Melody of a meadowlark's song

Tribe of Floating Stones

elegant flamepoint she-cat with deep blue eyes

Melody skipped the lanky, awkward stage of youth, moving from being a petite, rounded kitten to holding a distinctively powerful beauty smoothly. She is long and graceful, her body larger in both height and length than the average feline, but she holds a lithe sort of muscle that deceptively adds to a more delicate air to her build. She is thin, with long legs but narrower shoulders and hips, and it is only long fur that adds to the depth of her stomach and chest. Upon first glance, one might assume she built for speed rather than strength. But despite her elegant structure, Melody of Meadowlark's Song is built for war.

Her pelt adds somewhat to the width of Melody, though not more than necessary. Her fur is long but wispy in texture, thinner, and with a less dense undercoat than some of the bushier long-hairs of the tribe's number. Instead, her fur leaves her smooth and sleek, with lengthened furs primarily showing themselves more prominently along her plumed tail and the undersides of her form, whether her belly, chest, or neck.

Melody is a flamepoint she-cat, with shifting hues between medium ginger and pale creamy white. Her face is striped gently, some of her darkest reds gathering to pool under her lids and dripping down her cheeks or forming the characteristic tabby marks across her forehead. Otherwise, her stripes are deceptive, as her legs do not display them well nor does the richer auburn of her lower back or tail. The combination of reds, creams, and whites makes Melody particularly unskilled in stealthy endeavors, reflecting moon and sunlight alike in the brighter nature of her furs. The only setting in which she could hope to blend in would be half-submerged in the snow turned amber in the sunset.

With a lithe, elegant body, Melody's face blends right in. Her muzzle is long with a strong bridge extending from her nose. Her ears are wide-set but just so, large but not in a way that looks foolish or over-exaggerated. She all angles, with high triangular cheeks and a well-defined jaw. The only gentle slope is that of her forehead across her crown, and the softness of the curvature above and below her deep-set, hooded blue eyes.

When one lives a life full of sorrow and misfortune, there are few things that one can hold onto besides their grandest dreams. Melody is such a dreamer, always lost in her own world of pleasant sunrises and warmth. Often, she is distracted by this - so much so as to seem inattentive at times. She tends to lean into her dreams a bit more than reality allows, gaining an optimism for the future that is sometimes unhealthy as it allows for a great deal of disappointment when life does not give her the joys that she thought it might.

From her birth, Melody has always been good-natured and sweet of disposition. She is easy to get along with with a kindness that carries her on a cloud of personability. She works very well with others, able to take charge or follow another's lead with equal skill. She listens to others and adds input without worry or anxiety, as well as doing her best to follow through with whatever is planned for her and others to accomplish.

Melody has a hard time pinning herself into a single box. She is a fluid cat with many different skills and interests, and with no one thing that she seems to excel at beyond all others, she struggles to limit herself. This is both in regard to her future occupation, and also to relationships, for she always feels as though there might be something that she's missing or that she isn't cut out for the role she is set to fill. She can be incredibly pedantic, relying on precise and accurate wording and rarely understanding sarcasm or opaque ways of communicating on the first try. Where she is an incredibly friendly and helpful coworker, individuals that are meant to be friends and loved ones can sometimes find her challenging to communicate with due to her reliance on a clear discussion as well as her inability to feel content with her situation.

There is an intelligence within Melody that she inherited from her mother. She is as quick as a spark, picking up on new information quickly and being just as fast to recall what she knows. She has a deep fascination with many different things, especially different weather phenomena, as well as the way the lake's tides pull and shift. However, even beyond her immediate interests, she is easily fueled with information enough to begin her own investigations into the nature of the world.

When something catches her interest, she tends to hone in on it. Often she is absorbed in her own internal musings so much so that she forgets to live within reality. Melody has a tendency to question that which others take as fact, something that can lead to her seeming particularly peculiar or quirky. Her unconventional way of thinking and interacting with the world often is viewable as an optimistic naivety as opposed to a disregard for tradition, a fact that can sometimes earn her the title of endearing rather than annoying.

Grandmothers: Starlight & Snowflake
Mother: Dawn Breaking Beyond Arbored Hills
Father: Breeze that Carries Petals
Uncle: Icicle (@ silverfire)
Aunt: Shadow
Littermate: Sparrow that Chirps at Dawn (@ spotty)


When Dawn and Breeze's kittens were born, Fog was called to name them based on visions seen upon their birth. And, despite the nature of seeing a vision, it was sound that their kittens' names were drawn from. Two birds were heard in the new dawn of their existence, a meadowlark singing, and the early chirping of a white-crowned sparrow. And the two kittens had been named accordingly, Melody of Meadowlark's Song's pale fur resembling the yellow breast of the lark, and Sparrow that Chirps at Dawn's mottled brown appearing close to the feathers of the humble earthy bird.

