Amberflame

[Fia]

Name: Amberflame

Prefix Meaning: Given the prefix Amber for her golden-ginger fur.

Suffix Meaning: Given the suffix Flame for her bright, strong personality – and also for her ginger pelt.

Age: 38

Rank: Deputy (Acting Leader)

Clan: SunClan

Description: Amberflame is not a large cat. She isn’t the smallest, and is by no means fragile, but she isn’t one of those muscular, bulky warrior she-cats that could be mistaken for a tom. Her build is sturdy, but light and slim, though it’s hard to tell one way or another past her thick coat. She’s strong enough to hold her own in battle, but in human terms, hers is the sleek, steely muscle of a martial arts master, not a big, heavy wrestler. She’s light and quick on her paws, dangerously precise with her movements, and capable of taking countless blows, as much from physical endurance as from an iron will.

Her pelt, true to her Clan, and the reason for her name, is a brilliant reddish gold, too much of both and in too many shades to be just ‘orange’. In bright light it resembles fire, especially when the golden light of a sunset catches it and seems to actually turn it to flame. Its color is strongest and most reddish on her back and the backs of her ears, and lightens and yellows slightly down her sides and chest. She is not a tabby cat, lacking any darker markings on her bright ginger pelt. Amberflame’s coat is thick and soft, but not especially long, which means she’s only moderately uncomfortable in both leafbare and greenleaf. It’s a beautiful coat, and brings to mind warm images of fiery, colorful trees in leaf-fall. Nearly thirty moons as a warrior have left their mark on her: she has no hideous deformities, but faint scars can be spotted on her shoulders, flanks, and neck if one looks for them. A very small, very light scar is also visible on the left side of her lower jaw, where an opponent tried to bite her throat, missed, and nicked her jaw with a fang instead.

Scarred chin aside, Amberflame has a very pleasant face, not too roundish, not too angular, not too flat. Her medium-sized ears sit far apart on top of her head, though not freakishly so. White whiskers sprout from her pale, orangey-cream muzzle, around a bright pink nose. The pale cream color reaches up her cheeks and down her throat as well, but the contrast isn’t nearly stark enough for her to be compared to a ‘tuxedo’ cat. The fur just above her eyes is this lighter shade too, but it’s only really visible when her eyes are closed. Those eyes are big and bright, a deep shade of gold tinted with orange – they’re much like her fur, in fact, but far more luminous. Her eyes are sharp and clear, usually warm but capable of turning cold enough to freeze a hardened warrior mid-step. If ever her flaming eyes turn to ice, the wisest course of action is to shut up, nod agreeably, and go someplace she can’t see you.

Personality: "Don't mess with Amberflame." Apprentices whisper the words, and warriors agree. Amberflame is not to be trifled with. It's not that she has no sense of humor; she doesn't mind terribly when she finds a a layer of soaking wet moss under her nest, or a smudge of red on her pelt from crushed berries. Young cats play tricks, always have and always will; there's just no punishing it out of them. If it gets out of hand -or paw, as it were- she'll have words with their mentors, but she usually takes their pranks with good humor. She's been known to tease and needle at Clanmates herself, or even cats of other Clans on occasion. A favorite pastime of hers at Gatherings is pestering that MoonClanner Stonefang until he loses his temper, at which point she sits in amusement as he curses and snarls at her. It's when somebody's genuinely out to cause trouble that her own patience goes out the figurative window.

Amberflame's got claws like snake fangs and a tongue like stinging nettles. She doesn't usually think twice before speaking, mostly because she usually doesn't have to: what first comes to mind tends to be the right thing to say. Her harsh, witty comebacks come to her within seconds of receiving an insult, making her a lethal opponent in verbal warfare. It's hard to win an argument with her, because she'll listen to half a sentence, then cut you off with a counterargument, and refuse to allow you to speak until she's had her say. She will drown you out and shove her words down your throat so that your own have no chance of being heard. Amberflame has no conscience when it comes to tearing down cats she doesn't like; she'll use threats and blackmail without a flicker of guilt, and takes care to always strike where it will hurt most (whether that be wounding an opponent's ego, insulting his mother, or bringing up a painful memory or a debt owed to her). Amberflame doesn't need her claws to tear apart an enemy.

