WHITESMOKE

[ink]

whitesmoke .
thirty nine . female
windclan & warrior . click
white she-cat with cold blue eyes & brown stripes

name explained white - color of her pelt & smoke - her personality, her fleeting nature, she is like a ghost: there and not there at the same time

APPEARANCE. whitesmoke takes on her father's pelt and her mother's eyes. she is small and beautiful, her shadows are like wisps of smoke- they shrink like cocoons, they hang off of her shoulders and fold in on themselves. she has no substance between her bones and her pelt- skinny and small, everything on her body is needed. she is hollow like a ghost. her ribs are like mountains, her collarbones: the wind. the negligible weight of her own body drags her down, forming the paw prints on the moor called her home. however, her reflections in the rivers do not give any signs of recognition. she is beautiful, yet she does not believe that she is.

whitesmoke is like a blackhole. everyone yawns their sadness into her in hope that it will be gone forever. and it is. their sadness sticks to her pelt and drags her down even further. her sadness is not reflected in her eyes- but she will always fall asleep with the memory of unforgettable words on her skin. the white she-cat's silhouette looks invisible against the skyline, and she is filled with something other than emptiness and silence. perhaps, invisibility.

some nights, whitesmoke would walk home by herself and she realized how nice it was to be invisible. because others couldn't see her. they couldn't touch her. they couldn't hurt her. she felt like winter, and she looked like it too. but she couldn't tell anyone about it. however, as she grew older. whitesmoke became something worth remembering. they made her a hero, painted her invisible cape fifty different shades of gray luxury, of beauty. she became something worth taking a second glance at. yet whitesmoke does not take a second glance at others. with an ache in their guts, they will think of the way her silvery-white fur fell down over her shoulders and the way her cold blue eyes pierced their shields of safety. they will remember that she was like a sculpture forged by some renaissance artist. perfectly, piercingly, beautiful yet broken.

because she is like an american summer with lips longing for disaster. she is like a walking cliché with deep sky blue eyes like july longing for adventure. she had been hard wired to make mistakes and that is all she has ever known. she had been waiting to leave ever since she found there were paths by the river that were willing to take her anywhere she wanted to go. but she wouldn't go. she wouldn't walk down the back roads where no clan cat had explored before, she wouldn't wander down and lose track of expectations, of responsibilities. she wouldn't lose her mind, or bury herself in her past and construct a new her with eloquent words that could make up dreams filled with gritted teeth and anchors and the sea. she wanted to leave and only come back home when her heart was soaked- except when it rained, she locked herself inside of the reed covered camp and buried her nose in her own tail. she shut herself off but she longed to play with fire. she is like a walking irony with her silver pelt like stars, like the undertones of the river. she is the sunlight peeked over the horizon, and she ran towards dawn. it left her breathless and each light illuminated her face to reveal eyes that danced across the earth. she is spring, but she is more than spring. spring is more than her.

578 words


PERSONALITY. whitesmoke sits beneath the stars and in crowded clearings and on the rough edges of otherwise forgettable camp grounds. eighteen moons of her own inner voice, and this was the peace that she found: some call it disappointment, and others call it desperation. but she? she calls it disintegration, but she's slowly getting better with time. she doesn't speak much, but if you give her a few seconds- she would try to find something worth telling you. she has spent entire lifetimes chocking on words that should have been said, but weren't. it was always about the should have said, the should have done. what they don't know, is that this is all for one cat. and so many of these lost moments are for him that sometimes, there are moments when she fears that she lost him amidst the silence. well, she got lost somewhere inside the changing seasons and she finally found the point in all of the stars: she bends, she weeps, she cowers, she cries, she hurts, she lies, but somehow, she smiles.

there are cats out there waiting for her. they're waiting for her to stumble through the troubles of today so that she could finally get to tomorrow, and the next day, and finally to the days of prosperity of her clan where she would cross paths with strangers who smile because she knows that they were waiting for her, never getting too close. when it comes down to the smallest fiber of her being, it is a little more than selfishness that she finds- sheepishly stitching up her own heart. she walks past the strangers, but she wants to reach out and help make the bruises go away. she might ruin her perfectly forgiven hands. she has seen enough black and blue to last a lifetime; enough to know that no one lets them fade by choice. the only reason humans skip rocks is because they hate how calm the water seems without it. they collect bruises to breed their humility. but destroy everything they touch. she is not an exception, no matter how hard she tries to be a savior.

