[size=8]No worries, Frostsoul!
The reason people might be a little museless might be due to my lack of posting -- at least, I might've contributed to the muselessness of the threads as of late, so I apologize to anyone who may be feeling affected because of Moirai's absence! :(
Blue, shall we do a private HH thread for the two of us to boost some muse? C:
Bump~!!
[size=8]"I agree with you.' Wholeheartedly. Moirai nodded at the new arrival, dipping her head slightly in respect of the newcomer -- her prowess was yet to be tested, but it was certainly there and ever strong as the she-cat seemed to show at all times, and Moirai was really rather curious about her abilities. It seemed that Minerva was more unusual than some of her clanmates, but not in a necessarily bad way. "When prey returns, life will. Or is it the other way around?" she meowed quietly, looking at the greyish skies above the world, wondering just when that would happen.
[size=8]The cold threatened to bite Moirai's toes off, but the she-cat ignored the numbing sensation of the melting snow beneath her paws and stiffened her back, taking special care to where her feet were placed in the crunchy yet melting solidified water underpaw. Whirs, buzzing, and fluttering could be heard around a cat if one concentrated hard enough, and sure enough, as the apprentice stilled her twitching ears and swishing tail, those noises sprang out at her, reminding her that new-leaf would soon be in full swing. The winter hares were slowly losing their white fur to reveal their true brown pelts beneath, and that was always one of the many marvels that new-leaf brought with it that Moi enjoyed witnessing -- though a hare couldn't be found at the moment, the calico had no doubt that she would soon come upon one during one of the ensuing days. Where tundra met spring, the dead met the living.
A quiet chatter drew her attention, and Moirai's ears pricked up instinctively as her head swiveled to the right. There, not three cat-lengths from her, stood a tiny, scrawny grey-and-white squirrel. It would sure be tough, dry meat, but it made better fuel than the various herbs and slimmed fish her clanmates and the Federation had been feeding themselves on. Smooth as water, faster than lightning. the apprentice challenged herself with one of Talltail's many phrases of advice to her that seemed to be given so long ago. Quieter than a shadow, deadlier than a snake. This squirrel would feed one more that she wouldn't have to worry about. This squirrel could save someone from death.
The apprentice was surely out of hunting practice, but she was surely not going to lose this squirrel to some careless error she might make. It was hers. The squirrel seemed to be even more hungry than Moirai, however, so bringing the measly bit of prey down was no problem at all, for the grey-furred creature had unfortunately been much too concentrated on collecting any spare nuts on the ground to keep an ear out for predators. One pounce and one quick swipe to the neck did it for the squirrel, and, victorious, the calico she-cat carefully took the warm body in her jaws, taking extra care not to move too quickly in case she slipped and made a fool of herself.
[size=8]Don't worry about it, Blue. I had no intention of guilting you for being late, honest. Just needed to keep the thread moving. c:
+++
The patterned she-cat shrugged her shoulders broodingly, not making -- or caring to make -- eye contact with her mentor. It wasn't her place to tell her mentor what he should be doing, even if he was more often than not out wandering around and not giving her instructions on her duties. She'd always been somewhat of a strong leader, the young she-cat felt it herself, and nothing any cat did to her could stop her from her goals. Her motivation wasn't Io, after all; it was her clan. Well, rather the well-being of it. In fact, the wiry Hitchhiker was going to leave the other hanging for a response but thought better of it. He doesn't deserve to be shut out because of his absences, no matter how many times he's been gone. "No need to apologize." she said curtly, almost roughly, refusing to look at the other medicine cat but keeping her line of focus direct and straight ahead at the path ahead of them. Yeah, you're a foxbrain sometimes. But that's one of the things I like about you, okay? Now shut up. the she-cat longed to voice her stronger opinions to the tom, but figured that would earn her no more than a cuff on the ear and no less than silence. "Let's get that chickweed and borage. We don't want to freeze out here; even if new-leaf is upon us, it'll take a while for the ice to melt and I don't fancy catching myself a cold anytime soon."
[size=8]Your family will be in my prayers, Sky. If you need anything, just PM me! <3
Bump!
