tøpaz

by **Topaz** Tue May 26, 2015 8:05 pm

.Basics.

Name: Topaz Olivie Arevalo.
Nicknames: None, as of now.
Age: Two years, seven months.
Gender:Female.
Rank: Healer.
Sexuality: Heterosexual.

.Appearance.

Coat: Her fleece is a melting pot of creams, whites, and browns, giving an almost golden appearance in certain lightings. Her coat is actually somewhat thin, made to be in warmer, drier environments. While it is short, it is far from rough. No, her coat is thin yet fine and soft to the touch.
Eyes: Her eyes are a unique color, somewhat hard to describe. An intensely bright cream, if you will. To give a visual perspective, it’s as though someone stationed a light bulb behind a clear iris.
Height: Topaz is surprisingly short, only standing at 26 inches at the shoulder.
Build: She is quite thin, with little to no muscle definition. She doesn’t have the size to be a warrior, nor the stamina to be a hunter. With training, however, she could end up becoming an exceptional runner, but don’t count on it. She despises running with all her soul and all her being.
Scent: You will recognize her by the sweet, smooth, sugary scent she emits, somewhat akin to the scent of honey.

.Persona.

Personality: Very quiet, Topaz likes to keep to herself. She despises needless drama in all shapes and forms, and will do anything to avoid it. She has difficulty trusting others, and will keep an exchange short & sweet if she does not know or like you. However, if you’re a dear friend, she will display the utmost loyalty to you. She would never betray you, and is quite a good listener. The upside, she can listen to you drone on and on about your problems for hours and not doze off. The downside? She’ll try to give you advice on every little thing. There’s no such thing as venting, in her eyes. If you come to her hoping to let off steam, she’ll try and teach you how to stop the steam from accumulating in the first place. This is one of her vices; she feels the need to control everything. She likes to make sure everything goes as planned, and that everything has a plan. She will go out of her way and ‘teach’ others how to do something the right way. Even if the way she teaches isn’t necessarily the right way to do things, she’ll teach it anyways and, while she won’t snap at you if you refuse to do it her way, she will shut down completely and ignore you as best as possible. She’s intelligent, yes, but she’s far from mature.
History: She was born to a litter of three. A sister, Aria, and a brother, Orion. Orion, having thick black fur and piercing yellow eyes, was the spitting image of his mother, Karliah. Aria had her mother’s black coat and her father’s olive-green eyes. Topaz was the only pup to inherit her father’s—Nero’s—cream-brown coat, and her mother’s golden eyes. Karliah and Nero often felt as though they were blessed to have a litter of strong, healthy pups.
Of course, they thought they were. As the pups grew older, Aria and Orion naturally started to roughhouse. They played outside the den, mingled with other pups, formed friendships and began to take an interest in their parent’s professions, as to be expected.
Topaz, on the other hand, rarely bothered to play with other pups, or even to play with her siblings. She never talked all too often. She always kept to herself, and never got into much trouble.
The only wolf she would ever talk to, far more often than even her own parents, was the very wolf that helped deliver her on the day of her birth. The pack healer, Lark.
Lark was an elderly female, with a pale gray coat and white flecks dusting her snout and ears. She was frail and bony, yet her mind remained as sharp as a tack. Topaz always sought her out in her den, asking her a myriad of questions on just about everything. She asked Lark about her family, the pack, the pack’s history, the world around her, prey, predators, everything. And to every question, Lark had an answer. This was the thing that Topaz loved about the healer. She was so wise, so smart. She had an answer to everything, even if some of her answers didn’t quite make sense to Topaz.
Topaz had, at one point, tried to rely on her own parents to answer her endless amounts of questions. But they either wouldn’t bother to respond, or their response was silly and humorous. This always infuriated the pup, simply because she didn’t want to be seen as just that. A pup. A pup with pointless questions, where she was always too young to know the answer. Her parents never took her seriously. That’s why she always gravitated to Lark. When Lark looked at her, she didn’t see a stupid little pup with silly and irrelevant questions. She saw a person with a thirst for knowledge. She always seemed to look past her age.
