Nymphkit

OUTSIDER

black classic tabby she-cat with amber eyes

With the strong and powerful ancestry of RedwoodClan coursing through her veins, Nymphkit is a tall and aptly built she-cat. Boasting long and elegant legs, Nymphkit inherited her father's commanding height, while her musculature betrays her LichenClan blood. Inheriting her mother's lithe figure, Nymphkit is nearly all leg and a long, slender flank trailing into an even longer tail.

Unfortunately, she holds herself awkwardly—never proudly or in an intimidating manner. She pads with her head hung low, ears flattened, and eyes narrowed, constantly in silent judgment, flicking from den-mate to den-mate.

As the rest of her family, Nymphkit carries a classic, black tabby pelt. Not a hint of white blemishes her dark complexion. A fawn colors the visible base of her coat, while rich russet and walnut decorate her coat in a swirling classic pattern, running from the crown of her head to the tip of her tail. Her stripes are thick and curl around her flank and legs like halved seashells washed upon the shore.

To her greatest dismay, she wears her mother's face, a mere reflection of Briarfall and her very first memories. Her features are round and delicate, instead of sharp and defined. She did not inherit the sharp jawline and high cheekbones of her father's family. Large amber eyes and wide-set ears perpetually make her look much younger than she appears, as does her long, white whiskers, and small peach-colored nose.

A cat born of shadows, and not of light, Nymphkit harbors a strange fascination with the macabre and death. This manifests into a relative, but perhaps disturbing and abnormal, ease with the concept of death, disease, and the afterlife. Nymphkit does not fear death. She is deeply perplexed by it, especially after learning about StarClan and the Dark Forest. She wants to understand how it works. The unknown and the forbidden drives her imagination, but also the analytical part of her brain. An intelligent cat, her intrigue knows no bounds.

Nymphkit's grim, and at times off-putting, demeanor causes her to appear uninviting and mirthless to her peers. An outcast in every sense of the word, she does not exactly don the cheery and likable facade of cats her age. She is dark, dry-witted, and deadpan in delivery. Her humor is sarcastic, twisted, and often at the expense of someone else. She simply knows she does not belong in a crowd, and frankly, does not care.

Fiercely independent and self-assured, Nymphkit does not give a fox-dung about what others think of her. After getting called "weird" enough, she decides to embrace it. She likes being strange—and perhaps, this is her odd way of earning attention. Squirming is a reaction, is it not? She'd rather be known than not at all.

Scathingly aware of her social standing, Nymphkit is extremely observant—whether that's of social standings, the unsaid, or a mouse scuttling along the forest floor. It's hard to escape her all-knowing gaze—and her judgments. A rebel at heart and an addict to counter-culture, Nymphkit is quick to judge another cat for wanting to "fit in." Anything cool, "in", or socially acceptable puts a bad taste in her mouth. Yes, she hates the "popular" crowd, and no, it's not always warranted.

She was not supposed to exist.

Born to an ex-medicine cat seeking refuge, Nymphkit's earliest memories are dark, cold, and lonely. She only knows her mother's tongue, delicate and warm against her nape, and her gentle voice murmuring among the stone tunnels beneath the island. Nymphkit does know how she came to be—of how her mother didn't mean to find comfort in the nest of a RedwoodClan tom.

Briarfall didn't mean to cross paths with Gullheart, time and time again, at Gatherings or during chance encounters at the border. She didn't mean to grow heavy with his kits or break her oath with StarClan.

It did not take long for her apprentice, Lilacpaw, to figure it out, and drive her from the Clan—from the Stars she loved.

Nymphkit is born a single and only kit to the unfortunate couple. She does not know of the Clans or StarClan's oath. But a large tom named Gullheart, who smells like oak and decaying leaves and sky, comes to visit her periodically and bring her gifts. He is her father, he says, and as those visits grow longer, Nymphkit discovers she must go with him to this so-called-Clan and leave her mother behind.