eaglestrike | shadowclan warrior

EAGLESTRIKE
picture: X
Age: thirty-seven moons
Gender: Tom
Rank: warrior
Clan: shadowclan
Short Description: large brown tabby tom with emerald green eyes

Appearance: if you were to look upon eaglestrike for the first time, nothing about his pelt would catch your attention. Your typical tabby colourings; mottled browns, mistints of white. He is a handsome cat, and the colourings of his pelt accentuate his most startling attribute.

Eaglestrike’s face is heart shaped, thick through his cheekbones, and narrow through his muzzle. He has a broad band between his eyes down to his pale pink nose, and a jaw that tapers off at his chin. His slightly rounded ears sit on his head slightly off center, creating the illusion that he always seems to have his head slightly tilted to the right side.

Now, for his body. He is, as stated before, a rather large tom. He is broad through the shoulders, with powerful bulky muscles, nothing really subtle about his strength. His legs are thick and sturdy, minus his left hind leg which was injured in an accident during his earlier moons as a warrior. The injury causes a limp, and his foot is twisted, giving him an awkward gait that he was teased for mercilessly. His hips are narrower than his shoulders, but not so much so that they look out of place, they are as muscular as his shoulders.

Back to his pelt. On his face, he has cream fur outlining his eyes, and white on his chin and under his nose. Black spots indicate his long white whiskers, and the two black ones that reside on either side of his face. The tabby markings on his face are as ordinary as any others. Along his back, he has grey and white, with a mingle of black disrupting the pristine colour of the white. The tip of his tail is black, and his twisted foot is white.

Eaglestrike’s eyes are the highlight of his face. The outsides of his eyes are a deep green, with varying shades of green throughout. By his pupils, there is highlights of yellow. They are piercing, and cold.

Personality: Upon first meeting eaglestrike, most cats will merely turn their noses up at him and not give him a second thought. Coming off as cold and aloof, eaglestrike isn't the kind of cat to hang around and strike up a conversation just for the hell of it. This large tom would prefer to head out on a hunting trip and leave all his clanmates in the shadowclan camp. Being alone with his thoughts is something eaglestrike loves to do with his spare time.

Eaglestrike is a relatively quiet tom cat, as can be determined by the short information about his history already received. It is not out of spite for the other cats, or because he has a blatant dislike for them, it is merely because he has a lot of dark areas of his mind he is constantly trying to work through. He isn’t the

type of cat to hold hatred towards anyone, but dislike is not an emotion that is foreign to him. There are a few cats that have gotten under his skin, and found refuge in the blackest part of his heart, but he rarely gives them a thought one way or another.

Contrary to what some would think, he isn’t a mean cat, just anti-social. However, some cats are bound to take this the wrong way and deem him mean and cold. He doesn’t show a lot of emotion, having learned to keep it bottled up under a cool front around most of his peers. He is more passive, than he is aggressive and doesn’t see the point of arguments.

Remorse and guilt live deep within him, and he longs for a way out of it, but none have come thus far. But more on that in his history.

History:

Piercing yowls ripped through the chilly new-leaf morning as the lovely cream coloured mottled tabby brought her only kit into the world. The father was nowhere to be found, out in the marsh of ShadowClan on a morning hunting patrol no doubt. Her face contorted in a spasm of agony, before the tiny kit took its first breath and started mewling for warmth. Relief and ecstasy tore through the agony on her face and within seconds her tongue was rasping over his lithe body. Soon, his pelt was clean and he was suckling his mother as the medicine cat gave her praises to the she-cat.

Within a couple of moons, the tom was bouncing off the walls. When he wasn’t driving the other queens crazy, he sat in the opening of the nursery and stared longingly at the apprentice den. However, unlike the other kits, he didn’t want to rough house nor did he want to hang out with the other cats. Even at a young age, he was a solitary kit and didn’t much like the company of others. This worried his mother to no end, scared that he would be alienated for being 'different'. She need not have worried.

When his six moon rolled around, and he was finally named an apprentice, Eaglepaw couldn't be more ecstatic. He was finally able to leave the claustrophobic nursery and get started on his apprentice training. His mentor turned out to be a lithe she-cat with a gnarled scar snaking its way across her left cheek. Eaglepaw was terrified of her.

His first day of real apprentice training, besides the cleaning of the elders den and listening to their endless stories about the good old days and what have you, didn't go very well. His mentor wanted to teach him the basics of hunting, but it was clear from the very first moment when he went to crouch down that he was extremely uncoordinated and it was indeed a train wreck. After countless commands to balance, and stalk quietly, Eaglepaw simple couldn't step quietly. His rapidly growing body was hindering him from being agile like the other cats. Both outrageously frustrated, and Eaglepaw horribly embarrassed, they slunk back to the camp and he was sent on a typical apprentice duty.

That night, Eaglepaw lay awake, shame burning deep within the pit of his stomach. His father was a great hunter, and so was his mother, but apparently he wasn't cut out to be a hunter. a little after moon high, Eaglepaw felt sick with the thought that he might not be cut out to be a warrior. Terror ripped through his body, and he was sleepless for the rest of the night.

