Post by bast on Mar 16, 2013 15:53:46 GMT -5
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| [atrb=background,http://i46.tinypic.com/2dkhd1k.jpg] [scrolly:h(306),w(482),sy] IT was so often dreary and grey in the wintertime that some cats claimed to forget what color looked like. The world could be so easily washed out by the grey-white of falling snow. Green grass was turned stiff and brown, bitten too many times by hard frosts and flurries of snow. Tree trunks, normally deep early brown and splotched with lichen and moss, faded to worn out grey with their long branches barren and lonesome. These branches reached out like skeletal fingers to puncture a sky that so quickly faded to pearly grey, constant promise of snow and cold hiding the golden sunshine from view. Even the dropping temperatures seemed to make the world greyer. It was as though warmth was what really brought color to life and without it, everything just sort of faded out, was washed with ice and painted with frost until nothing looked quite the same. Colorful little fish that flashed their scales and flicked their tails playfully in the warmth of greenleaf sank deep into the mud of the streams to hide from the cold and the rippling waters that danced with light went still and opaque. So dreary and sad was this time that sometimes Egretpaw forgot a little, of what true color was. OF course the little white she-cat knew the colors of her clanmates. All of them had a color in her mind, a remnant of a game she once played with her mother when Egretpaw had been only a kit. Coalpaw, for example wasn't black, but the fierce amber of fire burning bright and hot. Leopardpaw was an earthy golden, warm and a bit tarnished but strong. Flameheart was red, passion and courage and just a bit too flashy to be subtle. Egretpaw's color game helped her through the barren months, when the ground was washed white with snow and the waters turned into canvases painted with frost. For a while, it helped her remember that sunny days and warm kisses of sunlight weren't so very far away because her clanmates had all of their warm, beautiful colors. Eventually though, anyone could tire of the endless white and grey, the tired colors of the coldest moons. For Egretpaw, lately it had become so bad that even the colors she imagined for her clanmates had started to go dull, to fade and be washed out by the weariness they carried. The cold months were making them all tired, turning their thick fur dull and their shoulders slumping with the weight of having to continually hunt harder and longer for enough food. Everyone was growing a bit on the thin side now and the toll that took on them was beginning to show. Egretpaw, naturally a petite cat, looked positively tiny now, made lean by deep snows and long cold nights. Everyone felt at least a little hungry more often than not these days. RUNNING through this washed out world, Egretpaw seemed to be fading too. Normally so brilliantly white with the sunlight glancing off of her spotless pelt, everyone could spot Egretpaw a mile away because she just seemed to light up from the inside out. With her untouched pelt and laughing blue eyes, many of the warriors chortled and said she'd never be subtle. She may be a small slip of a thing, as delicate as a lily, but she was as bright as a moonbeam. Now, with the winter moons making Egretpaw lean and small and washing out the world around her, she too seemed to have faded into the snow. She wasn't as fluffy as some cats got during the cold months and her small frame made her susceptible to cold but today the young apprentice was determined to be out of camp for a while. Everyone was tired and worn and Egretpaw needed to be away from it for a while, even though it wouldn't last long. PADDING out of the crackly, winter-dry brush, the little she-cat found herself in an open clearing. It was roughly circular and crisscrossed with tracks of all sorts. Egretpaw could see bird and raccoon and cat and even some deer tracks in the white powder. Walking slowly, picking her way through the tracks and trying her hardest not to disturb them, Egretpaw made her way to the heart of the clearing. Most of the tracks skirted around the clearing's edges, most beasts too wary to be bold enough to walk across the heart of a clearing so that at it's center, a fairly large patch of snow was untouched. Tipping her head back, Egretpaw's shockingly blue eyes looked up at the sky. It was heavy and grey, that frosty, cold color that didn't promise snow but there were clouds nonetheless. Laying down in the snow, Egretpaw rolled herself onto her back and looked up at the sky. "LOOK Egretkit, look how blue the sky is!" Icestream's wistful voice drifted through Egretpaw's mind, soft and gentle, lit up with love. "It's as blue as your dreams, the ones that go one and on forever!" EGRETKIT giggled, looking at her mother lying on the grass with her belly up to the sky, all stretched out on her back. Her mother's soft white fur and light blue eyes looked up at the sky, light and wistful joy in her gaze. Bounding to her mother's side, Egretkit rolled eagerly onto her back, pressed up against her mother's side. EGRETPAW smiled up at that dreary sky and in her mind's eye, remembered the same sky washed an impossible blue in a time when the grass was green and soft. Back then, leaving camp had been a treat and that memory was one of Egretpaw's favorites. If she concentrated hard enough, she could imagine Icestream's soft fur against her side as they both laid on their backs in a little clearing near camp and looked up at a blue-blue sky that went on forever and ever. That sky had been so blue that Egretpaw could remember feeling like she was about to fall right into it and fall forever, feeling like her mother was all that was holding her to the bed of soft grass. Egretpaw closed her eyes and waited to fall. HER best dreams had always been in blue. Tagged;; Leopardpaw Singing;; "Caribbean Blue" by Enya Words;; 1036 Notes;; wistful little egret -pets- |
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