A Broken Spirit [NC] [Open]

((The first part of this post takes place in the area of the Twolegplace. Feel free to jump in with just about anycat, though probably not a kittypet!))





It was sleeting, an apt description of what rain does when it’s too cold to be rain, and yet too warm to be snow. Sleet. Raven’s grey eyes reflected the dreary weather, as he crouched beneath the shelter of a bush. A drop of water rolled off a leaf and splashed onto Raven’s whiskers. He twitched his nose, staring intently at the house he had thought of as his home for most of his life.



The house was dark, which was unusual, even though it was just the old man who lived their with Raven he always kept it bright and cheery. But there wasn’t a single light on in the house. Raven’s fur bristled up slightly, there was some deep instinct in him that said something was not right here. He twitched his whiskers, once, twice, and timidly put one foot forward.



One foot came after another, and before Raven even realized it, he was halfway across the lawn. A particularly large drop of rain fell between his shoulder blades, making him involuntarily shiver. He blinked, and quickly glided across the rest of the lawn, sidling up to the side of the house.



Jumping up onto the porch, Raven peered through the front window into the darkened living room. He could make out the dark shapes of the sofa, and the dimly lit table and chairs. An eerie chill ran from his nose to the tip of his tail as he surveyed the dark silent house. It was clear to him that it was empty. His ears pinned back, Raven parted his lips and took a breath, scenting the air.



There was nothing, just stale human scent. The sudden roar of a monster startled Raven, he dashed under the house’s porch, trembling as the monster roared into the driveway. The terrifying growling of the monster suddenly cut, and there was a crunching of feet on the gravel of the driveway.



“Do you think his cat’ll show up?” A human’s voice asked, “That is the only thing left, right?”

“Yeah, just check around the house, if you can’t find it, oh well.” Another voice answered the first.

“Still can’t quite believe that he’s gone, I mean, it was just last week we were here visiting him, wasn’t it?”



Raven peeked out from underneath the deck, his tail fluffed up as he watched the two humans stroll around the house to the backyard, looking for him. He didn’t like strange people, and his instincts were screaming at him to run. As they disappeared behind the house, Raven slowly snuck out from underneath and looked around.



It was clear to him now that the old man he had lived with so contentedly was gone, never to return, the few words he could understand from the human’s conversation reassured his presumption. So with one last glance back at the dark house, Raven streaked from the lawn to return to the bush he had first hid in before approaching the house. There he stayed, watching with his tail twitching in agitation as the humans wandered around, calling for him. It only took the sleet to become a little more like hail for them to finally relinquish their search and clamber into the horrible monster and roar away.



Raven sat there, shivering in the lonely bush for hours, feeling sorry for himself. Everything he had cherished in his life up to that point had been stolen away, first his mother to those terrible rouge cats, and now the old man, whom he could always rely on for a warm place to sleep and food to fill his stomach. But now it was all gone. All of it. Gone. There was nothing left for him here. Nothing left for him to stick around for, so why did he still crouch beneath this bush in the cold sleet? What was there for him to turn to now in times of trouble? No one, there was no one left, just himself. That was one thing that could never be taken from him, no matter how hard they tried, he would always have himself.



With a hard look in his eye, Raven rose stiffly from his place under the bush, things had changed, he had changed. The Raven you saw now was not the same Raven who had cowered from his siblings all those moons ago. No, the Raven which stalked out from under that bush was a new creature entirely, gone were the rose-hued lenses from his eyes, also gone was the shivering wreck he had been when his mother died. The Raven who didn’t glance back once was more cynical, more conniving, and more ruthless than he would’ve liked to have said.



But were all the other parts of him really gone? Had the past completely died for Raven? Or were these just walls he was erecting unconsciously around himself, to keep from letting the knowledge of being absolutely alone in the world from completely destroying him?



* * * * *



It was growing dark as Raven trudged through the forest, the rain had stopped not long ago and drops of water were falling from the branches of the trees. A chilly wind blew away the clouds, clearing a crisp sky dotted with stars. Raven did not recognise the part of the forest he was in now, no familiar scents met his nose, and in the fading light the few trees around him were mencing rather than welcoming.



Before long he found himself in a clearing, the pale light from the stars beaming down on him. All at once, his strong demeanor that he had been upholding his whole trek through the forest came crashing down around him. He wanted to curl up in a ball, he wanted to yowl his grievances to the cold dark stars above. Instead, he simply came to the center of the clearing and sat staring up silently at the stars. His eyes filled with the pain he could not express gazed at the unblinking stars.



“Why.” He quietly stated. “Why?” He pitifully asked. But there was no answer. Just the wind brushing through the newly grown grass. There he stayed, staring up at the sky.