i sit and look out. [p]

[alkaline]

nobody
-- [née foxstep]

the night sky is more impressive than you'd think. streaks of orange, glimmering light far, far away - interwoven by bright, big stars. so many they blur together, and only the largest, lightest ones stand out. and there are different kinds of dark - navy blue, deep void black, and hazy smoky gray. it's deep. it's neverending. it expands beyond meaning. beyond comprehension.

it is more than anything he ever was, could ever think to be.

it is lonely.



he prefers to look into the constellations rather than upon the forest.

"there is a great cat in those stars," his mother would say when he was very young and unaware of the world. "she stomps in the storm clouds and sends lightning down. when she shakes her mane, little stars fall out and scatter across the sky. whenever she sighs, a gust of wind blows through the trees."

his dead, dull eyes watch those far-away cat eyes wink at him. if he stares hard enough, maybe their life will rub off onto his spirit.

if he wanted that. he knew he didn't.



he would rather forget them all, the way they did him. (does that make him selfish?) fox, alderstep, foxstep, alderpaw, alderkit, the little one in their mother's belly - what is the difference? his name. it means nothing to him. he cares not to watch the clans, or if he deigns to glance down, it is with apathy. their game is one he has grown to know far too well for his comfort. (didn't they already think he was selfish?)

if one mistake is great enough to dissolve anything else, then he dissolves himself into nothingness. into the void in the sky.

spirit in the sky.



the stars clump and cluster together to make illusions of babbling brooks and swaying willows. it is their imitation of a luscious forest, green and ripe with jovial souls. he hears nothing. the stars do not speak.

he glowers at the back of an intruder. he cannot tell who they are. maybe they are nobody, like him.

yes, he is Nobody.

his tail lashes, and his back arches up in hostility. "who are you?" a pause. "i don't care. go away," he snaps quickly after. his glare is like the empty stare of a corpse. he looks over the pelt of his adversary. silvers and blues and the colors dip and sway and shift like rushing water. no. this is Somebody.

that irritates him more. "out," he hisses again, lips curling and muzzle wrinkling with his snarl.

@redshiftreign // okay goodnight !

[redshiftreign]

hello? is anybody home?

what's left of someone who was once something
rushwater

he did not want to be here.

but, god, was it beautiful. infinite fractals caught in a futile spiral, an effervescent, twisting, churning sky streaked like blood twisting through water. blues, purples, reds. it's subtle, speckled in a thousand- a million- a myriad of glistening spots. the nebulas reach out with open arms, but the distance is too vast no matter how hard you run. no matter how much distance you cover, you'll never find yourself cradled adoringly in the stars' arms. not even if you were among them. which, for that instant, he was.

but he'd never be welcomed here. that's scarce comfort.

rushwater- or whatever he was now- He lifted his head, feeling a scorching stare on the tensed muscles between his shoulder blades. his head tilted to the side and he stared at the denizen.

recognition flickered briefly behind indigo eyes, affixed to an ever so slightly familiar face. but with buckshot memory, he couldn't place a name to the pelt.

a dead man.

heh.

the metaphor meets the reality.

the irony was not lost on the washed out sleuth. an acknowledgement of silent respect that passed from him to the stranger. he was standing before someone. someone who had been somebody. at one point or another, maybe. but alas, the questions who and why were just holes punched in a cardboard target.

even at the hostility, which He saw boil up in the pelt of the stranger, hackles risen, teeth bared, muzzle sneering. but, rhadamanthine as the river rushes, the sleuth felt so far above his body and a thousand foxlengths away that he merely lifted his head and turned to face him.

who are you? the stranger snarled. He drew a blank.

"i'm not so sure myself, not anymore." admitted the blue-grey tabby in spite the hostility. with dog teeth divots in his head, torn fur starting to heal into something finally less horrendous, he bowed his head reverently and pinned torn ears back. how the mighty fall.

tail flicked, then swayed. it always was a bad habit, wasn't it? old habits die hard.

He felt insignificant. and as something insignificant, unthreatened. Small, but safe. like a forgotten special edition card locked behind a now-yellowing plastic sleeve in some three ring binder in a box in an attic. forgotten and worth only what people thought him to be.

which, in that moment, was nothing. nothing at all. not a single thought of him anywhere, he feared. Not a single breath with the name- his name -rushwater lacing it.

"we're very similar." he said. there he went again, clinically honest. far too honest. he'd be better off lying.

He wasn't sure he'd ever been in starclan before. if this was it, it wasn't him who dragged himself here. However accidental, the bristling cat before him must have dragged him up from his personal pits of hell for a chance meeting. He- rushwater supposed even the dead make mistakes.

maybe his weren't so heinous, then. he dismissed that possibility with a shake of his head.

right- he had a point to elaborate on. "you don't know me. but i. . . i think i should know who you are." it's blurry. like pushing his paws through warm honey. it is suffocating. he'd drown before touching the bottom. "yet, i don't. i think we're both. . . nothing, anymore."

well you don't know me, but i know you.

@alkaline

[alkaline]

nobody

the tendon that wound up his scarred leg twitched and pulled tight his muscle as he set his white paw down a step closer. he watches that face. the expression, in its idiocy, irritates him.

but it's the scars that catch his eye. they look like fox teeth, like being ripped apart mercilessly. like blood welling up from mauling wounds. like mistakes. though it's a stretch to say they are like the claw marks of your clanmates forever etched into your body.

he blinks out of his reverie. "good," he snarls. "i don't want to know who you are." a ghostly tongue runs over ghostly teeth. "i don't care."

his gaze drops disdainfully to look at the other cat's tail. it moves like prey that ate from the wrong bush.

he knows an Alderstep who might've been aggravated into violence: arrogant and much younger. someone who would have jumped forward to see if spirit claws stung just the same on that wretched tail.

maybe it is both their luck that cat is dead and buried under a different kind of viciousness. he looks back up, into those cerulean-violet eyes.

"are you deaf? i said go away," he repeated, narrowing his eyes. "and no, we are not - the same." he spits out as the concept itself disgusts him. "you literally don't know me." he's indignant to be called nothing, but those who have been running from the truth too long tire eventually. there's no respect to be saved.

gritting his teeth, he looks over Somebody more critically this time. he gets the sense they like to know things. the assumptions and far-out claims: this is someone who figures things out, not unlike the precision he'd seen in Rabbit. though this Somebody is cold and threatening, whereas with Rabbit he had felt peeved rather than dissected.

he is the poor worm under the gaze of an early bird. strung out and dried up.

self-pity and desolation had gotten him nowhere (well, it certainly got him here), so he shuts up that nagging, whining voice in the back of his head and quickly regards Somebody. he'd been thinking too much of others again and conjured a cat up accidentally, hadn't he? it was intriguing that it was Somebody dead this time, Somebody he didn't know.

he'd rather it have been his son than this irritating piece of dogwaste.

@redshiftreign