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>m<

Moon 8

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Halfway around the world lies the one thing that you want

Buried in the ground, hundreds of miles down

Fogfreckle hasn’t stopped shuffling around since sundown. Moonstar may not have her eyes open, nose tucked firmly into her tail, but she can tell that he hasn’t stopped moving because the constant shff shff sound of him shifting around in his nest is driving her to madness. 

Willing sleep to come just a little bit faster, Moonstar flattens her ears as close to her head as she can get them and fluffs her tail up against her face. 

Shff, shff.

Fed up, Moonstar uncurls her tail from her face and sits bolt upright, mouth open to shout at her brother to just lay still already, but Fogfreckle cuts her off by springing quite suddenly to his paws. Having not seen him do much more than curl in a ball for two entire moons, the sight shocks Moonstar into stillness. 

“I can’t,” he meows into the darkness. “I can’t do it. I’m not going to suffocate in this– this– cave for another heartbeat. I’m going hunting.”

Moonstar’s annoyance flees from her immediately, like a mouse slipping from her claws. “Wait–” She scrambles to her paws, panic overtaking her as Fogfreckle reaches around to grab the edge of his cobweb wrappings in his teeth. “Wait, don’t! You can’t– what if your wounds open back up–”

With a wild tug, Fogfreckle rips at his cobwebs, pulling the sticky strands away from his fur. He keeps going, yanking at them, agitation and annoyance etched in the sharp lines of his thin limbs. Moonstar reaches for him, attempts to get him to stop, and Fogfreckle spins around with his hackles fluffed out and swipes at her. Narrowly dodging the reach of his claws, Moonstar gasps, retreating.

For a heartbeat, both cats stare at each other, tension thick in the air between them.

“Stop treating me like I’m a helpless kit,” Fogfreckle spits, torn cobwebs hanging from his jaws. They lay tattered against his white fur in shredded strands. “I’m fine! I don’t need you to– to play medicine cat at me! Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do!”

His words sweep against Moonstar like a cliffside gust, the hurt they bring almost physically pushing her back. “I… I…” Several emotions cycle through her in the space of a single heartbeat, until it finally settles into a pulsing anger that crackles over her pelt like lightning. “I’m only trying to help! I’m looking out for you– we only have each other, in case you’ve forgotten,” she snaps, voice nasty, horrible satisfaction welling within her as the words strike her brother and he recoils. “We left the rest of our family behind, buried under a landslide!”

“As if I could forget!” Fogfreckle explodes. His reflective eyes are almost as sharp as the claws he’s sinking into the earth. “I can’t– I was useless to help them, and I’ve been useless for moons to help you, letting you go out on your own every day, when I’m the only one left who can keep you safe!” 

All of the anger rushes out of Moonstar, fast as a roaring river, as she stares at her brother, heart shattering. 

“I’m just–” he continues, yowls bouncing off of the boulders around them. “Sitting around in this dark hole, doing nothing from sunrise to sunset, wasting time we could be using to find a new camp and you– if something happened– I could lose you, too– Moonstar, I wouldn’t even know–” Fogfreckle breaks off on a hiccuping sob, voice losing its volume as it takes on a shaky quality and he ducks his head, hiding his pained expression from his sister.

Moonstar stares at her brother’s shaking shoulders. Guilt claws at her insides for the words she spat at her brother, the memory of her lost Clanmates sitting like a stone in her throat.

“Fogfreckle… I can handle myself,” Moonstar mews quietly. “I can handle both of us! Look at me,” she says, gesturing to herself with a sweep of her tail. “I’m here, aren’t I? I’m fine! I’ve been hunting for us for moons and I’m fine. You’re the one that’s hurting, and I’m– you need to let me take care of you sometimes, too.”

After a heartbeat of silence, Fogfreckle mews with a wet, broken voice, “you’re an awful excuse for a hunter. But,” he adds, flicking his eyes towards her, “you’re a pretty good sister.”

A bubble of incredulous laughter escapes Moonstar before she can stop it. She can’t even be mad about the hunting bit – he’s right. She hopes he’s right about the sister part, too. She butts her head against her brother’s with a purr.

“I’m supposed to protect you,” Fogfreckle whispers.

“Where did you get that from? We protect each other. I’m sorry for fussing over you so much, just–” Moonstar releases a huff of breath and sits back heavily on her haunches. Her tail swishes the ground. She waits until Fogfreckle sits across from her with a shaky sigh. “I worry about you, too. It doesn’t make you any less brave to need help. I worry about you because I care about you– not because I think you can’t deal with it on your own. Not because I think you’re weak.” Fogfreckle’s mouth twists into a grimace as he casts his eyes to the side, avoiding Moonstar’s gaze. A weak smile lifts the corner of her muzzle. She’ll never get her brother to admit out loud how much stress he puts on himself trying to stay responsible for the both of them, but she knows now. She knows.

