Post by vera on Aug 5, 2020 5:08:21 GMT -6
[attr="class","appCONTAINER]
[attr="class","appHEADER"]ROWANMASK
[attr="class","appTAG"]@/rowan - slender golden-brown spotted tom with green eyes
[attr="class","appIMAGE"]
[attr="class","appPADDING1"]
[attr="class","appTOPBOX"]
[attr="class","appTOPBOXBG"]
| 31 MOONS | CIS MALE | HOMOSEXUAL | THUNDERCLAN | WARRIOR |
[attr="class","appBGIMAGE"]
[attr="class","appCATEGORY"]TRAITS
[attr="class","appTRAITSBG"]
| + loyal + intuitive + passionate + confident + realistic | - lackadaisical - willful - temperamental - vain - insecure |
[attr="class","appCATEGORY"]PERSONALITY
[attr="class","appBAR"]
[attr="class","appFIELD"]
hes a little b*tch baby pls for the love of god fight him
where the heavens seem to grant your brother every quality your parents wished for, they chose to give you none of the same spoils. your near-identical pelts are the very extent of your similarities— the moment your mouth opens, the cosmic joke begins.
for one thing, no matter how much anyone tries to instill anything into you, you push back with herculean defiance burning brighter than the red-gold fur on your back. it looks to be your sole defining purpose since the first time you screeched murder the day you were thrust headfirst into the world. you walk the earth to your own offbeat pace, hellbent on trampling upon every expectation and becoming the antithesis of everything.
certainly, your mother never stifled your fire. call it maternal instinct, but maybe she knew that even pushing so hard against the current, you'd still find yourself fitting into the place you're slowly, painstakingly carving out for yourself. (maybe she was simply amused by you, eagerly waiting to pounce on the chance to scream-laugh a hearty i told you so before forcing you to settle into the curve of her belly and give you a good pummel as mothers so often do.)
it's this, too— emotions too big and too many and too much for such a skinny little tom like you. the sheer amount of what you want to feel manifesting into some frankenstein's monster that makes you burn so hot and so bright. temperamental and susceptible to the slightest change of the wind. starbursts left and right and fleeting. anger one moment, disinterest the next. productivity levels rising and falling without reason or rhyme that has everyone in your vicinity driven to the brink of plucking hairs out of their skin one by one.
the older you grow, the less you learn not exactly to control it but moreso how to douse it. boundless energy and an uncanny intuition for finding easy outs and unconventional fix-its wind up into making a little mask for you to wear. you can't waste energy trying to express every single feeling thrumming in your bones if you spend it with a single-minded determination to not do anything at all. you find that taunting emotions out of everyone else makes it a hell of a lot easier to deceive them into thinking you have none at all.
but for all your bluster, you can’t ignore the sunspots marring your skin forever. blistering little insecurities wrapped up in a pretty little bow of just the right touch of vanity. you’ve never been the kind to really stop and think twice before making a choice (that much is evident with what messy legacy you’ve made for yourself so far).
(you stay up some nights thinking about it. wondering where you’d diverged, failed to swim up the stream, hit a rock and just never quite came up for air for a time. but only on some nights.)
the rest of the time, you show them this: lazily hanging off of low-hanging branches; exchanging insults left and right with your ex-apprentice; short walks and long pauses with your children; shoving back against too-nosy friends.
for what it’s worth you still walk the path you’ve made for yourself, and you try to come out better. you always did have a strong intuition for finding a way out, sometimes surprising yourself with your own small nuggets of intellect. for all the times the heavens did you wrong, you do find it in yourself at least a few times to try and make it right.
where the heavens seem to grant your brother every quality your parents wished for, they chose to give you none of the same spoils. your near-identical pelts are the very extent of your similarities— the moment your mouth opens, the cosmic joke begins.
for one thing, no matter how much anyone tries to instill anything into you, you push back with herculean defiance burning brighter than the red-gold fur on your back. it looks to be your sole defining purpose since the first time you screeched murder the day you were thrust headfirst into the world. you walk the earth to your own offbeat pace, hellbent on trampling upon every expectation and becoming the antithesis of everything.
certainly, your mother never stifled your fire. call it maternal instinct, but maybe she knew that even pushing so hard against the current, you'd still find yourself fitting into the place you're slowly, painstakingly carving out for yourself. (maybe she was simply amused by you, eagerly waiting to pounce on the chance to scream-laugh a hearty i told you so before forcing you to settle into the curve of her belly and give you a good pummel as mothers so often do.)
