LOVE IS CURSED BY MONOGAMY, SILVERANTLER

    Black-striped legs carry an average-sized warrior briskly across the shady forest floor. The trees of ThunderClan stretch up all around him, maples with leaves green for the warm season, elms dot between them, towering and shading the smaller trees with their sprawling branches. Silverantler nearly stops to admire a blooming redbud, the vibrant pink flowers stark in newleaf. With the breeze hitting him the right way, the beautiful scenery around him and underpaw, the tom is liken to lose himself in the dreaminess of it all. However, the same zephyr pushes prey scent his way.

    Immediately the light ashen warrior freezes, ears erect, slipping into what he, affectionately, dubs hunter mode. Silverantler stoops low to the earth, soft moss tickling his black paw pads as he starts to creep in the direction of his to-be kill. He inhales, catching another waft of what he identifies to be a songbird of some kind. Then, his ears strain forward, catching its trills from no more than few fox-lengths away.

    He keeps close to the ground but quickens his pace, figuring he could risk some lost stealth to get closer, faster. The scent of the—chaffinch, to be exact, becomes stronger, its song louder. And then, he sees it, hopping along with its reddish, twig-like legs and sampling the grass with its beak. Sorry, little dude, but I’m gonna have to put an end to your lunch break. He says to the bird in his mind, reading himself to spring forward by wriggling his haunches, claws unsheathed, prepared to launch himself—

    Suddenly, beady black eyes turn towards him, and Silverantler nearly chokes on an inhale, rolling to duck beneath the shade of a a feathery-leafed hemlock tree. He’s tensed, worries that the chaffinch will have seen him and taken flight. But then, a chirrup tells him otherwise, and he can breathe again. He squints through the hemlock’s drooping lower branches, barely able to spy the flutter of black and white wings throw the tendrils of green.

    Silverantler curses beneath his breath, bowing his spine to avoid the reaching low-lying branches, but the extra fur on his haunches (having trouble completely shedding from leafbare, still) gets caught. The warrior keens on accident, flailing his back leg and making the entire hemlock tree shudder as if to mock him before the branch releases. The momentum pushes him forward into the open, and he tumbles in a somersault, landing in a sitting position with his tail crushed beneath his weight.

    "RRAGH!" He snarls, shooting up and away from the shock of pain that travels from the base of his tail and rings between his ears.

♔ ferocious werepup
ooc: pumpkin investigate the terrifying shriek? ROFL

    With a wince, Silverantler sits lopsided on one haunch, contorting his body in a jagged, half-moon shape while nursing his sore tailbone with a rasping tongue. Stupid bird! He bawls inwardly, snorting while he tries to soothe the throb. That chaffinch would have been locked in pearly fangs were it not for a certain, equally stupid, branch catching on his leftover leafbare fluff. Silverantler makes a mental note to spend some time chewing off the rest of his cold season fur. Though in complete honesty, he seems to have the strangest misfortunes happen to him, ones that are more often than not always laugh-worthy.

    A black-tipped ear snaps backward at the sound of something crashing through the undergrowth at a rapid pace. Silverantler stiffens mid-lick, head flashing up in time to see a mottled blur burst through a clump of ferns and into the tiny clearing. He sighs in relief, a part of him having thought some predator had been coming to make his day even more worse. Or to laugh at me maybe, for nearly breaking my tail off… The warrior muses grumpily, managing to push himself into a standing position and face the bristling Pumpkinpatch.

    “Did you make that noise?” If Silverantler could have blushed, he would have. Instead he smiles sheepishly, tail flickering in embarrassment. “What happened?” He could have dropped to the ground right then and groaned. His image is seriously at stake at this rate, why did his Clanmates have to drop in for all of his failures. Why aren’t they ever there when he climbs to the top of a tree with ease? Or when he leaps to the tallest boulder of Sunningrocks without struggle? OR when he catches two mice at a time with a double strike of his paws? Okay, so maybe some of those he hasn’t accomplished yet but that totally doesn’t mean that he isn’t going to make them happen.

    "Well, see, I—um, that is—" Silverantler draws a blank, "haaah, you see, it's kindoftotallyridiculous..." He blurts, and thinks, what if he thinks I'm— Silverantler scoffs and averts his eyes."It's super dumb."

