Murphichi

A black and white fennec with the ability to shape shift and a strange interest in gemstones. If those big ears and bright blue eyes don't catch your attention surely her ability to conjure fire will. Incorporating dance moves and martial arts into her fire poi spinning, she is quite a sight to behold. Very familiar with the art of flow and movement, her dance routines put on quite a show and can also make for some interesting and entertaining self defense.

Her typical attire involves dresses and halters made by hand. She has a knack for making her own clothes with whatever fabrics she's able to obtain. She prefers pure cotton for its fire retardant properties but if she's not putting on a show you can find her in comfortably soft silk and gauze as well.

She enjoys crafting her own jewelry from precious gemstones and minerals she finds in the earth. Finding new ways to cut, polish and wrap them has been a happy past time that dates back as far as she can remember. Not only do they make beautiful jewelry, these gemstones are the key to her ability to shape shift. Only later in life did she discover her capabilities to harness the different energies of the earth - found in these gems and minerals - and use them to transform her body. She has no where near mastered this ability and only particular stones with a certain amount of mass will work. For some she needs only a little and for others she may need to be standing on a boulder of it. The mysteries are unfolding every day.

Her claim to shape-shifting fame goes to a lineage of kitsune in her genes. It's an abnormal presence since her parents, grandparents, and great grandparents were all fennec foxes who were born in desert regions. Murphichi's distinct coloring and markings are the only clue to her unique kitsune bloodline. None of her other siblings were strangely colored or had the ability to shape shift. The source of her unique color pattern comes from an ancient kitsune deliberately rendering their genes as a recessive trait until its genetic code could express itself in a descendant strong enough to carry it. Revealed to her only recently; it was forty-four generations prior to her birth (about seven-hundred years ago) when Murphichi's father had impregnated her ancestral mother, making this unique gene a “kitsune sleeper agent.”

Page portrait by Noctalosis