it's this, too— emotions too big and too many and too much for such a skinny little tom like you. the sheer amount of what you want to feel manifesting into some frankenstein's monster that makes you burn so hot and so bright. temperamental and susceptible to the slightest change of the wind. starbursts left and right and fleeting. anger one moment, disinterest the next. productivity levels rising and falling without reason or rhyme that has everyone in your vicinity driven to the brink of plucking hairs out of their skin one by one.
the older you grow, the less you learn not exactly to control it but moreso how to douse it. boundless energy and an uncanny intuition for finding easy outs and unconventional fix-its wind up into making a little mask for you to wear. you can't waste energy trying to express every single feeling thrumming in your bones if you spend it with a single-minded determination to not do anything at all. you find that taunting emotions out of everyone else makes it a hell of a lot easier to deceive them into thinking you have none at all.
but for all your bluster, you can’t ignore the sunspots marring your skin forever. blistering little insecurities wrapped up in a pretty little bow of just the right touch of vanity. you’ve never been the kind to really stop and think twice before making a choice (that much is evident with what messy legacy you’ve made for yourself so far).
(you stay up some nights thinking about it. wondering where you’d diverged, failed to swim up the stream, hit a rock and just never quite came up for air for a time. but only on some nights.)
the rest of the time, you show them this: lazily hanging off of low-hanging branches; exchanging insults left and right with your ex-apprentice; short walks and long pauses with your children; shoving back against too-nosy friends.
for what it’s worth you still walk the path you’ve made for yourself, and you try to come out better. you always did have a strong intuition for finding a way out, sometimes surprising yourself with your own small nuggets of intellect. for all the times the heavens did you wrong, you do find it in yourself at least a few times to try and make it right.
[attr="class","appCATEGORY"]HISTORY
[attr="class","appBAR"]
[attr="class","appFIELD"]
ryecloud - twin brother
burnetfang - best friend / kinda crush kinda maybe not anymore
pepperstorm - ex-apprentice / it's.. Something
dovesong - baby mama
lichenpaw - daughter
rosepaw - son
it's the apple falling from a tree—
down, down, down with a little cry and a clean split in the middle.
you and your brother are something of a marvel. the same kitten-blue eyes set on the same striped face, wearing the same sun-gold, spotted coat.
it stays like that in the beginning. you are your brother as much as he is you. you don't mind for a while, not when your world is limited to your fur mingling with his, tucked away in your mother's nest with nary a care for anything else.
then you learn to stand on your own four paws and suddenly you mind everything.
rowan this, rowan that. rowanrowanrowan. you wear your name out in what feels like the first few moments you learn to pronounce the two-syllable word, so desperate to claim what little sliver of identity you have and hold on to it for dear life.
bless your brother— he always did seem to just have an innate understanding of you even in your earliest days of youth. that craving for autonomy that came with correcting every living soul who made the mistake of calling you ryekit instead of rowankit. so he lets you be and smiles and jokes while you scowl and groan and dig your heels into the ground.
(you didn't want him to be you, anyway. you always did invite more scoldings than he.)
you carry that supernova inside you all the way to apprenticehood. until now you wonder why nobody ever tried to smother it in your sleep. (you certainly would have.)
your mentor could have, too, if the way you butt heads with him day in and day out is any indication.
so young and already so determined to shake the foundations of everyone you come across. say one thing, you bark the other. receive an order, feign deafness for the next twelve hours.
you perfect the art of running in circles faster than you perfect anything else your mentor deems of utmost importance.
but you do try... when it suits you. (or when it is what you have to do lest you find yourself six feet underground a little too ahead of schedule.)
it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you by now, but you still furrow your brow when you find yourself in situations like this—
1. snoring your soul away next to someone named burnetpaw
2. being wrangled by him and your brother every minute of every day
3. fighting back and worming yourself in the most absurd places to escape death by duo
and then somehow there’s
4. finding yourself staring a little too long at muscle tensing underneath tabby fur, mouth impossibly dry, brain outright refusing to connect point a to point b
you feel you might combust if you come into contact with whatever creature has dug a home in the pit of your stomach. it rears its head with every glance, every shove, every laugh (even the ones at your expense), each little insignificant thing that has nothing and everything at all to do with you.
so you turn to what you know. you go back to shoving the proverbial boulder up the hill, and when you can't do that you turn off all the lights in your head and pretend to sit in dark.
as if you'd ever have any trouble finding him there, too.
if ryepaw takes any notice—and you're certain he has, perceptive as he is—he keeps it down to knowing, exasperated stare-downs and insinuating comments. you claim not to know anything at all. and it works. at least, you keep telling yourself it's working.
and whether it's because you are so adamant to prove this point to your brother (to yourself) or your flame burning one step ahead of you or entirely by some miracle, you end up stumbling forward until you're somehow standing in a crowd and being handed a new identity and a new way out.