[size=8]Without further ado, the splattered-pelted she-cat nodded back down at her former mentor, preparing to push the entire comb of honey down to earth once and for all. She'd never done anything like this in her life before, not while training to become a normal warrior of the Hitchhikers. She'd only ever glimpsed glimmers of honey, bronze-gold in the slanted light of late spring and earlier summer, dripping lazily onto withered, crunchy moss floors or the specks of black that were the bees who made the combs their home. She'd never laid paw on honey before, never sniffed at its delicious scent, never got so close to it as she was now. It was a real wonder how the miraculous, gooey liquid worked, how it could so easily lull a distressed kit to sleep, numb the pain in a throat, even work to seal wounds tight and protect them from the elements, if need be. Sure, the makers of it were a pain in the arse to deal with, but their product was the treasure of the season, and thank StarClan for Talltail.
"Here it comes!" she meowed loudly down to the ground where her two clanmates were sitting, waiting, and with a gentle nudge, an ear-splitting crack sounded, signaling the tearing of the bit of bark that held the frozen over, deserted chunk of beehive. The ice that had frozen it in place where the tree met the top of the hive shattered into a hundred shards and the once still hive was no longer motionless as it flew towards the hoarfrost-covered land.
[size=8]Anytime. Bump! 
[size=8]Welcome, Sanity!
Bump!
[size=8]The morning was still young. Birds hadn't ended their morning choruses, and neither, it seemed, had the Hitchhikers ended their goodbyes and farewells. Whenever the group would be leaving, it would be too soon for the older ones especially, who took emotional feelings so close to heart, who treasured the memories more than anything. A flicker of her thoughts strayed to her old mentor, wondering how he would take the sudden decision to leave today. Some of the Hitchhikers hadn't been informed of their departure until late last night, around moonhigh, when words reached their well-rested ears, and had hardly gotten a good chance to utter their last words to the friends they've grown close to in the Federation. It was a pity they couldn't stay a little longer just to enjoy the first real rays of new-leaf with the group who had sheltered them for most of the new year, but they couldn't stay forever. Sooner or later, it would come time to leave to set out for a new camp again. Moirai knew that just as well as her precursor did, just as well as the kits did. Every cat in the Hitchhikers knew their ways.
But she only wished things could be different. At least, for a while longer.
[size=8]"Thank you, Styx." Moirai breathed breathlessly, glancing momentarily at the tomcat and nodding in gratitude before snatching the few stalks of feverfew up, beginning to chew a few of the leaves viciously, working up a fine, soggy paste in her mouth before spitting it out onto the ground in front of the now conscious (barely, though) red-furred fox-like creature in front of her. Its mouth was still foaming, the bubbles never seeming to end from the head (fountain) that was the lips of the small, fuzzy thing. "Hey! Hello, we're here to help. Please, if you could get this down your throat..." could it comprehend her? Hopefully, it would be able to; she was almost positive this creature had some connection with the Feddies anyway, and so it should have been able to pick up her meaning. "It's feverfew. We don'tk now what kind of illness you have, but this will probably help bring down whatever fever you have. You're really warm, you know." she meowed, beginning to panic because Io wasn't snapping at her anymore. Was he off in a trance again?
[size=8]Bumpish. c:
[size=8]Goldenrod. How is that possible? Moirai's ears shot up at Io's call, and the young cat felt a thrill of excitement run through her spine and lift all the hairs of her pelt up, making her seem like an eager kit once more. This was too good to be true. First the accidental finding of the honey combs by Talltail, then this? StarClan was truly kinder than they had seemed. "Are you sure?" she meowed critically, too fearful to raise hope too soon -- but then again, her body, her heart, had already affirmed the feeling by showing it outwardly, and no fool would've mistaken the signs of desperate faith that still clung to the young medic. This was a good day, indeed.
Bounding over to her counterpart, the healer in training's tail streaming out from behind her like a flag rippling in the wind, the sleek feline skidded to a halt besides the tom, eyes wide with eagerness and whiskers quivering with the daring to believe. Could this all be true? Was new-leaf coming quicker than the cats thought? "You're definitely good at this," she commented briefly before ducking her head down to sniff at the baby shoot. It was alone and delicate, and the frost was already getting to it; if they waited much longer, it would be gone, sure as day. It was now or never, and nevermind waiting for it to grow. "I think we should pick it." she meowed determinedly, making to nip the stalk out of the barren earth. She paused just slightly, wondering if Io would protest to it -- after all, he had more knowledge of the herbs in the world and she wanted to make sure she wasn't committing some horrible medical crime.
