you're not entirely sure if what you see before you is a storkatten...
it looks like a storkatten
it talks like a storkatten
but occasionally one of its clan members comes walking in and hands it a few flowers
the storkatten - if thats what it is - eats them.
its eyes tinge greener.
how odd...
and a few minutes later you see that odd being fade away,
leaving just a storkatten with tired, untrusting eyes staring back at you.
its pupils are narrow. small.
"you came here."
"what do you want from me"
meet Ophiuchus,
the unfortunate bearer of, what it deems anyways, the parasitic magic curse.
or, better yet, "the parasitic paragon."
that title makes it sneer. paragon.
it doesnt seem to enjoy the title but theres not much else it could be
and you swear you almost hear a sneer, some pride, in its tone
perhaps this is a front. perhaps you only need to...
talk.
so you answer its question, saying that you wish to know it
you wish to familiarize yourself with its magic and how it became what it is
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it looks like a storkatten
it talks like a storkatten
but occasionally one of its clan members comes walking in and hands it a few flowers
the storkatten - if thats what it is - eats them.
its eyes tinge greener.
how odd...
and a few minutes later you see that odd being fade away,
leaving just a storkatten with tired, untrusting eyes staring back at you.
its pupils are narrow. small.
"you came here."
"what do you want from me"
meet Ophiuchus,
the unfortunate bearer of, what it deems anyways, the parasitic magic curse.
or, better yet, "the parasitic paragon."
that title makes it sneer. paragon.
it doesnt seem to enjoy the title but theres not much else it could be
and you swear you almost hear a sneer, some pride, in its tone
perhaps this is a front. perhaps you only need to...
talk.
so you answer its question, saying that you wish to know it
you wish to familiarize yourself with its magic and how it became what it is
trait list wrote:albinism and unnaturally colored calico chimera
nr: expression edits, eye shape, expressive ear edit, whiskers, weight edits, unnatural coat color, unnatural markings,
lim: additional eyes (x1)
legend: height edits, ear type edits, body length, chimerism, albinism, melanism, shorter fur, biolum, multiple tails (x4), multiple forms, genesplice (tails on second form), natural tail alteration (first form), genesplice (talons on second form), multiple ears, muzzle edit
paragon; major magic expression
it regards you for several long moments more before sighing, relenting, and it speaks, divulging its story.
I was always a sickly kit. No one quite knew what was wrong with me, or how to help me. My eyes were wrong to them. My sickliness concerning. And my inability to improve no matter what they tried, worrying. At least, not until we got a new healer. As soon as I began to eat herbs and poultices prepared by them I began to grow stronger. Quickly.
My eyes shifted to a more normal green that was seen in those with plant magic, and I could join the other kits in the clan in their playful quarrels and training. I'd weaken over time, though, so our healer had me on a strict regime of some of their plants from the garden they personally tended and grew. That... That kept me going. While we still hadn't been able to figure out quite what was going on with me by then, most were aware that I was... not quite like them. There was always a gnawing hunger for those magically grown plants, to a point where I was sneaking into the garden at night to get my own meals. Cold, shaky paws on frosted ground became a common occurrence for me. I'm not sure if they ever noticed, if they even cared, but despite the glint of their green eyes from the shadows of their den, they never said anything.
Looking back, perhaps they knew. Perhaps they always knew.
Months passed by. The clan gained a few more members, my training progressed, and the hunger ached. It chewed on me and bit into my thoughts. Every time that another apprentice would hit me with some sort of magical attack I would feel a jolt of energy I couldn't explain. It bewildered me, but worried my mentor. His name is... foggy now. Yet, I remember the several concerned chats he'd have with me after the practice bouts.
He'd ask me what in the moon's name I was doing. Or why I wasn't dodging attacks. Or, in a tone that still haunts me with the lingering, barely veiled fear.... "Why aren't you hurt?"
My own mentor was afraid of me. Afraid of what he was seeing every time I spared with someone.
Others are always afraid of what they cannot, and do not, understand.
I might not have understood then, but how does an apprentice even process that they aren't quite like the rest? I had no other normal to go by. I didn't know why my mentor was upset. I had no idea why I was craving those plants in the garden, or why my fellow apprentices' attacks weren't hurting me.
So, one night, late after training, that hunger was practically burning a hole through my chest. My paws shook on the gravel as I walked away from the training grounds, my head foggy, and my mentor leaning against me for support. I could only dully hear his words. They fell on uncaring ears. There was something drawing me onward away from him, something that quietly promised it could chill the burn in my chest. It yanked me along through the camp, past the main dens, up along the basking rocks, and right to the entrance of camp where a series of runes etched carefully into the rockface sat, staring me. The glow was the only thing I could see. The hum of magic the only thing I could feel.
Someone shouted, somewhere.
Suddenly, the hum was silenced. The ache in my chest was gone. And the glow that had been filling my eyes had completely disappeared.
And so had the runes.
The now bare rockface in front of me cracked, rumbling as a tendril of inky black wound through the splintering rock. I couldn't step away. Partially due to the primordial fear keeping in my paws locked to the ground, but also because that very same tendril was attached to my front left paw, which was now pressed against the fractured, broken rune closest to me. I don't recall ever lifting my paw.
There was screaming behind me. My mentor's sharp tone broke halfway through a shout when he must've seen the damage I'd done. I could feel the attention of the clan on me from the hollow below.
Those runes had stood for generations. I only knew faint details, but our clan's overseer, a gifted runic cat, had first engraved them himself, putting up protection for the clan's hollow to keep them safe from intruders or predators, and to keep the hollow safe from natural disasters and storms. Those runes had been the cornerstones to the clan's success. Everyone knew that much.
And I had just... destroyed them? Perhaps not. I could feel the echoes of the runic magic filling that burning void in my chest, a recollection of the moment that they'd been first etched into that stone face rising in my thoughts. As those runes were seemingly engraved in my mind, a new voice rose in my thoughts, grave and heavy, "Run. They're behind us."
The black tendril was gone from the stone and my paws were moving. I was running. The energy surge from the runes filled me with the strength I needed to scramble up the cliff, finding pawholds I never knew had even been there. Sharp edges dug into the gaps between my pawpads as I hefted myself up over the edge of the camp's cliffside, claws digging into the soft soil, tugging down the grasses as I finally dragged myself to the top.
And I ran.
I never stopped running.
I did find my answers, eventually. Found some other friends. Reunited with an old one.
But those are stories... for another time, perhaps.
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