Post by Aspenpaw ✿ on Jul 26, 2013 20:07:19 GMT -5
ASPENPAW
PINECLAN x APPRENTICE
[PLAYFUL] œ [STUBBORN] œ [GUILT-FILLED]
General Knowledge
AGE: FOURTEEN MOONS
GENDER: SHE-CAT
BREED: DOMESTIC SHORT HAIR
SEXUALITY: BICURIOUS
REASON FOR NAME:prefix ASPEN: Named for her lovely orange on white fur. Her beautiful pelt had reminded her mother of the aspen tree, a tree known for its characteristic white bark and orange leaves.
suffix PAW: Still being but an apprentice, she bears the name paw to show her as such.FLIGHT: Due to her remarkable gift for jumping high as well as jumping long distances, making her appear almost as if she were flying, she earned the warrior name flight to reflect upon this. She is also quick on her feet, making her almost appear as a blur when she does get to running at full speed and this adds to the reasoning as to why she was given the name she was. She wouldn't change it for the world and takes great pride in her name.
Appearance
Aspenpaw is a beautiful domestic short haired with lush and thick fur. Her legs are of average lengthm not too long yet not too short. They are powerful and allow for excellent jumping abilities. Her sharp claws allow for great traction and climbing abilities that she adores trying to hone. Of course, were it to come to it, her claws would be great in any fight though she is still young and still learning. Her face seems rather narrow and her muzzle long. Her ears are a bit rounded at the top, it seems, almost as if they had been cut, though it is just how she had been born. She has long whiskers that seem to be a little longer than they need to be but add for great sensory abilities. Her long tail allows for excellent balance and she adores grooming it often.
Her fur is the reasoning for her name: Aspen. The coloration of it having reminded her mother of the great aspen tree. It is almost a clear line where the burnt-orange color ends and the white begins. Her back and a majority of her tail are the burnt-orange color, as well as her ears and the upper part of her face. From around her eyes and across her forehead does this color seem to end, the white starting up her muzzle, jagging into the orange. Down the rest of her face and moving along her neck and underbelly is the white, pure and bright, almost reminiscent of the bark that the tree she is named for. Across her orange back are darker lines, almost brown in color. The stripes seem to remind her mother very much of the veins on the orange leaves of the aspen tree, yet another reason for her name. At the very tip of her tail is a patch of white and each of her paws are the same color. Her nose is a bright pink, and the fur where each of her whiskers comes out of is a small orange dot. Her eyes are a nearly golden-brown color, an almost eternal shine of eagerness in them.
Personality
playful
Like most young cats, Aspenpaw is extremely playful. She loves to hop around when she gets the chance and play games with the other aprentices and even the older kits. So full of energy, she seems to almost never run out, making her almost always eager for training. Though she would much rather do her training with her old mentor, having had such a powerful bond with him prior to his accident. She loves to jump around and climb things, always literally pushing herself to new heights. Sometimes she even seems to wonder how far down she can fall and still land on her feet. She has yet to actually try, that though. After all, she's not suicidal and she would much rather live a long and eventful life as a warrior someday.
stubborn
Something that seems to appear a lot in the personalities of PineClan cats, she is extremely stubborn and very resistant to change, which is probably the reason she is having so much trouble with adjusting to her new mentor. When she has her mind set on something, it is generally rather diffucult to change it. She generally likes to think that her Clan's veiws are the right ones, the best ones, and that the other Clans are all pretty much stupid for the way they do things. After all, RoseClan and StoneClan gave up on their traditions, so how can anything the ever do be good or at least as good as what PineClan does?
full of guilt
A cat ridden with guilt, she tries to keep it bottled up, often muttering to herself when she's alone that this and that was her fault her. Sometimes, she'll even be seen talking to other animals about it, something that probably makes her appear less than sane, though she doesn't seem to care much for how others see her. She feels guilty because she couldn't talk the badger down, she couldn't warn Dustcloud before he got the injuries that would send him to the elders den. And, something of a side effect to her little gift, she feels guilt everytime she takes the life of one of the animals she hunts. It seems to be a heavy burden on her mind that something she can communicate with so well is what keeps her alive, healthy and full, leaving her to often think of the terrible things she has to do to survive.
