Whispering Weapons (Open)

Dawnpaw had found the heat too unbearable during the day to do too much, and Blossomstep must have felt the same way. Their training had slowed as the creek ran dry. Less and less things were available to hunt. The only consistent prey around were songbirds, which was good enough for most Skyclan cats. The night had settled on the forest, but Dawnpaw still found the apprentice den too warm to sleep in. He stepped out of camp and silently wandered off on his own. His brain was buzzing. The echoes of a thousand voices chimed away in his head. It wasn't literal, but something stirred him to travel to the Great Ridge. Dawnpaw inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly at the sight of the world below him. His cold clue eyes scanned the horizon, lands far away in the distance, that he would never be able to wander to. At least, not while he remained loyal to his clan. The air was only mildly warm and humid, but at least it was manageable without the sun beating down on him from above.

Dawnpaw sat at the edge of the Great Ridge, and a sense of reveling serenity washed over him. It was enough to calm the beast inside that typically raged and thrashed within him and urged him to act upon his lowest instincts. The stars were out in full without a cloud in the sky. His eyes gazed at the smiling crescent moon above him as he bathed in the little pale light that it offered. It was enough, from the moon and the stars, to cause the silvery-white parts of his pelt to shimmer like metallic threads when the breeze would blow. Dawnpaw couldn't see it or notice, but it was almost like he was coated in stars like one of the Starclan warriors that he had yet to meet.

"If you cared about us..." Dawnpaw whispered to the sky. "You wouldn't be doing this." His voice was soft as a song, but the expression on his face was twisted in a silent frustration and worry. For several moments he listened to the silence of the night. Even the nightsongs of the crickets were disappearing as they died by the thousands to the merciless heat and little water. Is this all my fault? He wondered as he stared into the night. Would Starclan be so cruel as to punish an entire forest, for the thoughts and actions of one cat? Of course, no answer came to him. He was not a medicine cat. Starclan only ever spoke to them or called them, did they not? Well Dawnpaw had no intention of becoming a medicine cat, so the silence of Starclan and his ancestors would have to be enough of an answer for the rest of his life. Screw them then.

A wind blew by, hot and even dry in comparison to the bit of humidity the night still offered. Dawnpaw didn't move. He sat there and began to conjure words in his mind... various small words that he transformed over time into bigger words. Red became crimson. Black became obsidian. Dry became sun-baked. Death became demise. Life became entity.... For hours Dawnpaw sat there in silence, and for a time, his worries were eased as he distracted himself with more impressive words for simple words used every day. What if he started talking like that? How would other cats react to him; Those he knew and those he had yet to meet? Perhaps he'd try it, but he knew he would have to work harder to make them make sense.

Weaving together beautiful and horrible words together in sentences... Words themselves had the power to uplift as easily as they could bring down.

"Day-break ascends..." He whispered to himself, testing the different words on his tongue as the first rays of the sun barely became visible in the distance. "...and the darkness plummets." His tail tip twitched. He loved it. A sense of peace wrapped itself lovingly around the young tom's soul. He needed to do this more often, but he would need to be alone to focus on it. He would need to be away from the distractions of his clan in order to perfect his words and gild his tongue to be more silver...

"Is there a word for what this is?" He wondered out loud. What was it called when words were woven together to tell a story or to make others listen?

What was it called....

Pale streaks of dusk littered the sky, blue turning into violet turning into a midnight navy. During this, Redfall sat on guard at the camp's entrance, not caring about much other than when he would finally be relieved from his duty and this terrible, scorching heat. After what felt like eons of agony, another warrior came for the night shift. It was full-on dark now, and the ginger tabby prepared to catch up on much-needed sleep... when he saw a cream and white pelt slip out. Dawnpaw.

The arrogant apprentice. Redfall didn't trust apprentices, considering the decisions he'd made as one. And for one like Dawnpaw... a soft growl emitted from his throat as he padded after the apprentice, who was heading towards the Great Ridge. With his moons of experience, the warrior knew a few shortcuts. Bounding silently among the leafy canopy, the trees began to thin out closer to the ridge. Redfall stopped in a particularly leafy one, hiding his ginger pelt. He crouched down, eyes locking onto Dawnpaw, ears pricked. He didn't seem to be doing much. The ginger tabby dropped down from the tree silently and padded up until he was right behind Dawnpaw. The wind was helping him, not bringing his scent towards the apprentice. Redfall was never one to pass down an opportunity for something like this...

