ooc; follow up to
this topic.
It had felt like the wind had been knocked out his lungs upon the realization everyone was gone. The camp was empty. If it hadn't been for the many worn paths and network of dens, Chad might had questioned if he had found the right place. Instead, the young tom had resigned himself to a slow acceptance and struggled to work his way back onto his paws.
A pawful of sunrises and sunsets had passed since he had stumbled into the abandoned Thunderclan camp. During that time, life had improved only marginally. Chad was not well-equipped to deal with his own wounds beyond basic cleaning. His pelt still ached and burned from the various memories of claw and teeth. Worst of all was his eye and a hindpaw that made hunting an absolute pain. He'd never been the most skilled hunter to begin with so this only made his situation exponential worse. But it was a relentless persistence that he'd inherited from his bloodline, one that had carried him through the past moon's perilous trek, and one that kept him pressing forward despite the sinking ball of ice lodging itself in his gut.
Admittedly, the tom felt so entirely mousebrained to the point he wanted to strike himself down over the boar-headedness that caused this circumstance. He'd set out to find a home and a place to discover himself, only to be beaten down time and time again, ultimately ending in a failure. The one thing that had him pressing forward was a feral need for survival. At the very least, this temporary shelter provided a place away from the very real dangers of the world that he had discovered over time. Dens helped to stave off the cold winds and predators generally seemed to stray away. It was the longest that he had been able to stay in one location.
Chad's days were currently spent doing what he could to keep himself as functional as possible. With prey hard to come by and his physical state far from ideal, that had been the most painstaking process. The most useful tactic he'd come by was hauling his carcass up onto a rock and waiting for some unsuspecting creature to wander through, taking the pressure of his lack of ability to leap. This had worked once so far. His other catches consisted of a rabbit that he had managed to nab from a pure stroke of luck, two predators distracted in combat over the catch, and bird that he had found already dead around the base of a tree. Eating it likely wasn't the brightest idea but given the circumstances, he'd had little option.
Slowly, the brown and white-furred tom had managed to drag a few pine branches back to the camp and piled them off to the side, near the most sheltered of the den entrances. Underneath, with a sparse encasing of snow, was the half-eaten bird. Also hidden there was the rabbit. His stomach growled angrily. As much as Chad wanted to scarf down more food, the small bits of robin he'd plucked at had left him feeling nauseous.
"
So, what now then?"
Words echoed into the empty clearing. He lay near the entrance of the den with his chin rested gingerly on his forepaws. His injured paw splayed out behind him and his one eye was still slightly squinted from the swelling of another ill-fated encounter. Clans were supposed to have medicine cats and he could not stop cursing over the fact there was not one here now. The only thing in Thunderclan's camp was a half-starved, weak, young featherbrain. He'd live another day, and the day after that. But beyond that? He wasn't sure. It was an odd thing to be faced with his own mortality at such a young age. Not that he hadn't already entertained such things over the past moon, but at the end of the thought previously, there had hope for the future and security of Thunderclan. Now, the only thing he could rely on was his own resilience.
"
Not much a reassuring thought to know I am all that I have left. Starclan, if only they could see me now. I'm not sure if concern or a lecture would come first..." Chad sighed, rolling his eyes slightly, "
Don't worry mom and dad, I'm only half-dead, not all the way there."
Of course, the thought had already occurred to him to head back to the stone den but there were several challenges there. One, he wasn't sure he remembered the way on account of hardly making it here in the first place, and two, this was certainly no shape to travel in. Chad was stuck. Condemned to a prison of his own design and ignorant youth. He felt miserable on almost every level, a feeling that turned to bitterness the more his pelt was tousled by the wind.
Pulling back into the den and away from the breeze, he twisted about trying to find a comfortable position to get some rest in. Stray feathers from the bird had been strewn about the nest and stirred with his writhing. Chad tried not to think about prey as it only worsened the upset of his stomach, instead leaning into the comfort of the down and blinking several times as he glanced out the wide opening and into the nighttime.
It was hard to admit that in that moment, he dearly missed his parents.
