what do you know of skyclan? [sand + fennelsky]
Mar 28, 2020 18:34:55 GMT -6
Duckei, ELLA, and 2 more like this
Post by Riley on Mar 28, 2020 18:34:55 GMT -6
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sand + fennelsky. skyclan camp F rom the white overcast there had emerged a customary drizzle that misted the forest like a finely-speckled pall. It was soft, dreary - mellow, a token avatar for the uncertainty that sheathed Sand’s mind. Upon his return from his enlightening and convincing escapade with Rowanwing, he had been guided to the pinnacle of the alder gully: a well-decorated cave formed of archaic, rainswept boulders, riddled with young bushels of broom and growing underbrush that was slowly climbing along its sides. Fennelsky’s den, Rowanwing’s voice had ghosted in his ear, would you like me to come with you, have him see it isn’t some mortal sin to invite you?No, Sand had said in reply, firm yet benign. Fennelsky needs to see that I’m able to speak for myself. There is more strength in it. Rowanwing had only laughed, remarking that Sand was still as proud as he had ever been. Sand’s broad feet whisked the green springs of foliage at the foot of the sandstone cleft, eyeing the curtain of mosses with something like childlike sheepishness. What was the custom of entering a leader’s private quarters? Need he introduce himself before entering, or simply enter with a differential tip of the head? He ruminated on this, his jaw taut and his eyes tauter as he ascended the pile of boulders leading up to the yawning mouth of Fennelsky’s den before he stood on the same level of earth as it. As he discovered the resolve to begin his tread to enter, the brush guarding its interior swished, and out stepped the lithe leader Fennelsky himself. "Sand." ”Fennelsky.” The loner tipped his chin inward, albeit refrained from devoiding himself of eye contact with the thorough-gazed SkyClan cat. ”I wanted to give you my thanks for allowing me to speak to Rowanwing.” Fennelsky’s eyes scored over the length of Sand’s willowy frame, brows stitched with an unreadable facet of scrutiny. ”How thoughtful of you,” he said in a velvet tongue, looking not an ounce interested in humoring the loner and his presence in their campgrounds a moment more. He tipped his gaze skyward, to regard the time. The sun had not yet kissed the edges of the treetops, but it had begun its downward descent from its sunhigh apex. ”Do you require warriors to see you from the territory?” ”If I may,” Sand intervened, which startled Fennelsky if the flare of his pupils was any sign to adhere by. ”Rowanwing speaks glories of SkyClan. Glories that he found and continues to find every day among you; I come to you asking if I may follow the same path, to become a SkyClan warrior.” And Fennelsky laughed. It was not a cruel nor sardonic bark of laughter, but a small, subdued chuckle that rolled like thunder in the base of the leader’s throat. It was gentle, almost, had it not been for the underlying and unmistakable incredulity that darkened its timbre. ”What do you know of SkyClan, rogue?” he probed, stepping further from the safety of his mosses and advancing upon Sand, who stood firm despite the leader’s smooth approach.Sand’s jaws opened wearily, only to be silenced when Fennelsky began to twine around him, still leaving a generous berth of distance, like he might dirty his pale, marbled beige fur if he stepped too near. ”What do you know of our customs, our laws? Our leafclaws, fernclaws, and their traditions?” Fennelsky stopped, standing at the knobbled base of the log that jutted out from the cliff's edge, hovering out over the boulders where Sand had ascended to reach this point. “What do you know of protecting more than yourself, than lying down your life so that others may continue to live?” Sand felt subdued, the minute triumph of scaling the molehill that sat at the foot of a mountain. Rowanwing had not revealed such sensitive information to him; he supposed that was his own error for not inquiring further before ceding from his old friend to seek out the Clan leader. However his reluctance quickly transformed into something willful, something that turned the ice in his belly to flame and set his shoulders straight and strong as he regarded Fennelsky’s leveling stare. He would not let himself be disparaged by it. Not his condescending blue gaze, not his bodily language that howled for Sand to take his leave, and not his challenging queries. If his heart was right as much as Rowanwing’s intuition, then this was where he was meant to be. It was where he longed to be. And he would not let this tom with a dark, brindled face and the tongue of a weasel let such an ambition perish. ”I will learn.” When Fennelsky showed no immediate response, only a tick of the brow, Sand continued. ”You’re right to say that I know next to nothing of SkyClan, Fennelsky. I;m humbled by this fact. But know that Rowanwing has offered to train me, like he was by you. I can learn your rules, your customs, your traditions - your method of hunting, fighting, protecting. I am no stranger to defending one’s honor, let alone the lives of others. I am not the hapless rogue you see.” His throat throbbed with uncertainty beneath Fennelsky’s calculating visage. It was difficult to tell, even to Sand’s practiced and earnest eye, what exactly the leader was thinking now. ”But what I do know of SkyClan is that it is worth protecting. I see the cats where and while now I see them wary, cautious, even unhappy to see me - I want them to know that I can and will protect them when the time comes. I want to be able to. But I cannot do that without your help.” The individual hairs on Sand’s tail tip were quivering where they rested atop his neatly sat paws. He sat ramrod straight, his neck arced high and his head higher; he carried not the illusion of a pompous and beseeching loner in his wake - but a warrior keen to learn how to be what Rowanwing had become: protective, diligent… wanted. Needed. The time between Sand’s case and Fennelsky’s response stretched for what felt like eons. The drizzle fell thin but implacable over them, filling their ears with the whispers of mist and logging their short pelts with cool moisture. Sand felt, for a moment, that the eyes of the entire gully were focused on his back. They may very well have been, but he did not want to break the contact he had with the silent Fennelsky to check as such. At long last did Fennelsky finally placate, though he looked no more receptive of Sand than when he had first discovered him with Astertail and Lionbee. ”Very well,” the tabby tom rumbled. ”You may stay in this gully while you prove you are capable of sustaining a warrior’s life. You will not take on a Clan name until your extensive warrior training is completed and Rowanwing will be responsible for you.” The thought glinted in the leader’s gaze, like it amused him to see an elder tom assigned to a mentor. ”You will train as a fernclaw and a fernclaw only. The Skyway, to you, and all leafclaw orientations are off-limits. Do we understand, Sand?” Sand could only silently nod, his throat too bound up in knots of gratitude to offer a proper response. ”Good,” Fennelsky grunted. ”But know this. I do this to prove to SkyClan that I can be as kind and as tolerant a leader as the late Sunsky was. Should you take any wrong stride, make any ill impression on any cat within SkyClan and they come to me, you will be removed. If you fail, you will be removed. Can you accept these terms?” “I can.” “Then we’re through. Leave my den. You will sleep in the brambles of the warriors’ den; ask where it is, if you must. You will tell a SkyClan warrior where you are going and when, whenever you leave this gully.” Sand felt slighted by Fennelsky’s cool words. Did the leader think him a child, unworthy and unwilling to adhere to basic etiquette? “Thank you, Fennelsky,” he said nonetheless, rising to his thin limbs and dipping his head, however curtly, to the leader. When he turned, multiple upon multiple sets of eyes darted hastily away - but just as many stayed, focused on him - some curious, some wary... some baleful. He swallowed thickly as he began the downward descent to the camp floor in pursuit of Rowanwing. Despite the dampened spirit that Fennelsky had left him with, Sand’s eyes were bright. Brighter than they had been in many, many years - perhaps, they were the brightest they had ever been. SkyClan was his charge now as much as he was theirs. And he was ready.
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