THE COAL THAT BURNS YOU likes this
first posted Feb 10, 2016 23:18:32 GMT
first posted Feb 10, 2016 23:18:32 GMT
Post by BADGERPAW on Feb 10, 2016 23:18:32 GMT
Character Name:Badgerkit- > Badgerpaw
Character Age: 6 moons
Character Gender: tom
Character Sexuality: bisexual
Character's Clan: thunderclan
Character's Rank: apprentice
Short description:
A big tom with golden eyes and a long black-and-white pelt.
Physical Description:
Badgerpaw is the first to tell you he’s “too big”—he’s just grown into his awkward phase. His paws are large and trip him up, and judging by size alone he could be mistaken for an older apprentice than he really is. His shoulders are wide like the animal he’s named for, and his head seems broad too. His mass is all clumsy for now, however. He’s growing into himself—into his wide round eyes and his awkward paws.
It doesn’t help that his pelt is thick, has always been stiflingly so, giving him an illusion of even greater size. He’s mostly black—has a blaze of white on his face and white paws that flash bright against his dark fur. It seems that his fur is almost always bunched up, prone as he is to physical play that keeps the long bits sticking up funny and his pelt dusty. He’s not filthy, but the sort that forgets to give himself a good wash every now and then because he’s not used to being fussed at for it.
Badgerpaw’s eyes are wide and friendly—bright, warm, golden like the sun but in the way that people make themselves seem happy to hide that maybe they aren’t really feeling it. They’re rounded, still-large in his head due to his young age.
He’s always got a warm expression on his face, always seems to be open and friendly despite his young age. He walks like he’s about to embrace the world—stands with ears pricked and eyes warm when everyone is looking. In the background he’s prone to crouching low, to trying to disappear into the ground and pretend he doesn’t exist. The instant eyes slip from him he deflates into smallness of being, like he’s not quite sure where he belongs anymore.
Personality:
At first appearances he’s all smiles and warm greetings. The cat you go to when the sky is just a little too gray because he likes to point out the beauty of a just-breaking storm. He’s the sort with a forced mantra of optimism—bringing cheer where there isn’t any and covering up any sad feelings with soft words of encouragement. He likes to pick people up, he thinks that he would carry the world on his shoulders if it made them feel a little better. There’s nothing more satisfying to him than a grateful smile, nothing that makes him burst with pride more than gentle words of thanks. He likes to make others happy, so he tries his best to keep his own sadness locked away on the shelf.
Friendship comes easily to him—unless it comes hard. The sort that makes friends because he loves them, but makes enemies because he annoys them. He’s physical and emotional, the sort that rushes headlong into love and friendship like it’s a journey to run on. He dislikes the taste of angry words on his tongue, and swallows hurt feelings before he attacks another. The sort that makes some cats scoff the word “soft” at.
He finds in himself a wild temper whenever a friend is in danger. A want to stand before them and take blow-after-blow if it means they walk away unscathed. He’d die a million times to stand next to someone he loves, and he’s not afraid to do it. He stands in the face of wickedness with teeth bared and back arched because he feels that he has more love than hate to give in the world. He’d rather settle arguments with words but if it means keeping those he loves safe he doesn’t mind the idea of lashing out with tooth and claw.
Suffering comes in silence for him. He keeps his woes to himself, and he has plenty of them. Below bright smiles is a constant fear of rejection, failure, anger, hatred. He tries his best because he’s terrified of being left behind in the darkness where all his empty spaces open up and eat him alive. He thinks that he could fall into them sometimes, and has nightmares about the way the world could turn their backs on him. He craves love like things crave the breath they breathe, and nothing kills him inside so much as disappointment glimmering in the eyes of others.
Love for stories burns warm in his heart. He likes to listen to others talk but always fills the quiet with his own words. He’s told to shut up often, begged for silence that he finds uncomfortable because he has a hard time reading them. He makes time for words; always willing to have a long-winded conversation but secretly longing for the feeling of comfortable quiet that can stretch on and on without need for words breathed. He thinks that words have more power than many cats give them credit for because he’s felt their cut more times than he cares to admit, but he knows that quiet can be agonizing and empty.
