The Silver Ash [private w/Ashkit]

[Snakepaw]

Snakepaw was spread out in the shadow of a furnished pine, in his usual relaxed and nonchalant way. The pine needles made a thick if somewhat prickly nest. The pure-black apprentice seemed completely asleep; but even with his eyes closed and his mind fogged with sleep, his sense of hearing was in permanent alert. Was he asleep...? He himself didn't really know.

[Ashkit]

The rushing air; the weightless feeling; followed by the soft and almost soundless thud. Ashkit's deep sapphire eyes looked back up at the branch in the pine tree with satisfaction. Getting down from the trees was getting easier by the day. Even better, no one ever bothered to search the trees! The only one that knew he was ever up in the trees was Snakepaw; and Ashkit knew that the apprentice wasn't about to say anything. This meant he could sneak out of camp for hours on end without being bothered. Until I hit the ground that is. The grey tom was learning that the ground was not the safest place to be... when your clan was searching for you.

Clan. The word made Ashkit snort with irritation as he leaned against the pine. Ever since the day RiverClan had asked for help, things had never been the same in his eyes. Twilightstar's words still rang in his head whenever anyone looked at him.

"You have a big strength, you aren't afraid to speak your mind," Ashkit had been furious at his leader. Sure RiverClan was a rival, but he knew that the right thing to do was help them. Yet no one would listen to the kits. Ash had gotten angry... defiant. "but your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness."

Ashkit's sapphire eyes stared out across the ShadowClan territory, thinking and fuming over words that had been said almost a moon ago. The sun was slowly on it's way down from the center point in the sky; although when he was on the ground, the grey kit had some trouble telling where the sun was. The thick foliage blocked out most of the sunlight in his clan's territory. The only way to see the sun was to go up, or to the edge of the territory by the lake.

The silence dragged on as the grey kit's thoughts were filled with irritation. It wasn't a weakness to speak out against his leader; Twilightstar had been narrow minded. Everyone knew that the clans balanced off of each other. ShadowClan couldn't survive without the other three. And he had been right in the end! [since ShadowClan did go to RiverClan's aid] Yet everyone still treated him like a lowly kit. Why? He understood everything they did. ShadowClan was his home too. Why treat him like this? Was something as pointless as age keeping them from seeing the truth in his words? Or did they even hear him at all? A long, irritated sigh broke through the silence barrier, and the small kit shook his head. Their philosophy was something he would never be able to understand...

[Snakepaw]

Thud. Snakepaw's ears flickered; he raised his head, focused the grey kit into his field of vision and looked with mild interest as the kit held his internal monologue. He was getting desinterested when an irritated sigh broke out from the kit, and the black-pelted apprentice lay his head on his paws, feeling bored.

[Ashkit]

There was a slight rustle in the leaves next to him that broke Ashkit's concentration. Whipping around, he had expected to see someone like Bushtail or his sister; however, the jet black pelt told a different story. "Ohh..." He sighed, relaxing his I'm-gonna-bolt-up-this-tree stance. With curious sapphire eyes, the kit moved closer to the apprentice and sat down. "What are you doing here?," He asked, trying to forget his irritation in conversation. Maybe if Snakepaw could keep him talking, he wouldn't be so irritated with the rest of his clan...


[no muse for him either... sorry]

[Snakepaw]

Snakepaw raised his head and yawned. Had he been sleeping? His mind didn't feel fogged up like they said it did after sleep. His mind had never felt fogged up; it was always crystal clear and sharp as a knife. Snakepaw began to wonder... had he ever slept in his life? Had that been the first time? Oh, he had dozed before, and napped as a kit, but had he ever slept... Snakepaw mentally shook himself: he was getting off track.
Had he ever been off track before?
Why was he suddenly asking himself such stupid questions?
Snakepaw turned his icy gaze to the kit. "What do you feel... after you've slept?"

