Neraru Pith

Background Story

• A work in progress...
  
  Neraru was born in the Forest of Zyfria, the third and smallest of a litter of three. Her beginnings were rather uneventful, living as any other young kit would with her parents and siblings. She enjoyed playing with her brothers, but felt the deepest bond to her father, though her appearance was akin to her mother. In fact, the only physical trait that stemmed from her father was the unnatural yellow coloration of her auricles and the firey orange of her eyes.
  
  A few short weeks after her birth, however, the once happy family began to deteriorate rather quickly. Her mother and father slowly began to show signs of seperation and despite their attempts to hide it from their newborn kits, it wasn’t long before they caught on. However, the young and naïve Nera believed that this was normal for a family, knowing of nothing else.
  
  Of course, she was wrong. On a night to follow, her mother told the kits that they would be leaving the forest without their father. In fact, she had never even informed their father of the quick and permanent move his family would be making away from him. However, their mother did not have the heart to tell them that they would not be returning to the forest, leaving Nera under the impression that she would see her father again quite soon.
  
  They traveled for what seemed like days without a true destination. Her mother tried to make the journey enjoyable and allowed the kits to explore as much as they wanted, but the father they strayed from home, the more restless the young kit became. Nera’s continuous questioning about their home and father placed a heavy strain on her mother, finally resulting in an outburst that revealed that she had no intention of ever bringing her children back to their homeland. This caused hatred of her mother to grow deep in her heart that would possibly never be quelled.
  
  Distraught and feeling betrayed that very night she devised a plan to flee her family to reunite with her father. It seemed simple enough in her naïve eyes, thinking that if she simply followed where they had come from, she would eventually make it back to the forest, but only a short time after slipping away from her mother, she became hopelessly lost. Her mother and siblings had no idea that she had intentionally left, and thought that perhaps she had strayed off that night and been preyed upon. So a few days after their search proved fruitless, they thought her dead.
  
  It was pure luck that she did not run into any hungry creatures on her first days of travel, but as the days went on, she became famished. She had yet to learn much about hunting and finding food, forcing her to make do with the occasional scraps left in the woods by other predators and the few plants that she had learned were not harmful to ingest. Her body began to suffer from her unhealthy diet, transforming the once youthful kit into a sickly, lethargic child.
  
  It wasn’t long until they found her, an underground group of furres whose believed that magical abilities in ferals made perfect specimens for study and were considered a threat to those who lived in cities and villages elsewhere. She was easily subdued by one of their hunters and immediately processed and caged. The accommodations were severely inhumane, leaving her with barely enough space to maneuver and just enough food to keep her alive. Her caretaker looked on her with such disgust and his abusive practices were left unchallenged by his coworkers.
  
  Almost every day, she would lie in wait for one of the scientists to come and study her, preforming multiple, often painful experiments on her to try to manipulate and observe her magical abilities. It wasn’t long before their studies found that in times of great distress, her young magic showed the most potential and strength. They would then harness this knowledge to ‘encourage’ her to create short bursts of shadowy mass. As their experiments continued, they eventually discovered a way to preserve these shadows for their own use. Once they had made this breakthrough, the experiments on her ceased for a time.
  
  She was cast back into the light of the laboratory again when her small wings began to develop. Years back, they had discovered that the mage fox species could develop wings and extra appendages in the pursuit of their magic, but they had not yet discovered how this was scientifically possible. At first, they monitored their growth, but when their results were inconclusive, the decision was made to completely remove her wings to prevent her from harnessing flight to resist them. One day, she simply woke up in her cell with incongruent stitches lining her upper back, covered in her own blood. It left her completely broken.
  
  As time went on, she lost the will to struggle and lived in constant fear of being removed from her small cell again. Often, the days where she was left alone were the most stressful, as she had developed severe paranoia. Being deprived of necessary nutrition as a child had greatly stunted her growth, leaving her body small and fragile when she reached adulthood. She learned how to live without excess or natural light, eating just enough to survive and sleeping just enough to retain some energy. When she did sleep, she was plagued by terrible nightmares that violently shook her back into an even more frightening reality. After a while, she had to come to terms with the fact that she would never again see the sun, her forest, or her family.
  
  One night, she awoke to the sounds of failing electrical systems and bursts of light fizzing from the machines around the room. As she peered through the bars of her cell, everything went dark and her weight pushed her cage door open. At first, she just sat there, afraid that an attempt at escape would be futile and the punishment she would face would be extremely severe. Hours passed in silence and still no one came. She took a deep breathe in, but she could not smell anyone in close range. She slowly convinced herself to look around.
  
  The doors were all open as she slowly padded through the dark, underground facility, but she had only one interest. Now that she had built up the courage to investigate, she had only one thing on her mind: to locate the exit and run as fast as she could away from this terrible place. Once she found the long staircase leading up to the surface, she bolted, running faster than she ever had in her entire life. She reached the surface and continued to run for a long time, her adrenaline keeping her moving long past her physical limit. When it finally ran out, she collapsed to the ground, crying tears of relief and joy.
  
  After a half days rest, she was moving again, intent on finding her homeland. There was nowhere else she knew and despite the years of turmoil, it became the only thing that gave her any ounce of hope. The thought of seeing her father and being in her forest again gave her just enough hope to stay alive. She travelled for days, mostly in the cover of night, and utilized any resource she had found. Though she was not brave enough to engage other creatures for assistance or direction, she spied and waited for any conversation to give her clues to tracking down her forest. It started with a few stories and rumors of a mage fox packlands a few days travel, to more concrete landmarks to search for as she got closer and closer.
  
  She would persevere: Suddenly appearing out of nowhere on the outskirts of the forest as if she had come back from the dead. She was weary from the days of travel, barely running on fumes when her father discovered her. The joy of seeing him again was too much for her strained body to handle and she collapsed at his feet with a small smile on her face. It would be a few days before she would come around, and longer still to share the long story of the years she had been gone.
  
  Too be continued...

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  Please let me know what you think of my story so far and if you have anything you want me to add in the future if your characters have interacted with mine

  • 

    Unregistered User: Enn || September 14 2012, 7:33pm

    "I enjoyed reading this. ^^"

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