i sit and look out. [p]

[val]

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

[val]

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

[redshiftreign]

so you better get ready,

what's left of someone who was once something
rushwater

"i don't want to be here. you don't want to be here-" he said, finding a place to sit a foxlength away from the stranger. tattered, scarred tail coiled around his flank tightly. uncomfortably. for as stoic, composed, and lethal as he was, even the antsy shifting could not be kept under lock and key. he was not flawless. not anymore.

the countless scars, torn deep like canyons in his fur, were a testament to that. and all the things he had survived. and all the things that killed him.

tilting his head upwards towards the sky, though everything was sky around here. endless, rolling in every direction. vertigo was the feeling, twisting and rolling like he forgot which way was up and which was down.

"-but it is breathtaking." he continued, a comet rocketing through the watercolor abyss as if brought up by sheer thought itself. "i think this is a dream." said the ever deductive tom, head canting to the side, studying the nameless, faceless, lost warrior of the stars. the silence was thick and viscous, and he was certain he could press his paw-pads to it and it would push back with the springy resistance of wet soil. he missed the feeling of the riverbank under his paws, even if it was as fresh a memory as any.

the disconnect between the self and existence was real and deadly. his name was just a word- two words, really, that had no right being together. two words that deserved to be separated by a pause, maybe a verb. rush water. rushing water. rush filled water. just words. meaningless, empty noise that buzzed in what was left of his tattered ears.

he looked away, to his paws this time. eternity spiraled out under him, dizzying in its endless scope. far above the world, far below the heavens. that was where he was, and somehow his brain would register neither alive nor dread; the lines were blurred here, like an over exposed polaroid, unclear. he was just the after image of what was supposed to be something grand. his mission failed, his rope used, and his life slipping through his claws like sand.

and somehow, just somehow, he was okay with it all.

maybe not okay- but accepting. he let it roll over his pelt like water, thoughts blank and shielded, slipping in only through buckshot gaps in memory and mind. he accepted it. he endured it. autopilot- going through the motions, because he had to. because he was expected too.

"sorry. i'm not trying to be much of a person right now." he said levelly, head dipping slightly to regard the russet tom with something a little more real. no longer piercing through him, just. . . studying. "i'm just trying to get some sleep."

you can come as you are, pay as you go.

@samm

[val]

nobody

he growled quietly as the other drew closer, though not close enough to ruffle his fur the wrong way. he squinted and peered closer at his scars, scrutinizing him. Somebody claimed to know him - or, felt like he should - but he recognized nothing. not in the patterns of his fur, not in the grooves of his scars, not in his glimmering eyes. he ground his teeth, clamping his jaw shut with an irritated twitch of his eye. he tried to swallow down his words, stubborn to talk amiably, but a deep down habit compelled him beyond his ornery.

"who said anything about that? i like it here," he denied quickly, sticking his nose up and looking down at Somebody. he was posturing as something bigger, and his errant shortcomings humiliated him into cringing away instead. he scoffed as Somebody gazed up at the sky. "a view so cruel," he muttered to himself; he remained standing, lashing his tail awkwardly at his side. glancing away swiftly, he avoided the gaze of Somebody.

he didn't get how this was a dream for the other. could the dead dream? he's never tried. he's always kept his eyes open and wandered listlessly the expanse of StarClan. back and forth, with a keen sense of madness. an urge to peel the stars from his pelt nagged at him constantly.

a certain wrongness tore at him. he used to think there was nothing up here for him - only a hesitant belief in the existence of spirits, not their 'well-meaning' intentions - and so he was met with muddied surprise whenever he looked around at the weeping willows and their drooping branches decorated with dazzling stars.

when it came to preferences, he knew he would've taken an empty void over this. his wish to dissolve his being into nothingness in final liberation, no matter where it took him.

a guaranteed was easier to be afraid of.

his gaze drew back to his unwanted company, turning a critical eye upon his pelt. there was something lackluster about him, something he couldn't quite place, that raised his hackles. suspicion, or maybe dread, touched the marrow in his bones and compelled him to remain cautious. his narrowed eyes swept over his scars once more. they garnered his morbid curiosity. their sight made his own scars ache in phantom pains he hadn't felt since he was alive.

what are you? he held his tongue this time.

with an irritated, drawn-out sigh, he sat down, taking his sweet time and ensuring he was far enough from Somebody to feel impersonal. he doubted the other would heed his wishes for him to leave him alone. every cat he's ever met has had that odd, annoying habit. he didn't know if it had made his life better or worse, in the long run.

a sneer crossed his face when he realized he was staring back at him. "don't look at me," he snapped defensively. "what does that even mean?? you can't try to be a person. you are, or you aren't," he pried. he threatened further, "don't be all mystic and - and philosophical or i'm gonna throttle you. and what do you mean, you're 'trying to get some sleep'??"

