[this is Part 5 of a backstory I'm writing for Doetuft [formerly Doekit, and Doepaw of Thunderclan] - Find Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 here [
A Time of Torment ] [
The Wails of Distress ] [
The Power from Within ] [
Memories of Time Past] ]
Part 5
A purpose to find
Slowly she was learning. And recovering. And putting every single broken and shattered piece together back where they belonged. It hurt. But… what didn’t hurt at this point? She’d… she’d survived the worst of winter, the worst of leafbare, and had come out of it still alive. It wasn’t to say that the snow had given up its grasp on the frozen earth, it wasn’t to deny the fact that she was still at risk of dying from starvation, from frostbite, from the cold and blistering wind. But it gave her hope. Hope she so desperately needed and longed for. Hope that brought her comfort and everything she longed for. It was true, progress was slow. But wasn’t was slow? Recovering was slow, it took its time. Breathing was slow, preserving energy for the days to come and even burning energy and her metabolism had gone down as she moved less and less. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. But it also… had been.
Sagefeather’s words had become more and more effective and Doepaw often woke up in a cold sweat, panic evident in her breathing as she tried her best to hold the memories at bay. Everything hurt, and everything broke and those days there was nothing she could do against it but breathe and take a day where she just… existed. It seemed it was the majority of what she’d been doing for the past… time, she’d spent in the burrow. Existing. She wasn’t living, anymore was she? It was just… survival. And surviving wasn’t living, or at least that was what Doepaw believed. She needed to find a purpose, find a need to STOP existing and start living her life. But it was so incredibly hard, it wasn’t just something you said you were going to do and then you did it. It would be progress, progress over longer periods of time that took her from the rock bottom of which she were at, to the steps that would lead her further up and towards where she wanted… not it wasn’t just a want, it was a need. She needed to live. Needed to stop existing and needed to start living.
And that was what motivated the blind molly to, despite shaking limbs and fur hanging limply on her body, ribs visible despite everything, move out into the snow, to at least try to find prey. To at least make some progress towards where she wanted to be. She wanted to gain her strength back, wanted to learn more… and that couldn’t be done without food in her stomach. She wanted to show Sagefeather that… that she wasn’t a burden. She wanted to make her mother proud… to show that it wasn’t her fault. That she wasn’t useless. That her clan her would appreciate her if she ever managed to find her way back to them. She missed them. Would she live to see another leafbare with them? Maybe? Hopefully? She hoped that. Hoped she would find her back. Eventually. The frost and fog was still too dense and too cold for her to stay out there for longer periods of time and… and she didn’t even know what way lead home.
But first on her agenda was food… was surviving and then she could consider finding her way back to a place that might not even want her back, that might deem her needs too many, her uses too few and her entire self too worthless to even consider letting back into the clan. She was nothing but an apprentice who was scared of the light, who was terrified of birds and who struggled to be around others due to her past.
‘You don’t deserve to be around others.’ Sagefeather’s voice resonated through her head and she wanted to bang it against a tree to just escape it for one second, but… her mother was right. She didn’t deserve it. Not yet.
Pushing through, finally, she felt her legs shake as the frigid cold and freezing wind evenloped her. But she had to do this, or there would be no hope for her. And hope was always better than being useless, than being what Sagefeather kept telling her she was. She was better than that. Or at least at some aspects, because you could learn how to not be useless, could develop your skills slowly. Food. Food. First thought and seemingly the one thing she kept forgetting. So slowly sliding into a crouch, a poor one and one that took way more force than she’d originally expected it would. But then again, she was weak, she lacked the basics of muscle on everything and it was all a learning curve. No one had taught her anything anyhow, she was supposed to learn it all herself. And that included her poor hunting crouch that could do with some serious improvement, but this was neither the time nor the place for such things. This crouch got her food and that was all that mattered in this moment.
And so crouching around, snow creaking under her paws she flopped with a defeated sigh. She needed a reason to keep going on, a reason that wasn’t just… surviving and existing. Of course, she had the clan to go back to but… Sagefeather seemed to constantly discourage from that, and she didn’t know what else to do, where else to go. So, it was surviving and existing for now. And she could do that. Until she found her purpose. Until she found a reason to go on. Pulling herself up from the snow, her belly fur now completely drenched and cold too, she regretted it but there was nothing else to do but trudge on. To find more food, to survive to see another day and to seek out this purpose wherever it may be located. Ending the hunt with the catch of a sole mouse, she gulped it down where she’d caught it and looked up into the sky, empty eyes glinting for once. She had a purpose to find, a purpose to hunt down.