[ti]Private[/ti]Demon Days

[mewmehh]

Warm orange light bathed the forest floor as a sleek, pale form slipped through the soft undergrowth beneath the setting sun. Milkberry's neck seemed like rubber as she swished her head around to face all the directions at once as best as she could, the fur along her neck bristled slightly. It was her first real patrol after having been flushed from Mothclan during the wildfire, and it was around Mistclan's territory no less. The warrior didn't really know what to expect out in the openness of the unfamiliar woodland.

It had caught her by surprise when she had been approached by Dogear and Batstrike regarding daily patrols. Perhaps tired from all the extra work, Mistclan appeared to need some help and the Mothclan she-cat was thrown together into a ragtag hunting patrol with a warrior from Rootclan just as unlucky as she as well as a young warrior from Mistclan to guide them. Milkberry soon found once they reached the woodland how much of a mouse their guide was; Miredawn had been picked to chaperone the patrol, but as they arrived, she seemed to teeter off on her own in silence, abandoning Milkberry and Brittlebark. Left alone to their own devices, the seal-point warrior simply offered a curt nod to her companion and began her own hunt.

Still, she didn't want to run off too much. Yes, Milkberry felt awkward and vulnerable in the unfamiliar company and territory and wanted to get away, but she was also a warrior of Mothclan and they weren't the kind to get scared. Heralded as the strongest clan, she had the responsibility of representing Mothclan appropriately before all the rest. So instead of ducking off too far, the Mothclan warrior kept rather close to Brittlebark.

The evening air was hot and wet and it fueled her growing irritation at her lack of success. It was sweltering and it seemed the prey knew better than to be running even this late into the day, thus there seemed to be little to hunt. Spitting a curse under her breath, berry-blue eyes flicked angrily and the pointed she-cat sunk her claws into the earth. The softness of the ground, too, was foreign and hissing, she snatched her paw back. Snapping her head to look up at the sky, a nervous jolt sparked its way down her spine as even the familiar sky glowed ominously like firelight. Choking down her fear and feelings, Milkberry steeled her gaze and continued onward. Between her failure to find anything, the sheer exhausting of being cramped in Mistclan, and her continued trauma from the fire and what came of it, the warrior was all sorts of emotional.

[LupTacco]

The shadows of the trees laced the ground like cast bones, each burning orange gap between them like the eyes of some vast predator ready to snag anything into its jaws. The woods here were so different from any he had ever known, different even from the still-foreign new home of his in RootClan. There he could at least pause and listen to the pines, looking out over the flat, thin grasses and brown stones- or retreat into the complex darkness of the camp itself. Here, though, nowhere felt truly safe. The trees were all at once too close together, the spaces between choked by undergrowth, and yet so far apart, leading him to keep glancing upward in fear of an eagle or a daring hawk.

Making matters worse, there wasn't just the local escort, but that she-cat from MothClan, too. As if he wasn't on edge already, constantly checking himself for signs of disease and praying to the land on behalf of his sick clan and hoping against all else that peace held up, here he was walking side by side with a stranger- one who was walking a little close for comfort. When their guide peeled away on her own, he wasn't sure if that brought him relief or raised further worries; his shoulders could only get so tense, after all. Brittlebark eventually stood alone as Milkberry slipped into the undergrowth, his heart thudding in his ears and drowning out any little sound prey could have possibly made.

Crawling into the bushes himself, his fur prickled against the branches that poked his sides and scratched at his face. How on earth did anyone hunt like this? After seemingly an eternity, he spotted a dark shape dart across the fiery gap between shadows. Acting almost on impulse, he got into a pounce-ready crouch, and the second time he spotted it, he launched himself forward- only to stop himself at the last second, tumbling over his own body as the large rat darted into the bushes with a squeak. Of course he'd find a rat. Shaking, the tom pushed himself to his paws and trotted through the bushes, giving up on hunting, on being stealthy until he spotted Milkberry again. "S-sorry," he muttered, his eyes still wild and his body tense.

[mewmehh]

Blue eyes burned as she sprang up in surprise, to tightly wound up that Brittlebark's display had totally spooked her. Struggling to collect herself as she retracted her claws, Milkberry cleared her throat a little and huffed, "It's fine." There was a bit of an edge to her words, but they were also distant and cool. Almost as if the she-cat were trying to keep herself calm while an inferno blazed inside her. However, she did her best to quell her bristling mood as she deemed it unfair of her to lash out at the cat only trying to do his job. She hadn't overlooked the fact that it had been a rat which crossed the Rootclan tom's path; she was sure he felt the same as she felt about the hue of the sky. She wondered to herself if she'd ever be able to enjoy a sunset every again.

Biting her lip a bit, she returned her focus back to her hunt, and with it returned her itching irritation. She couldn’t understand how Mistclan preferred such a stuffy territory- the moisture from the nearby body of water that crossed the land was enough to make her pelt feel heavy and sticky in the evening air. Mumbling a few curses under her breath, Milkberry continued scraping over the undergrowth until it felt as if she had torn away ever last blade of grass and frond in a pointless effort. Nothing except the mocking rat wanted to their path.

The queen yowled in frustration, clear claws slipping into the earth to pull up clods of dirt in her fury. She knew it was no good, what she was doing, but she couldn’t help it. It took all she could muster not to scream to the stars beginning to bud in the darkening sky at the cruel joke her ancestors seemed all too keen to play on them.

[LupTacco]

He averted his gaze as her own swung around to face him, the pale blue color like ice. In the burning orange landscape, they were like a direct lightning strike against him. Grasping at words but unable to hold onto any, he merely grunted in response, waiting for her momentary fury to subside until she resumed her hunt. Brittlebark tried to do the same, but he swore that damnable rat kept edging into the corners of his vision, mocking him at every step. And that drumming, the constant drumming in his ears- he wished he didn't have any ears at all if it meant never hearing the sound of his own blood rushing through his head ever again.

I can't take this, Brittlebark's claws dug into the trunk of a tree as he watched a lone bird flutter into its branches before immediately fleeing when Milkberry's angered yowl clattered against the scenery. The fur on his spine pricked up, eyes darting around as he searched for- what? He had nothing to key in on. He couldn't attack her, for multiple reasons. His breath hitched as he spotted that rat again, for real this time. With a guttural growl, he was upon it in a flash, slamming it into the ground with a paw twice before taking it in his jaws and throwing it against a tree. As he waited for it to move again and realized it never would, his ragged breathing slowed, rage replaced by cold dread. This wasn't hunting anymore. It had been plain cruelty, and he'd allow it to to be done by his own paws.

"I... uh..." Brittlebark gulped, glancing to Milkberry in a daze, "What's wrong with us?"