The she-cat puts her mind to use in more than everyday quarrels, though. She doesn't claim to be a genius, but she can plan with the best of strategists, with a keen sense of foresight and insistence of looking at past battle to see where exactly SunClan made its mistakes. "A really smart cat learns from others' mistakes. A fairly smart one learns from his own. One who doesn't learn from either is just an idiot." As a kit, she loved to hear stories, from her parents and from elders, even the ones that bored other kits to tears. History fascinates her - recent history, SunClan's history, the origin of the Clans themselves (though she understood that some elders may get a bit imaginative with stories like that). When discussing strategies, she'll sometimes pop up and say something along the lines of, "Wait! That won't work. Don't you all remember the Battle of the Marsh?" And upon receiving blank looks, will sigh and mutter, "That one when SunClan warriors struck back at NightClan and surprised them in their own territory? That was a disaster," and the go on to recount the casualties, results, and long-term effects of such a battle. It's not that she's got a better memory than the others, it's just that she happens to know these things that many others never bothered to listen to; still, it gives her more to offer in strategy discussions, and she is quietly very pleased to know that.

Now, Amberflame isn't... bossy, exactly. She's just rather... imperious. ...Alright, forget the euphemisms. Amberflame tends to have a very authoritative presence, though technically, she has no more power than the average warrior of near forty moons. A dependable individual, she gets her work done every day and insists that others do the same. If she sees a job that needs doing, she'll get up and do it, and round up some Clanmates if she needs some help. She volunteers to lead patrols and isn't at all shy about organizing them if she sees cats who have yet to be productive on any given day. If it offends the older warriors... well, that's their problem, as far as she's concerned. She doesn't try to throw any weight around with them, though; rather, she will approach them with a cheerful, "Hey, anybody think that fresh-kill pile's looking low? Let's go for a hunt, what do you say?"

Amberflame isn't formal with any SunClanner, or warrior of any other Clan, for that matter. Only to their leaders and medicine cats does she show any formal respect. Otherwise, she's perfectly comfortable with deputies, warriors, elders, and apprentices. She hasn't given any thought to kits of her own, but she enjoys babysitting for queens who just need a break from mothering for a while. She approaches everybody with the same attitude, one of open friendliness and respect, as if she's been friends with them all her life. (Unless of course, she doesn't like them.) Amberflame's just... very self-confident that way. Her loyalties lie absolutely with SunClan, but she has no quarrel with the other Clans (DayClan being the obvious exception; she simply dislikes them on principle).

History: Amberkit was born on a rainy afternoon, with thunder rumbling overhead, wind whistling through crevices in the rocks around the camp, and the smell of the storm blowing into the nursery. SunClan looked forward to her birth. Flamestar himself paced outside the nursery, forbidden from entering but anxious to hear that his only daughter was alright. Beside him paced Otterfang, the kits’ father, as fearful and hopeful as the Clan leader. Allowed inside at last, the tom-cats beheld young Cherryheart and, to their mutual pride and delight, a beautiful trio of kits. Amberkit and her brother, Redkit, arrived in perfect health, both as strong and sturdy as newborns can be. Their sister, Tawnykit, was not; she lived several days, but in rapidly deteriorating health, eventually proving simply too weak to survive. Amberkit and Redkit never saw their sister, though they were dimly and briefly aware of the sudden absence of a third small form in the nursery when she died. But the rest of the Clan mourned for the lost grandkit of Flamestar. The ginger tom was devastated, as were his daughter and her mate. Otterfang, a noble young warrior, was struck harder than the more upbeat, optimistic Cherryheart; he grieved for moons, and only began to seem himself again after the day he walked into the nursery and was greeted by a shrieked, “Daddy!” and the flash of gold of his living daughter’s fur as the she-kit tackled him joyfully. The close bond shared between the two was formed in that instant, as Amberkit bounced happily on her father’s back and the dark brown tom laughed as he hadn’t done in moons.

The two kits had opened their eyes within hours of each other, though their mother, for diplomacy’s sake, never told them who was first (to this day, it is a disputed topic). The kits began a sort of development race, beginning to see, hear, stagger about, etc. at different but very close times, generally on the same day as each other. By the time they were a moon old, Redkit was bigger and stronger, but Amberkit’s speech was much more developed, and her movements more coordinated. Now, being brother and sister, the two bickered and competed, constantly butting heads over everything under the sun, but maintaining a powerful bond of friendship as they grew. They could be spitting thorns one moment, then shaking off their quarrel and bouncing off to play the next. Redkit was always the first and most eager to go looking for adventure, but Amberkit led the way, planning their escape attempts and making all the ‘crucial’ decisions along the way. “My little Clan leader,” Otterfang would boast to his Clanmates, generally to amused head-shaking and eye-rolling on their parts.