(until now they still talk about how you nearly had it revoked for sleeping through your vigil and having to do it for two consecutive nights for recompense. but you never said the new name came with new habits, did you?)
back to the same rivers and lakes you know. back to pretending you're chasing after different waterfalls instead of running yourself ragged on the same path that leads to him. so when you meet her, it's entirely too good to be true. you plunge in headfirst anyway.
her name is dovesong, and she thinks you're ridiculous, but she laughs and keeps you company and keeps you distracted. her voice is impossibly soft, and she stands shoulder to shoulder with you, and you look into her eyes and feel something stir in you.
it's not love.
but maybe?
that's all it is, you think. maybe. maybe if you had been different. maybe if she had been different. maybe if she wasn't so good to you, and you were better—better enough not to keep stealing glances the other way, to keep your heart in control like you never could do as a child and still can't.
her name is dovesong, still sticky-sweet on your tongue and nearly nauseating. she thinks you're ridiculous, and she laughs and hits you in the back of the head and says you better start getting your act together.
(it is love.)
(just not the kind you're desperate to run from.)
(but you still do anyway because you never could get past that sadness you put in her. not yet.)
now, you pride yourself in not being delusional. you say a lot of things and puff out your chest, but it's never more than a peacock's show. you know as well as everyone else does that you don't quite fit into your own skin as much as you say you do. you're all legs and retorts and a heaping mess of fears.
so how in starclan's name you find yourself staring down at a too-young face with a too-impressionable mind for them to ever be in your vicinity, much less under your authority, is something equally terrifying and confusing.
you spend the next 24 hours holed up in an old abandoned fox den and only come out at ryecloud's threat of revealing every dirty secret you've swept away to burnetfang.
still, still. nothing has ever prepared you for this. certainly not your own apprentice days—belligerent and unorthodox at best—and neither is advice from anyone else. none of it feels like you, none of it feels like it should be your responsibility to bear. the worst of it is that they agreed with you.
you ask yourself: coward or realist?
neither of you stick around with this arrangement long enough to really find out.
the first time you tell pepperpaw no is the day you unknowingly sign a contract that until now, you're not quite sure what the terms and conditions are.
(neither of you do, apparently.)
you do know this much:
1. there is no getting out of it this time
2. waking up at the crack of dawn is a lot easier when you're running from mentor responsibilities
3. pepperpaw matches you step for step in being the most insufferable living being in the forest
it takes less than a day for your whole world to turn upside down. you go from burnetfang and ryecloud's nagging to pepperpaw's face sneering down at you whenever you care to open your eyes.
immovable object, meet unstoppable force.
flame, meet fuel.
it's a gamble for the ages, and you know you're not the only one going blue in the face from holding your breath too long.
somehow, the constant push and pull gives way to something that feels a little to close to routine. the script is all the same, but maybe you've both broken into it, and now it's this.
whatever that means for the both of you.
familiar paths you could navigate with your eyes closed. the slightest twitch of whiskers giving away today's mood. that same bone-deep ache you'd get when you sense when a storm draws near.
as much as you hate to admit it, you're starting to learn the erratic pitter-pat of the music. you'd rather be caught dead than admit it in any life you've lived and will live, but some little part of it feels... kind of not truly terrible.
and if you find yourself actually having the heart to call his name out a little louder than the rest, then that was no one's business but your own.
you're prone to mistakes.
one of those is holding a torch for your best friend.
the other one is thinking you and pepperstorm could ever peacefully be in the same space for a prolonged period of time.
but the biggest one is standing in front of you with those same big, round eyes and sad smile, calling your name as if you'd crumble the moment you hear it.
she didn't know, either.
(and you pretended not to after.)
she loved you, once. still does, but it's not the same.
(you did, too, but never in the way she wanted you to the first time around.)
she wants to try, for their sake.
