Jay

OUTSIDER

An oriental, seal-lynx bicolor she-cat with blue eyes.

Elongated limbs and gaunt lines become her; herself of an oriental variety, she possesses a certain poised grace, a pedigree that shows in her angular features, large ears, and elongated muzzle, in the largeness of her eyes, their bird-bright quality and the deep blues they possess. As for her mother’s heritage, little and less of that is known, but of her appearance, she is not one whose bloodlines originated there. She is of a finer sort, composed of a delicate bone structure better suited for arduous chases through open fields than the hardier lives led on by her Clan neighbors. Her ilk is of the hunting sort, and as such, she excels at just that. So small a body, and one possessing the key attributes of a runner, there is little she can’t hunt down, and despite her dainty appearances, there is a hardy toughness in those demure muscles beneath her short coat, of the sort that allows her to spring just high enough to snag a bird on the wing or launch herself into the vaulting buffs of trees in hot pursuit of squirrel and other such arboreal prey.

In coloration, Jay shares the seal lynx points of her mother, with her father's excessive white spotting. As such, her points are broken by plains of white, so that what color she possesses remains landlocked in a sea of white at the crown of her head and ears as well as the back and tail. Complimenting the subtle grey and darker tabby lines, eyes of a most precious blue peer from her angular skull, oddly bright and expressive in quality.

A life of comfort is all that Jay requests of the world, one in which her heels aren’t dogged by tribe or clan cats, where the food is not snatched from her very jowls, and the prey runs well enough to keep her belly full and, potentially, the bellies of her young should she be so inclined in bearing them. Like her mother, she is a prolific hunter, and makes good use of her talents to provide for herself as well as supply compensation for her protection and exemption from the antics of the rogues that plague the island. Through her contributions, her safety is secured, however, in due time, she intends to break away from them entirely to find a life for herself that doesn’t threaten her livelihood.

Jay’s beliefs are not religiously inclined but instead ones based on past experiences. As a loner, she is inherently distrustful of all things foreign to herself. She finds little comfort in the close proximity of her clan and tribe neighbors and views them as an especial threat after her mother's disappearance. Her opinions of such factions are, in turn, increasingly ignorant and biased. She sees no problem stealing from either, as in her eyes, where the clan dominate the best hunting grounds and grow fat year-round, loners such as herself have to work twice as hard to provide for themselves, and as such, she sees little issue in stealing prey right from under their nose. She has developed a considerable amount of infamy as a thief, and her presence is one met with open abhorrence, though she views it more as a compliment to her work ethic than anything else; however, under no condition will Jay ever steal from another loner.

Her mother’s origins are unknown even to her, but the nature of her leaving them is not. She was cast out from her home, on false pretenses, she had alluded, though of the truthfulness of that, Jay never truly questioned. What was certain was that she had been, and when she was it was alone that she set out, her belly swollen with the kits she harbored and was now tasked to raise alone during a cruel and unrelenting winter. But in the face of such a challenge, she did not balk but instead chose to leave with her chin held high, and so disappeared into those untouched quarter of the island, rearing her children in that abandoned campground where the snows were least troublesome, and the gnarled roots of an oak bade them sheltered from the worst of the season’s chills. And so she persisted, packing the walls with moss, hollowing the earth with her very own paws, and when the worst of the winter snows fell, it was there she resided, her strength waning, though the lives within her kicked with a newfound ferocity.

She bore two kits in the heart of a blizzard, one named after the blue jays whose feathers she so coveted, the other named after the very oak that harbored them. To them, she would give anything, even her own life, and she did.


As her brood grew, the weather softened. Winter made way for spring, and their shoddy den became a place of prosperity. No longer did their nights go by in famished anguish; with the warmer moons upon them, their mother recovered enough of her strength to hunt, and so did, and they were never wanting. Rabbits, birds, all ilk of prey, she provided to them, and by the time they were thoroughly weaned from her milk, she took them, too, on rangings, so that they might learn the lay of the land and the choicest places to pick prey.

Jay took naturally to her mother’s teachings. She had the build for it, the simple elegance of frame and fleet-footed grace that so possessed her mother, and as such, took quickly to every lesson. Her brother, however, was of a different sort. Unlike Jay, he had been born sickly, and though he had recovered somewhat in the coming of new-leaf, he was troubled by a cough which never left him and a wobbliness of limb that did not permit him to stalk with any finesse after prey. Always he needed rest, a place to lie his head and catch his breath, his lungs so weary from their constant bouts of coughing they could not keep him on his paws for long. It worried their mother, but no matter how much prey she offered, he never truthfully recovered, though he did linger on, sick as he was, for a while yet.