she always answers in half whispers, wanting to choke on her own words, wanting to gulp down the smoke and let it smother the part of her that ached for everyone that she lost and left her. everyday is the kind of day where she hits every god damn red light, her eyes always sting and her words mean nothing- she knows that the past hides somewhere in between the run on sentences while she babbles on and on about nothing important.

whitesmoke always thinks about running through flooded streets, drenching herself with the sky's tears until she shakes away the memory of how she opened her clanmates rib cages and read the words that were etched into their bones and left them all bleeding. she opened her own rib cage and couldn't find her own heart- she knew that if anyone peeled her skin away, she would look worse than everyone else. she pushes the thought of getting close to cats away, and always says nothing short of avoidance. “let's not talk about it. let's not think about it. i'll explain sometime in the future.” but the future came and the future is today- but she always tries to run away from tomorrow when tomorrow is already here. but she still can't remember why she's so terribly lost and broken.

whitesmoke has always stood on the moor edges, waiting for the moonlights to tell her something that she didn't already knew. she has never been good with directions, and she likes to look at flowers every spring only to watch them die every fall. she likes to believe that every cat began as stardust- but then she looks at the specks that float by the florescent lights in the middle of the night and they tell her that she has always been nothing more than disappearing light, forgotten, erasable, replaceable. whitesmoke knows that she was always been more of an idea than a cat- the aura of perfection and arrogance was sculpted by cats that she has never met, and then gently molded into this frightening mask of repressed anger and intolerance of breaking rules by tongues that she used to talk to with her own clumsy tongue in her childhood.

she likes to take long walks even when it's cold outside and stays up past when she said she would- she still doesn't know what she wants, she's trying figure out what she doesn't: she doesn't want to see the end of the road, she doesn't want to smell the dead bodies of her loved ones, it makes the air in her lungs get caught in her throat because she knows that it will never smell like this forever. whitesmoke will never be the same person that she is here tonight, tomorrow morning will come and so with the next, and she knows that she will be flung into saying the few goodbyes that she has the guts to say.  she will stumble into her clan cats with clumsy words and try to talk about things that she thought wouldn't kill her, and she will try to laugh but only until she feels like no one would get hurt from the inevitable goodbyes. she knows that her cheeks will ache with all the memories, forgetting and remembering at the same time.

she finds it difficult to meet people's gazes in fear that they will see something she doesn't want them to. like they will figure out that this bad, confident, girl mask is only a disguise. she's not a bad girl, just restraining her impulsion to conform to standards. like they will figure out that she has been living inside of dreams for moons now, but the problem is they have already begun disappearing. halfway through her moons of living, she realized that she got stuck somewhere and she has spent the past few moons trying to figure out which part of her left to disappear with all of these deaths. her heart wades through canyons and she still folds into the pain: cracked, blistered, switched with scars of aching. she will never apologize for the self-induced agony, she still lusts after the breaking and falls in love with the sound of her own heart shattering, crouched down low to scoop up splintered pieces of her own heart, trying in vain to curse everyone out for doing it to her, and not thinking about cursing herself. but she always thinks twice, and five times more.

1100 words.

family. wintercloud - mother, deceased. eagleclaw - father, deceased. ravenstripe - brother, deceased.

HISTORY. there is a myth that all beings were created when a rock the size of mars crashed onto earth; they were all wrecked from the beginning of their existence. whitesmoke is made out of stardust- no wonder why she acts the way she does: distant, cold, reserved, lacking morality within her non-existent soul, wrapped around a rock solid envelopment called her heart, lacking emotions. being around her is to be deprived of all feelings, others are lucky if they ever find excitement within her 14.6 billion cells. instead, there is melancholy, regret, disappointment. yes, good luck with that. she is made out of dust and cracks and craters of her own regret that can span thousands of kilometers and can go as deep as an ocean. she has blue eyes and white fur- created from the icy volcanoes of her own repression that erupted and spilled their lava all over her. she has domes and wrinkled ridges called her claws and her whiskers- she gets shivers that cause fractures to appear at the surface and emit harmful rays of indifference. weathering is imminent- whitesmoke experiences collisions of emotionally unstable conversations and bombardment of meteorites made out of everyone's tears. there is nothing beautiful about being destroyed.

