Post by Egotistic on Jan 3, 2021 18:50:22 GMT -6
Houndsong
LichenClan
A haggard, battle-scarred tom with black-mackerel tabby fur and brooding, yellow-green eyes.
warrior
male | tom
60 moons
Appearance
Large and cumbersome—should one find themselves tasked with finding the words to describe a tom such as he, these two would flit instantly to the tongue, and for good reason. He is veritably huge, one whose herculean frame ripples with highly coveted and time-hardened muscles, all borne with relative ease upon thick, broad-shouldered limbs. His chest is equally broad, cadaverous and capable of producing a considerable base, after which he earned his name. Further adding to his immense bulk, his coat is one of ponderous thickness, thick, shaggy, and much in need of a thorough grooming, of which it has not had for some significant and inexpressible amount of time.
But it is not only in size that his propensity for fighting can be realized; this fact is revealed much more plainly in the myriad of scars that litter his pelt: tokens of war that speak volumes of his merits as a warrior. Along his body, they glare through, black, hateful, and puckered against his dark tabby fur, though the most glaring of all is that which cuts down his throat from his jaw. Long and gnarled, cutting deep into the flesh. Where and how he obtained such a wound nobody knows, but one thing is certain regarding it: any deeper, and it would have cost him his life.
But it is not only in size that his propensity for fighting can be realized; this fact is revealed much more plainly in the myriad of scars that litter his pelt: tokens of war that speak volumes of his merits as a warrior. Along his body, they glare through, black, hateful, and puckered against his dark tabby fur, though the most glaring of all is that which cuts down his throat from his jaw. Long and gnarled, cutting deep into the flesh. Where and how he obtained such a wound nobody knows, but one thing is certain regarding it: any deeper, and it would have cost him his life.
Personality
Adept, Disillusioned, Steadfast, Unforgiving
Apathetic, Cynical, Threatening, Individualistic
a·dept | /əˈdept/ | very skilled or proficient at something. || In the field or elsewhere, his inclination for perfection and order is widely regarded and respected. He carries out his duties methodically, in such a way that does not brook error willingly, and attacks those of a more ostentatious variety with equal vigor and zeal.
dis·il·lu·sioned | /ˌdisəˈlo͞oZHənd/ | disappointed in someone or something that one discovers to be less good than one had believed. || After the passing of his mate and the desertion of all those he held dear to him, Houndsong’s outlook on the world has grown grey—drab, cynical and spiteful. He harbors ill feelings for his ancestors, which forbid his mate aid in her last moments among the living, and to those who labeled him weak in his grief and unwavering monitoring of that which he held dear. Both are detestable but grim realities which he stomachs with no great want or satisfaction, only the certainty that that is and always will be the way of things.
stead·fast | /ˈstedˌfast/ | resolutely or dutifully firm and unwavering. || Though his love for his Clan is a fickle thing, to those whom he deems worthy of companionship, he offers his unfaltering loyalty, not easily breached by methods of coercion. He cares strongly for comrades, more for kin, and even more for those he loves. He would betray none without reason, and should he, not at their expense.
un·for·giv·ing | /ˌənfərˈɡiviNG/ | not willing to forgive or excuse people's faults or wrongdoings. || A fool’s task, to forgive none, yet it is one he takes on with a dogged readiness. He is not quick to dismiss a slight or a betrayal of his trust and bears grudges sedulously. It is no easy thing to return oneself to good standing in his eye should such standing be lost.
ap·a·thet·ic | /ˌapəˈTHedik/ | showing or feeling no interest, enthusiasm, or concern. || Once his throaty howls could fill the forest with their booming song, now they’ve grown hushed, desolate and harsh. He is no longer roused as quickly as he was in his youth but instead favors a more stoic disposition that yields little to anyone.