@redshiftreign

[redshiftreign]

and they run when the sun comes up, with their lives on the line.

what's left of someone who was once something
rushwater

"i'm asleep right now," rushwater restated, much more straight forwards this time. "i'm asleep, in my nest, under some starsdamned bridge in the middle of nowhere." he wasn't a fan of philosophy, so the prodded accusation was one that made his ear flick in irritation and his pelt tighten and hackles raise. the flicker of annoyance that crossed his indigo gaze was not concealed well.

"it's not philosophical," he replied, almost defensive. it definitely grounded him, tugged him sharply back to the forefront of his mind, paws gripping the steering wheel, hitting the gas. it was, ironically, more effort than he had allowed himself to put into anything for quite a long, long time. "people care about people; people feel. right now- i'm not doing those things." he shook his head. "just letting it flow through me. i'm a husk. an empty shell. it's not that complicated." he coiled his tail around himself tightly, "but if you insist that it is, please feel free to 'throttle' me- psh- with what, those little ghost paws of yours?" he snorted, a low, raspy laugh. mocking, almost. he shut himself up as soon as it started.

he was feeling suddenly more present than he had in. . . well, weeks. annoyingly, it was out of sheer irritation that he had been driven back to reality. his gaze tore away from the stranger to appraise the sky. it looked almost. . . stormy. maybe it was the tension between the two- if he were here, it had to be a dream, after all. he wondered. . . the russet warrior seemed to be unable to tell this was a dream. were the lines that blurred in the afterlife? that seemed. . . horrible. he hadn't really believed in starclan- hell, even staring in the eyes of undeniable proof, he still didn't. he'd come up with a million excuses for why it just couldn't be, shouldn't be. because it being real was a reality far more horrifying than any oblivion he had once considered nightmarish. rushwater would rather, simply, cease existing than life forever.

maybe they were alike in that regard. rushwater found some sick sort of kinship in the way this stranger snarled and sputtered and kicked like a cornered rat. he just had the decency to act like a member of society rather than a festering carcass.

maybe that was harsh. rushwater had always been bad at that. when do you give slack? when do you crush down the pressure? when do you forgive, and when do you destroy. he had been too harsh, too rhadamanthine in the past. he had drowned out every small flaw without a moment to break or breathe. maybe that was why he was where he was now, drowning. alone, suffocating in the aftermath of his own watery dug grave.

gods, he was horrible. a low, bitter laugh escaped him. who was he to judge when his own scars were bared and on full display? he was no testament to divinity.

"that was rude; i'm sorry." he said finally, amusement filling his voice. at himself. at his own stupidity. he. . . annoyance was replaced with other feelings, duller, still, but feelings nonetheless that he had been trying desperately to keep out with his floodwalls built high. disgusting thoughts, vile homesickness.

out here, only the strong survive

@samm

[val]

nobody

"no you're not," he protested, his scowl pressing deep into his maw and pushing his ears back against his broad skull. he snapped quickly, trying to shove his penny's worth into Somebody's ears. "you're dead. i don't believe you."

a grimace mangled his expression as the stranger continued on. at first, he was hopelessly confused and irritated because Somebody was still talking nonsense. then, the hairs lifted on his spine at the 'please' - it felt so vitriolic that a primal, warning growl tore from his throat. the laugh, short as it was, sent a jolt of pure acid through his ethereal heart. it flooded his veins with a raging fire.

immediately, when Somebody's attention flicked to the stars, he gave the other cat a short once-over. he'd already begun to memorize the pelt, it being the only new one he'd seen in moons, but, now, his squint focused on joints that might be weak, or any sore spots that stuck out to him.

the violence burning across his consciousness made his paws tremble only just slightly.

he just wanted his dignity. when was he going to stop saying sorry and bowing his head? he was tired sick of it. how many times does he have to forgive himself so everyone else will?

once? twice? ten times? a hundred? or is it innumerable?

he can't make them move on. it's not his place. he hardly can make himself - but he has to, because wallowing served him only more loneliness.

and who says he has to be forgiven?

what if he didn't care.

the secondary bout of laughter yanked him from his bitter reverie. not for the first time, he bared his pearly fangs at Somebody. "you're not sorry," he called him out plainly, though a hardly controlled undercurrent of curt, abrasiveness coursed through his words. all apologies; no more apologies.

he rose to his paws and padded over, a panther stalking its prey. "i'm gonna maul you. you're on my list," he hissed. his ghost claws unsheathed and caught on the starry dirt. "i'm gonna tear open your stomach and wrench your guts from your ribcage until your laugh becomes nothing but a dry wheeze." his gaze grew stony. "would you be sorry then?" he questioned.

impatient, he refused to wait for an answer. he lunged forward, a spring in his back legs more youthful than his old, living capabilities.

and passes through.

he is tangy smoke with a faint glimmer and an ember glazing. he is a crisp morning breeze, or an evening gust of savory, summer scents.

he is. nothing.

a pang of isolation strikes the hollow space between his ribs. he steps back, and his scowl falters to an empty, deadpan mien. "that's not..." muttering, he scrutinized Somebody carefully and reached out to poke him.

or attempt to.

his shimmery white paw slipped through the dream apparition.

@redshiftreign