She pushes herself to her paws and gestures at Fogfreckle with her tail. “Well, we’re not getting any sleep now. You’re seriously up for hunting?”

Clearly relieved at being rescued from having to talk about his feelings in any further detail, Fogfreckle twists around to pull the remaining shreds of cobwebbing from his back. He licks his fur into place, carefully covering the freshly healed pink marks of where the eagle had sunk its talons into him. “I can hunt. It doesn’t even look that bad anymore, see?”

Moonstar smiles. Thank StarClan she doesn’t have to do a botch job wrapping him with fresh cobwebs anymore; she’s really not cut out for it. 

With a stretch, she pads from under the boulders, pleased beyond relief that they won’t have to spend another night under these suffocating press of rocks. “Let’s go hunting, then.”

///

Don't ever forget, We haven't lost it all, yet.

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RIP to a real one. Also Hazel scaring children in death just like she did in life~

(Mintclan cats are top to bottom: Mistswirl, Shystar, and Sunstorm)

Moon 0

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IT'S MY BOY!!!!!!!! HE IS SO SHAPED and so sad. somebody get this kid a tissue

I drew my friend @nimbusclan 's lil guy Fogpaw today! I love him... just a sad lil guy

#I wonder where they’re gonna go do you have an idea of what territory they’re looking for? @hiddenvalleyclan

YES! I made a map of the territory they'll end up in and everything - though I kinda borked myself by drawing updates 'til now with red rocks, because I decided AFTER I had started drawing the comic that I wanted them to be somewhere familiar to me - a sort've fictional version of the mountain ranges of New England. I hadn't thought much about it while playing, and the game has the mountain setting somewhere with kea and buzzards and venomous snakes and spiders (which New England is not home to, for the most part), so I'll probably just... gently start drawing the scenery more northern and change the animals to match, lmao. I'm keeping the location fictional instead of basing it on a specific place to give myself some leeway, though.

What is Direstrike? Find out next time (NOT)

Moon 0

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Moon 6

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Cold wind whistles through the rocks Moonstar and Fogfreckle are hunched under, bringing the crisp scents of first leaf-fall. With a shiver, Moonstar presses closer to Fogfreckle for warmth, but startles back as he lets out a pained hiss. She rests her gaze on her brother for a moment, eyeing the bristled, spiky fur of his pelt that sticks up around the cobwebs she did her best to wrap him with, stiff with dried blood.

The talon marks that are sunk into his back worry Moonstar. She wishes she had listened better when she was an apprentice, when their old medicine cat, Loudtalon, had been rambling on about herbs. She doesn’t want to try mixing a poultice for her brother in case she gets it wrong; she wouldn't even know where to begin. The most she can do is change his cobwebs when the blood starts to soak through and pray to StarClan that infection doesn’t set in.

She’s been doing her best to keep his wounds clean, but he’ll need new cobwebs soon. With a heavy sigh, she rises to her paws as much as the rocks crushing in around them will allow, her shoulders brushing the ceiling. Her ears have been pinned to her head for so long now that she thinks they may get stuck that way.

Moonstar moves towards Fogfreckle to give his ear an affectionate lick before she leaves, but he ducks away from her, wincing at the movement.

Moonstar halts and pulls back, chin wobbling.

Puffing her fur against the biting wind, unseasonable for this early in leaf-fall, she squeezes her way out of their makeshift den in search of three thing: cobwebs for her brother, fresh-kill for the both of them, and someplace they can finally call home.

With Fogfreckle injured, her search is limited.

Moonstar pads across the mountain, eyes sharp for the movement of prey but mind elsewhere. Before Fogfreckle was confined to his nest to heal from the eagle attack, they were constantly on the move. So far, they haven’t found anywhere that would make for a good camp. They’ve slept in abandoned dens, up in the branches of trees, tucked under scrubbly, thorny bushes – but a place big enough for two cats to sleep is nowhere near large enough for a camp.

They will rebuild NimbusClan. StarClan decreed it – StarClan chose her as leader. It has to be for something, she has to have something, some trait or destiny or something that StarClan can see that she can’t, or they wouldn’t have chosen her. Her stomach churns uncomfortably at the thought.

Her mind strays to worse thoughts, the sharp glide of golden wings slicing through the air a constant in her mind this past moon. She can’t shake how odd it was – sure, it’s not strange that a mother would want to protect her eggs – but the way it shifted its beady black glare from Moonstar to her brother seemed tainted with something more than just a mother’s protection.

With effort, she shakes the subject from her mind and sets to canvassing this section of mountain. She doesn’t want to stray too far from where Fogfreckle is, so she’s been going out in a different direction each day in the hopes she’ll find something suitable. Today, she pokes her head into a shaded clearing of pine trees, only to be met with the blinking eyes of several racoons peering through the needles – sniffs around the opening of a fox den that smells very clearly occupied (hurrying away as quickly and silently as her paws with allow) – and shrinks back into the shadows of a leafy bush when a pair of twolegs turn a corner onto a twolegtrail, speaking loudly in their foreign tongue and likely scaring away all the prey in the area.

