#when it's narilamb I'll tag the narilamb

[the-tropes-are-hungry]

The Cat's Mother (1/3)

Did someone say mommy issues? Congrats, Narinder, you lose!

CW: Stillbirth, death by burning. [Next]

His mother protected him.

Her litter was cursed. Dead kit, after dead kit, after dead kit. Six dead daughters and one all-black son who came out half the size of the corpses and barely breathing. In their matriarchal colony, he was a travesty.

He let out a single mewl, his first and meant-to-be-last breath.

His mother’s nurse, her sister, took the ill omen for what it was and placed him in the water to drown him. Better to let seven kittens go back to the River Eater together than the incomplete six. Grief would cleanse the poisoned womb. Next time, there would be daughters.

Mother disagreed and took him from the water. She protected him. She held him and groomed him and gave him his first taste of life while his sisters lay cold in a basket and hers lay dying on the floor.

They left the colony before his eyes (only two, Heket teased) opened.

Mother was a warrior. Her fur was the colour of bright sand under the spotless blue sky, her coat thin but sleek over lean muscle that let her twist and strike like lightning. She killed every member the colony sent after them asking her to return, breaking the Wrath Bringer’s prohibition on striking messengers. For this, they became strays, and he wore the blood of mother’s victims as if she’d pulled off their skins and wrapped him in them.

He should not have been a warrior. Every omen, card, tea leaf, entrail, and star said his claws should have folded against sand, never-mind stone. His teeth should have rotted out of his skull. His ears should have been filled with pus. The hatred of seven dead kinswomen should have doomed him to a feeble, terrified existence. The River Eater should have supped on his blood and spat out his deformed bones.

Instead, where mother was the wind, he was her shadow. Where her eye went, his darts followed. Where her sword struck, his claws sank. When she showed her fangs, his already held flesh. There was little she could teach with blade or chain or claw that he could not master, and she loved him for it.

“My little lord,” she praised, purring deep in her chest over every kill, every triumph, every show of power. She loved his midnight dark pelt, grooming him to an oil-slick shine and taking every opportunity to procure the oils and waxes to give him the texture of smoke to go with his flawless grace.

They stayed nowhere, and lived richly (as bandits, Shamura complained). If Mother said they would eat from the Thunder Mother’s table, then they would scale the temple walls and gorge themselves on honeyed meat and rich wine and fill their bags with trinkets and tributes. If she decided the Tortoise Keeper’s tax men demanded too much, they would make a game of slowly cutting around their shelled heads to peel off the shell—only to realize, delighted (and to Kallamar’s horror), that the entire brain came out when they pulled.

Mother adored him, and made his life a paradise. He bathed in her favour, supped on her devotion, and grew tall atop the pillar she raised for him. Six prized daughters had died to bring her one son; therefore, the omens must be wrong and the gods who peddled them equally blind. Their peoples’ colonies did not need another queen, they needed a Lord of Lords to rule them, and she named him appropriately.

“Narinder--!”

It was the last thing she said before she died.

They were, in the end, only bandits in the eyes of the Green-Eyed Queen. Thieves, stealing both from her altars, and her divinity.

Mother had begun to gain uncanny power. He hadn’t notice it, or else he had not been old enough to understand it. The way people whispered of a gold sphynx; a flash of light on the road that became a rain of copper darts and sharp stone; how travellers at midnight could avoid her wrath by offering a pot of lamp oil, or a clever riddle. Whispers, rumors, and—sure enough: prayers.

Prayer, faith, devotion, love. Four names for the same energy, the same power that the Green-Eyed Queen wanted back from them. Theirs was a land of gods and demigods where the love of the many empowered the few. While his mother was never kind to their victims, she never struck the young or their mothers either. She left the elders alone in their beds. She was, in some small corners, to a very lucky few, a grace. A blessing.

So, the Green-Eyed Queen sent her hunters.

A fortnight later, his mother was in chains with nails driven through her wrists and ankles, locked in an iron cage his claws and knives could never break through. He tracked them for three days, twelve years old and trembling with hunger, rage, and terror. All he needed was one chance to spy the key among the knights and hunters. Just a moment’s distraction to get through the lock and cast off the chains and hide her, protect her, feed her fledgling divinity the way she had been trying to spark the same in him.

They dragged her deep into the forest, built a great bonfire to their queen, and hurled his mother’s cage into it.

He fought better than he should have. He killed more than any other twelve-year-old could have hoped for: at least two. In his furor he didn’t see the other figures strike the camp to flank him, he just saw the cage. He just heard Mother screaming, and burning, and dying.

The iron was glowing red when he threw himself at it, but the spider caught him in three strong arms while the fourth kept swinging their weapon. His throat tore with every emotion made sound. He forgot to fight the spider, he needed Mother and he fought for her with hisses, snarls, and yowls.