(you want to. you really, really do. except you couldn't say anything and couldn't look her in the eye.)
it takes you far too long before you make your way back into the picture.
none of the pieces still fit quite right, but it's getting there.
you find your footing again. you still hide, but not so much out of fear than it is a pastime (and a way to slack off.) you breathe a little easier, even around burnetfang. you let dovesong kick your ass mercilessly and hear her laugh a lot more than you probably deserve. ryecloud still butts his nose in wherever you can, and nothing has changed. lichenpaw and rosepaw—well, who could blame any of the three of you if you still sit in awkward silences and leftover anger and hurt.
and there's pepperstorm still antagonizing you, and you still fighting back.
(except now there's that split-second silence that comes before every word, and you're not yet sure what it means. if it means anything at all.)
—
ryecloud - twin brother
burnetfang - best friend / kinda crush kinda maybe not anymore
pepperstorm - ex-apprentice / it's.. Something
dovesong - baby mama
lichenpaw - daughter
rosepaw - son
—
it's the apple falling from a tree—
down, down, down with a little cry and a clean split in the middle.
you and your brother are something of a marvel. the same kitten-blue eyes set on the same striped face, wearing the same sun-gold, spotted coat.
it stays like that in the beginning. you are your brother as much as he is you. you don't mind for a while, not when your world is limited to your fur mingling with his, tucked away in your mother's nest with nary a care for anything else.
then you learn to stand on your own four paws and suddenly you mind everything.
rowan this, rowan that. rowanrowanrowan. you wear your name out in what feels like the first few moments you learn to pronounce the two-syllable word, so desperate to claim what little sliver of identity you have and hold on to it for dear life.
bless your brother— he always did seem to just have an innate understanding of you even in your earliest days of youth. that craving for autonomy that came with correcting every living soul who made the mistake of calling you ryekit instead of rowankit. so he lets you be and smiles and jokes while you scowl and groan and dig your heels into the ground.
(you didn't want him to be you, anyway. you always did invite more scoldings than he.)
—
you carry that supernova inside you all the way to apprenticehood. until now you wonder why nobody ever tried to smother it in your sleep. (you certainly would have.)
your mentor could have, too, if the way you butt heads with him day in and day out is any indication.
so young and already so determined to shake the foundations of everyone you come across. say one thing, you bark the other. receive an order, feign deafness for the next twelve hours.
you perfect the art of running in circles faster than you perfect anything else your mentor deems of utmost importance.
but you do try... when it suits you. (or when it is what you have to do lest you find yourself six feet underground a little too ahead of schedule.)
—
it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you by now, but you still furrow your brow when you find yourself in situations like this—
1. snoring your soul away next to someone named burnetpaw
2. being wrangled by him and your brother every minute of every day
3. fighting back and worming yourself in the most absurd places to escape death by duo
and then somehow there’s
4. finding yourself staring a little too long at muscle tensing underneath tabby fur, mouth impossibly dry, brain outright refusing to connect point a to point b
you feel you might combust if you come into contact with whatever creature has dug a home in the pit of your stomach. it rears its head with every glance, every shove, every laugh (even the ones at your expense), each little insignificant thing that has nothing and everything at all to do with you.
so you turn to what you know. you go back to shoving the proverbial boulder up the hill, and when you can't do that you turn off all the lights in your head and pretend to sit in dark.
as if you'd ever have any trouble finding him there, too.
—
if ryepaw takes any notice—and you're certain he has, perceptive as he is—he keeps it down to knowing, exasperated stare-downs and insinuating comments. you claim not to know anything at all. and it works. at least, you keep telling yourself it's working.
and whether it's because you are so adamant to prove this point to your brother (to yourself) or your flame burning one step ahead of you or entirely by some miracle, you end up stumbling forward until you're somehow standing in a crowd and being handed a new identity and a new way out.
(until now they still talk about how you nearly had it revoked for sleeping through your vigil and having to do it for two consecutive nights for recompense. but you never said the new name came with new habits, did you?)
