Movement alerted him to the present. A presence. Fail Cone strained his ears to find it -- it was close, he could almost taste it. like a frog just beyond his reach, he needed to locate it. frozen in place, it could not run.
It. Would. Not. Run. not again, he could not let his quarry escape. paws sank into the ground, his blood roared like a lion. the world melted into ashen gray as water poured over the boulder.
muscles bunched. He prepared to pounce, eyes flashing upward to aim at the rock. he sprang, rusty in motion as his paws struck the edge. Heaving himself up, he leered down at the stranger with teeth bared. "Going somewhere?" run all he wanted, Fellcone would not let this stalker flee. This game needed to end.
Frozenberry gasped and choke on the inhale, lightweight paws suddenly feeling like lead- and he was standing exposed, ALARMED, AND ABOUT TO DIE.
this wasn't howitwasSUPPOSEDTOBE anything but this why did it havetobe Him why now WHY ALL OF IT and the way he stared was so menacing, shockwaves rippling through him and every inch screaming at Frozen TO RUN FOR HIS LIFE, because this was the approach of an unhinged maniac and oh god oh stars This was it, the end-
Not even a panicked yowl. He was PREY. standing wide-eyed. death incoming. GET OUT GET OUT but he couldn't move and felt dizzy from the overwhelming and sheer amount of adrenaline-infused fright preparing him nicely for the taking.
It happened in snapshots.
Frozenberry saw Falcon leap forward. Bowl him over. The wind knocked from him. Blacking out. He had to be bleeding. He was definitely injured. Brink of death. The last thing he saw would be Falcon's green eyes flashing down at him in heedy HUNGER. It was a matter of milliseconds.
And the weight lifted. A swoosh of air.
He regained himself only enough to catch a glimpse of it. The whir of color: a bird, now frantically flapping and Falcon was left dropping back to the moor as the bird retreated to the skies.
he was ready. He would not Fail Cone around and let this one go. Claws scraped against rock, and he lunged.
Okay, look. This was not out of aggression - he wasnt here to hurt him, but he wanted this cat to stop-- right? he had to stop. This weird study group had gone on long enough. (he didnt even sign up for a book club)
But soon after the stars collided, something tore through his back. Fellcone grunted from a combination of surprise and pain, darkness threatened the edge of his vision. did.. How..?
He was being lifted, dazed from shock as the Giant Bird tooketh him away. His descent into stardom was short lived, as his weight caused the bird to buckle. talons released from his back, and he flew south for the winter. He felt the impact of the ground before he saw it, tasted dirt and blood in his mouth.
In the aftermath of chaos and destruction, there was a cloud of char and dust and dirt. And Frozenberry coughed on it as he heaved himself to his paws again to make sense of.. whatever had just occurred because? it was. it was still processing. (That was all he did these days anyway.) Another cough. Strange not having Falcon's huge paws pulverizing his chest.
Falcon.
His eyes darted around, taking in the moonlit moor. There he was. A pile of brown tabby and impossibility. The heap that contained the extent of his traumatic childhood, reduced to this blob by a well-timed - owl? maybe?? didn't matter. There was something so .. satirical about this ending too, and a corner of his lip twisted into a foreign smile as he attempted stifling his chuckle. (Just barely managed to keep it back.) This was what he got for, .. for kidnapping him, for the torture, for the scars and the pain, for ignoring him, for wrecking his life and all his relationships, for devouring that stupid sparrow.
.....
An eerie calm washed across the scene. That was, just it, then? And.. he could leave. It wasn't the closure he'd expected, but it was closure nonetheless. It was finally over. With nothing left, Frozenberry hesitated and .. gradually began his first step, then the second, and - the third interrupted his stride. He craned his neck, and felt the stab of guilt. Falcon. He couldn't have done anything to save him anyway.
He'd been handed an opportunity. (But did that justify walking away? Leaving him to rot? Did he even deserve an ounce of decency?) A silver platter - Falcon's fate sealed, trauma closed, appropriate elation. But to just go home and sleep...
Frozenberry never had made the right choices, why start now? He suppressed the sigh as he padded over to what remained of his ex-abuser and peered down at him, blank. Slowly, he collapsed into the grass beside him. Discontent. It... it wasn't. it wasn't what he imagined this moment would be like.
and he soaked in the sight.
...........
....
..
...his flank was moving. Where Frozenberry expected dread, he only felt relief.
Stars, he was seeing stars. The reflection of a green specter staring back at him, unfaltering and bold. Hazel, watching him with warmth but he was so cold. he was cold, his back hurt, his head hurt. a lot of things hurt and he was so tired of it.
when the ditch soared to him, he wished he'd never left it. To be left as crowfood would have been more a mercy than this fate, entombed in darkness for an eternity. The green peach was angry, but the hazel fuzz kept him safe. The talons couldn't get him.
drip, drip. The den was dripping. Throughout the night, Fellconepaw stirred. he was restless, haunted by ghosts that he knew. Faceless entities that poked and jabbed, rasped their tongue over his ripped back and soaked in the blood.
When his eyes fully opened, his blood must have satiated the sky. it stained the horizon a deep scarlet, the coming of dawn. his back hurt, but less. His body ached, bruised from the drop but not broken. he was alive.
alive, but exhausted. Fellcone huffed and flicked his tail at the near-stranger, aware another movement could unleash the bird. he did not know how this witch summoned such a thing, but here they were. "You are still here." a statement. "why." why let it leave, why stay, why not run like the little bird he was?