But even Lark knew this level of seclusion from her peers wasn’t healthy for a pup. So one day, she sat her down and tried talking to her about the importance of relationships. How a wolf needs relationships—be it romantic, familial, or purely platonic—to stay sane.
Topaz didn’t take to this information very well.
She saw it as a personal attack on her choices, on her life. She thought Lark had no right to tell her what the ‘right’ thing was and what the ‘wrong’ thing was. Topaz’s choice was hers and hers alone. Lark didn’t need to butt in on her life.
And so, after that, Topaz rarely visited Lark’s den. She rarely stayed around the camp. She figured there was nothing to gain from her being there, so she always stayed away, near the outskirts of the territory. She took it upon herself to learn things from personal experience, instead of relying on some old hermit whose mind was beginning to go.
Topaz lived like this for just about the rest of her childhood. She only returned to the pack’s main camp to sleep. Even then, sometimes she’d be so preoccupied with the beautiful night sky, filled with countless amounts of stars that she’d fall asleep, alone, in the midst of the forest.
This unattached lifestyle didn’t last for long, however. One evening, she was out by herself, picking around in the undergrowth, searching for even a sliver of a scent of prey. Topaz was much too small to tackle larger prey, such as elk, so she was reduced to hunting mice, squirrels, and other rodents of that nature. It wasn’t much, but she refused to rely on her pack for food.
And then, she smelled something. Not rodent. Smoke. It was faint from where she was, but within minutes it grew and grew until it was almost overpowering. She shot up from the underbrush. The scent was coming from the direction of the camp, and immediately she thought of Lark.
She sprinted through the forest, careful to jump over rocks and logs in her path, before skidding to a halt by her camp.
The place was washed in a harsh, orange light. Embers flew up and all around her, and the smoke was so thick it made her eyes water. She held her breath and dove into the heart of the camp.
She tried not to look at the lifeless bodies littering the ground, either crushed by falling debris or collapsed from the heavy smoke. She immediately spotted Lark’s den—and her heart sunk into her stomach.
Red-orange flames lapped at the entrance, and a fiery light was being emitted from inside the den. Topaz shrieked, jumping towards the fire—only to be caught mid air by the scruff on her neck, as though she were still a newborn. She kicked and thrashed, screaming for her attacker to release her. She kicked out as hard as she could with her hind legs at the wolf’s chest, hoping to penetrate his flesh with her dull nails and draw blood.
Finally, her attacker relinquished his hold. Topaz jumped to her feet and whipped around to face him.
A large, white male with slate-gray eyes. His coat was smeared with ash and singed in some areas, but other than that, he was unscathed. She knew who he was. Atlas, one of Orion’s closest friends. The ‘friend’ who bullied her the most when they were younger. She didn’t trust him then, and she didn’t trust him now.
“Why on earth did you stop me?” she snarled.
He caught his breath, before saying in a low, scratchy voice, “You would have burned alive. The den is engulfed, and whoever—or whatever—was inside, it’s dead now.”
She snapped at him. “Why would you care? Why would you care if I burned alive?! It’s not like any of you actually liked me. Why bother saving me when you don’t even want me around?”
“Topaz, this isn’t the time—“
“I don’t care if this isn’t the time! Lark’s dead, and she was the only person in the world who even bothered to listen to what I had to say! We fought, and we disagreed, but she still heard me out! Without her, everything will just go back to the way it was. No one will take me seriously. No one will respect me, no one will—“
“Topaz. Stop,” growled Atlas. “Listen. That was when we were pups. We’re older now, and I’m sorry that I ever hurt you but please. We need to leave right now if you want to live.”
Topaz paused, and then gave a resigned sigh. She followed him wordlessly.