“It is enough,” said the spider.

He’d dropped Mother’s sword. He’d run out of darts. He unsheathed his claws on all four paws and screamed, shrieked, wailed at the creature holding him. He lashed out in a flurry swipes and kicks and they, understandably, slammed him into the ground.

“Shamura!”

“At ease—he is frightened.”

They pinned him there and no matter how much he clawed and kicked and fought their flesh never wept blood. The spines of their carapace were thick, snaring his claws and tearing two of them out. Their armor was like nothing he had ever seen, liquid black and gold links that flowed like water under his claws. He fought until his throat was bloody, and his arms went feeble, and his eyes were blinded by sweat and tears and smoke. He fought until three horrible days without sleep or food or peace fogged his mind and yet he could still see. He could see his life running thin, the thread of it spun of something almost different but now fraying from abuse.

He saw the moment where Shamura weighed his flesh against the hunger of their brother and soldiers. He understood that if he did not tip those scales in his favor, they would eat him, and at least his flesh would go to better use than the smouldering char of his mother.

He could not die here. He could not let the Green-Eyed Queen take his mother and then be devoured in turn.

He sheathed his claws. He let his arms fall. The spider eased their weight on him until he could roll to his side and see the smoking cage atop its doused embers. He curled up tight as he had been in the womb, and lay there.

He let out a single mewl, his next but never-to-be-last breath, and wept.

Two thousand years later on a hazy bonfire dawn, Narinder will kneel in a circle of gray stone and let the memories come for him. He will remember disciples, and siblings, and priests, and knights. He will remember temple halls and celebrations. He will remember camaraderie and wine and soldiers and conquest. He will remember his mother’s purr and her gentle claws grooming behind his ears. He will remember six dead sisters and understand, for the first time, how his mother’s life was a tragedy and that he had never wept for her, only for himself.

But on that day, in the distant past, on a battlefield swiftly stripped of gold and armor and weapons, with the corpses left to lay in the grass, Narinder limped with Kallamar’s help to his mother’s cage. The squid merely touched the cool iron with a word and it corroded away, letting him inside with a nervous word that anything of value had been taken from her already by her captors.

All he wanted was one more moment with her, if the charred husk flung against the bottom of the cage was anything of her at all. He wanted to make a promise. He wanted her to know he would do it, as he knelt beside her and placed both hands on the corpse.

“I will kill the Green-Eyed Queen,” he whispered, his voice still raw and wet from screaming. “When I am done there will be no more queens.”

When he saw the glint of red he knew she heard him. The corpse was just a corpse, so even his young hands could reach into the charred meat and pry out the sharp edges of a dead womb.

Theirs was a world where faith and prayer could change fate. The cycle of devotion from a mother to her son crafted a crown with a single red eye. The memory of six dead daughters crystalized with intent to preserve one perfect son.

He put on the crown and went back to Shamura.

His mother protected him. Always.

[Next]

I have the Cat's Mother, the Worm's Mother, and the Lamb's Mother all written. Trying to get a full fic to work but at least this "prologue" bit is done. If I actually reach the plot I'll post this to AO3 with its actual title.

[dormatheus]

Later the lamb would just think that the real thing is nicer than the gaunlet idk

I gave up so fast holy shit

-💊

[mewniemoon]

What if instead of being resurrected and staying their age in the afterlife, the twins instead went back to the age they were when they were last alive (aka, lil babees)?

Bonus:

Nari was not emotionally prepared for this get him some soft blankets to build a nest with stat!!

[lordsalissoon]

The One who Sorrows.

Few people still knows about Misham, the kind God of Death who was locked away, and they still pray for him. Or they did. But when all cats were slayed, their God's name was forgotten with them. Or it was... But a singular cat survived. And he is making a cult! And the rest you already knows... Right?

This is a swap AU idea me and @inky-beasts had when I was at my mom's home last week. Inky is the one who will draw Narinder's design, but I still need to draw some other things for Lamb's design!

And yeah, in this AU, Lamb is called Misham, but since I don't want to create a new tag, I'll still use Lamb and Narilamb as tags for this one!

[the-one-who-lambs]

9 people you would like to get to know better tag meme

except I'm starting a new post because the one I got tagged in was long as shit. I was tagged by @tacofuus, thanks so much!

Last song: Batter Up by Babymonster. It's a solid 6.5/10 check out

Favorite color: violet/lavender. Really any shade of purple

Last tv show/currently watching: I honestly don't really watch TV. I genuinely cannot remember. The last series I actually watched was Death Note with my best friend and that was last year/beginning of this year. I used to be into anime when I was in middle school and this felt like a return to my roots lmao

Sweet/spicy/savoury: I go with savory most of the time, but my favorite is sweet for sure.

