dawnstep ☼ riverclan

dawnstep
pictures; x
Age: thirty-two moons
Gender: female
Rank: warrior
Clan: riverclan
Short Description: a lilac-point she-cat with blue eyes.

Appearance:

She's lithe and wiry, not the strongest nor the sturdiest but quite agile. Her fur is largely pale, with blue/lilac points, short, and smooth; she sometimes fails to put effort into keeping herself neat, though, and might have a smudge of mud on her pelt here or there if she's not paying attention. She was tall and gangly as a kit and as an apprentice, but she grew into it and now she's fairly average in height, perhaps a bit on the larger side.

Her nose is darker than normal in color, and also sharper than normal in accuracy; she claims she can smell a mouse from all the way across the territory, though perhaps that's far-fetched. Her ears are also abnormal - a bit too large - but her hearing is no better than the next cat's. As for her fur, beyond being short and smooth it's sleek and vaguely oily from eating so much fish and spending so much time in the water; as an apprentice, her denmates used to joke that she was halfway to becoming a fish herself. It's paler on her chest and face, darker on her back, her paws, and her tail; the tip of her tail especially is so dark it's almost black. Her ears are darker in color too, but while her face is a shade darker than her chest, it's not nearly on the same level of darkness as the rest of her points. Her paws are medium-dark and small, almost dainty, though if you suggest that to her she'll surely show you just how undainty her claws can be.

Personality:

If you're looking for someone to comfort you, to know just the right thing to say to put your heart at ease, to impart upon you some glistening nugget of wisdom to guide you forward in your life... well, you have absolutely come the wrong cat. Not that she won't try - she's quite compassionate and usually finds herself making friends wherever she goes - but her tendency for sarcasm and cracking jokes at bad times means she's not really the best person to come to for advice or comfort. That said, if you just want a simple pick-me-up or a friend to goof off with, she's your girl! She's the type to have a large circle of amiable acquaintances, but only one or two really close friends.

She absolutely loves spending time just wandering around outside of camp, especially near the water - even for a RiverClan cat, she has an unusual propensity for fishing and even swimming, though she doesn't tend to emphasize it to others for fear of being teased or having sarcasm and jokes turned on her instead of originating from her.

She's not the sharpest of minds, but she is pretty clever, and she'd much rather solve most problems with words than claws. Of course, get her angry enough and that might change in the blink of an eye, but by and large she's a pretty peaceful sort of gal. She's good at finding new solutions to old problems, or inventing answers to questions that have only just been asked. If she had more affinity for leadership, these traits might have helped to inspire her toward leaderly ambitions, but she's not the greatest when it comes to actually telling others what to do; she tends to balk and defer to a higher authority, making her much more suited to grunt work. She's happy with that, though - she'd prefer to not have the extra responsibility on her shoulders and just live a relatively carefree life instead.

History:

As is the case for most cats, her tale begins with that of her parents; however, unlike most of the clanborn cats, she doesn't know much. She's the child of loners, and unfortunately, she never learned her father's name. She grew up at first in a little glen nestled in the foothills of the mountains, with a small river running nearby. Her mother was called Willow, and she had two brothers, Kip and Shard; the three of them got on famously, with no sibling rivalry to be found. Of course, this could have been due to the fact that they were less than a full moon of age when they were chased from their home by a pair of foxes, who killed her brother Shard and injured her mother. Willow ran, but she didn't make it very far with a quickly worsening injury and a pair of hungry kits before she had to make a tough decision. In the end, she had to abandon Dawnstep - though at that time, of course, she was just Dawn - in the hopes that Kip, who was the slightly hardier of the two of them, would have better chances of survival. She never saw either of them again.

Luckily, though, Willow and her kits had made it all the way to the edge of RiverClan's territory, and the poor lonely kit managed to stumble her way in front of a patrol eventually. She was weak, hungry, and, though technically trespassing, far too young to punish, so they took her back with them; since no one had any idea where her mother was or what else to do with her, the clan took her in. She was already weaned, which mad the issue much simpler; after a naming ceremony and an introduction to the others in the nursery at the time, she was quickly integrated into the clan.

From there, she had a fairly normal kithood. She saw perhaps more than her share of attention based on the fact that she wasn't clanborn, but she adapted to the life so quickly and fully that the murmurs about her lack of loyaly, faith, and bravery soon died down. The clan had other concerns; no one was that concerned about the fact that she was born a loner anymore - especially once she was apprenticed and proved to be one of the most gifted fishers anyone had seen in their lifetimes, if not so talented with regular, land-based hunting. Apprenticeship is now long behind her, and she's established herself as a reliable warrior and a good hunter capable of providing for her clan, even if she may not be the most eager, courageous fighter sometimes.