The adventures continued as the siblings grew older, the most dramatic of which was indisputably the day Redkit, all of three moons old, came face to face with a fox; having refused to obey his sister’s furiously hissed, ‘This way, mousebrain!’ and bounded off in the opposite direction, the tom survived the encounter only because a nearby hunting patrol had scented the animal. They came bursting in on the scene, Otterfang in the lead, within moments of Redkit’s squeal upon stumbling across the fox. Amberkit arrived in time to see a familiar apprentice’s throat ripped open, just before the warriors managed to bring down the savage creature and kill it in the very same manner. She and her brother returned to camp in the warriors’ jaws and in hysterics, unhurt but so traumatized that they had to be dosed with poppy seeds before they could stop shaking or speak a coherent sentence. And when they finished stammering in horror, they shut their mouths and merely nodded and shook their heads mutely when asked direct questions. This silence lasted nearly three days, a little longer for Redkit, who suffered fox-related nightmares long afterwards and carried a sense of guilt for moons. Neither kit was willing to set foot out of the nursery for nearly half a moon, until Amberkit decided enough was enough and quite literally shoved and dragged her brother outside.

The rest of their kithood passed without a single escape attempt. Both resisted nagging, pleading, and teasing from their peers and stayed put as the others tried to sneak out of camp. They had learned early that Clan rules existed for a reason, and shook their heads at the kits and apprentices who didn’t yet understand that. Amberkit grew up very quickly in those three moons; she learned to sit quietly and think before she was five moons old, and to learn something at every opportunity before the age of six moons. Visits to the elders’ den replaced escape attempts, and Amberkit was immediately caught and held there by the stories they had to tell. Redkit, after hearing the more exciting tales, lost interest fairly quickly and spent his time pestering warriors and apprentices to teach him battle moves. Amberkit, however, pestered the elders to tell her more stories, all the stories they could remember hearing; things they had seen and heard and done, and things the elders of their time had seen and heard and done. Everything they could remember. “Who was SunClan’s first leader?” “Why don’t we like DayClan, what did they do?” “Why is Soundkit always so silly, does it run in the family?” “If MoonClan was outnumbered so bad, how did they beat NightClan?” “Why didn’t we see that attack coming, if they'd been threatening us so openly?" Her questions were endless, and always welcomed by the elders, especially her great-grandfather, good-humored old Grasswhisker.

Apprentice training began then, and though Amberpaw visited the elders as often as she could, training quickly started to consume her time. She and Redpaw were welcomed into the apprentice den by the slightly older apprentices, particularly Soundpaw, with whom Amberpaw struck up an immediate friendship; it seemed the ginger tom was friends with everyone, and Amberpaw was no exception. Through the outgoing Soundpaw, she became acquainted with his brother, Mousepaw, and his sister, Emperpaw, the medicine cat apprentice. Flamestar had chosen Beechpelt as his granddaughter’s mentor, and the kind and friendly tom did he very best to push Amberpaw to, but not past, her limits. Her days passed more and more quickly, and after a couple moons of training, Amberpaw and Redpaw attended their very first Gathering. Much to her family’s –later– dismay, Amberpaw found her first non-SunClan friend that night, an equally bright, wise-beyond-her-moons she-cat named Owlpaw. Neither apprentice had been looking for new friends that night, but they hit it off nonetheless. By the end of the Gathering, Amberpaw had quite forgotten that Owlpaw was a MoonClan cat, and was almost surprised and certainly disappointed when they had to part until the next Gathering – assuming they would both be there at all.

Time seemed to drag... and drag... and drag... until Amberpaw was convinced the moon would never be full again. But she trained as hard as she could, striving to impress Beechpelt and Flamestar to ensure her place in the group attending the next Gathering. Much to her relief, and to Redpaw's envy, she was indeed chosen to go along; and when the night arrived at last, she was delighted to meet the equally happy MoonClan apprentice again. The Gathering passed in a flash, but the two were not to be parted for so long again. They determined that they could meet where their respective borders reached the unknown territory where the rogues and loners lived; each would accompany whichever patrol marked that border, so that their scents wouldn't surprise anyone the next day, after the apprentices returned in the night. And they did meet, three times, which they determined by the phases of the moon - the waning half moon, the moonless night, and the waxing half moon. The pattern continued, except the times Amberpaw deliberately stayed away when her denmates offered to keep her company on what she told them were 'midnight strolls' (as far as any cat knew, she simply had insomnia). And if any cat wondered at how close the she-cats seemed when they met at Gatherings, the two shrugged it off, stating that their eagerness to meet was due to the fact that they only got to talk once a month.