cyn·i·cal | /ˈsinək(ə)l/ | distrustful of human sincerity or integrity. || In his grief, he learned a great deal of the world and of those he once considered friends. He discerned that few are as selfless as they seem, that their airs of generosity and chivalry are but novice illusions, as unreliable as the morning mist. He learned that many are selfish, self-serving and cruel, and so does not surrender himself to fanciful impressions of those he meets or their deeds.
threat·en·ing | /ˈTHretniNG/ | having a hostile or deliberately frightening quality or manner. || A black temper tails this tom. Cruel, savage and undiscriminating, once unleashed, it is not so easily subdued before sinking its claws into whichever poor fool had the misfortune of triggering it in the first place. As such, many provide him a wide breadth—one he claims suits him just fine.
in·di·vid·u·al·ist | /ˌindəˈvijələst/ | one who is independent and self-reliant. || Since he was weaned off the tit, he had a mind of his own. He adopted the customs of his Clan, their beliefs and traditions, but never to the point where he could not challenge them in some way. After all, to stay true to oneself is to act in one’s best interest—to trust in the yearnings of one’s heart—and he is proud to assert that his has never been deprived of that which it wants most.
History
They sent them
To the fields to die
and some of them did
The rest have been dying
in bits and pieces
since the day they were sent home
Father: Timberfall (deceased)
Mother: Ivybreeze (npc)
Littermates: Coyotespring (npc|sister)
Mate(s): Featherstep (deceased)
Offspring: n/a
Neither had known the other with any great propensity. They had only known their duty and carried it out accordingly—as tradition deemed fit, as the laws of nature deemed most suitable—and so courted and bore forth a belly swollen with new life.
Ivybreeze never knew what love meant, nor did she care to ask. She was content with the wriggling lives in her belly, and the kicks of their paws made her heart soar with love. For Timberfall, she knew, he bore a similar want. He desperately craved that which she nursed within her, wanted it to be born. He was ravenous to redeem himself. Ravenous to raise himself in the eyes of those who had cast him aside. And so was she. They were both anxious youths, anxiously waiting as their sires and dams were as well, for the redemption to surge them into higher standing than that which they already possessed.
They were most ravenous for it and found their appetites sated when two lives were borne amid a blustering winter.
Two lives, a tom, and a she-cat—one from which seeds could be sown, and the other in which seeds could be planted—a dutiful split, most profitable, most coveted.
And they’d need covetable names. Strong ones, and so were named. Houndkit and Coyotekit. New lives. A fresh start.
His mother ensured that neither he nor his sister were ever wanting. Her warmth and affection was readily available and dolled out in generous amounts—soft laps upon needy foreheads and ruffled flanks, smoothing them sleek and tidy—and so they were never questioning or wondering over the absence of their father. Of course, such things remain mysteries for only a fleeting moment. Even Houndkit, enamored by elder tells and always will a belly full of milk and dozing lids could sense a respectful tension betwixt them.
They never shared their meals together, rarely spoke if not on the matter of their kits and their growth. They did not share the same warm exchanges as he and his sister shared with her, nor did their eyes glow with warmth and adoration. It was a loveless, officious thing—it was not warm like their mother’s love for them. Sometimes it was even cold and desolate and blaming.
But it was something, and though his father never dolled out warm laps or warmer words, when they came of age—old enough to garner his interest and become absorbed in those rare and fleeting spurts of conversation—he did doll out his presence. Most generously.
And so he had. Tirelessly, through the day and night, against his own mother’s wishes. He was never sure if his father reared them so tirelessly out of love or otherwise, only that it put the fright in his mother, though she was powerless to stop it.
But she never did. It was beyond her. He came to hate her for it. He never loved his father or his teachings—in fact, they revolted him, made him sick, especially the way he would sometimes get when his temper was on him. Black and mean and hurtful, especially towards his sister. It was a cruel thing. Houndkit vowed to never replicate it: his mother's idleness or his father's self-serving cruelty.
