Who we are [c]

Mother Tongue
Forest Tongue

Dirty looks were cast in his direction, but he was far too occupied with ripping into a bright blue bird now stained red. With its beautiful feathers pulled and placed aside, he muttered a thanks for it's life in-between mouthfuls. His dad always told him that the God of Life - the Sun - wouldn't pass a good word onto the God of Death - the Moon - if he failed to give thanks for even the gift of food.

He wondered, briefly, if the cats here would even get an afterlife when he never heard any of them give thanks before their meal. Not that they would have ever wanted to learn. Which made him better than them, actually. "Aurelia! Over here!" His feral tongue startled some nearby warriors, but amber eyes were focused only on the cat he considered to be an auntie of sorts.

Aurelia glanced up at the sound of her name to find Vinepaw tearing into a bird. She knew that his use of their language drew some unfriendly looks, and her tail flicked once in irritation with them. The clan cats were simply too close-minded to understand, but Vinepaw and his siblings would be raised as properly as Aurelia could help with.

"Hello, Vinepaw." Aurelia padded towards the cat she considered in the same manner as one of her own kits with a purr. "How are you?"

Mother Tongue
Forest Tongue

Having an older cat respond in the language his father held dear made Vinepaw's pelt rumble with a hearty purr. Sure, his siblings and the other feral kits knew the language. But it hit different when someone he looked up to returned the feral-tongue. It was comforting and made it easy to drown out the weak-minded warriors of ThunderClan. "Starving." He groaned, the hollowed corpse of a rabbit picked clean laying to the side, the de-feathered bird currently in his bloody paws, about to suffer the same fate. "Want to join me? A warrior with a nasty scar on her face just dropped a few plump birds earlier." She never cast any dirty looks in his or his siblings direction, but she never shared a smile or a simple greeting with him, either.

It wasn't like he really cared about anyone else but his own blood and the two she-cats that hung out with his dad and their kits, but he hadn't actually bothered asking why until now. "Aurelia... Why do they not like us here? We do everything that they do, yet they glare at us for speaking differently. Why does it matter?"

Aurelia smiled at the response. Vinepaw and his siblings were growing quickly, to see one of them not hungry would be a shock.

"Alright," Aurelia was always glad to join one of the kits she and her companions had raised. The Thunderclanners were fine, of course, but it was still easier to speak with those who shared their language and beliefs, which the warriors... Did not. The golden spotted tabby was quick to snag a small bird from the pile, returning to sit by Vinepaw.

An ear flicked at his question, and she sighed, "It doesn't matter, and it shouldn't, to them." She muttered, "We are different. Faster, stronger, smarter. Our language too, is something they don't understand and most will not try to understand. They fear and despise what they don't know, even if you are being raised among them with the clans' way of doing things." The older she-cat began to meticulously pluck the feathers from her bird, then continued. "There is little to do about it, save for making them see they are wrong. For me, that's far too much effort to go through for cats I don't care about." She shrugged.