Steele |♂| Council

Runt was immediately born into a family who wanted nothing to do with him. His mother bore five kits into the world, and he was the only one to make it. She was distraught and enraged, first lashing out at her mate for giving her faulty children and a weak, scrawny runt as the only survivor. He, of course, didn't understand her anger at the time. He was fed by the other mothers, being passed around constantly and ignored by his own. His father would show him kindness when his mother wasn't watching them, but whenever she returned from wherever she had gone, he would turn and shout at his runt of a son for behaving out of order. In the presence of his mother, if he did anything other than sit still and be quiet, he would be screamed at for hours and stuck in a tree for an entire night - sometimes even the rest of the day if it was still light outside - on his own. His father would bring him down the next morning, and that would be that. He stopped playing by the time he was four months.

His life was a downward spiral from there. Once training started, his father would take him out often. Anything that he did wrong, he would be punished for it. Even if it was his first try. His training with the other colony members, however, was better, and they actually explained everything to him. Anything they were teaching, he would understand. They were patient, kind, and tolerant to his mistakes. The exact opposite of his parents. He dreaded practicing with his father, but after a while of training, he learned to be absolutely perfect. It was all completely fueled by fear of failure and the words that would follow. 

The second his major training was over at the age of 19 months, his father dropped him. That was the last time he had any real contact with his parents other than a glance. After that, the council seemed to take him in. He was old enough, and they said they wanted to mentor him to be a part of it. He, albeit a bit apprehensive, accepted the offer immediately. They'd have meetings that he would attend and participate in, lessons where they would teach him what he'd need to know, and casual conversations. He found a home in them, and because he had been so introverted as a kit, they were his first friends. The first cats he was okay with calling 'family'. They seemed to enjoy his company, which was the only reward he needed. He was finally pleasing people with what he was able to do. 

It shouldn't have happened. Runt was awoken in the middle of the night by large paws shaking him. Wilfre. He could barely make out what he was saying in such a hurry, but it was obviously important as he'd hunkered his large body halfway into the smaller cat's den. Then he heard it, well, smelled it. Smoke. His heart leaped into his throat as he pushed the tom out of his den and scrambled out, blinking blearily at their surroundings. A thick, heavy smoke was beginning to settle above them, and the gray tom could see crackles and flickering of angry red lights in the distance. It was a fire. A section of the forest had caught on fire. They had to move. It wasn't big, so it would eventually perish, but they needed to move before the scorching flames burned them. From the looks of it, everyone was mostly gone. However, he caught movement in his peripheral, and through his glassy gaze he saw the form of what looked to be a cat, along with a small group, scattering off from wherever they had come. This fire wasn't an accident. It had an intention. When everyone had cleared out and he heard the sound of wails from above, he realized why. The intruders, whoever they had been, had stuffed a litter of kits into the tallest tree in the forest. Before he could even process it, he was speeding towards the trunk and sinking his claws into the bark. His mind was racing as his heart plummeted, and he was beginning to worry that his body would as well the higher he got. His fear of climbing was forced to the back of his brain as he rose above the layer of smoke that had reached the floor, weaving through the branches of the pine tree. He still had a ways to go. He ignored the snapping and cracking of the branches around him, his glimmering eyes honed in on the bundles of fur despite the sound of Wilfre yowling from the ground up at him. The branch beneath his paws began to give, and with one final leap he dug his claws into the bark next to the frightened kittens. He barely knew how they could've felt at the moment being so young, but he definitely had an idea. 

He climbed quickly back down the giant tree, having had to climb to almost the very top to get them. When he reached the ground, his lungs inflated with smoke, but he refrained from coughing as he carried the three bundles by their scruffs in his jaws away from the damage and towards a new location not far away. Their camp was already scattered all over their territory, so it wasn't difficult to move to a different spot. They always moved, anyway. To most, the day had just been a quick moving day, as everyone had made it out alive, but to him.. To him it was a day he could never forget. Ann, his therapist whom he'd been going to for months and could easily consider a friend, convinced him to change his name, as it only held bad memories now.