Perhaps he had always known in some small way that he was favored. Perhaps he had known that when his father’s tongue grew coarse and barbed, it lashed a little lighter on his hide as opposed to his sister, who faltered and fought against it. And perhaps he had known that even if he had done worse it would always be so, for his sister was a she-cat—her place was not among them, though he would not know until later why that was.
His sister never redeemed herself in their father’s eyes. Soon her presence became a past thing. It did not trouble those moments when the camp grew quiet and the thundering of his paws filled the quiet and his muscles ached and strained in tandem with his father’s wishes. She became a shadow, a distant, forgotten presence until he forgot her entirely. She was with their mother, and that was just fine for her, he figured. It was where she belonged—where she could learn all she needed to… for her purpose.
His sister had failed. Her mentor was a common thing, low in standing, of ill-breeding and iller-bred mindset. She was a simple creature—soft—and his father resented her. But it was her purpose.
His purpose was much different. His mentor had been craftily chosen—a veritable tom with an even more veritable reputation. He instilled in Houndpaw all that he needed, a brazen nature fed by his mentor's fuels. He trained tirelessly under him, tackled every challenge, and when the fighting grew and beckoned them to the border, unleashed himself upon it like a hound from hell, unhindered, unfaltering, and relentless in want to prove himself.
With each skirmish, his courage grew as too did his boldness. He came to be well-known, even more so for the company he kept, and gradually rose with time as was his purpose.
Of his father, he saw more and more. Their time spent together was spent in tense acknowledgment—a presence grudgingly shouldered, but shouldered nonetheless. And so he instilled in him his poisons, his ideologies and cravings and disregards, and Houndpaw, though it shamed him, ate them ravenously. He lost all care for his mother, for his sister, who had already been bidded off to some highborn family with a higherborn tom-kit in need of a pretty piece. He knew she'd be happy. It was her purpose.
His was much different. He had to grow stronger, to grow quicker, bolder, and more courageous.
He felled his first warrior on the cusp of his inauguration as a warrior, felled them with his own claws, and rent the life's blood from their throat to spill upon the plains. He felled another during the skirmish that would strip the life from his father.
He watched the life's blood pool from him thin, to spill upon the plains.
It felt odd. He did not weep for his father.
Perhaps for the first time in moons, he saw her as she was: a poor thing, cheated of life, forced to take part in an existence none of her making. And she hated herself for it as much as she detested his freedom. She hated that he had made the choice she had failed to and was acting upon it despite her wishes, despite the wishes of old crones who still clung desperately to things so benign. And he hated her in turn, for all she had given up, just as he did, in some small way, detest his sister for all she had become.
He would not echo their mistakes. His life was his alone.
While the fighting persisted at their borders, a different sort of war waged within Houndsong, split between his duties—to his mate, the fair and soft-spoken Featherstep, and his Clan, which demanded him incessantly. To field and den, he flitted without rest, hurling his frustration and confusions at whichever fool braved his claws that day to return, sullen and bleeding, to a she-cat whose health waned with the moon.
It was no common sickness that gripped her, no affliction of the lungs to be warded by the forest’s bountiful simples. Hers had come with that detestable lump beneath her fur. Once small but ravenous as it ate away at her and swelled and bloated. Where it grew, she seemed to shrink, until the bones did jut from beneath her fur and her eyes sunk into her skull, weak and pleading for the merciful relief of poppy.
And so she persisted, lulled into fragile slumbers to rise, weaker than before, to nibble at the haunches of mice until the meat fell sour on her tongue and she could not eat anymore and so grew weaker still.
Not even Cinderface with her sagely wisdom could ward the sickness, and nor, either, could praying to the stars, though he treated with them regularly when the poppy took her into another slumber. Both forbid him the cure he wished, and so he would come, bleeding and sullen, time and time again to sit alongside her, to watch the life shrivel away with each moment she lingered.
It was a mercy when she died.
Taken in her sleep, she did not linger long in pain but had shrunk into herself and ceased. And so he had found her, limp and lifeless, and so too had he buried her, alone, baring teeth at any who dare draw close to his weary and grief-stricken vigil.
