my sick pride [kin]

[flyaway]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-image: url(http://i.imgur.com/gvmt7UI.png); width: 500px; height: 594px;border:1px solid #000000] [style=margin-top: -20px] At times, she felt like a lion among gazelle. She was a predator, a true power. She was made for greater things. And those creatures, those that dared to call themselves “warriors”. They were nothing. They were sheep, flocking together. Their numbers didn’t increase their strength, only accented their stupidity. They said they valued “peace”. But with near constant battle, not a kit within the clans could truly know peace. She supposed they prided themselves on it, the whole forest stank of their self-righteousness. She wanted to show them their reflections, the blackened purity they thought they held. She wanted to see their eyes, as she stood above them, as they viewed her true perfection. She could understand, in truth, why her father had left. There was nothing in the clans worth his time, or hers. She’d probably inherited her more…pessimistic…outlook from him. He’d been strong, truly strong. He took what he desired, when he desired it. He sank his claws into it, pulled it to him, and shredded it when he was finished. He’d done so with her mother. Hell, he’d done so with her quite easily. And for a while – she had hated him for it. But in the end, he’d taught her a lesson worth learning. There was no such thing as true loyalty – only perfection. Her mother, her sister, even herself – they hadn’t been good enough. They hadn’t been worth his time. So he had walked away. And Cedarpaw would never again let anyone walk away from her. And these clans pretended to have democracy. They pretended they knew something of equality. But they were a monarchy, established moons before any of them could remember. They were open to corruption, but blind to their own essential faults. Then, when they found themselves exploited, they reacted with foolish amounts of fury. Yet time and time again, they would make the same mistakes. These were mistakes Cedarpaw would never bring to light, fatal flaws she would never try to fix. To strengthen the clans, their core structure, was to weaken her own possibilities. Her dreams of her future, her ideals, all depended on their spineless compliance – their blindness. They depended on her achievement of perfection, even at the cost of others’ failures. She rounded a corner, still lost in her impossible dreams. They were fantasies, truly. For despite the haunting maturity of her thoughts, she was still an apprentice at heart. She was youthful, had little experience in the world. She was jaded, yes, warped and obsessive. But young at heart. Perhaps she truly would leave the clans, leave them for good. And whatever she did, it was likely her actions would revolve entirely around herself. But for now, dreams of dancing flames remained just that – dreams. She stopped short, a familiar scent hitting her nose. Froststar was near. The older scarred leader had instructed her apprentice to meet in the Pines though, characteristically, hadn’t given a specific location. So Cedarpaw had wandered. She had left hours before their meeting time. To be late was intolerable. To disrespect her leader, to show signs of carelessness or stupidity would be worth her life. For she was above an apprentice. She was something more. She always had been and always would be. She paused, giving her chest a few swift licks and straightening her shoulders. She moved with pride. After all – she was chosen for greatness, she was the leader’s apprentice. She held her head high, pushing through the last bushes to greet her mentor. Her quiet eyes were placid, but sharp. Every movement was calculated, stiff and almost hauntingly robotic. But such was the image of perfection. [/style]

[Kin]

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froststar

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It had always somewhat disturbed her, the way Cedarpaw moved. Each motion was precisely calculated, economic in a cold, emotionless way. She yearned for perfection, strove to be the best and above her peers. And yet, standing on the outside looking in, Froststar held nothing but sympathy for her apprentice. Cedarpaw thought she was honing herself for perfection, when in truth she was only making herself mechanical, unreachable. Her motions looked stiff and awkward, as opposed to the graceful, fluid glide some of the Clan's more skilled stalkers sported.

While Cedarpaw had a great intellectual capacity, she couldn't seem to understand a definition of perfection outside of her own, and reached for her naive ideal. As jaded and cynical as the tabby was, Froststar knew her to be naive. She knew not about the nature of felines, that to achieve even this degree of peace was something great. And one of Cedarpaw's own choices saddened Froststar greatly. The apprentice seemed to not know just how useful friends were, even if one was only looking at them from a cold, callous perspective. They made one seem more amiable and approachable, and were a sign of a socially skilled cat. Friends often helped each other reach greater heights, and forged paths together that they could not have reached alone.

Friends were the path by which the measure of a cat could be told. They helped each other improve and pointed out flaws in both plans and demeanor, both of which Cedarpaw strove to hone to perfection itself. In fact, today, Froststar hoped to have the beginnings of a better stride for her apprentice. While she wasn't quite sure she approved of Cedarpaw's fixation with perfection, the least she could do was steer her onto the right path, help her move more naturally and smooth out her steps.

And so, Froststar sat in a wide space of clear ground in the pine forest, tail wrapped neatly around her paws and good ear perked, listening for Cedarpaw's arrival. Her ruined ear was canted forward as well, by pure habit. She was all but deaf in the ear, as it could no longer catch sounds. Some of the younger cats thought she actually was deaf in her ruined ear. Contrarily, Froststar had almost normal hearing in the ear, with a minimal loss purely from damage. The leader could hear sounds from above her nearly as well as she once had, and wind whistled loudly across the lip of her scars on days with a lively breeze. Gossip and whispers often escaped her ruined ear, but some of her warriors even forgot that she had a perfectly good, if scarred, ear as well and that she wasn't fully deaf.

