Story
Raven was the runt of his litter, and has always been smaller than other cats. He was incredibly sickly as a kit and young cat, so much so that his naming ceremony was delayed as everycat was sure he would die at any moment. Once he was named at 15 years old and began learning to hunt and fight, the other cats his age were far ahead of him in skill, size, and strength. One of them,, actively bullied him, refusing to call him by his newly appointed name and instead referring to him as his previous number, “four”. Raven took great offense to this, but due to him being named late and restricted to camp for years, he hadn’t developed the emotional awareness to deal with bullies, sadness, and anger. He bottled up his emotions, letting them turn his mind to a perpetual state of angry fear of everycat around him. Because of this one cat, Raven began to think everyone else was making fun of him constantly; every bout of laughter was aimed mean-spiritedly at him; every smile was one of contempt; every accidental jab of a paw into his side during the night was intentional and meant to cause harm. He began to resent everyone for the fear that they resented him. At this point he had been training for a few years, long enough that he should have begun to gain weight and muscle and skill, but he just couldn’t seem to. So he decided to train in things he wanted to be good at, things that he knew would help him when these bullies finally attacked him outright (something he was confident would happen).
He started training with mice, then rabbits, then deer. He learned how to kill with a well-aimed blow to the back of the neck; with a rock, thrown from a cliff; with his claws, with his teeth; with spears, with swords, with expertly-crafted daggers he purchased secretly on the far-eastern shore from a mysterious hooded creature. He decided he was ready for any attack, and waited in silence on the edge of meetings for this betrayal. When it never came, he started making up these situations, thinking so long and hard of these soon-to-come ambushes that these fantasies of his became, to him, real. He was certain that Staghunter (then called Sunny) had pressed his claws into Raven’s throat while he slept; he knew that Rabid had been setting bear traps along his usual walking routes. Finally, this came to a head one day, when he, deep in a vivid fantasy of exacting his revenge, spotted his original (and only true) bully stalking through the undergrowth beneath the ridge Raven was standing upon. With a deft motion, Raven grabbed a sharp stone in his paw and hurled it at . Instantly, he died, the back of his neck fractured with the rock protruding grotesquely, the blood bubbling around it as a hot spring bubbles from a crack in the earth. Raven quickly switched demeanors, from a dreamlike, paranoid fugue state to a startling vividity. He was, for the first time in months, starkly and grotesquely aware of the thunder of the wind in the trees, the neon green of the spring leaves, the pointed scent of iron in the air, the laughing of the crows and accusatory bugling of the elk in the fields below. He snapped between one reality to another; one moment he was throwing a stone in a perfect, sunlit arc of infinitely forgiving silence, the next he was facing the thunderous horrors of reality. Back and forth this went for hours (and really, his whole life, constantly switching from his silent and dreamlike world where he could do no wrong, and the blood of the crows he mauled flowed a godly golden beneath his claws – to the deafening roar of blood in his ears as the blistering heat smoldered on his pelt and the sunlight pierced his sight as he stares at the deep red intestines he spilled creeping over his claws like ensnaring vines).
After bringing the body of back to camp, he told a slightly altered, short story of being attacked in the forest, and only defending himself. He was believed, almost certainly due to interference from the Cervilati. You see, they were the ones behind it all; went against them. His thoughts.. they were too unique, too poised for articulated speeches, too primed for rebellion. He was far too likely to cause an uproar, and so the Cervilati amplified his rude, half-joking comments to abysmal standards in Raven’s already shattered mind, placing new, disgusting words into his head that were never said, and leaving him to spiral. After the murder was done, the Cervilati simply sent a sort of soft static into the minds of the others. Raven remembers a small, somewhat incomplete trail. The others remember nothing, not a trial, not a murder, not even a flash of once-golden fur at the edge of their mind; nothing resembling the cat they once knew and loved. has been forgotten, and Raven has learned since not to try and talk of the incident, for fear of the mind-altering fog that fills his head and the cotton feeling that floods his mouth when he tries to speak. Now, he is still resentful, and bitter, and reclusive, preferring to recall memories, real and manufactured, and think of all the things he would like to do to punish the others who he deems have betrayed him.
