TAGS | When he’d been younger, he’d found pleasure in folding paper airplanes inside the walls of his bedroom in town and launching them as hard as he could out his window at anyone in sight. Yuri had always made him stay indoors when the weather was cooler than usual or the wind was too rough or maybe his father just liked to keep him trapped inside like some dumb princess in a tower. He knew that he got sick easily and he’d been told too many times how he was ‘special’ and needed to be protected and for the first few months of his life he had thought of the outside of his home in Colour Town a dangerous, unhappy place. He hadn’t asked to be ‘special’ and he had hated the way he was treated for it. He wanted to help and do the things the other creatures did but he was a good kid so he listened to what his parents said and sometimes he did get to play around town.
Sometimes when the business of the square in Colouredclan didn’t capture his attention with the handing out of tasks and talk of politics and recent happenings, he’d travel all the way to the farthest biomes to a favorite stream that continued to stretch across the border and out of the territory. Here there was no use for paper planes and instead he’d make little paper boats to send out to a place called ‘ocean’ and watch them float away. With his most recent journey, he’d been able to see that place he’d never truly seen but filled with so much wonder. The ocean was now his favorite sight he’d ever laid eyes on and every step of his exhausting journey (and a journey he hadn’t even really meant to embark on) had been worth it to see the rolling ocean where the land reached a dead end.
He’d missed his family and the little friends he’d made. He’d worried himself almost to nothingness the first two weeks he been away on his own with no help from anyone but Kaiser. Somehow, the two of them had proved themselves on their own and grown as individuals but he was relieved to have returned to clan life and familiar lands at last. He had never been good at being separated from the world he knew, and yet, he had come back better and he knew more now than the books he loved to read could have taught him.
Finally, she appeared and his wait was over and he throw out the speech he was repeating over and over again in his head. Instantly, at her hesitation and surprise in her eyes he felt awful. It would have been polite to say it was him with that telepathic message, huh? Those things were creepy enough and he had picked up on them, had learned to use them even, from his mother Frightfur. Perhaps he should have never shown up. He didn’t think the look on Arcadepaw’s face was happy at all, no she was…scared?
”Arcade! It really is me! You don’t have to look that way. I’m sorry. Kaiser and I, we went out exploring and it got dark and stormy and we lost our way until we’d gone so far I thought we’d never get back. We made it as far as the ocean. It’s beautiful place… but I’ve missed you the whole time, and everybody actually,” he shifted awkwardly on his healing bionic leg when her eyes darted to it and he didn’t dare move in order to prevent embarrassing himself due to the clumsy way he still moved with it,”I call myself Mattermore now, pretty nice, right? I’ve come by because I wanted to see you and I want to help, too.”
He didn’t mention he’d nearly cried his eyes out hours earlier when he’d recognized his parents likely weren’t home and that he’d no place to stay in Colouredclan that wouldn’t be lonely and that he recently pledged to help out Shadowclan along with Kaiser because he was too easily swayed by those who could use some help. But Aracdepaw didn’t need to be burdened with his issues, she didn’t need that. She probably had plenty of issues of her own to work out.
”Are you okay?” Mattermore asked after a moment’s pause and he finally stood and walked, limping painfully, to the older girl’s side to reach out with his uninjured forepaw to poke her shoulder as an uncertain smile came across his face.
/it was beautiful tho + this is kinda long too oops
