Biography for Calypte’s Fursona

By: Crystal Shekeira (Melissa Hartman)

When they say that life is a bitch, I often wonder if some invisible census person made special note of me. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve fallen—there’s far too many; but I can certainly remember in vivid detail the few happy moments of this paradoxical life I’ve been given. Usually you tend to remember the bad times and lump together the good as one big conglomerate of pastel-goodness. I know better than that.

My life began in the streets and there is where I think everything will come to a final, anticlimactic end. Pessimistic? Sure, why not? When you live hard, you tend to die in a pitiful heap, surrounded by the very trash you sprung up around. My grave will be a gutter and my mourners the rats; the feast will be my very flesh and my legacy will live on in the belly of vermin. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust and so the earth reclaims its own.

I remember the smell of my father’s fur as he carried me through the darkened streets of the rotted-out city that sat at the edge of our village. We were never clean, but that day, my father smelled of something other than the usual sweat and exertion that I’d come to associate with normalcy. Too small to voice my concerns and too sleepy to care, I held tight to my father’s brindled pelt and allowed him to take me away—away from any semblance of a normal life I could have had.

I should have died that night, alone next to a drunken serval who stank of several odors not his own, minus the alcohol. However, some unseen force must have also been drunk, for I lived that night and for many other nights. So many nights that I gave up hope that my father would ever return and take me home. I never even thought to look for him, back at the village. I knew by then he had already gone and that I would never see him again.

Wise to the wiles of the streets, I began to take care of myself—after disposing of the serval who, once raised from his stupor, took me in. More than one way he took me in and once I was strong enough, I killed him—struck him in the back with a sharpened edge of wood I’d pried from my shabby cubbyhole. But the bastard had the last laugh in that matter; before he died on the fecal-strewn floor of his own excess, he turned and slashed my right eye. So both our bloods ran that night, mixing onto the floor in an ebb and flow of misuse.

I was never able to save that eye. I could see through it for a few weeks afterwards, but then infection set in and I traveled to a local street doctor who filled me up with brandy and removed the eye entirely. From that moment on, I was free. Not the carefree freedom of the middle class or the rich, but at least not bonded to anyone in mind, body or soul. I could go where I pleased (within reason) and do what I wanted (also, within reason).

Money has never been that important to me—what have I with scraps of metal and paper?—but even the philanthropist needs to eat. I traveled the streets and picked up what I could through any means I had, save selling my body. I had enough of that vile touch and swore never to subject myself so.

For some reason, I managed to gather a small network of “friends.” I wouldn’t go so far as to call them that, but it’s the closest I can come. I wouldn’t trust them with my life, but a few have been known to help me out in a pinch, when my own wits, strength and wings couldn’t save me.

For now, young as I am, life continues to roll. Every day passes as the next does—mostly uneventful. Maybe I’ll pass out of this town for good, not just on some trip. I don’t know, really. Something keeps me here, something that I can’t explain. My destiny, my fate, is in this slum hole. And I have resigned to that.