Badgerpaw longs for the sight of others’ faces, squirms when he can’t read what is going on there. He asks how you’re feeling all time, worried that this time he may have tread wrong or spoken something unwanted. He’s always looking into eyes, trying to read postures—leans in on conversations so that he tends to get “too close”. The sort that bodily runs into others he cares for, that brushes his whiskers against faces in the dark to see if teeth are bared, that asks, “Is this okay?” when he’s sharing a nest because he’s worried it might not be.
The world to him is bright and empty and open and wild. He wants to eat up distance with pawsteps, to venture to places no cat has seen before and taste winds on his tongue that have never been tasted. He longs to make friends from all walks of the earth, from corners of the forest he’s never seen and with the cats that live with “twolegs” at the edge of the forest. He’s curious and open to learning, if not easily distracted from his task at hand. He’s prone to flights of fancy, to bolting off excitedly without thinking because everything seems so big and beautiful to him.
Likely to dodge questions about himself, he doesn’t have courage in facing the darker corners inside of him. He thinks that he’s too much of many things, sometimes feels that waiting out loneliness is the best he could ask for. When he’s not trying to shine brightly he’s realizing that he thinks he believes he should fade into the darkness. When he’s not trying to speak to others he wants to crumble into the ground, to let the earth swallow him up so that he never sees or breathes again. He feels insecure and wonders if he’ll ever grow into his paws. Maybe he’ll just keep being a burden on ThunderClan—a cat too soft around the edges for the life of a warrior but not sure where else he could belong.
History:
His mother, Kitestorm, was not the sort of cat that fell in love easily. She was loud, brash, bulky, angry with others. His father, Whiteface, was the sort that rushed into situations with his heart out first. He was meek and quiet, and when he found that he was to have kits with Kitestorm he found that he was afraid. So it was that he told her he couldn’t bear to be considered the father of her kits— “Please Kitestorm, I’m not ready for this!”
And he was a young warrior, but Kitestorm had never opened her heart up easy. So she didn’t take his cowardice as fear but as a personal attack on herself. She shut him out quickly, pushed him away and decided that that was the last time she’d let her heart go a little soft for another cat again. It was—perhaps—too bad that she continued to feel this way about Badgerkit.
He was the only one in the litter that was born. A little larger than she expected him to be, but small and helpless and just the sort of cat that made her squirm in her skin. Kitestorm didn’t hate Badgerkit but she had never been a soft cat. She didn’t know how to treat something that didn’t know things for himself, and blundered through the raising of her kit in the only way she knew how. Kitestorm had always been afraid to love, and those she cared for received that care through sharp words and shouldered blows.
Badgerkit never quit clicked with his mother. He was too enthusiastic, too loud and eager to please. He was always there to try and make her happy, when she sometimes just wanted to be angry. So the more the young kit tried to get close to her the more she tried to push him away. Not because she hated him, but because she didn’t really love him. It wasn’t like that was a crime. Motherhood couldn’t flip a switch in her to make her care for him beyond instinctive protectiveness.
It didn’t take long for the kit to figure out that he wasn’t special in her eyes. That his desperation was just pushing her farther and farther away—but he tried and that seemed only to make it worse. He was clumsy in his childish love for his mother, in his want to show her that he was worth something more than food that she had to give him every day. Maybe she tried, and maybe she had decided long before that she was tired of trying that hard at all.
So he found himself struggling with loneliness—a kit born at the belly of a queen with nothing to spare for him in her heart. He ventured forth into his small world, searched desperately for the gentle touch of cats that would purr encouragement or at least look him in the eye. He longed for cats that didn’t just growl at him and turn away. Who didn’t just let him curl close to their belly because that was what the Clan expected her to do.
OOC name: Malarkey
Timezone: Mountain
Tag: THE COAL THAT BURNS YOU (idk what's with my weird prose for the personality doing new things rofl)
