general tw for heavy religious trauma and themes, parental neglect, self-destructive tendencies, animal death and canon - realistic gore. all other triggers will be tagged if applicable.
❝ playing in the swamp of alligator blood, behind our house in the marshy lawn, he'd always hold my head under the water a little too long. he wanted me to be all guts, no glory — ALL SURVIVOR, NO GUILT. ❞
SERPENT, n.
/ SUR • PNT / depicted as a paradoxical combination of wisdom and evil — beautiful yet repulsive. they have a fluid grace if viewed from a safe distance, but they are to be feared, often striking from hiding places and without warning. a serpent symbolizes craftiness that mesmerizes its victims.
— SERPENTSPINE ; serpentkit, serpentpaw / transgender male, he / him pronouns only
⤷ named serpent- at birth by his father, both for his long, whiplike body as well as to bestow strength upon his newborn child.
— jagged xx shadow, younger brother to chilledstar.
a severely poor relationship with his father. brought to and raised by chilledstar in shadowclan, unaware of the fate of his biological parents after his return.
— eighteen months, ages realistically ; single, bisexual with a male preference.
— shadowclan warrior, raised partially as a loner after an incident in his childhood.
vc. speaks with a low, steadily growling tone. a near whisper to non - shadowclanners, who's ears are not so adjusted to the quiet of the marsh.
toyhouse / pinterest / spotify — ❝ HALO OF FLIES ROUND HIS HEAD ❞
WILDLY WARPED IDEAOLOGIES OF STARCLAN : note that his view of their ancestors wildly differs from that of reality. believes in the suffering of this world promising a better life in the next, so long as he faces it with a smile.
plush black tom with ghost rosettes and blood orange eyes 𓆦 ҉ ༄ smells like brackish water and copper. shadows manifest into sunken limbs and translucent membrane, stretching horribly from knobby, swollen joints. oil - slick rot & buzz of hungry horseflies crowding sloughing meat, he is born of his surroundings, forged black like the writhing insects that permeate his homelands. shaped in strands of shadow, long and bony ; a coat of scruffy, rosette - splotched obsidian feathering messily over his gaunt form. maned like a viper in shades of salt and pepper, splintering fur cast in a mock hood along a slim, vertebrae - bumped neck. his name has suited him since birth, eased into the world a long, writhing thing, with limbs of stretching shadow pawing blind at the shadowclan muck. his ears and eyelids are thin - membraned, thick - veined and stark against the darkness of his face. a strange, spidering thing ; broad - shouldered and tall in his maturing age, poor posture bringing his serpentine muzzle to a low, drooping hang.
↳
generation one ; genetically solid black longhair ; carrying rosette tabby, vitiligo, shorthair.
DRAW SCRUFFY, LEAN & MALNOURISHED. meant to instill alligator / reptilian imagery.
NOTABLE INFO | often peppered with locust wings or lost animal teeth in his fur. suffers from
HYPERDONTIA ; an excess of teeth leaving him severely snaggletoothed when opening his mouth, splitting into separate rows in his mouth. causes frequent gum, tooth and jaw pain, as well as limiting his freshkill choices to softer foods ( various eggs, maggots / large insects, toad ). bleeds, especially after combat or eating anything tough. ❝
— positive: empathetic, devout, conscientious neutral: shameless, personal, gossipy negative: judgmental, obsessive, underhanded 𓄒
MOTIFS | ❝ swamp thing. siren with an alligator tail, all hooded eyes and too - long smiles.
HISTORY —
• he was born a waste.
born an ugly, wriggling thing, wet and plastered thin. a product of a one - off never happening again night with former mates jagged and shadow ; neither fit to care for a child, and neither inclined to when gazing upon his long, twisting form. an eel in the reeds, a lizard coiling beneath the hot sun, scaled and ugly. father names him serpent, curls his lip and bestows power up on him in desperate hope to nurture something cruel — something war torn and selfish. he named him for the awkward tangle of limbs reaching for his mothers belly, the strange scoot - slither of a obsidian body, oiled iridescent in the dim dusk. serpent, he’d said, mused, knocked the word around like ice against his teeth, cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.
the first few months of his life were spent under him, and starclan above.
with his mother amidst the carrionplace, he was taught to hunt the smaller rats and mice to bring back for their ramshackle colony. a queens work, she’d told him, although he didn’t feel much like a future queen at all. but as he ambled blind through the haze of burdened childhood, chilledgaze had joined the clans, and with it bore knowledge of a better world. their parents refuse to join, refuse to relinquish their youngest son to the care of the clans until leafbare strikes. a blizzard, a great freeze. in the dark of the night, he was exchanged for a small stash of prey. without a breath or whisper to their father, chilledgaze takes him home, where he is introduced as serpentkit, and then serpentpaw — a shadowclan tom cat. he adjusts, as all apprentices do, youth carrying his paws into the path of warriorhood, raised by his elder sibling. love, they give him ; he’d experienced only a phantomime before.
he lasts until the age of five months, when out on patrol, he is taken by his father once again.
he is taken back to the colony his father now resides, shadow no where in sight and never spoken of by his father again. he is humored — trained like a tom, rough and intense. but serpent, cursed by his namesake, is built lithe, long and thin, all gangling limbs and stretching spine. he does not learn to hit the way his father does, but he quickens, knows to dodge and avoid. in the fray if he and his fathers sessions, his tail breaks at the tip. it sets awkward, an ever - present reminder of the time he’d spent beneath judgmental blue eyes. he is taught to thank the stars above for being returned, for having this home over his head now, for his parents and father. they pray to the stars each night, to keep them safe in their homes, even outside of the clans. something blasphemous, something desperate and scratching at the edges of oblivion they could never reach. he smiles and smiles and smiles until he cheeks hurt, until jagged no longer snips his heels or ears for a sullen, sunken frown.
soon enough, he runs. slips through the carrionplace in the night and returns, haggard, warped in the skull. starclan burns behind sunbeam eyes, and the jagged, too - toothed smile at his mouth.
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↳ generation one ; genetically solid black longhair ; carrying rosette tabby, vitiligo, shorthair.