Relationship status: narilamb

Current obsession: Writing fanfic for cult of the lamb. It's been just about a year and a half now and I don't see this dying down anytime soon, cotl has squarely entered full special interest status for me so I'll be here for at least another 3 years. I have a bad habit of making a new fandom blog every time I get a shorter-term hyperfixation, writing for it, getting kindasorta recognized in the fandom, then abandoning my works and deleting the blog when I'm not interested in it anymore. Maybe some of y'all followed me in my previous fandoms and y'all would probably never know bc of orphaned works that I can't find anymore. ...anyway. I've made too many close friends in this fandom to pull that stunt again. the-one-who-lambs and my cotl fics are here to stay. I'm rambling

Last thing you googled: 600 cc in cups (I was making soup but all the good noodle packets from China+Korea give units in cubic centimeters. It's about 2.5 cups btw)

Uhhhhh I don't know who to tag so I'll just pick the most recent 9 mutuals in my notes who haven't been tagged already by taco or the people they tagged lol. Don't feel pressured to do it, though! @artsycryptix @just-a-random-demon-official @miallurk @pikos-den @tokyonymph @mianing @bamsara @coffincrows @fanged-cotl

[angstandhappiness]

VERY FASCINATING

The Cat's Mother (1/3)

Did someone say mommy issues? Congrats, Narinder, you lose!

CW: Stillbirth, death by burning.

His mother protected him.

Her litter was cursed. Dead kit, after dead kit, after dead kit. Six dead daughters and one all-black son who came out half the size of the corpses and barely breathing. In their matriarchal colony, he was a travesty.

He let out a single mewl, his first and meant-to-be-last breath.

His mother’s nurse, her sister, took the ill omen for what it was and placed him in the water to drown him. Better to let seven kittens go back to the River Eater together than the incomplete six. Grief would cleanse the poisoned womb. Next time, there would be daughters.

Mother disagreed and took him from the water. She protected him. She held him and groomed him and gave him his first taste of life while his sisters lay cold in a basket and hers lay dying on the floor.

They left the colony before his eyes (only two, Heket teased) opened.

Mother was a warrior. Her fur was the colour of bright sand under the spotless blue sky, her coat thin but sleek over lean muscle that let her twist and strike like lightning. She killed every member the colony sent after them asking her to return, breaking the Wrath Bringer’s prohibition on striking messengers. For this, they became strays, and he wore the blood of mother’s victims as if she’d pulled off their skins and wrapped him in them.

He should not have been a warrior. Every omen, card, tea leaf, entrail, and star said his claws should have folded against sand, never-mind stone. His teeth should have rotted out of his skull. His ears should have been filled with pus. The hatred of seven dead kinswomen should have doomed him to a feeble, terrified existence. The River Eater should have supped on his blood and spat out his deformed bones.

Instead, where mother was the wind, he was her shadow. Where her eye went, his darts followed. Where her sword struck, his claws sank. When she showed her fangs, his already held flesh. There was little she could teach with blade or chain or claw that he could not master, and she loved him for it.

“My little lord,” she praised, purring deep in her chest over every kill, every triumph, every show of power. She loved his midnight dark pelt, grooming him to an oil-slick shine and taking every opportunity to procure the oils and waxes to give him the texture of smoke to go with his flawless grace.

They stayed nowhere, and lived richly (as bandits, Shamura complained). If Mother said they would eat from the Thunder Mother’s table, then they would scale the temple walls and gorge themselves on honeyed meat and rich wine and fill their bags with trinkets and tributes. If she decided the Tortoise Keeper’s tax men demanded too much, they would make a game of slowly cutting around their shelled heads to peel off the shell—only to realize, delighted (and to Kallamar’s horror), that the entire brain came out when they pulled.

Mother adored him, and made his life a paradise. He bathed in her favour, supped on her devotion, and grew tall atop the pillar she raised for him. Six prized daughters had died to bring her one son; therefore, the omens must be wrong and the gods who peddled them equally blind. Their peoples’ colonies did not need another queen, they needed a Lord of Lords to rule them, and she named him appropriately.

“Narinder--!”

It was the last thing she said before she died.

They were, in the end, only bandits in the eyes of the Green-Eyed Queen. Thieves, stealing both from her altars, and her divinity.

Mother had begun to gain uncanny power. He hadn’t notice it, or else he had not been old enough to understand it. The way people whispered of a gold sphynx; a flash of light on the road that became a rain of copper darts and sharp stone; how travellers at midnight could avoid her wrath by offering a pot of lamp oil, or a clever riddle. Whispers, rumors, and—sure enough: prayers.