the last cat she had ran into tried to get their leader to open up. the conversation ended with a curt, “you don't know what it's like inside of my head.” as if anyone had a clue about anyone else. whitesmoke was just angry, she had to sit there with her heart in her lap. “it's all about to change,” they told her. her life began to resemble and old black and white movie- just a bunch of clips strung together in hopes that the end result would resemble something fluid and real. but it was choppy and she moved like her body was anyone else's but her own. she knew that the stars would come out one day, she knew they would be different, less mysterious- more like cheap headlights from monsters that drove past her twice a day. that's what happened when she arrived a the truth: the rest of the world began to lose some of its mysticism.

that's what they tried to tell her mother, wintercloud, who had her father's name, eagleclaw, tattooed beneath her tongue. whitekit wished that she could just know eagleclaw instead of wondering what he would be thinking about. it had been years since wintercloud and eagleclaw's last conversation- but he was still waiting in her dreams, forcing their children to construct him into an illusion that would only crumble if anyone tried touching it. eagleclaw left wintercloud with nothing but bleeding paws that tried to cover up his mistakes- if he only knew how many dens she had stained with his name. whitekit and ravenkit watched the earth turn without him. they force fed themselves air until their feet put one in front of the other. there were moments of the past that play on an endless loop; it wears wintercloud down until she is on her side, screaming words she never said to him- asking one more time to come back with that sideways smile. she knew that she lost it a long time ago, but she just needed to know what went through his mind when he looked at the stars with those eyes as deep and profound as the night sky. she wanted him to come out, come back to windclan, to sit down with her and tell her where he'd been for the past few moons. tell her what he'd been thinking about right before he slept. let her take him away from the night to meet her in her dreams and tell her that she isn't as crazy as she seems. except, he never did come. she realized that his family would never be his number one choice- but wintercloud hoped that he would find what he was looking for because starclan knows, it was never them.

but she just turned around and tried not to talk about the twinkling lights above their heads. at night, whitekit had tried to talk to her. but then she walks away again. nothing was getting any easier. wintercloud wondered if she should look back and laugh at how foolish they all were- she doesn't. he was a lesson learned in spring- always halfway leaving, everyone used to watch his footsteps as he went and never told him to turn around and come back. they probably knew that freedom laid with his walking away. they let him walk, run even. the only race he ran seemed to be the one with himself and they all knew that there wasn't going to be a finish line. and their mother knew that one day, whitekit would tell strangers that her mother tried to count the clouds while she waited for everyone to ask about her silence and the way she closed her eyes to see all of the conversations (or lack of) and the stolen glances with eagleclaw from across the riverclan border and the dreams forged between midnight and sunrise. she remembered she at beneath the stars and in crowds and on scorched ground with blood splattered over her pelt on otherwise forgettable rocks.

whitepaw found her mother by the gorge and gave her a few seconds. wintercloud tried to find something worth telling eagleclaw. it took heartbeats, a couple of seconds, a couple of minutes, a couple of days. maybe, he would realize that that by the way her voice rises at the end of her sentences that the words were just for him. if he didn't? well, at least she hoped that he knew that she spent entire lifetimes choking on words that should have been said, but weren't. it was always about the should have said, the should have done. this wasn't for him, this was all for her. it would always be for her. so many of the words were for her that there are moments when she feared that she was lost amidst the scattered syntax and haphazardly chosen diction. she let words dissect her and carry her away.