It was only when troublesome storm breached their island that he waned in his sickness. Their den was subject to constant and irksome leaks, of the sort one could not pack with moss, but simply endure in its dripping pestilence. Their mother did all she could to make the den more comfortable for them. She stuffed the walls, she lined the nest with feather down from her hunts, but nothing could have saved Oak from the chills that claimed him. Constant, recurring and violent, his body was overcome by trembling shakes, and where once he could wander into the fields to watch them at their hunting, he could no longer move but for a few steps before sitting down to tremble and whine of the cold that gripped him despite springs bountiful warmth.

So pitiful and anguished did his life become, that they resolved to leave him there in the hollow, visiting with prey and stories alike to color his bleak existence. But it could not have lasted for long. All the prey in the forest could not abate the illness that dogged him, and upon the arrival of their adolescence, he passed, taken in his sleep so that when they found him, he was, for the first time, peaceful in it.


They buried him where he lay, there beneath that oak, and as spring made way for summer, they departed, in search of better burrows and better hunting grounds. Jay never ventured to ask her mother about how she took her brother’s passing, but she knew, in that small way that youths do, that it pained her mother to have lost one of her own, and so shared her grief in those passing days of aimless wandering. But as is the way of those who do not reside in the Clan, there was little time to wallow in their sadness. They had their own bellies to fill and a new burrow to dig, and so they sought for such things and eventually found them in the northern cliffs.

It was there, amongst those crag-wall dens, that they found shelter, nestled there in an outlook over the lake with moss to cushion them each night and scavenged bird feather from the water fowl that resided there as well. Food became a commodity. It was not as easily found as it had once been, and so with each day they grew bolder in their pursuit for food until it led them into Clan territory. There the prey ran best of all. Plump squirrels, shrews and mice alike—to a loner who was unused to such plenitudes, it was a bounty of which they were reluctant to ignore, even with the threat of Clan cats so near.

And so their life settled into a sort of regularity. Jay would often spend her days hunting birds at the shore, for they were her favorite to catch, while her mother ventured into the woodland where the mice and voles tempted her best. She proceeded in her daughters lessons, teaching her the most basic knowledge of herbs, which could heal a cut, how best to wrap a wound, and when that topic exhausted itself, she wandered to other things, such as fighting and the like. And on one rare occasions she did venture to educate her on the Clans, of which she knew a surprisingly great deal. She spoke of their customs, of their faith in the stars, of a cave where the waters possessed the power of the stars above and the Clans gathered to be gifted with the knowledge of their ancestors. She spoke of it with a bitterness, but beneath that a fondness. Jay knew not why; her mother had never been with the Clans.


Fall’s arrival set them back into a gradual recession. The water fowl had taken wing, and so their hunting led them deeper into those forbidden woods, where the markers only grew in their clarity, ever pervasive even from afar. But they did not falter at the threatened implications, but ventured forth as they had so done before. Jay never relished in such thievery. It always felt as if eyes followed her no matter where she crept. But her mother seemed almost impatient. With winters approach, she claimed they would need all the prey they could catch, and so, even when Jay could not find it in herself to set out to hunt, her mother did so, forcing her to eat and grow plump while the weather still ordained it to be so.

But it was one particularly cold night that her mother did not return. For an entire morning and night, her presence was missed, though Jay did not venture to seek her out until the next days rising. Out into that nipping cold, she scoured the field for her scent until she found it, trekking deep into those woods yet again, only this time she was quick in noticing they ventured deeper than they ever had before.

Still, stubbornly and with a twinge of fear, she followed her, and did find her at the edge of a bog, her fur plastered with mud and a swarm of flies to trouble her sides. She was dead, and when Jay looked upon her, she did not fail to notice the gash at her throat, the crusted blood where claws had shorn away at the flesh there, leaving tattered ribbons of flesh in their wake. Her mother had been murdered, and the stench alone told her of who the offender had been.

Grief-stricken and horrified, she fled from those woods more speedily than she had entered them, back towards that home among the cliff face where she spent the night alone with no company to warm her side. In her sorrow she did not move from that place, not until she was approached by a peculiar creature, vexed by her inactivity.


He was near her equal in moons, bawdier than her, and less fearful of the outdoors. He came from a group of cats that lived along the peninsula close to her own home and ventured to say that they were moving inwards. He invited her to meet their leader, and so, with nowhere else to go and no one else to confide in, she followed him in meeting them.

Their name was Curiosity. An unusual name for an unusual cat, one who harbored a particular hatred for the Clans and an affinity for semantics. Beneath him, a legion of rogues resided, his dutiful accomplices in crime and members of a ragtag group upon that northern-most point. They did not live as the Clans did, marking their borders or banding together in patrols, and yet there was a sense of community about them and a thread-thin security in their ranks that appealed to her. She joined them under the pretense of offered safety, under the condition that he provide for them insofar as their meals were concerned. She thought nothing of it. Her mother had raised her to be a hunter, and so, when the winter moons approached, she did her duty and provided them the prey they needed.

Such has become her life, one that has only grown in its suspicion and mistrust of the clans amongst a band of rogues that promise to exterminate them completely.