Open to Join Butterfly in the Sky (14RP21)

Tiptoe through the murk and mire
✧ ⭒ ♦ ⭒ ♖ ⭒ ♦ ⭒ ✧

Duskmantle padded low through the strange heart of Whitehart, scents thick and foreign. He kept to the edges where shrubs or broken fences offered cover, though even here the air reeked of Twolegs and their strange contraptions.

When his path bent and opened he froze.

A clearing of stone stretched before him rows and rows of tall slabs jutting from the ground their faces carved with unreadable claw marks. The sight alone made his fur prickle, unease sinking into his spine. This was no forest glade, no honest rise of earth. It was something planted, arranged… and wrong. Then he saw her.

A cat...but something else perched atop a stone bench. Duskmantle’s eyes widened as the creature rose, and with her movement, the air seemed to shift around her. Wings, glittering wings draped across her back, shimmering blue and black like a beetle’s shell but soft as a butterflys.

A growl shuddered low in his throat, unbidden, his hackles rising. His claws scraped against the path before he wrenched them free. StarClan’s breath… what manner of beast is this?

The standing stones loomed around her like sentinels, silent and cold, sealing her in. To Duskmantle, it looked a den for the dead.

He drew a step back into the shadow of a tree stump, his breath sharp through his nose. "What are you?" He growled. Cornflower eyes stayed fixed on her, his body poised between fight and flight, every instinct torn between bolting and testing his claws against this almost otherwordly vision.

Tiptoe through the murk and mire
✧ ⭒ ♦ ⭒ ♖ ⭒ ♦ ⭒ ✧

Duskmantle’s ears flicked, her calm tone cutting strange against the growl that still trembled faint in his chest. His claws eased back into their sheaths, though his stance stayed coiled.

Her words... some sort of sacred shelter - they were not the words of rogues he’d known, nor even the polished airs of Laetitia the day before and sat heavy.

He let out a slow breath through his nose, the fur along his spine flattening a fraction. "Sacred." He echoed, rough and low, as if testing the shape of the word. His gaze swept the towering slabs, hard lines of his face unreadable but for the faint twitch of his whiskers. So much like Highstones...

Her question tugged his eyes back to her and those wings. "Am I alright?" His mouth twisted. "I’ve seen many things but never a cat that wore the sky on her back. You look like something StarClan sent to test me." The admission carried no shame but a blunt edge, though curiosity threaded beneath it.

Duskmantle shifted forward a pace just enough to stand clear of the tree’s shadow. "I’m not from here." He said simply, tail flicking once behind him. Cornflower eyes fixed on her again, steadier now. The fight drained into watchfulness. "Tell me what you are and maybe I’ll tell you what I am."