[Ashkit]

The silver kit's eyes furrowed at the unexpected question. "Umm..." He stopped for a moment, slightly puzzled. What did it feel like after he slept? Nice? Depending on how much sleep he had gotten the night before. Sometimes, it felt like he hadn't slept at all; depending on what he had dreamed about or if it had been a light sleep. I spend half my time sleeping, you'd think I'd know. Ashkit laughed slightly at his own thoughts, but quickly stopped. The apprentice was probably giving him a weird look or something...

His sapphire gaze flickered back to Snakepaw, a small grin replacing the concentrated expression. "Usually... well nice." He tilted his head slightly at his own words. There had to be an better way to explain it. The silver kit let out a deep sigh and leaned back on his hind legs, looking up at the cluster of tree leaves. "Sometimes, it feels nice. Like you get all this energy from just closing your eyes. Other times, depending on what type of night I had, I don't feel like I slept at all and feel even more tired waking up then I did going to sleep." Ash looked back down at Snakepaw curiously, his front paws falling genitally back onto the forest floor. "Is that what you meant?" He asked, wondering if he had even answered the question correctly.

[Snakepaw]

Had Snakepaw been the expressive or emotional kind, he would have nodded to himself and layed his head on his paws, maybe with a sigh. But Snakepaw just stared unblinkingly at Ashkit. So I haven't slept. He felt something between relief and regret, as if the two parts of him were fighting out whether sleep was good or bad. He could almost hear the voices again, which meant that if the two voices were present then the second one must be getting stronger.
Had he really just been analyzing voices?
Snakepaw's heart hardened and the voices seemed to stop. He hated things. He hated life. He hated pure cats. He despised evil cats. He hated the water, he hated the warmth of summer and the cold of winter.
He was sovereign over them all. They were at his feet, under his power, pliant to his will. The cold could be driven through the enemy's heart. The warmth could tire another cat long before Snakepaw's stamina ran out. Pure cats could be bent at will, evil cats would be crushed by his strength. Life couldn't wind its icy patterns around him. Love couldn't catch him into its fiery ring.

The night-black tom suddenly felt very tired, but Snakepaw didn't feel anything. The night-black tom wanted to brush the worried kit's shoulder with the tip of his tail; Snakepaw was cold and unsensitive inside. Life was stupid; and life was good.
Snakepaw was used to play it nice with others; be nice, be sweet, be sensitive, it pays off. But, for some strange reason, he was always more himself in the presence of the kit. He... didn't pose any threat. It was like a little voice that changed him from the clash between the two other wretched voices.
He suddenly realised that he didn't hate that little voice.

"Tell me," Snakepaw said, "What you think of your family."

[Ashkit]

The silver kit hadn't noticed Snakepaw's mental conversation because his mind had drifted... again. His sapphire gaze had caught sight of a pigeon, on a very high branch, about two pines over. "What you think of your family." In his mind, Ash had been finding ways to get to the pigeon without scaring it away. The question threw him off track- and the pigeon was forgotten. His family... "Do you mean the clan? Or my blood family?" Ashkit asked, turning his attention back to the black apprentice. Normally, cats who didn't have any blood relatives called their clan their family. Even for Ashkit, the distinction between family and clan seemed to get blurred often. They all seemed to have the same attributes to them: Annoying at times, caring sometimes... some of them were even fun to be around. Clan and family were almost the same thing in his book. The only difference he could think of was blood; sharing the same mother and what not. Even then, he could think of other kits that had "adopted" mothers. Although he had some disagreements with how things were run... he still considered most of them his "family."

[bleh...]

[Snakepaw]

[nice, I liked it ^^]

"Whichever," said Snakepaw, flicking his tail and looking away, to the pigeon which had earlier attracted the kit's attention. For a second he thought the silly bird was staring at him; but he mentally shook himself. Crows were known to stare. Not pigeons. Maybe he was really beginning to loose his mind.
Blood and Clan. What difference? Much. One could be of noble warrior blood and be exiled as a rogue, or one could have filthy blood and be considered as a Clan member. By most, at least. Tainted blood was a worse sacrilege to Snakepaw's eyes than being a bred loner. At least the loner had some pride. Scum. If ever he became leader, he would make sure they knew what being a true ShadowClan Warrior stood for.
Not if.
When.

