when the lights go out (meta musings/death[s])

Ooc: Prickle is ded. Also he a bad kitty for trying to murder an NPC because he was amgy with her. Note: she didn’t know he was trying to shove her into the river- she thought he was trying to run from her.

Dawn will definitely be returning. Hen might. If Hen dies I’ll post her death thing here.




The rain fell steadily. A slow pattering sound. It made the rocks beneath his paws slick, hard to stand on. He had never seen the sense of patrolling near the RiverClan border- or the sense of renewing scent marks in such a rain.

Of course, his patrol partner didn’t seem the type of molly to see sense.

Period.

She chattered, through the rain, all about mouse-brained foxing things like, like- mouse-brained foxing things. He wished he could block her out… but no. Apparently the only thing he could hear through this stars-cursed rain was her chattering.

“Close your maw. Let’s just get back to camp, alright?” He muttered, shoving past her.

“Is someone grumpy?” She teased lightly, but he could hear something change in her previously-empty voice. “Did I get under your pelt, you big mouse-brain?”

“Shut. It.” He picked up the pace, but she seemed determined to follow him, like a cat from the Dark Forest.

“I think somebody’s jealous!”

He stopped. His fur bristled.

“Never felt good enough, huh?”

Something deep within him said ‘no, don’t do this, you know she’s just a cruel she-cat. You’ve heard her before, insulting cats-‘

“I saw you looking at Appledapple, wishing you were as skilled as her. Or Stoatfur, wishing you were as logical. Or Minkstar, or Wolfblaze, or anyone other than you. They all have someone that loves them, but you don’t. You’re all alone.”

He hated all those cats- except perhaps his mentor. Her words struck home- despite being a gossip, she was a perceptive gossip. He wished she could just slip into the river and drown-

He wasn’t one to resist temptation. The rocks were so slick, the drizzle so perfectly obscuring their surroundings. She wasn’t even looking at him.

His paws moved before his thought, but he did not resist them. Closer- she wasn’t even looking- they were right next to the river- no one was watching-

And his paws slipped on the treacherous wet rocks.

He caught a glimpse of her shocked and horrified face as he plunged into the icy-cold river. The breath left his lungs. No one would know- they would think he slipped into the river- mouse-brained, clumsy-

They would know he wasn’t worth anything.

His eyes started to drift shut.

No.

He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t let them. He’d show them- show them what he hadn’t even hesitated to attempt to do-

His head broke the water, but he was already far downstream.

The current buffeted him, the cold sapped away the feeling in his paws-

But there was an eddy, a rock that sheltered a small sandbank from the current.

The forests around the river were dark and unfamiliar.

But he was alive.

The water began to freeze onto his pelt. He lay, exhausted, on the sandbar, unprotected from the rain and wind.

He would go back. Show them all.

But first, he would rest… let the cold take him in its freezing embrace…

…one he would never escape.