Nothing changed when Amberpaw became Amberflame and Owlpaw became Owlwing. Though each had pledged her loyalty to her own Clan, the two had made an unspoken vow of eternal friendship, and they both knew that neither would break that promise for anything. By then Amberflame had good friends within SunClan, as well: the infamous Trio of Trouble, Soundstep and his siblings. She still got along with Soundstep best of the three, for his outrageous flirting only ever amused her; but Emberpool, being a she-cat after all, was the one she trusted with any secret but Owlwing. When the Trio's father succumbed to the epidemic of greencough that swept the Clan, Amberflame and Redblaze mourned with them; but when Emberpool died the same way, it hit them far more personally. Redblaze backed away from the medicine cat's brothers, afraid to intrude, but Amberflame did her best to be there Soundstep as much as she could. They were as baffled as any cat when Mouseclaw disappeared, and Amberflame, outraged that the warrior would abandon his brother just after the loss of their sister, promised fiercely to stand by her friend always.

But she would go through her own terrible tragedy even before the pain of Emberpool's loss began to heal. Flamestar had long borne a grudge against MoonClan, and though Amberflame knew the history of their 'cold war', she and the other young cats could feel that it was coming to an end. But Flamestar wouldn't have it. He was otherwise a noble leader, but his resentment towards MoonClan ran deep; he spiked tensions between the Clans again with his sharply edged words at Gatherings, until each was suspicious of the other and every meeting on the border threatened to explode. Amberflame and Owlwing agreed reluctantly that their meetings had best be saved for Gatherings, to keep from inadvertently sparking an all-out war. Inevitably, though, the two Clans came to blows at last. Much to her horror, Amberflame found herself face to face with her friend while a battle raged around them. True to their word and to each other, they stepped around one another. Near the battle's end, though, Amberflame caught sight of her MoonClan friend locked in combat with the SunClan deputy, Brackenpelt. Her instinct was to rush to Owlwing's defense, but before she could move far, Brackenpelt had hurled the young warrior, bleeding from the throat, to the grass and turned away to find a more worthy opponent. Amberflame reached Owlwing's side just in time to see her friend's pained, terrified eyes dim. She recalls very little of the remainder of that day, only being guided home and lying in her nest, feeling that the world had crumbled around her and that she too must die now.

Amberflame was slow to recover from the shattering loss. For moons, she avoided the site of the battle, unable to face it, convinced she would find the grass still stained with her dearest friend's blood. Except by night. Every night that she would have met Owlwing on the far borders, she would instead sit atop a low hill overlooking the border with MoonClan, regardless of the weather, gazing out at where the two Clans had clashed that day. Keeping a silent, solitary vigil for her friend. Hoping beyond hope that she might hear Owlwing speak from StarClan. At dawn she would come home. Her explanation: insomnia, as it had been in the days she and Owlwing would meet by night. Any offers of company were met with vehement refusals, and though Redblaze twice followed her, he learned to leave her alone.

To this day she returns without fail to the little hill on such nights.

It helped her a little when Brackenpelt died, for she no longer had to see him around camp every day - though she tried her best not to be glad for his death. As much a help as the former deputy's death was the fact that his successor was none other than Soundstep. Proud and genuinely delighted for the first time in moons, Amberflame rejoiced for and with her friend. Not long after, she received her very first apprentice, and the time, energy, attention, and affection that she had to give did more to lift her spirits than anything. Mothpaw was a joy to train, focused and talented, struggling only when sparring with bigger, stronger cats. In working with Mothpaw, Amberflame steadily changed from a still shaken, reserved she-cat to the strong, capable warrior she is today. The moons flew past, whereas those prior to them had dragged, and soon enough Amberflame watched proudly as Mothpaw became Mothheart. The ceremony meant that much more to her because Soundstar, not Flamestar, was the one to give her apprentice her warrior name. The old ginger tom had lost his final life in battle, and the energetic young deputy had risen grandly to the task of leading SunClan.

Life has gone on peacefully since then. In more recent moons -eight moons ago, precisely- Redblaze became the proud father of Blazekit and Thornkit, both of whom Amberflame adores but refuses to spoil. She has spent the past eight moons keeping a close eye on the pair, taking care to be firm with them but always someone they can turn to for anything they might need. For three moons now, she has also had the responsibility of a second apprentice, this one decidedly more difficult than the last. Nonetheless, they have made progress, and she has vowed grimly to train this young cat whether he appreciates it or not.

Picture: <link>

[sunfrost]

Beautiful Fia! I love her xD

Accepted. Your cat is being moved is the Accepted Board. Lovely bio!