[Ashkit]

Ashkit twitched his whiskers as he tried to think of a way to explain both. How did you explain something like family and clan to someone? ...these were things that you could only understand through personal experience. I'm not going to come close to explaining this one right. His sapphire eyes pulled together in deep concentration as he began his "explanation." "The clan is... kinda like a family- which is why I asked in the first place." His tone was calm, but you could see how he struggled to put his thoughts into words from his facial expressions. His head turned toward the direction of the camp, needing some incentive to finish explaining. "They're there for each other... well, sometimes. Like the queens who foster kits that aren't theirs. Then there are friends you have within a clan- they kinda feel like family sometimes. Family and clan tend to get blurred often in my mind- but I always know who's my blood and who isn't. I feel more of a connection to my family."

Ash paused for a moment to think again, unthinkingly beginning to claw at the soil. The sun was slowly starting to drop from the middle of the sky- it made the silver kit wonder, for a moment, how long he'd been out of camp. The shadows on the forest floor were now speckled with bits of sunlight here and there, but most of it was farther in toward the lake. You could hear birds chirping high above them, and a light breeze push it's way through the leaves. Then, you heard Ashkit take in a small breath as he began to speak again. "My blood family is pretty "normal," I guess." He meowed. Ash paused for a second and turned to Snakepaw, making sure the apprentice hadn't fallen asleep, before continuing. "My mom gets on my case a lot about the things I do. My siblings are kinda boring. And--" He paused again, tilting his head. Ashkit had just realized something... "I don't know who my father is actually." The kit finished, his gaze looking out into the forest.

His tone was very distant. Ashkit had never asked about his father... ever. The topic had never came up with his mother, and none of his other siblings had bothered to ask. Guess with my always-getting-into-trouble, no one ever had time to think about it. Of course, he did have a father- question was who?

[DUN DUN DA!!! xD lol, sorry. Sorrelfur was his father, but that member is no longer active. He was a member of ThunderClan =0... this may be a good "plot" for Bells and me... and whomever else rps the other siblings...]

[Snakepaw]

[OMG! I love drama! Gimme gimme! *reaches out for invisible drama in the air* ^^]

"Yes... siblings are often boring. They never seem to have a long view of things. always living in the present, when the most powerful thing is the future," the black apprentice said with slight disdain. Something like sympathy stirred in Snakepaw's heart. Not exactly sympathy or comprehension, but close enough. He hadn't known his father either. It was as if, deep down, this little voice wasn't so much a thing anymore; but hard-driven instincts still held him in an iron grasp, and Snakepaw ignored the feeling - he didn't want to see it.
"I never knew who my father was either," he said before his instincts could edit and discard it. Somehow, a kind of gentleness manadged to seep into his voice, although his icy eyes remained unchanged.

[dunno where I'm goinf with this... probably to a Better Snake, for a start xD]

[Ashkit]

"I never knew who my father was either." The silver kit's head was still staring up at the canopy of leaves, but he gave an absent minded nod. A million questions were now running through his head. Why hadn't Bushtail mentioned his father? Did he die? Was he still alive? Did he even care that his kits knew nothing about him?

Ashkit's eyes furrowed, not being able to see a logical answer to any of his questions. It made no sense- unless his father was dead. But even if he was dead, mom should have mentioned him at one point in time. His sapphire eyes flickered down to the black apprentice's cold expression, not seeing it as cold but more like a...well, Snakepaw expression. "Do you ever wonder who he was?" He asked. The tone of his voice sounded like he was trying to answer the question himself. Why? A million whys running through his mind. "Why he never tried to find you, and why no one ever mentions him... and just... well, why..."

