Smoke curls aroun

hallowed moon

Tribe of Floating Stones

A solid, silver and black tom

When one sees Smoke, some may think that he looks a bit dainty, that he seems to float on in the wind when he walks, or they might even call him cute. His awkward smile and small language, habits held over from his youth, betray a frame that can stand up to with the other stone-guards of his time. From the top of his head to the very tips of his paw, he stands at about 2 feet. Over the year, he grew from scrawny and round to large and solid. His musculature and skeleton form medium thin and tight mass about his body, giving him a very dense appearance in spaces like his arms and his head. He has round wide paws that run contrarian to the imposing look that his midsection communicates. His legs are thick in their circumference, and while his shoulders are square, they rarely are seen due to the nature of his fur. He has a short, thick neck that runs down into a broad chest, bu not so broad to extend past his legs. His body tapers to back into thinner haunches and hind legs. Some of that mass is made up with his tail, fanning out toward the back in a length that is difficult to manage, as it is nearly as long as he is.

One of his most striking features is the arrangement of his fur. The long hair of his Smoke's pelt tend to droop over him like a shag carpet, and as he moves, it tends to wave around loosely in some places, especially toward his back and tail, and effect brought on by his generously strong His coat features a gradient of grays, sliver, and black. As if he were wearing a fluffly scarf, his neck and chest are crested with a white frill, that extends to gray tufts, in and on top of his ears. Around his back and shoulders is a mantle of black that cups down and extends to his legs. His paws are milky white, cutting into his black coloring with a diamond shape. Once past his shoulders, a thicker cape of swirling gray and white extends down to his haunches, eventually fading into a pattern matching his front legs.

His face features long, wide, and rounded ears, with flat tips, extended by his fur. His eyes are emerald green and take up a large part of his face. His face has gray around the edges but is mostly black, with the exception of the mark of his family, a stripe of white along his nose, where it would usually be black. He has long whiskers that are straight along his mouth and curve above his eyes.

Smoke does not fit in with the others around him, on many levels.

The first things that one notices about him is that he tends not to be noticed at all. Smoke is aloof, and separated from his tribe. He makes little contact beyond what is necessarily during work, and when not working, he spends his time alone. When he is seen, at first he can seem to be a bit intimidating, as he has a tendency to loom, and speak very little, even when spoken to. Not due to any impediment or difficulty, but what might come off as a cool and distant exterior is a meek nervous wreck, so afraid of saying the wrong thing or making a fool of himself that he ends up not speaking or uttering short, vague, inoffensive statements that dont betray his anxieties. Sometimes he can succeeded in gaining his solitude back, but in times when he needs to be a bit more vocal or when he can stand the isolation no longer, he can end up saying things he doesn't mean or nonsensical words that end up validating his worries, to him further deepening his separation from his tribe.

His wariness about himself spreads beyond the scope of just himself, and extends to other cats and his own walks of life. Smoke isn't one to charge in to a situation headfirst, wary of courses of action that dont seem thought through or haphazard. He likes to have all the information he can get his paws on before acting and because of his care in the analysis of a situation, he can sometimes end up with differing opinions to that of his superiors or the tribe at large. His meek nature however can make him withhold his reservations, even to the point of causing problems for him. He foregoes things he needs and tries to scrape by instead of asserting his claim over his resources, just to avoid contact.

This lonely life he leads is the result of not only his own inability to socialize, but also due to that of a curse. Whether or not the curse on his family is real, he has felt the effect of the rumor surrounding his family his whole life. When his parents took him out, he can remember some of the older cats looking at him oddly, and some speculating that he wouldn't survive his training. Although there aren't many cats left over from the time of Rain's reconstruction period, the impact they left on him remains, a legacy of guilt over something he didn't understand, and a feeling that he was adequate enough only for his own parents.

This life that he leads pains him, as there is another cat that lives inside of him, below the mass of timidness and fear. Underneath his oppressed shell is a cat that desperately wants to show the world who he truly is. When he is alone, away from the compromising presence of other, he blossoms into a passionate person with a wild imagination. He finds it amusing to dream up and act out all kinds of differing scenarios, play acting each of his peers by himself.

