Citrusmelody grief srp

Instructions

tw!! includes: mentions of death, grief, substance usage (kinda???) ——————- She had just gotten the news. Citrusmelody sat in silence in the darkest part of the nursery. Behind a little nook where the light could hardly reach. There was barely any light outside anyway. Snow fell quietly and eternally. The sky was gray. But none of that really mattered. Citrusmelody had never known real grief. She was desensitized, in a way, to death. The unforgiving heat of the desert lands had taught her that death just… happened. When Verglasvitrue died, she had cried for a night and then moved on, resisting the ache of grief as much as physically possible. She continued her duties, just as he would’ve wanted her to. Her father was always hardworking. Citrusmelody was terrified that if she stopped too long to dwell in the sadness, it would rise up to meet her, and she would drown in the melancholy. And here that rising water was, seeping into her paws like spiritual cold, otherworldly and terrifying. Her mentor. Dead. Drowned. Drowned how? IceClan swam across a whole ocean every moon to attend gatherings. It was not even a moon ago when she and Fleeceflare had swam to the moon lagoon on the island, where she had received her full medicine cat name. So if anyone was able to swim across safely, would it not be an IceClan cat? Would it not be Fleeceflare? A cliff, they said. Icecats climb cliffs for a living. So what gives? It was terribly, terribly unfair that StarClan would take her mentor from her now. Even if Fleeceflare had been the most terrible cat in the world (which he had not been by any means), Citrusmelody still would’ve wanted him around. She had gotten her full name, yes. But she wasn’t ready. She hadn’t ever treated anything more serious than a minor injury. She’d been taught what to do. But there is a huge difference between knowing how to and actually being able to succeed in the moment. If she messed up… there would be no one to correct her. No one to remind her. No one to save the cat whose life she would’ve put into jeopardy. No safety net. No plan B. No room for error. Citrusmelody had always enjoyed the prospect of living life on the edge, but this… this was too much. Far too much. She buried her head in her paws, feeling the grooves of her four ram-like horns against her paw pads. Tears streaked down her cheeks, but she didn’t sob once. It was a silent cry, as silent as the evening snowfall. What good is it to be orange and unique when you’re still incredibly alone? Maybe she wasn’t alone in the literal sense - most of her family was still living and breathing - but she was very much alone in her job. The role of a medicine cat was a heavy burden to carry alone. Citrusmelody wondered how Fleeceflare was still alive after all those moons of… oh wait. “Wretched hairballs,” Citrusmelody hissed under her breath. She had to get out from here. Suddenly the pungent smell of herbs and leaves was far too familiar. She stumbled out of the den and into the cold, gray air. She didn’t even bother to look where she was going, or to see who she might’ve passed by. A surge of urgency lit up the underside of her paws and suddenly she was bounding through the bleak afternoon snowdrifts, ears flattened against the sighing wind. For a while it was just the wind, the softly falling snow, the gray sky, and her own wheezy breathing. When she stopped to orient herself and catch her breath in the stillness of the snow plains, the terrible, poisoning feeling of grief welled up in her stomach again. Citrusmelody had to fight back tears. She turned around and began rapidly trotting back in the direction from whence she came. Running around the Arctic Isle would get her nowhere. Alone, out here, in the quiet, her thoughts were louder. Too loud. She usually associated ‘loud’ with ‘angry’ or ‘excited’. Today she found out loud didn’t have be either of those. It didn’t even have to be loud in volume. There was a metaphorical loud, too. Loud as in overwhelming. Citrusmelody was not angry, and that scared her. Anger was usually her way of dealing with things that felt out of her control. But this was way out of her control, and she wasn’t angry. Not at the ocean. Not at StarClan. Not even at herself. All she felt? Emptiness and grief. …. This was too much. It was too painful. She couldn’t think, for StarClan’s sake. She couldn’t think anything but thoughts about how her mentor was gone and how she would have to care for the entire clan on her own. A crest in the snowy hillside told Citrusmelody she was almost at camp. Would she ever even be able to look at the medicine cat den the same way? Every time she entered, she’d be expecting to see Fleeceflare in the corner, sorting herbs or going over the inventory. She thought about Grizzlehollow, her mentor’s mentor, who, if she remembered correctly, had died before Fleeceflare was even a full medicine cat. (continued in notes and credits)