Plovereye; the world is quiet here

[Cloud of Diamonds]

Name | Plover-eye

Gender | She-cat

Age | 75 moons

Rank | Elder

Clan | PineClan

Beliefs| Plovereye thinks there is no need for StarClan; when cats die, they die. Their spirit vanishes into the world, and their body also returns to the earth. What other kind of existence could there be? The idea of StarClan is pretty, but it has no more substance than a snowflake to Plovereye. If a FogClanner were to demand an opinion of her, she would simply smile and stay silent. She pities StarClan believers, for she thinks they are either desperate or deceived by others with false visions of starry cats.

After all, when Ziggy died Plover-eye never saw her in a dream, never even imagined her as a star in the sky. And if Sabrai didn't know about StarClan and teach her about it, then she didn't need to know and it's not important.

Parents | Sabrai-mother-deceased-NP Keeno-father-deceased-NP

Siblings | Dessa-sister-deceased-NP Jobo-brother-deceased-NP Ziggy-sister-deceased-NP stillborn brother-NP

Other Kin | Otterfur-grandson (played by Crow) Willowpaw-great-granddaughter (played by Whiskers) Crowpaw-great-grandson (played by Glowy) Elmpaw-great-grandson (played by Thistle)

Mate | Iacho-deceased-NP

Crush | None

Kits | unnamed stillborns, kit dead shortly after birth-deceased Mouse-daughter-alive

Apprentice/Mentor | None

Appearance | Plovereye is a Maine coon. Her long, often frizzy fur, is a mixture of beige, tan, white, black, and a light russet brown. She has tabby stripes on the top and sides of her head, and a narrow white streak down the middle of her face. Her ears are tufted, and her short white whiskers stick out in all directions.

Her legs have thick black stripes on tan fur, and she has all white paws. Her eyes are yellow with a tiny bit of green and get slightly darker around her pupils. The rest of her body is a mixture of pale tan and some russet, and her tail is tan with big blocks of black and dark brown on it.

Plovereye's build is lanky, and her muscle tone is not so great considering she doesn't do much that's active anymore. Her tail's average length, maybe just slightly short.

She's also blind in her right eye.

Personality | Plovereye's personality has many aspects, which have been built by moons of age and experience. She has what she calls her "outer layer" - the part of her that she wants cats to see and recognize as her. Then there's her "inner layer" which she thinks of as all her beliefs, unspoken thoughts, moral virtues, and judgment methods. Then there's her "core", which is all her deep down instincts and often, her harshest, fiercest, and most intense emotions lie buried.

Buried most of the time, anyway.

Her outer layer is one that is definitely part of her, even though she feels she more plays it than is it. Though Plovereye almost doesn't acknowledge it, she depends on her outer layer to keep her sane. Her outer layer is the quiet part of her, the part of Plovereye that is always listening, looking, and watching. She doesn't speak much, but she when she does, she knows cats will pay attention. At least, she expects them to. She is an elder, after all.

She dislikes rudeness in any form; cats who fail to tame their emotions, get angry easily, or speak too plainly are less than her equal, she feels. Cats who can keep a calm head in tense situations have her respect. The older you are, the more Plover-eye will expect of you; she'll be more disgusted if an older cat loses their temper than a younger one. And once you do wrong, it takes a lot to change this elder's opinion of you as a hot-headed mouse-brain. Forgive rarely and take a long time to forget, that's Plovereye.

Not that she'll show it much; chances are she'll just avoid you. However, if you do come in range of her and she's been displeased with you, expect a harsh comment or two before she falls silent and glares at you with her one seeing eye.

About her blind eye; for all intents and purposes, Plovereye isn't half-blind at all, or so she feels. If you so much as make a passing mention of it her fur will bush up, and snarl at you in about the most menacing manner possible, for this is the height of bad manners to her.

She doesn't take most kinds of humor well either, if you noticed. Abandon jokes all ye who enter here, if you want her to actually listen to you.

Her inner layer, now - that's a mess, plainly put.

Dreams, memories, complaints, emotions, plans - nothing is spared from this maelstrom beneath. It's what the old she-cat has managed to hide (mostly) from herself and others. All the pain she ever endured at her sisters' paws, her companionship with Jobo, that she now realizes she should have never let go of, even for Iacho, who left her anyway. Though she knows it was her fault, seething resentment still brews in her deep down. Mouse was her only daughter, after all. And sometimes, she wondered if it really was a bad thing that Ziggy died.

Not very pretty, is it? No wonder she tries to escape all those ugly things.

And her core...deepest of all. Every judgment, everything she knows is essentially based from here.

Her most basic beliefs are here: The importance she places on truth, when she thinks it is necessary to kill, and when to be cold and when to be warm. Her ever-changing thoughts on love and loyalty and how they work, and how hardship is a blessing and a curse. And of course, her strongest belief of all is to never, never judge a cat by their appearance.