—
back to the same rivers and lakes you know. back to pretending you're chasing after different waterfalls instead of running yourself ragged on the same path that leads to him. so when you meet her, it's entirely too good to be true. you plunge in headfirst anyway.
her name is dovesong, and she thinks you're ridiculous, but she laughs and keeps you company and keeps you distracted. her voice is impossibly soft, and she stands shoulder to shoulder with you, and you look into her eyes and feel something stir in you.
it's not love.
but maybe?
that's all it is, you think. maybe. maybe if you had been different. maybe if she had been different. maybe if she wasn't so good to you, and you were better—better enough not to keep stealing glances the other way, to keep your heart in control like you never could do as a child and still can't.
her name is dovesong, still sticky-sweet on your tongue and nearly nauseating. she thinks you're ridiculous, and she laughs and hits you in the back of the head and says you better start getting your act together.
(it is love.)
(just not the kind you're desperate to run from.)
(but you still do anyway because you never could get past that sadness you put in her. not yet.)
—
now, you pride yourself in not being delusional. you say a lot of things and puff out your chest, but it's never more than a peacock's show. you know as well as everyone else does that you don't quite fit into your own skin as much as you say you do. you're all legs and retorts and a heaping mess of fears.
so how in starclan's name you find yourself staring down at a too-young face with a too-impressionable mind for them to ever be in your vicinity, much less under your authority, is something equally terrifying and confusing.
you spend the next 24 hours holed up in an old abandoned fox den and only come out at ryecloud's threat of revealing every dirty secret you've swept away to burnetfang.
still, still. nothing has ever prepared you for this. certainly not your own apprentice days—belligerent and unorthodox at best—and neither is advice from anyone else. none of it feels like you, none of it feels like it should be your responsibility to bear. the worst of it is that they agreed with you.
you ask yourself: coward or realist?
neither of you stick around with this arrangement long enough to really find out.
—
the first time you tell pepperpaw no is the day you unknowingly sign a contract that until now, you're not quite sure what the terms and conditions are.
(neither of you do, apparently.)
you do know this much:
1. there is no getting out of it this time
2. waking up at the crack of dawn is a lot easier when you're running from mentor responsibilities
3. pepperpaw matches you step for step in being the most insufferable living being in the forest
it takes less than a day for your whole world to turn upside down. you go from burnetfang and ryecloud's nagging to pepperpaw's face sneering down at you whenever you care to open your eyes.
immovable object, meet unstoppable force.
flame, meet fuel.
it's a gamble for the ages, and you know you're not the only one going blue in the face from holding your breath too long.
—
somehow, the constant push and pull gives way to something that feels a little to close to routine. the script is all the same, but maybe you've both broken into it, and now it's this.
whatever that means for the both of you.
familiar paths you could navigate with your eyes closed. the slightest twitch of whiskers giving away today's mood. that same bone-deep ache you'd get when you sense when a storm draws near.
as much as you hate to admit it, you're starting to learn the erratic pitter-pat of the music. you'd rather be caught dead than admit it in any life you've lived and will live, but some little part of it feels... kind of not truly terrible.
and if you find yourself actually having the heart to call his name out a little louder than the rest, then that was no one's business but your own.
—
you're prone to mistakes.
one of those is holding a torch for your best friend.
the other one is thinking you and pepperstorm could ever peacefully be in the same space for a prolonged period of time.
but the biggest one is standing in front of you with those same big, round eyes and sad smile, calling your name as if you'd crumble the moment you hear it.
she didn't know, either.
(and you pretended not to after.)
she loved you, once. still does, but it's not the same.
(you did, too, but never in the way she wanted you to the first time around.)
she wants to try, for their sake.
(you want to. you really, really do. except you couldn't say anything and couldn't look her in the eye.)
—
it takes you far too long before you make your way back into the picture.
—
none of the pieces still fit quite right, but it's getting there.
you find your footing again. you still hide, but not so much out of fear than it is a pastime (and a way to slack off.) you breathe a little easier, even around burnetfang. you let dovesong kick your ass mercilessly and hear her laugh a lot more than you probably deserve. ryecloud still butts his nose in wherever you can, and nothing has changed. lichenpaw and rosepaw—well, who could blame any of the three of you if you still sit in awkward silences and leftover anger and hurt.
and there's pepperstorm still antagonizing you, and you still fighting back.
(except now there's that split-second silence that comes before every word, and you're not yet sure what it means. if it means anything at all.)
[attr="class","appNAMEREASON"]
| ROWAN; for the golden brown color of his pelt | MASK; for the distinctive marks on his face |
[attr="class","appOOC"]
| vera | |
| 19 | SHE/HER |
| GMT +8 | DISCORD |
[attr="class","appOOCfield"]Notes go here. For characters after your first you only need to include your user tag. | |
