"Son."
The words crackled through the air, sharp as lightning on a dry greenleaf day. Slowly, the scene came into focus. It was foreign and unfamiliar but warm and inviting. A sense of belonging transcended the bounds of normalcy, seeping into the speckled landscape. Everything shimmered and pulsed, breathing with the life of the stars. Such an otherworldly experience it was to be standing in a place such as this, especially in stark contrast to the vivid reality of the forest below.
Underneath an oak was a large figure. It's eyes were the most vibrant of the otherwise unimpressive creature. Somehow, even with the dusting of stars, its coat was little more than a mess of pale brown tabby hues. Massive paws and protruding teeth were reminiscent of the new comer, betraying the circumstances of their relationship. Despite the fact that he was hardly a being of intensive thought, the tom quickly found the flicker of a notion.
He looks like Ferretnose.
There was the faintest of smiles, causing the fangs to graze scars that had been worried into a memory of flesh over a life time. Nothing made more sense than that simple fact, combined with the idea that perhaps this young tom also bore an appearance to his own likeness. Beartooth drank in the oversized pads and obvious fangs. In life, he had grown to fine such disdain for the disfigurations but as he stared down the bridge of his nose and screwed his gaze for to truly drink it all in... it occurred to him that nothing could look more perfect than it did in that moment.
Moons of undue burden had stretched themselves across the warrior's shoulders, hunching them forward and threatening to fall him into the earth. But the ever expressive gaze, bearing the weight of all of his emotions, light up in a way it hardly had before. He straightened to better regard the tom. Perhaps for the first time ever, Beartooth looked like more than a broken mass, suffering to exist beneath his own weight and that pressed into him by the pressures of reality. The afterlife had done little to ease such things, and yet, all it took was a mere glance upon the sight of his precious son; the splitting image of his own beastly form, transformed into something so inexplicably beautiful.
Glistening tears prickled at the fringes of his vision, threatening to blur it all. Beartooth sank his teeth into his lower lip, once more brushing the memory of worried scars. But this was something that couldn't be missed, not even in an eternity that was to come.
There was a weight at his side, pressing closer at the notice of tears... the slim frame of a much smaller tom. Beartooth welcomed the comfort even if he hardly paused to glance down. Instead, the quivering smile began to further part his maw and a broken purr rumbled in his chest, mixed with what could only be considered a soft sob. When his voice rose into the still air once again, it was just as rough as it had been in life, raw with emotion encompassed in such a short span. His head tilted slightly, inviting Beecloud forward and into the beautiful forever.
"I'm so proud."