Annoyed with the previous days' disaster, his mentor looked upon his bedraggled fur and bright emerald eyes and smirked. "If you want to be a warrior, you're gonna have to do much better than yesterday. Come." Ears burning with his public humiliation, Eaglepaw followed determined to show his snarky mentor that he was as good as any other apprentice.

They wound their way through the marshy undergrowth until they came to the training grounds. Exhausted from his lack of sleep the night before, Eaglepaw yawned, fully exposing his small sharp teeth and sand paper tongue.

"Am I boring you, Eaglepaw?" The poison dripping from her words were unavoidable and he snapped his jaw shut and shook his head, tongue tied. "Good. Now, you are clearly no hunter, but maybe you can make up for it in fighting." With a flick of her tail, she walked to the other side of the grounds and sat down. "Now, Eaglepaw, I want you to show me..."

And thus began a hatred for each other that would never die. Eaglepaw trained as hard as felinely possible, and showed promise as a fighter. His body was growing stronger, and as he approached warriorhood, he began to gain more control over it and was no longer as clumsy as he used to be. His hunter abilities took more time, and his training period was extended until he was fourteen moons. He will never be the best hunter in the Clan, but he is successful the majority of the time.

On the dawn of the day he would be named a warrior, his mother took ill. Green cough shook her body, draining her strength. Eaglepaw tried to busy himself until the leader summoned all of ShadowClan to a meeting. Anxiety and excitement wrestled deep in his belly tying it up in knots until his name was called. Stepping forward, Eaglepaw looked up at his leader and tried not to let his body quiver with the anticipation he felt.

The ceremony was short, and because of his extraordinary fighting skills, he was given the name of Eaglestrike. He sat his vigil in the crisp air while the coughs that shook his mother piercing through him. When he was free to go, he went to his mother, not caring about the medicine cat's wishes, or that he might contract green cough as a new warrior. His mother had lost weight, the sickness taking over her old body. Disheartened, he gave his mother a lick on the cheek and left to go out on a hunting patrol.

His mother passed a moon later, and he was heart broken. Angry and looking for some sort of relief from the grief he felt over her, he took off into the territory of ShadowClan. His strong legs carried him over the earth with ease, until he found himself in a dead area. Rotten trees were all around him, and the smell of rot filled his nose. He didn't know where he was, and he was even more grief stricken than before.

Curiosity, however, soon took over and he began exploring. Taking a leap from the ground to the large rotten tree, he steadied himself and then took a few steps. His last step, was met with the groan of wood and his heart leapt to his throat as he felt the bark give way and he was falling. A yowl ripped through the quiet air, and he hit the ground, hard. Pain seared through his left leg, and a section of the rotted log fell from the main tree, and with a sickening realization, he tried to move but was too late. With his foot twisted, the piece of log struck it, sending even more pain through his body.

It was night before his Clanmates found him. His consistently yowling and mewling, they were able to locate him and get the relatively small piece of wood off his foot. Slowly and painfully, they were able to get him back to camp and into the medicine cats den.

Unfortunately, the bones in his foot had set in the time he had been laying there and the medicine cat could do nothing for him except give him some stuff for the pain.

Some painful moons later, he was released from the medicine cats den fully healed, minus a limp that would never go away. His peers teased him relentlessly. Due to this, he became even more introverted than before. He did his duties as he was told, hunted to the best of his abilities but it became even more difficult with his twisted paw. He refused to give up his warrior duties while he was still breathing. He simply had to work even harder than before.

When he was twenty-eight moons, Eaglestrike fell in love. She was a beautiful she-cat. A silver tabby, with striking ice-blue eyes and a voice like honey. She melted his heart. She was everything he had ever wanted before in his life. There was only one problem.

She was RiverClan.

He met her at a Gathering, and instantly fell in love with her. He spoke to her, using his deep voice and she responded with her own and instantly he was hers. She was all he ever thought about and he wanted nothing else. However, his heart was torn. Everything he knew about the warrior code went against his desires for the pretty RiverClan she-cat.

In the end, his devotion to the Warrior Code won out, but it was painful. Eaglestrike tried everything in his power to forget about her, even by trying to fall for someone in his own Clan. There was one she-cat, who was jet black with green eyes who was sweet as sugar, but wiry. She took to him instantly and he tried to be a good mate to her. Unfortunately for her, his heart was with someone else. When he was thirty two-moons, the she-cat announced that she wanted to have kits. Half of the toms heart wanted to say yes, but the other part, the part that longed for the RiverClan warrior spoke louder.

Eaglestrike broke her heart with a single phrase.

"I don't love you anymore."

In all truth, Eaglestrike never loved her to begin with. But he didn't know how to tell her that he was in love with someone else. The she-cat's gaze turned cold, and her body stiffened as she stared through him before turning and walking away. Eaglestrike gazed after her as she walked away from him, heart broken and sad. He knew that there was nothing left to salvage between them.

Eaglestrike limped his way to the scene of his accident all those moons ago, feeling hollow as the log which injured him. He knew that as long as he had love in his heart for the RiverClan femme, he would never find a mate.

At thirty-seven moons, Eaglestrike has never shaken the feeling of guilt that has lived inside him since he broke the ShadowClan warriors heart. All he can hope to do is continue his warrior duties, and hopefully find a way to get over the RiverClan she-cat who will forever be out of his grasp.