Skills | Back in her youth, Plovereye was a prime tree climber. Her hunting was average, her fighting was all right, and her tracking was quite honestly the bare minimum in skill. But she could walk onto the thinnest of branches and still not fall off, and she fairly raced up the trunks.

History | Plovereye was born as just Mina with her three siblings to her mother Sabrai in a dirty, wet alley under the shelter of a dumpster on a cold leaf-fall night. She also had a stillborn brother who she doesn't remember.

Life was hard, and there was rarely enough for the four surviving kits to eat. Their father had left Sabrai for another she-cat before they born, leaving the long-furred tabby and white she-cat to curse her mate, then care for her large litter.

Mina's sisters looked down on her for her blind eye, saying it was "ugly" and "weird." Hurt by their comments, she stayed close to her mother and brother, Jobo, for he said he didn't care, what was a cloudy eye on a face that was otherwise nice?

Jobo also endured teasing from Ziggy and Dessa for being smaller than them, so he and Mina often banded together to fight back against their littermates. Mina's mother often tried to break up fights between the two duos, and tried to get them to make peace with each other, but the kits wouldn't listen to reason and simply apologized without much conviction each time, and continued fighting.

Eventually, Mina's sister Ziggy died from hunger at around five moons. Sabrai mourned her daughter, but consoled herself with the fact that she still had three kits. Mina was surprised that she felt a sense of loss, even after being rivals with Ziggy for almost all her kithood. She realized that it had been no better of her to keep retaliating, keep fighting back instead of walking with her head held high, for what were petty arguments when her sister was dead?

It was a lesson Mina never forgot.

A short while after, Mina's mother deemed her remaining children old enough to train, and found two friends of hers to assist with the job. Mina was trained by a dumb but fairly nice tom named Iacho. She liked his funny way of speaking (what humans might call a deep southern accent) and his gentle correction whenever she made a mistake (which happened often) in training.

As Mina grew older, the two gradually fell in love. Moons later, Mina had Iacho's kits after they had gone off together. Two were unfortunately stillborn, and one died shortly after birth, but one survived, her daughter Mouse.

Mina loved her only surviving kit fiercely, so fiercely that she often clashed with Iacho on her upbringing. Iacho wanted his daughter to be able to be free and independent, not like some kittypet who couldn't survive in the wild. For that was similar to how Mina treated her kit: like the most precious, fragile, delicate thing alive who might die if she so much as stepped on a thorn.

Mouse loved her mother, but she often sided with her father when he argued that their kit should have a chance to explore for herself. Mina knew he was right, but she was so scared that she would lose Mouse to something - sickness, predators, hunger. So until Mouse was seven moons, Mina for the most part protected her strongly.

However, her world was rocked to pieces when Iacho and Mouse disappeared one day, and she couldn't find them anywhere. Mina wanted to yowl how alone she was to the sky, how unfair it all was. She'd only wanted safety for her daughter, that was all. Why had they left like that? How dare they do that to her?

And again, like after Ziggy's death, she realized that it was she herself who had been at fault. She thought back to her mother, Sabrai, who even when Ziggy died, had been strong and had let her kits grow. But, she argued to herself, I only had Mouse. And Iacho, she remembered guiltily. Had he really thought her so constrictive? No wonder he'd at last lost patience.

Still, Mina vowed to get on with life, and try and teach others the lessons she had learned. So, with new purpose, she traveled onward, far from her home until she reached a ranch. It took many moons, and she had some close calls, but she finally made it.

She found a ranch, a perfect new home. She talked to many cats, making some new acquaintances but not really being as close to anyone as she'd been to Mouse and Iacho. Still, the Maine coon enjoyed living and around the ranch, chatting, hunting, and sheltering.

Eventually, the moons passed by and Mina found herself growing old. She knew it was lucky that she'd survived this long, and for some reason found herself longing for something else to occupy her last moons.

So when word reached her ears of a huge group of cats who'd moved to the area nearby, she was excited. Who knew what they might be here for?

Thus did she go meet the Journey cats, and decided to join PineClan, for she figured the whole StarClan business was silly and wanted to be in a Clan where it was discouraged. So she became an elder there and enjoyed meeting No-ears and Jaggedclaw, and getting renamed Plovereye. Though she disliked the mention about her eye in her name, she doesn't often dwell on it unless somecat mentions it directly.

Recently, she and the PineClan warrior Otterfur have discovered their connection - that he is the son of her daughter who traveled here, completely unaware of the fact that her mother had ended up in the same area. And of course, that also makes her a great-grandmother, as of course he has a mate and kits of his own.

She is currently also involved in deciding the fate of the loner Rain and whether he should be allowed to stay in PineClan or not.