Flooded Forest. [VA Collection.][DNP.]

[stag]

This thread contains the following possible trigger(s):
drowning/implied drowning

Read at your own risk.

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Her life was covered with feelings of eternal bliss. But this was a feeling she missed from the former seasons, living in Thunderclan. If she was being honest, she did not remember the past. Her birth, her kithood, and her early apprenticeship were all lost memories. She does not know where they’ve gone or how they’ve gone missing. She misses it dearly. But what is she truly missing? Chasing memories that were swept away in the wind by a force out of her control.

Hornetpaw has claimed Thunderclan as home for as long as she can remember. …..Remember. That was a funny word, it was what she had been trying to do for the past moon, yet failure was always the result.

Hornetpaw could not say that this time was different. A figure filled her mind, once more. She called this figure “Spirit”. Spirit was constant, Spirit was always there. Spirit always appeared with a grey pelt, lighter markings that resembled wisps of wind, and shimmering blue eyes. Hornetpaw wished Spirit would talk more, offering a companionship in the forest of her mind.

Well, she could not even call it a forest anymore. It had been flooded when she tried to enter it about a moon ago, it was a lake now. Hornetpaw could walk on this lake, thankfully, she wasn’t able to swim.

The grey shecat twists her head, Spirit is here. Spirit lets out a soft chirp, a single word that Hornetpaw has only ever heard from Spirit. “Howls.” The word hits her, Hornetpaw lets the smile grow larger on her face. The apprentice can hear out of both ears at her lake.

Her lake. It was her’s and only her’s. Nobody else’s. It brought the grey shecat comfort, that she had something to herself. But now Spirit lived here, Hornetpaw was unsure of where Spirit stayed beyond the pine trees. A place that The Fallen refused to venture into. It had given her a terrible headache when she entered before, a dark force watching from the shadows. Hornetpaw knew they were Amber, like that of tree sap. Nothing beyond that was known to The Fallen.

Hornetpaw greets Spirit, a similar chirping noise in return. The one thing she knew would send a welcome message to Spirit. The Thunderclan apprentice allowed Spirit to take the lead across the lake.

Where Spirit stepped, she stepped. Until she didn’t. Hornetpaw missed the paw placement of her companion. The grey shecat was plunged into the wood land below, blue and eyes watching Spirit in horror as water surrounded herself. Filling her lungs.

Spirit would not follow her down here.

[stag]

Nobody knows what’s inside of me.

--

It surrounds her. She cannot escape its grip, for its claws dig deeper into her pelt. Dragging her lower and lower….
As the depths cover her, water soaks deeper into her pelt. Leaks into her lungs as she fights the downward motion. Paws kicking. Trying to make her way back to the surface….she fails. Her vision slips into the void of nothing. Water consumes her. Hornetpaw has slipped into the jaws of death…on this plain.


Hornetpaw is dead.


Only those of the past remain, within Hornetpaw’s final moments she can recall hearing a noise. That of an animal.....Howling.