that was the last whitepaw saw of her mother. ever since then, she disapproved of vulnerability. whitepaw tucked herself inside the folds of her dreams before she woke up to the sound of wondrous gasps, watching the flames caress what he once called stability. it burned and smoke spread through every corner of her hollow heart. the white apprentice didn't put out the flames, she let them consume her and embraced the third-degree burns, hoping that she would cool down into ashes. whitepaw felt nothing but ambition. the words of discouragement from her clan after knowing of her mother's abandonment intoxicated her. it elevated her to a new euphoria and numbed her all over. the she-cat knew that the words that spilled out of everyone's mouth would puncture her, leaving her to die and mourn the loss of this silent vow of agreement with her clanmates. she knew it wasn't going to be any different- the outrage and the shock was no use. everyday she just stood there, gently balancing two paws in two different worlds. her indifference stunned her- she needed to clarify the uncertainty of her feelings, of her mother's intentions, of her brother ravenpaw's wild insanity. there was no crevasse between her and her clan to widen- she was already dust in their eyes: worthless, insignificant, everywhere.

ravenstripe could never let go of the thought that he was abandoned by his own mother. he loved to play with the fire of his own abandonment, let the flames consume him until he fell to the ground like shooting stars. and shooting stars have tails of fire that follow, he was that fire; never went out until he smoldered himself with his own misery. no one told him to stop destroying himself with nature because they knew he wouldn't listen anyway. he wanted to see what color the flames would be if he let his own heart burn- it turned a brilliant, scarlet red like blood that ran through their veins rushing to save the self-inflicted pain, deep dark crimson like the droplets of sun shine on the evening sky, he burned a brilliant cerise- the color his tongue was painted when he lied and said everything was fine. he was red before he left windclan and turned into ashes of whitesmoke's mind. whitesmoke saw him in her dream a couple nights later. he would weave around the moors and crossed the gorge with his eyes closed- she knew he was hoping that the rain would come down anyway to take them away from here.

whitesmoke was used to being forgotten. she knew all of the pain and the sorrow and the love was still there, pulsing in her ears. she just didn't know what to do with it now. she woke up to the sound of her denmate screaming in her ear- get up, do work, get up, do work. she kept working and never turned around to see what the noise of the screams in her heart were about. whitesmoke- she was always expensive, forever dripping between the cracks in the earth from the spaces between everyone's words. the dreams at night tried to bring whitesmoke back to her family, like  that anchor trying to pull the ship into place, but she just noticed how great her reflected was in that lake. she turned around and never saw her family in her dreams again. but they would always remain a shadow figure in the corner of her mind that she can't get rid of. they were like early september, her- late august. they would never fall on the same page.

whitesmoke felt her own bones shift under the weight of her expectations- no matter how hard she tried. she couldn't find the right stars. her tongue was tied from all of hte apologies- the word "sorry" was like razorblades inside of her mouth, the muscles have formed a habit of saying it, even in her sleep. sorry filled her lungs and she doesn't have a choice but to exhale. sorry, no one understands, but she needed to say she was sorry like a tree needs to lose its leaves before it can finally admit that summer is over. she's sorry, she's not a child anymore, but she still checks both ways before he crosses the street and every time her heart beats, she can feel the dull ache of the disappointment of ravenstripe and wintercloud and eagleclaw. whitesmoke has since then stitched herself into the fabric of her own dreams of becoming the best windclan had ever seen, but the string is pulling her away from every familiar place she's never known. she's sorry- she's another twenty moons older but she still doesn't feel any wiser. she still doesn't know what to do while everything changes- everyone else is sitting around, waiting for their luck to run out. whitesmoke is waiting for her luck to run to her. it still hasn't. 

one day, the morning grass felt cool upon her paws. for the first time in a long time, she didn't mind being up with the rest of her clan. everything was so much louder than she was used to, but it took the mind off of the moments that made her dream. she wondered if the rest of the cats could see that if they peeled away her pelt, there would be a pile of mistakes where her bones should have been. for some reason, whitesmoke preferred it that way- she was harder to break. not that it really mattered. with one glance at the handsome tom next to her, she wondered if one day she would be able to forget her family and the path that spelled out their names. she sat with her tail curled around her paws. he smiled at her. she smiled back. she knew it wouldn't be tomorrow and she knew it wasn't yesterday. but maybe one day she would be able to forget. maybe.