[Snakepaw]

The tip of his black tail was the only think moving in Snakepaw as he thought, his eyes staring blankly ahead. Suddenly, the barriers seemed to fall, and Snakepaw found himself naked in front of himself, without the wall that had been bult around his mind. Strange, forgotten emotions stirred within him, emotions he was almost scared to explore.
For the first time, he looked away - to the tree-tops, the leafy canopy which shaded both he and the kit from prying eyes, from bad weather, from Life.
He closed his eyes, taking in a breath, long, deep, as if breathing in for the first time. The world smelt of pine, the rain was beginning to fall outside, the forest would be wet.
"I never have wondered where he was," he murmured. Then he found himself alone inside his mind again: "Actually... I maybe have. Deep down. When the world felt so lonely, and the wounds were bleeding again..." he hesitated. "I hated him. With all my heart. I still do. I hate him for leaving my mother to die, I hate him for betraying his Clan, I hate him for leaving me alone... I hate him for never coming back, I hate him for never defending me when the world was crumbling around me, I hate him for never being there when..." his voice was low, passionate. Now that he had gotten going, now that the Wall had gone, he could for perhaps the first time think clearly. "I hate my mother, too. I hate her for abandoning the Clan. I hate her for dying. I hate her for leaving. I hate her for not doing anything when Bloodfang was there, I hate her for never leaving me a message, something..." He paused to take his breath. Blood pounding through his veins... He took back a distincted, cold expression. The wall was slowly building itself once more.
"But I must be scaring you," he said. "Otherwise... No, I have never wondered why no one mentioned him. I always assumed that it was because he was unworthy of being spoken of. If I saw him today, I would most probably kill him for being on ShadowClan territory without permission, and never even think twice about who that cat might have been..."

[Ashkit]

What Snakepaw was saying should have made him somewhat frightened, however this wasn't the case. Actually, it was kind of the opposite. Ashkit just sat there, his sapphire eyes locked on the black apprentice's expression as he described how he felt about his parents- what had happened to him. This had to be the longest sentence the grey kit had ever heard him say.

It was kind of nice though, hearing someone else had the same problems as him. It made him feel like he wasn't the only one. But Snakepaw had so much, it made him feel a pang of sympathy for the apprentice. "I'm not scared," He countered after the apprentice had finished, feeling his face flame slightly. "Actually, it feels kind of nice that someone feels the same way... well sort of." How angry he was with Bushtail now- for keeping everything a secret. She should have told him who his father was ages ago, but instead she kept it from everyone. Everyone that mattered.

And then his "father": the tom he had never heard of, or really thought of, before tonight. His father had never even tried to visit him, or his siblings. Didn't even care that he existed. Sure it was a possibility that his father was dead, and possibly had been for a very long time. But deep down, Ash felt like his father had been alive when he had been born. And maybe a while after that. The tom could have stopped in any time, but chose not to. Coward.

"You've kept all that bottled up?," He asked, breaking from his thoughts again. The kit shook his head in frustration. "Although I've barely thought about the tom, I don't think I could have gone that long keeping it all secret and what not." Keeping quiet about it period. Then again, he did have trouble keeping his mouth shut about the simplest things. Maybe it was just him...

[Snakepaw]

The black tom snorted and raised his eyes to the sky. "Some cat once told me that the strongest trait in a true warrior was to speak little, but speak wisely. Silversand...

That last through was suddenly silenced by another brick in the Wall. It was building itself up... soon the night-black apprentice would be Snakepaw once more, Snakepaw the magician of minds, Snakepaw the killer...
"While most cats feel the need to share everything, he said, his gaze suddenly dropping back to Ashkit's eerie eyes, "I was trained never to speak. His voice was once again low, reassuring like a snake's hiss... but his mind still retained some liberty.

"Don't let go!"

"Pardon me?" said Snakepaw, looking at the kit with the slightest hint of puzzlement on his ever-impassible face.