(run run as fast as you can, i cant catch you, im the fail cone man)
Fellcone expected a chase, not... whatever this was.
The one-sided grooming session had long since expired and left Frozenberry to be the silent, stony figure beside Fallenfalcon. Observing something other than him (weirdo, CREEP) for once, which the guy might've been able to appreciate had he not been unconscious. Kind of annoying.
But he was also Not a Threat in this state, so... there was that. The version of Falcon barreling toward him contrasted vastly with pathetic heap Falcon. Any hint of that and he'd be in the wind, again. Fluttering out of reach and trying to not steal glances at Falcon from hidden spots in the clearing -- he couldn't do it anymore without hearing the scathing accusations, remembering the heartbreak of having no place in his memories. No closure. No apologies. (No favors either, seeing as he still breathed.)
Then, He was awake. They were awake together. Frozenberry had time to prepare for this inevitable intersection and yet, nothing had come to him as night turned to dawn. The question didn't leave him any better off when he didn't have answers. He didn't know. (he didn't know why he did a lot of things anymore.) Rhyme and reason coexisted on his plane of existence as a parallel line to his decisions.
"I thought..." he started, rough, voice unrefined from a lack of recent use. Frozenberry cleared his throat. "Thought you were dead." Wasn't why he stayed, wasn't much of a response at all, but it was true at least. He left out the unspoken part: and I was glad. Glad. He was ashamed. All night, he'd been replaying that specific span of seconds and letting the guilt eat him alive.
maybe that was why he stayed. because of shame. because he was too much of a coward to leave.
still here, it seemed. The world seemed a little less hazy with a moment's pass, a short, huffy breath lost in the wind. he's still in pain, very tired, but here he is. Lost in a sea of ash, scattered to the four corners of the forest. he is nothing and everything, desired only by the creep who haunted his shadow. it was... Pathetic.
Fellcone hated this cat and what he stood for. the silent stalker, a hunter of outsiders and a pretender. acting so innocent when he--- he caused this, all of this. He followed him, stared him down, tore him apart both mentally and physically. his back still stung from the owl. He bared his teeth. "one buries the dead or leaves them to rot. They do not lick them." ugh, would he ever get their frosty scent out of his pelt? It was intoxicatingly irritating.
He expected him to have run long ago, to escape while he had a chance. What would Fellcone do, if he fled while he was unconscious? He could only go so far. ".. Do you not want to go somewhere?" He had his chance, if Fellcone wanted he could snap him in two now. Make him pay for the eyes.
Frozenberry chewed the inside of their mouth, allowing each second to tick by, trying to take it moment by moment as his mind raced. beside Falcon-
kind of, not... he didn't know anymore. Hell, Falcon didn't know anymore or chose the path of non-acknowledgment. This wasn't the same cat anymore. He was doing Better, and it still tore him up inside to know that. All this time hanging on the ghost of what once was only to discover his efforts were for naught.
Dry, he said, "I don't think apprentice training covered that." .. Customs tended to be alien to him anyway. He just wanted to survive, didn't have to do it with the grace of a well-mannered cat.
Too exhausted too thin. "It's all the same." every place. running. moving through scenery. the faces changed, the problems remained. Frozenberry couldn't escape who he was and what he'd been, what had been done to him. sooner or later, it was back to camp. but what did that really change? Emotional distress followed him like a shadow. Panic grabbed him unsuspectingly like a .. an owl. The surroundings weren't important. I joined for you. It was on the tip of his tongue, self-hatred behind the words. Hoping for closure. (Pointless. The words dissipated again.)
what an absurd comment. This cat was ridiculous, but Fellcone had known that. impawsible, one might say. He did say. Seriously, who licked bodies? he'd be less creeped out if the strange one had talked about how he found him alive, and looked after him. or something normal. But no. of course not, that'd be NORMAL. and nothing about this freak was normal, because that-- that'd, that would be ABNORMAL and falc's head hurt so much.
Stars.
He withdrew from Frozen, trying to move as far away as possible because all this cat had brought him was hurt. the pain was radiating down his neck, into his chest. His back seemed like nothing.
somewhere, somehow, he was tempted. for a reason he couldn't grasp, he wanted to tell this cat he hadn't changed. but he didn't know him, so why would he? "hmph." He was not satisfied, perhaps never would be. "I can tell."
yeah, well. he knew he wasn't dead, but Frozenberry just shrugged. Not like he was necessarily OPPOSED to licking a body ?? who cared, he'd done worse things, there were many many worse things. Probably wouldn't seek it out though, despite intermittently grooming himself and he was little more than a corpse with some life left in it. (Besides, he had more urgent beacons to attend to, such as this exercise in emotional self harm.)
Stars, why did he have.. to find amusement in it? In a demise he thought he'd seen happen before his eyes. here he thought he'd found the ceiling of damage and brokenness, and yet, that fleeting laugh that he bottled up- Frozenberry exhaled the tautness away, guilt crushing him instead, swallowing hard at the .. the noise Falcon made, which he didn't know how to interpret (but his retreat away from him, that message rang loud and clear). He flexed his paws atop the grass.
"I thought you'd be happier about not being dead." If Frozenberry had the audacity (he hated himself for it) to feel relief, Falcon could at least join him.
Not dead, and clean wounds. Last favor he did for him, he guessed. oh. and oblivious to his past. must be nice.
Re: Windy Hills