That is, until she heard the shriek of a familiar voice. She looked in the direction of the bloodcurdling sound to see her sister Aria, pinned underneath a burning log. She was whining and yelping and thrashing in pain. Immediately, Topaz dashed over to her. Aria’s leg was crushed under the weight of smoldering tree trunk. It didn’t look good. Topaz tried to force the log off her sister, first by grabbing hold with her jaws, then kicking, then ramming into it. Nothing worked. She was afraid. She was afraid her sister would die looking at her. She would die right there. She’d be within arm’s reach, and yet there was nothing she could do to save her.
And, just like that, the log lifted. Topaz turned to see Atlas, yet again, his legs shaking and the log weighing down on his shoulders. Topaz gave him a nod of acknowledgement, before grabbing her sister by the scruff of her neck and, with all her might, dragging her out from under the log.
Once they were clear, Atlas dropped the flaming log and, with Topaz’s help, got Aria onto his back. They were gone soon after.
Topaz didn’t hide the fact she was upset. She was depressed. Lark was dead. Orion was dead. Karliah and Nero, while no one had seen it with their own eyes, were likely dead. Topaz didn’t doubt the fact that they were the last surviving members of a pack that thrived for decades.
Out of all of that, Topaz remembered her last conversation with Lark. How she should try to be more social, how she should try to form bonds with people, even if she saw it as a nuisance more than anything.
She stayed with Atlas and Aria, as she was the only one with even the slightest idea of herbs and healing methods. She gave Aria pain relievers, created poultices to clean the wound and stop infection. She set the bone, although she doubted it would heal correctly. Aria may never be able to run or sprint or jump or do anything that she’s wanted to do ever again. And it was sad. It was sad because she, like Topaz, was just a yearling. She had her whole life ahead of her. She dreamed of becoming the head hunter of the pack, but that dream was shattered.
But Aria remained in high spirits. Atlas was there to cheer her up. And as the months went on, Topaz felt more and more out of place. She saw the blossoming romance between her sister and Atlas. She saw how he tried to make her happy whenever he possibly could. He joked around with her, complimented her. The romance would have been a beautiful thing to see, if Topaz wasn’t so distrusting of Atlas.
Yes, he saved her life. Yes, he saved Aria’s life. But there was something about the way he carried himself, the way he talked to her, the way he just… moved. It was unsettling to her. And the wounds from her childhood tormentor had left scars that wouldn’t disappear. She held no soft spot for him. Nonetheless, she stuck around for her sister. Keeping tabs on her. Making sure her leg was healing up nicely.
Topaz hung around for a while. She was around the age of two years and several months when it hit her. She wasn’t needed around them anymore. Aria’s leg had healed to the point where she could walk on her own—albeit with a heavy limp—and she and Atlas had already fallen madly in love. It wouldn’t be long before they had their first litter. It wouldn’t be long before the two would start to rebuild the pack they had lost.
But Topaz knew she had no place in rebuilding their pack, because she never belonged to it in the first place. She didn’t feel a strong attachment to it. She always had a feeling of disconnection. She shouldn’t have to live the rest of her life watching from a distance. Having an awkward, out-of-place feeling whenever she tried participating in something, anything. It wasn’t her job to rebuild the pack. It was theirs.
And so, she left. She said her teary-eyed goodbyes to Aria, and left with a cold, solemn ‘farewell’ to Atlas. And now, she’s on her own, wandering with no attachments, searching for a place to start building her own life, with her own dreams and her own friends. Maybe even, in the distant future, have her own family.

.Relations.

Friendships: She’s too new to form any friendly bonds with anyone.
Rivals: As of now, none.
Lover: None for now, none for a while.
Offspring: She has to work on her own immaturity before raising others.
Family:
Karliah|Mother|Deceased
Nero|Father|Deceased
Lark|Mother-Figure|Deceased
Orion|Brother|Deceased
Aria|Sister|Alive
Atlas|Brother-In-Law|Alive