took!!!

{Shrikekit}
{F}{seal lynx point, black paws}{6 moons}

{in character}

The isolation imposed by her injuries had left Shrike fairly isolated apart from Sparrowflight and the medicine cats — and now the medicine cat apprentice. Prickly as she’d been even before, the cats that would go out of their way to visit her were few and far between. She’d just gotten unused to physical touch — at least, that was what she told herself to explain the shiver that rattled her spine at Coldpaw’s nuzzle. It wasn’t like she was actually cold or anything.

When she processed the words spoken, one Coldpaw pulled back, she couldn’t keep in a snort at Coldpaw’s apology. “Don’t be sorry — this is more your den than mine. Be as loud and startling as you like. If anything, it’ll keep my heart strong.” She wouldn’t touch the idea of getting back to normal any time soon; only recently had she mastered pushing herself on her hindlegs so the bedding could be changed a few days previous, and running seemed like something out of a fever dream. “I’m alright for now on the poppyseeds — thanks, though. Better that I feel what’s going on than not, yeah?”

Her eyes had long since adjusted to the relative dark of the den, meaning Coldpaw seemed to glow with her white fur catching in the light. When she couldn’t stand the gleam anymore, Shrike said into her paws, “If you don’t have anything else to do...you could maybe stay and talk a bit? You don’t have to, of course, but... you aren’t annoying and I could use the company.”

Despite her best efforts, she felt her nose tip and ears flushing. She’d never been great at asking for things, and this was apparently no exception. Coldpaw had some small degree of vision, she knew, but if it was enough for her to see Shrike’s notablush, she’d be done for. Emotionally. She would keel over and smother herself in the bedding. It was bad enough asking for things, but having anyone know that asking for things was ‘bad enough’? Awful.

{out of character}

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{Shrikekit}
{F}{seal lynx point, black paws}{6 moons}

{in character}

“Nothing that hasn’t been gone over a dozen times. Could use a distraction, really — what’s on your mind?” It would be nice to be pulled from her own thoughts for a while. Coldpaw probably had more interesting things going on than she did. Definitely had. She was a little surprised at Coldpaw suggesting that she leave as soon as she’d settled in, but maybe she was just having a jumpy day or something. Surprised, yes, but ultimately thankful.

Shrike’s relationship with eating had been irreversibly damaged in the moons of famine, and though she’d made a great deal of progress, there were some days that she forgot to eat entirely; it was reflexive to ignore hunger pangs and she often had to be reminded that there was food available in the first place. This, apparently, was one of those days.

“I — yeah, that would be good. If it’s not a bother. Thanks.” As if on cue, her stomach growled, and Shrike faceplanted into the border of the nest. Time to revisit that prior thought about giving up the ghost. Of all the times! “On second thought, you can just leave me here to die, ta. Make sure they only say nice things at my funeral, all that. I like lavender flowers, but any will do in a pinch, I’m not picky.”

{out of character}

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{Shrikekit}
{F}{seal lynx point, black paws}{6 moons}

{in character}

Coldpaw dropped the mouse at her paws and resettled beside her. Apropos of nothing, Shrike wondered why, exactly, Coldpaw was so willing to spend time with such a notoriously prickly cat as herself. Was she just being kind? Was she still recovering from Birdbones’ leave-taking and attaching herself to the one cat who posed literally no risk of leaving? Was it just that her backside had gotten chilly for the lack of fur and Shrike was the nearest available heat source?

Instead of asking after any of them for fear of embarrassing herself further, Shrike leaned down to take a portion. Enjoying the sensation of the mouse’s delicate bones crumpling under her teeth for a moment, ultimately she swallowed her bite of mouse and nudged it into Coldpaw’s grasp, missing a haunch and the boney tail. It wouldn’t do her any good to eat too much too fast, and Coldpaw should have at the mouse too.

“Not so lame when you don’t get out much,” she reminded Coldpaw in the softest of chides. “My knowledge of what happens outside is all second and third paw, apart from what I can make of conversations from here.” She hadn’t exactly been in the loop, before, but that was by choice. Now, she clawed after every reminder that there was life beyond like a lifeline. But that needed to be enough moodiness from her; Coldpaw ought to get the good-tempered company she wanted, and despite the general reality of her entire personality, Shrike would have to do. “You said there was a stranger on the border? Were you there?” Coldpaw’s taste for rambling was as noted as Harewhisker’s advancing age, helped along by rapidly whitening muzzle. If Shrike never recovered, maybe Coldpaw would know the moors so well that she could let Shrike know them vicariously, by her descriptions. No. No maudlin. Later.

Refocused, Shrike peered over at her temporary nestmate.

{out of character}

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