"Don't know, don't care. However, there is a word for what you'll be doing after I tell your parents about this: elder duty. You'll love the smells, I'm sure."

Dawnpaw definitely flinched and his tail fluffed when Redfall spoke, but upon seeing who it was, his eyes went back to their usual, cocky stare and his fur lie flat. Still, it was something that he intended to remember later: Be more aware of your surroundings. He inhaled deeply to calm himself, but it wasn't long before he went right back into a sitting position and his eyes looked out across the ridge.

"Oh, aren't you as sharp as ever." He said, almost dismissively. "First off, Elder Duty is two words, not one." Stars, do they at least have warriors in Skyclan that can count and keep up with a conversation? I would have drown them all as apprentices if I ever saw such cats that exhibited such poor mental capacity. "Second of all, you have me confused with my father. He's the one that vomits when he smells something mildly nasty. And third..." Dawn paw looked over his shoulder with a lazy smirk. "Go ahead. Go tell them. The only thing I'll get in trouble for, is talking down to you." And with that, Dawnpaw took his eyes off of Redfall and wrapped his tail around his paws.

He couldn't wait to see how the impulsive hot head handled himself now.

Okay then. Dawnpaw was in for it.

Redfall reclined onto his haunches, studying the cocky little bastard before him before raising his head to the sky and sighing. "You've got nerve, I'll give you that. And good, disrespecting a Clanmate is going to get a much worse punishment than sneaking out at night... but you've done things worse than this, haven't you," he mused, stalking around Dawnpaw. Green eyes met blue as Redfall tilted his head, amazed at how he was actually keeping calm for this. Dawnpaw's demeanor was rubbing off on him, it seemed. "Not believing in StarClan, hm? Or not caring? Yep, heard that. See, a lot of things are piling up on you. Won't tell anyone about it... for now." He stopped pacing around and sat down, tail thumping the ground. "Eh, can't deny it myself. StarClan are a bunch of ancient jerks, but they've saved this forest and this Clan."

Dawnpaw refused to even look at Redfall, though his ears swiveled to keep track of where the warrior was. Honestly, he was just waiting to feel claws in his back or teeth in his scruff. When none of that came, he was a bit disappointed. He could handle the butt-whooping of his life if it meant Redfall would be torn to shreds by the rest of the clan, especially Bloodstrike and Smokefeather. Oh well... Dawnpaw froze, however, when Redfall accused him of doing worse things. Dawnpaw's heart quickened, thunder in his chest and lightning in his veins. What does he know? The birds I plucked and let live? The mice I bit the paws off and threw in the river? The grasshoppers whose legs I pulled off and threw to birds? The fight with my sister? Rosepaw? That I went into Thunderclan territory? That I was turning others away from Starclan and the Warrior Code??? What does he know??? And then Redfall's words came...

Dawnpaw actually looked at him with the most sincere You've got to be joking... face that he'd ever had. He didn't think anyone could make him do that but Beechpaw. He continued to just stare at him, scolding himself for actually giving Redfall any credit as to what he might know. Of course he had no idea... if Bloodstrike and Smokefeather hadn't figured it out, who would? Certainly not this mouse-brain... He thought to himself, but he let Redfall finish.

Dawnpaw let out the loudest, longest and one of the most truly exhausted-sounding sighs that he had released from his lips in quite some time.

"Redfall... you don't like me, and that is fine. Few cats do. But to go and make up things is just... aren't you an adult?" He paused, but not long enough to allow much of an answer. If Redfall was speaking he immediately began talking over him. "I only said that if Starclan cared about us, they wouldn't be causing a drought. I said nothing about not believing or not caring." Though for once you're not wrong. I suppose statistically speaking you'd have to be right about something sometime... Though he definitely kept that to himself.

"I really think your resentment towards me is because we... left a bad taste in each other's mouths the last time we talked... however long ago that was." He rotated his paws around so that his hind-end would follow suit, and actually faced Redfall and looked him in the eye now. "So here, since we will probably have to fight together sometime or go on patrols together.... I'm sorry. You misunderstood our conversation the first time we spoke, and I should have been more mature and simply corrected you and apologized for the confusion." He paused now, actually meaning those words. Whether or not he liked Redfall or he him, the fact remained that they would probably need one another at some point. Dawnpaw didn't need to make his own life any more difficult than he already had.

"I personally, have very little in the way of an opinion of Starclan, since I'm only an apprentice. I follow the code to the best of my ability, and that is all I can do for now. Your opinion of them... well, that's how you feel. Were you about to tell me a story or...?"