For five days and nights, he persisted alongside her grave, still as a statue, unmoved by the vexatious weight of his loyalty to her, and when he, at last, found himself too drawn by hunger to persist any longer, he returned to a Clan that held nothing more for him.
To the fields to die
and some of them did
The rest have been dying
in bits and pieces
since the day they were sent home
Father: Timberfall (deceased)
Mother: Ivybreeze (npc)
Littermates: Coyotespring (npc|sister)
Mate(s): Featherstep (deceased)
Offspring: n/a
They sent them
Neither had known the other with any great propensity. They had only known their duty and carried it out accordingly—as tradition deemed fit, as the laws of nature deemed most suitable—and so courted and bore forth a belly swollen with new life.
Ivybreeze never knew what love meant, nor did she care to ask. She was content with the wriggling lives in her belly, and the kicks of their paws made her heart soar with love. For Timberfall, she knew, he bore a similar want. He desperately craved that which she nursed within her, wanted it to be born. He was ravenous to redeem himself. Ravenous to raise himself in the eyes of those who had cast him aside. And so was she. They were both anxious youths, anxiously waiting as their sires and dams were as well, for the redemption to surge them into higher standing than that which they already possessed.
They were most ravenous for it and found their appetites sated when two lives were borne amid a blustering winter.
Two lives, a tom, and a she-cat—one from which seeds could be sown, and the other in which seeds could be planted—a dutiful split, most profitable, most coveted.
And they’d need covetable names. Strong ones, and so were named. Houndkit and Coyotekit. New lives. A fresh start.
To the fields to die
His mother ensured that neither he nor his sister were ever wanting. Her warmth and affection was readily available and dolled out in generous amounts—soft laps upon needy foreheads and ruffled flanks, smoothing them sleek and tidy—and so they were never questioning or wondering over the absence of their father. Of course, such things remain mysteries for only a fleeting moment. Even Houndkit, enamored by elder tells and always will a belly full of milk and dozing lids could sense a respectful tension betwixt them.
They never shared their meals together, rarely spoke if not on the matter of their kits and their growth. They did not share the same warm exchanges as he and his sister shared with her, nor did their eyes glow with warmth and adoration. It was a loveless, officious thing—it was not warm like their mother’s love for them. Sometimes it was even cold and desolate and blaming.
But it was something, and though his father never dolled out warm laps or warmer words, when they came of age—old enough to garner his interest and become absorbed in those rare and fleeting spurts of conversation—he did doll out his presence. Most generously.
“The weak wallow in self-pity; you are not weak, you are my blood. And you must prove it to me.”
And so he had. Tirelessly, through the day and night, against his own mother’s wishes. He was never sure if his father reared them so tirelessly out of love or otherwise, only that it put the fright in his mother, though she was powerless to stop it.
But she never did. It was beyond her. He came to hate her for it. He never loved his father or his teachings—in fact, they revolted him, made him sick, especially the way he would sometimes get when his temper was on him. Black and mean and hurtful, especially towards his sister. It was a cruel thing. Houndkit vowed to never replicate it: his mother's idleness or his father's self-serving cruelty.
and some of them did
Perhaps he had always known in some small way that he was favored. Perhaps he had known that when his father’s tongue grew coarse and barbed, it lashed a little lighter on his hide as opposed to his sister, who faltered and fought against it. And perhaps he had known that even if he had done worse it would always be so, for his sister was a she-cat—her place was not among them, though he would not know until later why that was.
“Never bend to the will of such fickle creatures. You must learn to be stern, harsh, even, to remind them of their place. They are not like us—she is not like us. Never forget that. Never question that.”
His sister never redeemed herself in their father’s eyes. Soon her presence became a past thing. It did not trouble those moments when the camp grew quiet and the thundering of his paws filled the quiet and his muscles ached and strained in tandem with his father’s wishes. She became a shadow, a distant, forgotten presence until he forgot her entirely. She was with their mother, and that was just fine for her, he figured. It was where she belonged—where she could learn all she needed to… for her purpose.
