〚~Willow'Paw~〛
| 10 Moons | ShadowClan Apprentice | Female, She/Her | Purrks:
Kitty Soft Paws, Heightened Perception [smell]
[a small, fluffy tortoiseshell she-cat with pale green eyes and an atrociously fluffy tail, a small tick in her right ear, and a scar on her cheek]
Suddenly, everything seemed horribly impossible. Willowpaw's heart was already trying to leap out of her mouth before the bait patrol came, leaping up to the trees. The sight of the creatures she was going to be fighting was so frightening that she nearly shut her eyes. There were so many of them. Shallow breath after shallow breath tried to calm Willowpaw down as she stared, petrified, at the mass off writhing scales and fur and splattered blood. She used to have somewhat of a fear of blood, but she'd thought she'd gotten over that. Maybe it was the snakes and rats, but now, her entire being seemed to be stabbed by a fierce, horrible longing to stay away as far away from the critters as possible. But she couldn't do that. ShadowClan didn't back down; they were supposed to be wily and aggressive. So she couldn't allow thoughts like 'Nobody will miss a mere apprentice, would they?' to be swarming her little head. It probably wouldn't even work, quietly slipping away. Somebody would notice her, whether it was the Medicine Apprentice she'd just handed her load of herbs to, or a warrior or apprentice.
Willowpaw forced her muscles into moving, at Dawnstar's call to attack. She'd barely entered the densest part of the fighting when a rat began crawling up her foreleg. The apprentice held back a shriek of terror, and dropped to the ground. The rat was flung off as she began rolling viciously, and before either Willowpaw or it could recover properly, she lunged. Her aim was a bit astray with dizziness, but her blow still landed. It was weird to feel guilt and sorrow as she bit into the neck of the rat. Why did she care about some random pest? Why not spare her empathy for someone else? The only reason she could come up with was that she thought the rat she'd just killed might have had a family. Which, first of all, were rats even intelligent enough to grieve? Willowpaw guessed not. And then she realized she'd missed the rat's spine and it was still alive, and watched as it scurried off. That didn't stay on her mind long though. Another rat accidentally stepped on her tail. She jumped, startled. They stared and each other for a few moments. Then it bit down on her tail, which it was currently sitting on. She yowled as fiery pain flared on her brush, and tried to claw at the rat. She missed pathetically, instead stabbing into the already bleeding wound on her tail. Willowpaw was able to hold back her cry of pain this time, instead gritting her teeth. The rat had fled, probably to bite someone else's tail. The apprentice sighed. She wanted to fight alongside Turtlepaw; she was pitiful right now.
And she hadn't even fought a snake; rats weren't venomous, and rats weren't exactly nimble either. Worry stirred in her stomach, begging that the tail-nibbling rat would be the last thing she had to fight today.
[ open!! ]