prideful
Pride is something the young cat is full of. Pride in her clan, pride in her heritage, and pride in herself. Though she is often ridden with guilt, that does not mean she isn't proud to be a PineClan cat, especially one with such a rare gift. She can sometimes come off as arrogant, at least when talking to those outside her clan, due to her pride in her own clan. She can make herself seem like she's in the better clan, twist the ways of the other cats around and make them sound far worse than they really are. She doesn't quite have a hatred for RoseClan or StoneClan, it's more of an inheriant dislike that came from the way her parents spoke to her as a kit. She also, rather shamefully, feels prideful for being the only of her litter to survive. While both of her littlemates had died from sickness shortly after birth, Aspenpaw had survived. Though she will not gloat about this, she feels proud of herself for being the strongest of her litter.
loyal
Something else that had been instilled in her from her parents. She is extremely loyal to her clan and would never even dream of breaking one of their rules. She fears becoming an outcast and she fears not being able to serve her clan as a warrior someday. She wants to always remain a faithful member to her clan and she wishes only to protect it, even if it means having to harm the very animals she talks to on a regular basis. She will, however, hesitate in her attacks from time to time, especially when she can understand their pleas of mercy. Though loyalty can come at a rather big price, she knows that she has to learn to pay whatever it is she needs to in order to become a valuable warrior some day.
other
Though guilt can be a heavy burden, she tries her best to not let it become a forerunner of who she is, liking to think of herself as a rather clever cat. She is great at thinking of ways to get around certain things and was always quick on her feet, both figuretively and literally. She is great with her words and often tries to be as convincing as she can. Though she doesn't like change, she is slowly coming to grips with the fact that she has to deal with it. After all, even though she knows that her clan will always stay traditional, always remain the same structurally, things are ever changing. She just needs to learn how to handle that. She had always gotten along great with One-Eye, when he was still Dustcloud at least, and she had shared in his admiration for being somewhat of a trickster. Though she would never pull the kinds of pranks she had heard he had pulled in his youth, if and when he would ask or suggest something, she was always the first to jump up and down, feeling excitement at the idea of helping him. She does find some small satisfaction in playing small jokes on other cats, but it isn't something she will go out of her way to do and it isn't something she does all the time.
History
FAMILY:Lilacwhisker - maternal grandmother - deceased at sixty-three moons, twenty moons ago
Dappleheart - mother - thiry-nine moons
Duskfang - father - fifty-eight moons
Dahliapaw - paternal aunt - deceased at sixteen moons, twenty-three moons ago
Dawnkit - sister - deceased soon after birth, a little less than fourteen moons ago
Firekit - brother - deceased soon after birth, a little less than fourteen moons agoDustcloudOne-eye - ex-mentor/constant advisor - seventy moons
Jaydance - new mentor - thirty moons
There is always the stories of when a love starts from the nursery or when a love grows from a friendly competition between two apprentices, but the tales of an apprentice and mentor relationship don't seem to last as long or leave as much of an impression on the sands of time. Many love stories begin with cats much closer to age. But that is not the story of Dappleheart and Duskfang. And it is always the story of how love came to be that should come before the happenings of kits to follow. It is a story that, in all technicalities, did start back in the nursery. Before Dappleheart was even Dapplepaw, she had found herself fancying the attention of a certain young warrior. Duskfang had often gone to the nursery to help take care of his younger sister since neither their father nor mother were alive anymore. Dapplekit had often enjoyed sneaking up on Duskfang or trying to convince him to play with them. And when he had been chosen as her mentor, there couldn't have been more excitement.
Over time, Dapplepaw and Duskfang grew closer and closer. When Dahliapaw died, Dapplepaw was there to help comfort Duskfang as much as she needed to. She was always there for him and she promised that she always would be. When she got her warrior name at 17 moons, Duskfang and Dappleheart spent as much time togerther as they could. Often times Dappleheart would try to get on the same patrols as him or Duskfang would volunteer to go out on hunts with her. Any sort of small excuses they could make to be together. It was no surprise when Dappleheart and Duskfang became mates. Everyone in the clan had been quite certain that it was going to happen sooner or later, it had only been a matter of time. And it was about eight moons after she had gotten her warrior name that she had given birth to Duskfang's kits.
It could easily be said that Aspenpaw's birth was a miracle and there had even been a time when Dappleheart had thought to actually change the kits name to reflect just that, but had decided against it at the last moment. There had been three kits born to Dappleheart and Duskfang: Dawnkit, Firekit, and Aspenkit. The kits had all suffered from illness when the were born, though Dawnkit and Firekit had seemed to suffer from it far worse than Aspenkit. Her brother had passed first, soon followed by her sister. The medicine cat had done everything he could to make sure that the kits survived but it had seemed like all hope was lost. Though her parents had feared her death, Birchbark did all he could and, in the end, Aspenkit prevailed, though spent a good two moons in the medicine cats den to keep the illness in check and to make sure it didn't come back.
