Gale

Loner

an unkempt flame-point she-cat w/ blue eyes.

A life of hardship has not been kind to her. Gaunt, and painfully so, beneath her furs, there is always the presence of hunger—the sharp jut of bony shoulders and the sunken lines of a face forever racked with a life of wanting. Even her furs, however thick they might be, do not hide much and hug a rather unspectacular and dwarfed frame in mud-clogged tatters. Such is the way of those who are rogue-born. She will forever be damned to be smaller than her peers; despite that, there is a hardiness to her that does not suggest the frailty of her meager proportions. For even in her thinness, there is a leanness beneath, a firmness that does not indicate weakness, while in her figure, a voracious cunning arises in the unsightly obtrusion of bone. Even her eyes speak of a particular untamed zeal, for they are sharp and filled with a savage intelligence, missing as little as the tattered and flea-bitten ears that sit tufted atop her head. Even her furs—in the rare instance of cleanliness—possess a certain vivacity, bearing bold white hues and the soft brushes of flame points upon her nose, ear tips, and tail length.

To those born within the borders of Clan territory Gale’s ways may seem harsh. Her ignorance far exceeds her knowledge, and her nature is nothing if not brash and uncouth. There is little refinement to her nor softness—no tenderness or sentimentality, only the hard practicality that comes from a life of scarcity. Her ways are brazen and to the point—forthright to the point of rudeness, while her motives are often selfish and self-serving. Rare is it she surrenders herself to beliefs of good faith, and always does she look at those around her with an unbudging mistrust. For having lived so long alone and so long without, she is in no great haste to surrender what little she has and knows only a desire to safeguard herself alone.

Yet, for her philistine ways, she is not without her strengths. She is crafty, cunning, and resourceful even amid cold and starvation. Rare is it that she cannot pluck herself up even from the worst of conditions, and rarer still is it that she should be daunted by any obstacle that might come to obscure her way. In her is the innate zeal of a rogue, one that cares for its survival and thinks only of padding its belly—of luxuriating in the simple things and guarding what small treasures they possess with the rapaciousness of a wild beast. Such is her way, however simple, and it is this way that has allowed her survival and will surely ensure it in the moons to come.

00-02 Moons.
8 Moons Ago, the Awakening… Born amid times of famine and squalor, Gale’s beginnings were not decadent but wanting. She was born into a hollow in which the cold seeped, and the gnarled stretch of old roots jutted down, where outside the wind whipped and wailed, and there was no warm moss to nestle into, only hardened earth. Her mother was frail and sickly then, as she would always remember her being, and perhaps it was because of her own malnourished state that all of Gale’s kin but one were stillborn—all but a brother, who their mother named Wind—who did not wane as the others did as the cold inched into their bones, but wailed all the more fiercely in the wake of it and drank as fitfully as she, jostling and pawing her in his haste for milk.

So did the two grow under their mother’s watchful care, given suck until her milk dried early and later taught the ways of the land—how to pounce and how to fight, how to catch wind of old kills and enemies alike. Early did they learn these things out of necessity, and tireless was their mother in teaching them, so that it was rare in those moments when she was with them—for having to feed them alone, she was often absent from them—that they were not being taught some new lesson or some new way to steel themselves for the lives they had been predestined to live.

By their second moon, Gale and Wind had grown hardened. They learned to be complicit even in the wake of hunger, stay close to the nest, and never ask for more than what was given. Their lives did not permit the fanciful dreams except those that longed for prey in the scenting of the air, and never did they question it, for it was the only way they knew and so did not want for more than full bellies and a roof over their head—both of which were not so easy to find.

03-06 Moons.
5-3 Moons Ago, the Bleeding… Soon stories began to bleed into their little world. Whispers of rogues and uprisings—of war and bloodshed that set the hackles of their mother on end and sent tremors through their hunger-racked frames. Gradually Lily’s faction grew, and her cats slunk deeper into their hunting grounds until they were forced to leave, never mingling among them and so damning themselves to lesser hunting grounds where food became only scarcer and life meaner than it had ever been. Still, neither Gale nor Wind complained. They tried their paw at hunting where it could be allowed, gnashed teeth on the hard and brittle shells of insects until they grew acquainted with the taste and, as they had been taught, did not want for more.

For moons, their lives went on without change. Days without food were no novelty but to be expected, while two days with meat was a rare thing and to be celebrated. The only difference was the weather, for the fall leaves were coming, and with it, the crueler weather that meant longer nights and less fresh kill. As the threat of starvation grew, their mother grew more earnest in her quest for food and a new home that might offer them greater comforts, though, for all her searching, she never found it.

It was on a rare night in which they had gone exceptionally long without meat they heard the caterwauls from those distant and prey-rich fields. The sounds of fighting—a sound that had grown too common of late and sent their hackles on end to hear it. Rare was it that the battles bled into their northern home, yet always they would stand watchfully at the den mouth with pricked ears and listen while their mother, who saw opportunity in such moments, went in search of easy prey. Only this time, when the fighting broke out, they were older and longed as all kits do for the outside world, which for so long had been barred from them.

What must lay there beyond those ragged, wind-swept fields? What did a Clan cat look like, and what was a war?

In their den, they might never know, and so, with mischief in their eyes, they fled from their nest and trekked into the field after their mother. Over empty swathes of land they went, their tiny legs never tiring and their eyes glinting with adventure until the sound of fighting grew ever louder. Yet where Gale hesitated, made uneasy by it, Wind ventured further until she lost him entirely and so hid.

Moments passed before she ventured out from her shelter, and she found her mother lying still and growing cold with the creepings of death. Unable to find Wind, she made a long and sorrowful trek back to her home with her mother’s corpse in tow, packing it down into the hollow and resting aside it, alone for the first time in her life.

06-08 Moons.
2-0 Moons Ago, the Forgetting… If before she had known hardship, she knew not what to call life without a mother or brother to aid her. No longer could she rely on her mother’s offerings and so sought to feed herself, scavenging bugs from the cliffside and wetting her paws in the fruitless shallows for scrounge. In her desperation, she ventured into Clan land despite her own fears, and in an effort to find food, she found a tom instead who called himself Adderheart.

Despite bearing the name of a Clan cat, the tom was kind and offered her food, herbs for her wounds, and a warm roof under which to nestle. Gale took his food and herbs, and has since relied on him to sustain herself during the harsh leaf-bare moons.