    He sighs, say farewell to ever becoming leader, Silverantler, you are officially the worst excuse for a warrior, like, ever! "I had my sights set on this dumb chaffinch, and it saw me, and, like, I ducked into that cypress over there," he nods toward the offending tree, "then my fur got caught and when I managed to shake the stupid branch it launched me and I landed on my tail... Er, which is the dying screech that no doubt made you come running." Silverantler explains, visibly steeling himself for the young tom to laugh in his face

♔ ferocious werepup

    It appears that not only he had succeeded in making a fool of himself, he had also earned the title of ‘cute’. HIM, cute! Of all the descriptors that Silverantler thought himself, cute is not among them. Dashing or handsome, maybe. Brave, definitely. Might as well chuck all that hero act out into the river then, considering he would now be doomed to an eternity as cute. StarClan only seems to have a cruel sense of humor when it came to him, and they also are making it really hard on him to keep true to his destiny, to become leader of ThunderClan and all; he much would have preferred his trials be in the form of giant beasts that he must fight off or perhaps a drowning kit, anything but humiliation.

    He clears his throat. "Uh, yeah," a short, unsteady kind of laugh as he tries to mentally scramble for purchase on his confidence once more, "sometimes my voice is really deep, ah, y'know, I can see where you might have mistook it for something dangerous." Silverantler does a little cheeky jig with his head as he mews this, perking black-tipped ears and winking at Pumpkinpatch in a rather incorrigible way, his words perhaps an attempt to save his masculinity from the clutches of adorability.

    His brazen smirk falters a little when a brushing movement of the other's tail passes over him, leaving the fur standing up in its wake. Something about the close proximity made his whiskers burn, from a different sort of embarrassment. StarClan, when would it end! 

    At the mention of continuing the hunt, however, Silverantler tosses his earlier fit of our chagrin to the winds. The tom, a bit larger than his companion by a few whisker-lengths, bounces on his feet. He strikes out with his front paws, as if mimicking his deathblows on prey. Golden eyes narrow in mock concentration. "Worry not, Pumpkinpatch. After the stunt that cypress pulled, snagging me like that, I'll tear the next one apart!" He growls with a grin, imagining skinning the bark from the stupid, skinny tree in revenge.

    Realizing with a little start that he looks a bit ridiculous jumping in place, Silverantler straightens up and coughs. "Ah-hah—ahem, so, hunting. Right."

♔ ferocious werepup

    Pumpkinpatch appears to be quick to tease him just as he is to flatter him, seemingly in the same breath, as the tom mews on. He does not mind the attention in the slightest but cannot really figure out if the tortoiseshell actually thinks he is strong and brave or, as he identified, cute and adorable. If anything, Pumpkinpatch fits the latter of those descriptors. He is small, with big round, amber eyes, and a bubbly personality and an easy laughter that could also double as a kind of giggling (which holds a token adorability to it). Maybe he should look at his reflection some time and then see which of us is the cute one, the elder of the two thinks to himself.

    At the declaration of him being christened leader of the newly paired hunting patrol, Silverantler arches his neck like a fanned cobra so as to puff out his whitish chest fur in pride. It is clear that the energy between the two is particularly boundless, this much he is glad of; it is a breath of fresh air that Pumpkinpatch seems more than willing to play along with whatever Silverantler has in mind. Not to mention, the mismatched-furred warrior also let him assume command, which is a really good way to make warm fuzzies buzz in his head. Not that, Pumpkinpatch regularly gives him warm fuzzies or anything, you know. Just like, right now, at this particular moment. Definitely the platonic kind. This line of thought is totally not helping me.

    "Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can hear the trees shaking 'cos they're so scared." Silverantler purrs in amused triumph, cocking his ear theatrically to listen to the rustling leaves in the newleaf breeze.

    Whilst is a little bit for show, the grey and black tabby is in fact listening for signs of prey as well. This seems rather unlikely though, since his shrill but definitely masculine cry probably scared all potential fresh-kill from here to the SkyClan border. His tail flickers as he concentrates, taking in nearby smells (a small hope inside of him wishing to catch the escaped chaffinch's trail). Pumpkinpatch dominates his scent glands, however, making it nearly impossible to zero in on any prey scents.

    "We should probably get outta this part of the territory, see what we can find somewhere else." Silverantler says to appear as though he is not so distracted. The earlier crash landing really threw him off his game; perhaps if they move onward he would slip back into hunter mode

    He motions with a black-tipped tail for him to follow, leaving the clearing that was rather full with his earlier mishap behind. The sun comes in shafts between the treetops and spills greenish shadows over their pelts in the shapes of leaves. He is quick and eager on ebony paw pads, perhaps focusing on enjoying the walk moreso than trying to catch a whiff of prey. Silverantler glances over to his peripheral to look at the tortoiseshell tom in curiosity. "So, what were you doing before you, uh, heard all the noise?" It is not exactly the way of a hunting patrol to make small talk as silence is a key element in tracking prey, but Silverantler could hardly resist talking when in company.

♔ ferocious werepup