In front of her and slightly to one side, pawsteps approached. Both ears canted toward the sound, and Froststar's head followed. Her tail tip flicked in satisfaction, pleased that Cedarpaw was here so early. She'd thought to get some time to herself for thought, rare as it had been in the past several days. But this was excellent as well, because it meant more time to devote to the apprentice she had been forced to neglect for the running of the Clan prior to appointing Pinestep as her deputy. The code demanded that she appoint a deputy as soon as possible after her own ascent to leadership, but finding a cat who she trusted to lead after herself was difficult. Froststar had labored to accurately measure what her warriors would be like after moons and moons of being a deputy. Finally, she'd settled on an ambitious cat who she thought could mellow out into a good leader once she was gone.

Even just thinking of herself as gone, as no longer living, was a difficult thing. Death was not permanent, not for Froststar's first eight. But the ninth instance of death would claim her and decorate her pelt with stars, bedecked with StarClan's ethereal translucence. It would tear her from her Clan and her kits, and if luck was with them and old age took the both of them, it would reunite her with Lynxstar in a place where they could freely be together and love one another, unworried by interClan politics and free from judgement.

"Excellent, you're early. Let's begin." Froststar rose fluidly to her paws and beckoned for Cedarpaw to follow her. She scented the air, checking first high and then low. "Today," she told the tabby, "We hunt."

[/style]

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cedar

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[style=width:50px; font-family:arial; font-size:20px; color:white; text-shadow:#666666 1px 1px 1px; text-align: center;]notes

she lives!

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[style=width:50px; font-family:arial; font-size:20px; color:white; text-shadow:#666666 1px 1px 1px; text-align: center;]words

738

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[flyaway]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-image: url(http://i.imgur.com/gvmt7UI.png); width: 500px; height: 594px;border:1px solid #000000] [style=margin-top: -20px] Inadequacy, it had a stale taste to it. It was stagnant, but wrapped itself around the sense – obliterating all else. Cedarpaw knew that no amount of cleaning, no distance from her current position, would cleanse away the feel of it. It descended upon her, a slow-moving boulder. She could feel it rubbing against her fur, slowly pushing her down. Her knees would shake and weaken until they collapsed beneath her. She would be laid flat, slowly crushed. But it would be ever so slowly, too slowly to truly even notice until it was all over anyways. She would feel its weight, but by such a slight change each day that it would barely exist. It would creep up on her, consuming her, until she perished. It was a horrible feeling. And it was one she had never felt before. Though driven to achieve perfection as an apprentice, and soon as a warrior, Cedarpaw had never seen herself as a failure, or in any way as inadequate. No. She had known she was a good apprentice, she had simply strived to be better, the best in fact. But in doing so she had made herself blind. She had been so obsessed, so single-minded about her goal. So much else had become intangible to her. She had relied on Froststar’s admiration and approval, never truly considering that she might need more. She had seen Froststar immerse herself, always with one clanmate or another – but for select few she tended to avoid. But Cedar, she had always stuck to just Froststar – content with her and no others. How had she missed the crippling effects of her solitude? How had she managed to be blind to them? As she asked herself these questions, even more fearful ones rose to replace them. What was she truly afraid of? For she knew exactly what she feared. Failure. While this in itself was a very general and almost cliché fear, it was only a small word to describe a large and complex idea. She did not exactly fear failure, per say. Failure implied reaching a goal and doing something disastrous at the last moment that prevented the attainment of said achievement. Failure was a mistake, a deed that clung to one, forever reminding them of what they might have had. And as intimidating as it was – this was not what Cedarpaw feared. No. She knew that when the time came for her to grasp her life’s prize, it would be impossible for her to fail. For there was no position to refuse, nor fail to receive. No status to elude her. Her goal was intangible, unnamable. Because it was perfection in its most base and carnal form. Yet it was a perfection that did not demand acknowledgement in the form of an ideal family, a raised position, any such thing. And so it was impossible, in a way of thinking, for her to fail. But then again, it was also impossible for her to triumph. Every chance at perfection, everything she hoped for – there would always be a higher goal. If she became a warrior, she would dream of being the best warrior, or deputy. As deputy, she would dream of being a leader. As leader, of ruling her clan in a way none had done before her. There was no end to it, to any of it. But she couldn’t acknowledge it. She couldn’t face her own hopeless future. It would break her, leave her with nothing. And so she steadily, purposefully, ignored it. She turned a blind eye, and dreamed a future that would certainly be absolute perfection. Cedarpaw snapped to attention at Froststar’s words. Yet her blank hard gaze hadn’t shifted. There was no sign of her wandering thoughts. She stood, less fluid – more controlled, but stiff and wrong in many ways. She dipped her head in obedience, following respectfully at Froststar’s heels. At the very mention of their intended activity, she slightly parted her jaws. She waited for a scent to cross her jaws. An average apprentice would wait for a signal, a command. They would rely on the word of their mentors, as if they held no comprehension of individual thought. Instead, Cedarpaw intended to move separately, to show Froststar that she was prepared, she had trained well, that she was an ideal. She froze, dropping into a crouch, her ears angling ahead. Nothing but an admonishment, a signal of disappointment, would stop her from the hunt she had begun to embark on. [/style]