She only manages to catch one meager mouse – but that’s fine, because it’s Fogfreckle’s favorite, and with a cobweb-coated twig cradled carefully between her teeth, she doesn’t think she’d be able to carry more than one piece of fresh-kill at the same time, anyways.

Fogfreckle stirs as she presses back into their den, her head angled awkwardly so she can get through with the stick clamped in her jaws. He glances at her as she pushes the mouse towards him, and then looks down at his paws as she sets to working clearing the old cobwebs from his fur. She tries to be gentle, but she’s no good at this medicine cat stuff. Fogfreckle grimaces the entire time and lets his mouse go cold, not sharing a single word with his sister as she rasps a tongue over his wounds, cleaning the dried blood from his fur.

Moonstar goes to sleep when she’s done, stomach rumbling, and tries not to cry.

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Updated the refs for our now-adult MCs!

Moonstar: A pale tabby she-cat, eyes of sunlit ice, medium fur length. Nervous, steady paws. 13m old.

Fogfreckle: A white, unusually spotted (rosette) pale gray tom, cobalt eyes, medium fur length. Daring, good mediator, den builder. 13m old.

"I'm just gonna draw prominent events," I said, "It's not going to be a lot of work because I'm only going to draw big game stuff," I said.

-proceeds to draw 7 panels and 3 pages worth of filler episode-

Moon 5 Part 4

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Fogfreckle’s body hits the ground hard, rolling halfway down the slope as Moonstar slides down after him, pebbles skidding out from under her paws as she rushes to his side.

“Fogfreckle?” Moonstar’s voice wavers as she reaches him in a spray of stones, hovering a scraped paw gently over his bleeding body as she hesitates. He’s just lying there, chest rising and falling shallowly, as blood oozes from thick punctures along his back that stains his pale fur red. Should she roll him over? What if his bones are broken? He’s not dead, by the grace of StarClan, but she’s no medicine cat – she has no idea how close he is to death or how much worse she’ll make it if she tries to move him.

The circling shadow of the eagle drifts over them with another ear-splitting, screeching cry, and Moonstar’s fear makes the decision for her. She grabs Fogfreckle by the scruff of the neck and begins to haul him farther down the slope. She doesn’t want to injure him more than he already is, but she knows it’ll be worse if they’re caught out here on the open mountainside once the larger predators in the area catch scent of his blood and come to investigate.

Fogfreckle doesn’t make a single nose of pain as she pulls him through the dirt. She drags him as far as a tumbled collection of boulders and stones, squeezing into a space between the rocks that is just big enough for Moonstar to fit her body through and drag Fogfreckle in after her. The space is tight, without a lot of room to move, and Moonstar has to swallow panic and bile as the walls seem to press in around them. 

“This is best,” she says aloud to herself, “foxes or fishers can’t reach us in here. It has to be here.” The self-soothing doesn’t do much to abate her claustrophobia, but Fogfreckle makes a pained noise in response to her voice and all thoughts of herself vacate her mind.

Fogfreckle whimpers as Moonstar licks his wounds clean, flinching as she clears dirt from the punctures with her rough tongue. She doesn’t say anything while she works, but she nearly sags in relief with every flinch and whimper from her brother. He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s alive and he’s okay.

“Stay here,” she says at last when she’s cleaned most of the blood and debris from his fur. It’s still oozing sluggishly from his wounds, bright and wet. “I need to find cobwebs. Do you think you broke anything?”

“I don’t think so,” Fogfreckle murmurs, voice weak and faint with exhaustion. 

“Reckless,” Moonstar murmurs back, licking his forehead once. “Alright. Okay. Stay safe. Please, please, stay safe. I’ll get us help, okay? I’ll find someone to help.”

Moonstar scrambles out from under the claustrophobic press of rocks and pelts back up the mountain, swerving trees and boulders and leaping roots as she climbs higher and higher. Panic and grief strangles her thundering heart, pushing her to run faster and faster until her legs are burning. She reaches a break in the pines, a ledge buffeted by the wind, and yowls at the top of her lungs until her voice runs ragged.

“HELP! SOMEBODY, HELP! PLEASE! HELP!”

Her voice echoes back to her across the mountain, mimicking her fear. When it fades, there is only the sound of the mountain. Wind in her ears, the rustle of leaves in the trees, insects that hum in the sun. A sob escapes her, then a full blown wail, and her body collapses beneath her as the lack of response presses against her.

They are alone. At sunrise, she awoke as the leader of this clan, and at sundown she is so terribly, horribly, awfully alone.

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