He would never let anyone see him doing this, but if he did, they would see caricatures of their personsas, each one done more out of tribute than derision. His fantasies extend to how he would deal with the sickness if he were stoneteller, to meeting the heroic Rain, to the many ways he would beat back the coyotes and win the heart of a she-cat. Ever the romantic, wishes he could easily dish out the warmth he feels toward his tribemates, and hopefully easily reccieve it in return, perhaps in bulk, enough for a family.

The family den has seen more than it's share of the modifications by Smoke both during and after his parent's death. His creativity is found in his aspects of work as well, as he has edited his den to extend into other parts of it's hill, pass air, and even drain water during storms. One of the times he truly stands out is after the ravages of weather or upset. His deft paws and creativity make him a fine civil engineer, and one of his most redeeming qualities in the eyes of his peers is how he is able to reset the dens and clear away the debris and chaos left behind by the aftermaths of disaster. He is one of the go-to cats for the less illustrious jobs of stone-guarding, and one of the only times his attributes can get him to flash his crooked smile, is when they ask him for new bedding or a change to their home.

The lineage of Black Bear, the stoneteller that preceded the great hunger, somehow survived long enough to be passed down through the ages, to Dove. Since his time, his bloodline was marked by a most peculiar phenomenon. Every entry into the family tree, was utterly singular, and marred by sickness and weakness that delayed their development, if their development was still progressing at all.

Dove was not able to escape this fate with the only kit she was able to bear, Smoke. After his birth, he writhed pitifully on the ground, mewling weakly until her warmth was brought near. Dove noticed that he would be prone to chill, and he needed twice the amount of milk, to give him the level of strength reserved for once the amount. It was all Dove could do to keep her kit barely alive in those first weeks.

His sickness didn't leave him for the rest of his childhood, but he did grow strong enough to last a bit on his own, away from the constant eyes of her mother, but there was nowhere else to go. For reasons that his father Shade wouldn't let on, their den was farther away from everyone else's. He stayed close to his family, learning about the world in the safety of their parents tutelage until it was time for him to begin his training.

By the time he began, one of the first signs that he would be set apart from the others was that even though he had just begun, his health meant that he had started his journey to full membership at 8 moons, while the others began at six. Two moons of mistakes, catch up and allowances for his weakness made him an easy target. In the beginning, he was an extroverted to-be, attempting to make friends whenever he could. However, his identity as the tribe's "cursed child" made this exceedingly difficult and while he did his best through the training, it was beginning to look he was destined for a life of loneliness and ostracization. His parents began to see this, and decided that no matter what, two cats at least would be there to comfort him. Smoke began to spend more time around the den in response, preferring to make his living spaces more enjoyable for his family. He spent his training getting his rear end handed to him physically, while he found respite among his loving parents. Near the end of his training, he found he was finally beginning to grow into his body, and his vitality was starting to improve, and he hoped that it would have been noticed.

That would become the furthermost thing from his mind as he tried to put himself together after the coming events.

First came the meeting to decide the course of the remainder of his training. In his meeting with Rain, in her eyes, she noticed something else that mirrored the look that he saw in the eyes of the others, but even more. She spoke kindly and respectfully to him, but he would always remember the look of guilt in her eyes that accompanied the disdain. After that, he did his best to avoid her, but he would never forget how his teller looked at him, as if she wanted to let him in on some kind of secret but couldn't. The meeting came and went, and he would be assigned to work under the head stone guard.

Soon afterward, before he was made an official stone guard, Smoke lost his mother when she was caught out on patrol by a pack of coyotes

His relationship with his father grew even more after he lost her, and the pair, wracked with grief began to withdraw from the tribe more than they already had been. In the forest, away from the tribe stone, they lived off the land, with Shade hunting for food, and Smoke doing his best to revamp their home to stand up to the elements. During this time, Shade told his son what he knew of his lineage, and he received the first inklings of why their family was treated the way they were. They both went to work and did what they could for the tribe, but in their hearts, it was them two against a harsh world.

One night, after a patrol, he came home to find his father wheezing on floor, his throat mangled by the disease hat had claimed one of Creek's lives and their head prey-hunter. For the next couple of days, he stayed with him, running back and forth between the Teller and home, trying to deliver what little herbs he could, but in the end, all that was available only served to ease the pain of his passing.


Now, he has nobody. He is alone in his den and in his entire world. There is nowhere to go, except toward the others of his tribe, to hopefully, find a connection and unravel the mystery of his place in the tribe.