As kittens, the pair were largely healthy and happy. Although Melody dwarfed Sparrow from a young age, both did not want for much, having plenty of milk to split between them and plenty of attention from their loving parents. Despite the famine and drought that pursued the tribe endlessly, the lives of kits were endlessly supported even as their tribemates struggled, and they were at peace.

That was until the fire struck. Dawn's den gave in and caved under the weight of the burning bush that rose above it. She was buried except for her face, crushed beneath wood and root, with only the gentle purrs convincing her litter to leave her to drown in smoke and flames.

Melody and Sparrow did not leave their mother, even when the pleading purrs ended and the screams of pain began as her fur and flesh grew blackened and burnt. It was as though Melody could not take her eyes away, consumed by the destruction before her, desperate to save her mother from the suffering she faced. And yet, there was nothing a kit could do to rescue her.

It was when their father saw his mate that something within him broke. Desperately, he dug at the dirt, burning his feet and singing his furs. And yet, even when Dawn grew silent, Breeze wept and dug and pulled at the roots that tangled around his mate's body despite the way the heat had pulled them tight and twisted.

Melody begged her father to take them away, to remove them from the burning heat of the forest around them. Sparrow looked for a way out, but could not find one, the fires all-consuming. So Melody begged and begged, crying out for Breeze, sobbing into his heels as he kicked her out of his way. It was only after Melody crawled onto her mother's corpse, singing her paw pads with the heat of her burns, and met her eyes with his. Perhaps, he found the blue of her gaze as moving as the blues of her mother's, the first and last time he would see Dawn in either of his kittens.

He carried them across the waters reluctantly, finding themselves on one of the closest islands to the tribe stone, The Rock Where Leaves Fall. It was there that they were raised beyond their second moon, forever chasing the comforting warmth of a mother they had lost. Breeze, their birth father, rejected them and reminded them often of his broken heart and missing mate. Where Sparrow grew distant, Melody grew closer, desperate for connection.


So young was she that she hardly recalled the struggles of the tribe's tellers as they battled for sanity and power among the elite. She only knew of the struggles to be fed and feel loved by all except the sister ever at her side.

Even as Sumac seized power, Melody was not sure how to feel. Her life felt so far removed from such things - she hunted and trained and spent time with her fellow to-bes, unaware of the drama beyond her personal sphere. That was until her uncle was sent far to the prisoner island to starve, and her friends were punished for speaking against him or even giving prey to the wrong cats. The whole thing felt strange to Melody, but she persisted onward, not wanting to seem in too dour spirits. After all, she was supposed to cheer everyone up when they were down, and would do so dutifully until she could no longer.

That time came when she witnessed her teller die by the head preyhunter's teeth. It was the day of her fledgling ceremony, where she would be called by the ancestors to be a stoneguard or a preyhunter. She did want to be a stoneguard, so when Sumac called her forth as a new preyhunter, she did feel a twinge of disappointment. That devolved into shock at Fog's return, and then absolute horror and fear when Sunrise acted, killing Sumac before her eyes. Talon did all he could to shield Melody from the worst of the gore, but the scene haunted her and skewed her view of preyhunters forever.

How could one take a life so easily? When she fought predators and caught prey, it was only to eat, or to protect herself and those who were defenseless. But preyhunters fought for something else, and were used to bearing the blood of their foes upon their teeth and claws when day after day, they were sent out to kill and take lives. She remembered how Sumac had sent her to hunt leverets, and it all made sense. She saw that baby rabbit, hardly with its eyes open, and she knew that she was not fit to be a preyhunter at all.

If she wore blood, she swore it would be her own more than ever another's - for if her foes fought back, if they aimed to kill her, only then would she strike them down.

As time progressed, she began to work as a fledgeling stoneguard at Talon's request. She kept as far from the preyhunters and especially Sunrise as she could, fear swallowing her at the sound of the she-cat's voice or the sight of blood upon the pales of her fur. By the time of the festival, a lot of her nightmares had faded into occassional fits rather than nightly ones, and she enjoyed the time with her kin and friends. There were moments of awkwardness, and in the end, who were her friends and who yearned for more became blurred within her mind, leaving her dazed in a haze of a love others expected her to give.


Early in the 2024 season, Melody finally began to finalize her time as a fledgling, proving herself to Talon and the other stoneguards as a member of the team.