[attr="class","pintag"]# shortwave

[attr="class","pinscroll"] Shortwave couldn’t help his own reaction at Webdance’s lopsided grin, that shortly after blossomed into a more fully grin, something that encompassed both sides of her face. ‘She looks nice with even a small smile,’ Shortwave noted to himself. He chuckled a little. [break][break]

“Can I help?” Webdance asked. [break][break]

“Of course!” Shortwave chirped, perhaps a little too enthusiastically for a small moment. He was thrilled at the idea of someone wanting to help him gather stones for his gifts to the clan’s kits. It wasn’t often that someone took notice of what he was doing, and even less often that they offered to help. Generally, most treated Shortwave in much the same way as they treated Cavernpelt, his father. Both toms were strange in their own right, although Shortwave was more acceptably strange and seen less as an oddity amongst his clanmates because he was usually more logical and behaved in a more clearcut, predictable manner. But, in the end, Shortwave was still his father’s child and had adopted some of his quirks. [break][break]

Shortwave took a moment to observe Webdance’s attempt to get a stone, his head turning slightly to watch it as it was swept downstream by the current. [break][break]

“That’s okay,” he meowed. “It takes a few tries to figure out the best way to grab them. I’ve found that once you have it pulled up from the others, putting your paw on top of it holds it still so it doesn’t get taken away by the water. I hold it down for a moment and roll it to where it is somewhat lodged in the space between two other stones. Then I wrap my paw around it, using my claws, too, and catch it between the larger paw pad and the small one farther up on the back of your leg. It’s easier to pick it up when it’s kind of wedged between those two pads. Keeping your paw facing into the current helps, too; that way, the push of the water doesn’t pull it out of your grip, and it’s instead pushing the stone against your paw.” Shortwave explained, lifting one of his soaked paws up as he balanced on his haunches to gesture with his other front paw to the space that he was talking about. [break][break]

Shortwave hoped that his advice wasn’t unwanted as he watched her struggle with yet another stone. With how long he’d been collecting stones for this exact purpose, he’d tried nearly every perceivable method of getting them out of the water. There had been many days where he had come back into camp drenched from a fall into the stream. There had been even more times when he’d only been half-soaked due to an unfortunate faceplant into the water, leaving him coughing and sputtering as he struggled to right himself against the current’s ever-persistent march. [break][break]

He perked up as Webdance produced a triangular stone from the water. “That one looks interesting!” He said. It was shaped like a cat’s ear, one side far more rounded than the other. Shortwave wondered if it had at some point been lodged with the pointed end down, as the other side was worn down. The tom had placed much thought on how the stones got their shapes, finding it interesting to think about how long it must have taken the water to get them to that shape. Sometimes, he wondered where the stones had come from to begin with and if they had traveled long distances to get to a relatively quiet portion of the stream. While it was never something that he spoke aloud around other cats, Shortwave was quite fascinated by the forces of nature and, more often than not, found himself making up stories of the journeys that the stones may have taken to get to where they are. Many would think him strange if he ever spoke it aloud, for him to think about the process for stones to become as they are. [break][break]

The tom peered back into the water, scanning beneath the surface with a meticulous, focused gaze. He saw one peeking out from beneath a few other stones that might just be perfect. He reached in, carefully moving the other stones out of the way to get at the one that he’d spotted. He gripped it with his claws and pulled, finding that it was lodged deep in the bed of the stream. Another tug brought it up from the drenched sand, and much to Shortwave’s surprise, it was a strangely shaped stone. One side held a stone bubble, a protrusion that had been the portion that he’d seen peeking up. The rest of the stone was much larger, bigger than both his paws placed together, perhaps larger than all four paws placed together! It left a deep hole in the stream bed that other stones were pushed in to fill by the water’s pushing force. The stone was too heavy to be pulled away by the current as it was now, but he was sure that if the waters were emboldened by upstream rains, the current could slowly tug the stone along. The tom reached in with both paws, cupping the stone, and dragged it out of the water. Shortwave was surprised at the size that had been concealed beneath the stream’s rocky bed. The stone’s whole size was roughly the size of his head, but it was surprisingly light, given the size of it. Shortwave tilted his head slightly to the side as he settled back on his haunches, with a balance that came only from practice as he lifted the stone up to his chest. [break][break]

Shortwave blinked at the size of the stone and looked up toward Webdance, holding his quarry with surprising ease. He set it down on the ground before him, and as he did, the stone bubble on one side broke off, leaving him with a whole other stone that was admittedly rather perfect, aside from some divots from where it had pressed against the surface of the other stone, perhaps chipped off as they were forced together. With a confused look, he pushed a paw against the sides of the hole that it left and found that they broke off quite easily into thin, flakey pieces of stone. As he kept pushing at the stone, he soon found that most of the stone was covered in this strange flakey part, which, thanks to its waterlogged state, broke off easily to reveal a rough stone, darkened by the water on it. Shortwave had never seen anything like this before. He lifted it up again. [break][break]

“Webdance,” he said to get her attention. “Look at this! It’s the size of my head, but it doesn’t really… Weight like it’s that big. Normally, stones this big are hard to lift up, but this one’s surprisingly easy.” He lifted the stone to indicate what he meant.