[size=8]:D
Bump!
[size=8]"It is nice," Moirai agreed mildly, flicking her tail towards the dimmed sun and fog. The mountains were undoubtedly still cold now, but it seemed to her that soon, things wouldn't be as harsh as they had been. Conditions would lift for the better. "I guess I'm just her to soak up whatever sunlight we're offered for today, then back to the Apothecary for me." she mewed.
+++
Assuming we're still roleplaying the time before the Hitchhikers leave the FoC.
[size=8]I second.
[size=8]Bump!
[size=7pt][color=black]The sudden, roaring income of the rearing storm, like some spooked charcoal-black mare, threw itself upon the band of travelling Hitchhikers, bigger than the tides and darker than three-hundred shades of grey smoke. The clouds, roiling and pitch black and inky as the mixing memories of that one dark night so similar to this one that sparked in Etoile's brain unraveled, sprinkling -- no, pelleting was more the word for this situation -- the herd of cats (and one raven) with intense, furious shards of icy-cold raindrops. The shaking and quaking of the ground was nothing compared to the chattering of the young raven-pelted she-cat's teeth, and the rattle of her bones as thunderclap after thunderclap came to haunt each of the hikers' minds, bringing with each one a sizzle of light and blinding forks of lightning. This was by far one of the most horrific storms that Etoile had ever been caught in, not that she had been caught in many in her young life. Most of the storms she had waited out in hollows patiently, mostly taking a snooze to pass the time. This one, however, had been so sudden and unexpected that no one had had any time to dive for cover anywhere -- there weren't many places to hide, not on a mountain, but perhaps one could make it in time to some crack in the rock before the lightning struck them too.
There was no time to think, no time to do anything but blindly charge somewhere to find and hope to find a space that occupied enough emptiness to host her for a while while she waited out the fury of the storm, the worst of it. Etoile had never been a fan of wild winds and unrelenting sheets of cascading waters, and she doubted that any cat would notice her flight from the tight-knit crowd besides, her being new and relatively easy to go about undetected. Perhaps no cat had even noticed her arrival, which would make her quick escape (from the storm, of course, never the band of cats themselves) easy to explain. Besides, no cat would expect anyone to stay put and with the group, would they? If they were in the right mind, no. No one wanted to be stuck out in the freezing, wet cold.
Who cared of honor, who cared of loyalty or fearlessness or anything besides when a storm struck? Etoile had never been one to feel obligated to prove anything to any cat, and so if the leader or some pesky cat from the clan gathered enough courage one day to question her of this so-called "disloyal" act of ditching the others during a time of hardship, she wasn't going to deny them that she had, yes, fleed for that instant, but neither was she going to admit she was any sort of traitor. If that made sense. Bahah, her roleplayer is beginning to feel unmusey and wtf her muse is leaving her faster than blood leaves a face and kasdfjlaskf ignore this, keep reading.
The winds battered at her cold-wracked body as Etoile found herself -- more by the sense of touch than the sense of sight or smell -- a small crack in a cave that seemed dry and warm enough for her and wrestled herself inside. The cold lessened immensely then, and, grateful for some relief from the mighty winds that threatened to blow her right off the cliffs of the steep mountain slopes, the exhausted half-loner staggered a few more paces into the dark, tiny cave before giving in to the weariness of her muscles and collapsing on ice-cold stone at the back of the moderately deep enclosure. It was a very lucky thing that she had found a shelter so quickly in the midst of the blurriness of the painful rain, and it would be even more lucky for Etoile if she escaped this storm without illness. For now, the black she-cat succumbed to the calls of sleep.