The rest have been dying
His sister had failed. Her mentor was a common thing, low in standing, of ill-breeding and iller-bred mindset. She was a simple creature—soft—and his father resented her. But it was her purpose.
His purpose was much different. His mentor had been craftily chosen—a veritable tom with an even more veritable reputation. He instilled in Houndpaw all that he needed, a brazen nature fed by his mentor's fuels. He trained tirelessly under him, tackled every challenge, and when the fighting grew and beckoned them to the border, unleashed himself upon it like a hound from hell, unhindered, unfaltering, and relentless in want to prove himself.
With each skirmish, his courage grew as too did his boldness. He came to be well-known, even more so for the company he kept, and gradually rose with time as was his purpose.
Of his father, he saw more and more. Their time spent together was spent in tense acknowledgment—a presence grudgingly shouldered, but shouldered nonetheless. And so he instilled in him his poisons, his ideologies and cravings and disregards, and Houndpaw, though it shamed him, ate them ravenously. He lost all care for his mother, for his sister, who had already been bidded off to some highborn family with a higherborn tom-kit in need of a pretty piece. He knew she'd be happy. It was her purpose.
His was much different. He had to grow stronger, to grow quicker, bolder, and more courageous.
He felled his first warrior on the cusp of his inauguration as a warrior, felled them with his own claws, and rent the life's blood from their throat to spill upon the plains. He felled another during the skirmish that would strip the life from his father.
He watched the life's blood pool from him thin, to spill upon the plains.
It felt odd. He did not weep for his father.
in bits and pieces
“Don’t be insolent. This is what you were bred for—raised for. You will carry out your duty.”
Perhaps for the first time in moons, he saw her as she was: a poor thing, cheated of life, forced to take part in an existence none of her making. And she hated herself for it as much as she detested his freedom. She hated that he had made the choice she had failed to and was acting upon it despite her wishes, despite the wishes of old crones who still clung desperately to things so benign. And he hated her in turn, for all she had given up, just as he did, in some small way, detest his sister for all she had become.
He would not echo their mistakes. His life was his alone.
since the day they were sent home
While the fighting persisted at their borders, a different sort of war waged within Houndsong, split between his duties—to his mate, the fair and soft-spoken Featherstep, and his Clan, which demanded him incessantly. To field and den, he flitted without rest, hurling his frustration and confusions at whichever fool braved his claws that day to return, sullen and bleeding, to a she-cat whose health waned with the moon.
It was no common sickness that gripped her, no affliction of the lungs to be warded by the forest’s bountiful simples. Hers had come with that detestable lump beneath her fur. Once small but ravenous as it ate away at her and swelled and bloated. Where it grew, she seemed to shrink, until the bones did jut from beneath her fur and her eyes sunk into her skull, weak and pleading for the merciful relief of poppy.
And so she persisted, lulled into fragile slumbers to rise, weaker than before, to nibble at the haunches of mice until the meat fell sour on her tongue and she could not eat anymore and so grew weaker still.
Not even Cinderface with her sagely wisdom could ward the sickness, and nor, either, could praying to the stars, though he treated with them regularly when the poppy took her into another slumber. Both forbid him the cure he wished, and so he would come, bleeding and sullen, time and time again to sit alongside her, to watch the life shrivel away with each moment she lingered.
It was a mercy when she died.
Taken in her sleep, she did not linger long in pain but had shrunk into herself and ceased. And so he had found her, limp and lifeless, and so too had he buried her, alone, baring teeth at any who dare draw close to his weary and grief-stricken vigil.
For five days and nights, he persisted alongside her grave, still as a statue, unmoved by the vexatious weight of his loyalty to her, and when he, at last, found himself too drawn by hunger to persist any longer, he returned to a Clan that held nothing more for him.