ever since that day, thistleclaw's name was the only word that she had carved into her heart and caressed with her worn warmth on the loneliest nights. the wind was always a maelstrom that struck the valleys hidden behind each of her arteries and her emotions seemed to cling to the crimson that thickened ever since she had cried away her trust for her brother, ravenstripe- burned with betrayal from the one she had trusted the most. but trust should not be used to measure love. some nights, whitesmoke would use her tail to cage the lingering scent of thistleclaw and let the imagery evolve into dreams that only she could comprehend. she stitched him into the thoughts that swirled in her dreams while she slept, he was the first breath he took when she met the sunlight outside. he was the sigh that nestled deep when she felt alone, when she was alone, when she was nothing close to being alone. thistleclaw became the midnight ghost she couldn't get rid of that endlessly haunted her thoughts, he was the morning silhouettes that followed her everywhere she went, every step she took, and she didn't realize it until she paused and breathed.

but the stars were not in their favor- whitesmoke had been falling asleep with the memory of his words on her skin but,. and whitesmoke once said that she thought that if she could tell him a story worth remembering, that would somehow make up for everything else. but whenever they talked, she would say the ending and she would make him a hero and she was his damsel in distress. but somewhere along the way, he lost his cape and she didn't have the luxury of changing his mind- their love story was ending. she thought that growing up would change this, that it might prove her wrong- but she found that she was only a little more than a larger pile of mistakes, and that she began scrambling for something tangible that would set her free- like words. but words mean nothing when they could mean everything, if only they could find themselves in the ears of the right person. whitesmoke knew that she wasn't that right person, that she would never be that right person for her thistleclaw or her clan. but she hoped, oh she desperately hoped, that thistleclaw would be at least a little bit correct. it was true that she used to think that she would find something important when she no longer needed it. but the fact that she needed something important was the only twisted string left. she tried to tell everything, she swore she did. but things never went the way she imagined them to. if she had the ability to write a poem, she knew that it would end would goodbye. but she also knew that she would probably end up putting it into the sixth stanza because she wouldn't be able to stand to think that it was the end.

but things never went the way she imagined them to. whitesmoke knew that sometime in the future, she would try to say a few more goodbyes and stumble over her own words- it would sound lifeless and jumbled and the last sentence would be more like this. like this. like right now, staring into the eyes of a warrior that she loved with an ache in her gut, she knew that she would think of the way his fur fell over his body as he slept beside her. she knew that she would remember their conversations and how she once counted 42 clouds before she decided to speak. where would she lead them? she knew that it could never end up good because she knew that her life was not perfect, not written in the stars by starclan- she would have never been that lucky.

instead, whitesmoke was left stumbling over her goodbyes and a few more jumbled, lifeless, words didn't have time to explain. she knew that it wasn't the final act, but she wanted to have the heart to write in the goodbye scene. she doesn't quite understand, but thistleclaw does. he knows twarriory never understood the essence of love, she didn't know how to describe it, and what made others fall in love with love. talking about love, she thought, was a lot like listening to someone talk in a language she couldn't speak. she would never grab the essence of it- the meaning would be lost in translation.

after moons of ignoring each other, he was dying in her arms after they had won their border skirmish with shadowclan. she didn't understand love, but the moment she looked into his eyes again, the words began to wring the life out of her heart. she didn't know what love was, but would she be willing to trip over misplaced commas and run off with run on sentences and fall off of the paragraphs that she made after stripping her feelings off and presenting them nakedly in front of everyone else? would she be willing to humiliate herself, wound her ego, shove the face off her pride down the sidewalk to try and understand love for him? that was the million dollar question of the day. in whispers, she leaned forward toward to hear the goodbyes of lives lost on this land. tonight was no different. "i will love you forever." except now, she knows that thistleclaw has to go in peace- to starclan.

strangely, she was okay with that. she would just keep looking for ghosts in the places that her shadows used to be. she was getting tired of going to these places of death and loved ones- that's all this land is anymore. they were ghosts and their shadows had long ago taken the hint and left them to their vices. thistleclaw used to say that she would miss the nights he used to listen to the crunch of rabbit bone in their jaws and the flowers of warmer weather, and she used to say that she would would miss the way everything smelled like fresh cut grass in the summertime. but there was nothing left for her here except the safety of her clan- he lingers amongst the only things she knew. whether she was a creature of habit or impulse? it makes no difference. the roar thunder rumbles and shakes her bones every night. she put her paw one in front of the other. in whispers, she hears everyone's goodnights and they strangely sound like goodbyes and tonight is no different. except now, she knows that the old whitesmoke isn't gone- just waiting. and she has to go now. she has to go find whitesmoke for the sake of her own clan.