When New Leaf came around, she had been allowed to go back to the nursery. Though she had been sickly at birth, she had slowly started to get stronger and stronger and, at four moons, she was bouncing about and playing with the other kits. She constantly asked her parents to tell her the story of how they became mates, always loving a good romance tale even at an early age. She admired how strong her parents seemed to be and how close they were. They taught her early on to have a strong loyalty to her Clan and, between stories and play, she had instilled in her a strong faith in StarClan and a rather large amount of pride for being a PineClan cat.
Even when just a young kit, she knew that she was different, though it wasn't until she was six moons and had gone from Aspenkit to Aspenpaw that she realized why. It seemed rather strange at first. Like she thought that she was just hearing things. Many a time she would look to her mentor Dustcloud and ask if he had said something, but often times, he had been silent or what he had said hadn't been what she had heard. She would frown or question, wondering what was wrong with her. She had even thought, at one point, that maybe her illness as a kit had actually had more of an effect on her psyche than she could have ever thought. Was she just crazy? Just hearing voices? It was a terrifying thought because, if it were the case and someone found out, her chance of becoming a Warrior like her parents or her mentor would have been greatly reduced. The horror of this realization had kept her on her toes for quite a while when her training first started.
It wasn't until she had almost killed her first prey that she realized it wasn't all in her head. The voices she heard were those of the other animals. And it baffled her to think this. Just before she bit down into her first mouse's throat, she could hear its squeaky pleas and its squeals of terror. She hadn't known just what to do, far too confused and, before she could deal the killing bite herself, she let the animal free. Aspenpaw had told her mentor it was just nerves, that the mouse had somehow managed to get out of her grasp, though she knew that it wasn't true.
As time went on, she continued her training, slowly gaining guilt every time she was taken out to help with hunts. She tried to bite down on the anguish, always whispering an apology before killing her prey. It would never get any easier on her, but it was something she knew she would need to do to survive. Stalking had always been something she found fun to learn though and, though she didn't quite favor taking the lives of the animals that sustained her own life, she did love stalking and following them, listening to the conversations they had with each other and learning new words and phrases from them. She would also often sneak out of camp when she thought no one was paying attention to practice her climbing and jumping, almost too ecstatic when she got the chance to get to new heights than before. It also seemed to be a great way for her to listen to the conversations of the birds that stayed high up.
Aspenpaw and Dustcloud had always had a strong bond. She admired her mentor and, though she didn't always like the things she had to do during training, she would never question him. She would often go to him for advice and, at that time, he was the only one to know of her gift, far too scared to tell anyone else about it. At eleven moons, though, everything seemed to change for her. She had been out practicing with her mentor. Her task at that moment had been to catch the large rabbit she had been stalking. Simple enough. Or at least she had thought. As she stalked closer and closer, nearly ready to pounce, she could hear the rustling of leaves nearby and it had made her freeze. She hadn't realized that she herself was being stalked by a badger, not until her mentor attacked it. Her rabbit was lost though that didn't matter, not as she turned her sights on her attacker. She could hear the whispering hisses of threats and anger, the creature obviously perturbed by the presense of the cats in his territory. The whole time, she wanted to try and say something, apologize or try to talk him down but no words ever formed. Soon, a nearby patrol joined in the fight with the badger as the young apprentice, filled with fear and confusion stepped back. The patrol had been able to take the badger out, but at what cost? She had lost her mentor that day and she could only ever blame herself for it. If only she had said something to the badger, if only she had been able to do something. That day had taught her a valuable lesson, though. It was a do or die world. Though she would always feel a pang of guilt for eating and killing the other animals in the PineClan territory, it was better than dying or losing something precious to them.
Shortly after the loss of her mentor, whose name had been changed to One-Eye, she was reassigned to Jaydance. Though she held nothing against her new member, Aspenpaw was very stubborn to change and due to this, her training has started to take a little longer than it should have. She is slowly learning to deal with her new mentor, learing to trust her more and more, though Aspenpaw still often goes to One-Eye for council and questioning. She will always have a special bond with her original mentor, and she knows that quite well. After all, he is the only one to know her secret. She is trying to figure out the right time to let everyone else know, scared of what they might think and, lately, she has grown to trust in her new mentor a bit more. She hopes to finish her apprenticeship soon so that she doesn't have to become an elder straight out of her apprenticeship.
luna
thatchpaw, violetstep
image source = sousa
adopted
purchases for character = ability to talk to other animals