Prayer, faith, devotion, love. Four names for the same energy, the same power that the Green-Eyed Queen wanted back from them. Theirs was a land of gods and demigods where the love of the many empowered the few. While his mother was never kind to their victims, she never struck the young or their mothers either. She left the elders alone in their beds. She was, in some small corners, to a very lucky few, a grace. A blessing.

So, the Green-Eyed Queen sent her hunters.

A fortnight later, his mother was in chains with nails driven through her wrists and ankles, locked in an iron cage his claws and knives could never break through. He tracked them for three days, twelve years old and trembling with hunger, rage, and terror. All he needed was one chance to spy the key among the knights and hunters. Just a moment’s distraction to get through the lock and cast off the chains and hide her, protect her, feed her fledgling divinity the way she had been trying to spark the same in him.

They dragged her deep into the forest, built a great bonfire to their queen, and hurled his mother’s cage into it.

He fought better than he should have. He killed more than any other twelve-year-old could have hoped for: at least two. In his furor he didn’t see the other figures strike the camp to flank him, he just saw the cage. He just heard Mother screaming, and burning, and dying.

The iron was glowing red when he threw himself at it, but the spider caught him in three strong arms while the fourth kept swinging their weapon. His throat tore with every emotion made sound. He forgot to fight the spider, he needed Mother and he fought for her with hisses, snarls, and yowls.

“It is enough,” said the spider.

He’d dropped Mother’s sword. He’d run out of darts. He unsheathed his claws on all four paws and screamed, shrieked, wailed at the creature holding him. He lashed out in a flurry swipes and kicks and they, understandably, slammed him into the ground.

“Shamura!”

“At ease—he is frightened.”

They pinned him there and no matter how much he clawed and kicked and fought their flesh never wept blood. The spines of their carapace were thick, snaring his claws and tearing two of them out. Their armor was like nothing he had ever seen, liquid black and gold links that flowed like water under his claws. He fought until his throat was bloody, and his arms went feeble, and his eyes were blinded by sweat and tears and smoke. He fought until three horrible days without sleep or food or peace fogged his mind and yet he could still see. He could see his life running thin, the thread of it spun of something almost different but now fraying from abuse.

He saw the moment where Shamura weighed his flesh against the hunger of their brother and soldiers. He understood that if he did not tip those scales in his favor, they would eat him, and at least his flesh would go to better use than the smouldering char of his mother.

He could not die here. He could not let the Green-Eyed Queen take his mother and then be devoured in turn.

He sheathed his claws. He let his arms fall. The spider eased their weight on him until he could roll to his side and see the smoking cage atop its doused embers. He curled up tight as he had been in the womb, and lay there.

He let out a single mewl, his next but never-to-be-last breath, and wept.

Two thousand years later on a hazy bonfire dawn, Narinder will kneel in a circle of gray stone and let the memories come for him. He will remember disciples, and siblings, and priests, and knights. He will remember temple halls and celebrations. He will remember camaraderie and wine and soldiers and conquest. He will remember his mother’s purr and her gentle claws grooming behind his ears. He will remember six dead sisters and understand, for the first time, how his mother’s life was a tragedy and that he had never wept for her, only for himself.

But on that day, in the distant past, on a battlefield swiftly stripped of gold and armor and weapons, with the corpses left to lay in the grass, Narinder limped with Kallamar’s help to his mother’s cage. The squid merely touched the cool iron with a word and it corroded away, letting him inside with a nervous word that anything of value had been taken from her already by her captors.

All he wanted was one more moment with her, if the charred husk flung against the bottom of the cage was anything of her at all. He wanted to make a promise. He wanted her to know he would do it, as he knelt beside her and placed both hands on the corpse.

“I will kill the Green-Eyed Queen,” he whispered, his voice still raw and wet from screaming. “When I am done there will be no more queens.”

When he saw the glint of red he knew she heard him. The corpse was just a corpse, so even his young hands could reach into the charred meat and pry out the sharp edges of a dead womb.

Theirs was a world where faith and prayer could change fate. The cycle of devotion from a mother to her son crafted a crown with a single red eye. The memory of six dead daughters crystalized with intent to preserve one perfect son.

He put on the crown and went back to Shamura.

His mother protected him. Always.

[Next] <- Coming in like 5 minutes.

I have the Cat's Mother, the Worm's Mother, and the Lamb's Mother all written. Trying to get a full fic to work but at least this "prologue" bit is done. If I actually reach the plot I'll post this to AO3 with its actual title.

[angstandhappiness]

SO CUTE

Later the lamb would just think that the real thing is nicer than the gaunlet idk

I gave up so fast holy shit

-💊