3198 words

CODE WORDS. sleeping kitten.

---

name. ink or sleet

OTHER CHARACTERS. none

found. site hopping

ROLE PLAY. (taken from Wf)

there she was. lurking in the shadows hundreds of pawsteps from where she began. the windclan tom's scent came to her before the sound of breaking twigs came to her ears, and she shrunk even further into the shadows. she wasn't looking for a fight tonight. she wasn't ready. she wasn't okay. this wasn't okay. she didn't think that it would end up okay. except, the tom sounded friendly and plopped onto the ground. she felt the air around her ease up as his attack mechanisms disappeared. the she-cat? she wasn't quite sure. she opened her mouth to speak, but she was only able to mouth words that had become as familiar to her and her own heartbeat. hello, i'm whitesmoke. what's your name? she wasn't that friendly. each syllable that she wanted to say felt heavy on her tongue, weighed down like bricks with remembering all of the times she failed. it kept the walls around her high. but she wanted to break down those walls to let someone in, to talk to someone, someone who wouldn't judge her. but they all would, wouldn't they?

the tom was waiting for her and she was trying to feel alive as she curled her claws like life support around the cool ground where everyone else but her slept. there was a difference between what she did and what she remembered and what she wanted to do. her paws turns to walk away from the tom, the gravel between her paws. she knew that if she left, tonight would just be another flesh wound of her failure. just another scar left for morning. she would pick it away with pieces of her own self-loathing for not being as clever as sootstreak, as any of her siblings. and she would fill herself with the unforgettable ache of empty words under the moonlight.

she wanted to go out, but she felt like she wouldn't. she knew that she wouldn't, but she wanted to prove herself wrong. whitesmoke knew that if she was brave enough, she would tattoo the entire night sky on her skin. in the darkness, the stardust looks more like the her that hides in between the blue veins. the her that trails down her legs and around her paws until it disappears somewhere near the big dipper. she knew that she was part of the stars. the distance, the mysticism, the awe. and she knew that was what drew people in. but everything else that she did was what drew people away.

the irony was strong enough to taste.

it didn't taste good.

so the shadowclan warrior sulked further into the shadows, maybe she would be able to disappear. maybe he would forget that there was a shadowclan scent here. maybe she would become part of the darkness that he would give up and walk away. except she stepped onto a twig and silently cursed herself. the warrior had no choice but to step out into the moonlight, revealing the frail body with her fur hanging off of her shoulders like her own shadows- clumped up in mess. the disease had not hit her yet, she still looked better than most of her clan. but she felt worse. an unworthy warrior like her had no reason, no right, to be okay. there were so many who deserved health more than she did- like sootstreak.

“hi.” whitesmoke said shyly, her big blue eyes looking into the tom's. she still stood up, her claws clinging into the ground, holding her steady as if knowing that if she let go- she would fall. no, she would trip and stumble over all of the broken pieces of her own ending that she couldn't even string together. she wondered if the warrior could see how unworthy she was. she wondered if he knew it was a mistake to even acknowledge her yet.

how would she pretend like his harsh judgment of the way she held herself didn't mean anything more than just another stranger's thoughts. if this was easy, she would have already spoken to everyone else about how stupid all of the others were moons ago. that's what she would do: she would explain the things that scare the shit out of her until their microscopic dissected fragments disappeared. it would make herself feel better. it wouldn't have been a monster, she would have been able to name it.

deep breath. deep breath. deep breath.

she was going to be fine.

but there she was, staring the stranger right in the face. she wasn't fooling anyone. he was here to tell her that it was all ending. that she was worthless. that everything she'd known was being set on fire.

she didn't know yet that she was the one with the match.

[admin tetris]

First: Can you please use our application form?

Second: I feel like you haven't read our site plot - because the four clans don't exist any longer, and you mention the different clans multiple times in your app. I would highly suggest reading all of the plot and reference material on the site (if you haven't yet already) and editing Whitesmoke so she's possible on this site.