[size=8]What the hell does she mean by "get yourself together?" What a bitch. Etoile hissed under her breath, not wanting to further provoke the tabby she-cat by shooting a retort back at her, though the roof of her mouth burned with the desire to do so. Afterwards, a forceful clamp down on her jaws caused the muscles of her maw to begin aching in protest, but it did the trick and shut her up effectively for a while. The dark tabby feline headed off without her; she must be thinking that she held the advantage here, being from a clan of stronger cats than Etoile and knowing the way better up in the craggy terrain of the mountain, and she wasn't wrong. Vindicate was better suited to these conditions, surely enough. Her stance, the way she carried herself, and her build made that all too clear. For some cat like Etoile, traveling over mountains would certainly prove to be a challenge, for she had been bred and raised on flat ground and had never set paw on elevated lands. This would definitely explain the lurch in her stomach every time she dared to cast a glance down the rocks to see the streams and twolegplaces scattered about on the bottom like ant farms. Some twoleg-built brick dens were no bigger than a sliver of her claw, and that indicated their elevation. Their elevation? It frightened the black loner more than she would ever dare to admit to any cat, ever, perhaps more than she could admit to herself; Etoile wasn't used to admitting weaknesses to anyone at all, least of all herself, and if she began dwelling more on her fears instead of her strengths, it would surely be the end of her. Overthinking anything became dangerous after an amount of time, and the black feline couldn't let herself fall into such a trap. She'd been the victim of it once. Fear shut your senses down and clamped down on your mind until you suffocated from it.
"Stupid. Afraid of stupid fucking heights." Etoile hissed to herself as she dragged her paws on from behind Vindicate, who seemed all too able to carry the weight of the dead bird's body on her own. Yeah, Etoile had underestimated the strength of the wiry grey she-cat, but she wasn't about to admit that aloud either, to save herself some dignity, at least. The black cat lashed her tail back and forth in inexplicable rage. Her anger came from the pit of her stomach all too suddenly, like rising bile, and she could feel it on her barbed tongue, she could feel its hot, spicy, licking flames lap at her throat hungrily, and she forced the fury back down where it belonged, because fear and anger went together and had no place on a mountain, a place where Etoile's fears were real and alive and ready to take her down -- literally. One wrong pawstep... and she would plummet to her death, which was exactly the opposite outcome of what she wanted. It wasn't how Etoile wanted to go. She didn't want to go at all, but who wanted to? If she lived, though... she had no family to live for, nothing to live for at all. Her life was a waste of resources and time. And to be stuck behind some infuriating, silent, unresponsive daughter of a hound was only making it worse by the hour. The sooner the two travelers got to where Vindicate was headed for, the better off Etoile would be.
At one point during their slow-paced trek on the winding way that somewhat resembled a rocky path worn down by generations of cats' paws, Etoile noticed that the other cat had stopped in her tracks, frozen still to the stone beneath her feet. Was there something wrong? What was going on? Perhaps the other had sensed something oncoming, maybe a predator, or better and more likely, a whiff of prey-scent. The latter, Etoile could deal with, but the former, well. It would be the end of them. The two felines were worn out to the cores and their skeletal structures were beginning to show through their thick fur coats, and before long, if they didn't reach the camp of Vindicate's friends, they'd be forced to eat from their own catch meant for the others and then unfortunately abandon it, because sooner or later, Vindicate would not have the strength to continue on hauling the heavy sack of bones and meat. Being the stubborn fool she was, the grey tabby would not be looking for help from the black loner any time soon, so if the both of them lost the catch due to Vindicate's weariness, Etoile would faultlessly be able to hold something against the Hitchhiker.
Perhaps it was out of the kindness of her heart, but a while later, while crossing an expanse of open air -- a gap between ledges, was all it was -- the leader turned back to wait for the other, perhaps wondering if she would be able to make the leap at all. Huffing with annoyance clear on her breath, the raven-colored, wiry loner gracefully, effortlessly made it to the other side, letting out a sharp breath as her forepaws hit the hard stone. She wasn't a kit that had to be monitored every second, but she supposed it was better to have someone's support rather than no one's, even if it was support from some prickly-headed she-cat with no social life (yes, it was that apparent). A question bubbled at Etoile's lips, urging to be voiced: how long did they have until they reached their destination? But it was unlike the cat to speak before being spoken to, and she rather keep her silence than risk the angry sound of Vindicate's piercing sharp meow. As it turned out, Etoile wasn't too fond of being yelled at, or even treated in a blunt manner, for she did have some sensitivity in her and was more fragile than she let others on.
+++
Should we time-skip a little to when they get to the cave? cx
[size=8]Bump~!
[size=8]Aww, hope to see you back soon in some way, Vin. :T A bus surely won't keep you from us forever!
Happy early birthday, Peach-fuzz, <3
Bump-ish.
