Aoife

Aoife's pelt takes her father's colors and throws them into a wild pattern vaguely akin to an African Wild Dog, or a tweed merle dog. A deep charcoal gray gradient is the base of it, darkening around the tip of her muzzle and lightening faintly as it travels down her legs. But layered over it in wild splotches are shades of auburn and gold, scattered lightly over her shoulders and the fronts of her legs but heavier over her back, sides, and hips, heaviest over her tail which has no charcoal at all. Her left ear is more heavily covered than her right, but the almost-mask of auburn and gold that trails off over her eyes and cheeks is equal on both sides. A dark silver touches her toes on every foot, and dips the tip of her tail like a paintbrush as well as a splash on her chest. Eyes of a smokey gray-blue look huge and silvery in her dark-colored face.

Standing at a diminutive 17" in height, Aoife is hardly the most imposing or eye-catching among her family, bit she sports several mutations inherited from both sides of her family that set her apart. The most obvious at first glance are the long, thick fangs that curve lower than her jaw, wide and flattened and serrated like an extinct feline. Next might be noticed the ridge of hair running in a mowhawk from the crown of her head and tapering off when it reaches her back. These long hairs - banded in an agouti pattern in colors of black, auburn, and gold - are the long stiff guard hairs that a north american porcupine wears all over its body, and like the porcupine whose fur an accident of genetics bestowed on her, interspersed at random through the ridge are small, thick, barbed quills banded in the same colors plus smaller bands of white mixed in. Though she does have some control of raising or smoothing the ridge like a normal wolf does hackles, mostly it tends to just stick up on its own.

Less obvious are the changes to her paws. As small as she is, it isn't immediately obvious that there is anything different. But her paws are modeled far more closely on a housecat, with the softer pads and more agile toes, in addition to the more obvious semi-translucent needle-sharp retractable cat claws that tip each one. But that isn't as far as the changes go - as agile as a normal cat's paws are, her forepaws go a step beyond that.

To start, the prominent dewclaw of her father is even more prominent and lower, making her seem almost polydactyl except that it remains separated from the paw toes. Further, each toe is somewhat longer and more dextrous than a normal cat's paw, and what would have been the dewclaw is actually an opposable digit much like a human thumb, allowing her to grasp objects in her agile paws in a way that a normal paw - whether wolf OR cat - could not. When standing, the unusual shape of the toes is disguised by the arch in each toe from the retractable claws, which helps to somewhat hide the longer and otherwise slender shape of her toes.appearance

Outgoing
Aoife has never met a stranger. To say that she views even the most distant unknown person as a potential friend would not be at all far off, and any attempt to drill "stranger danger" into her young mind will likely find little or indeed no purchase in her. She simply doesn't have a shy or reserved bone in her body.
Adventurous
Every turn in the path, every fork in the road, every bend in the river is a new and exciting adventure for her. Every setback in her journey through life only makes it more exciting, more fulfilling. After all, nothing worth having ever came easily, and you might as well enjoy life while you have it.
Determined
Not much can stop Aoife from achieving the heights she wishes to achieve, whether it's the literal height of a mountain or a major life goal. It's not really so much a stubborn refusal to change her mind, because Aoife is fairly flexible and accommodating in her thinking, but rather a resilience and a clear focus on achievement that leads her to forge ahead where others may have given it up as too difficult. If something is important to her, she simply doesn't give up until she has finally achieved it.
Fierce
Aoife isn't fierce in temper, nor is she particularly snide or snarky, but fierce nonetheless describes her well. The small woman throws herself heart and soul into everything she does, and she feels everything so strongly that her emotional presence in the world is like fire incarnate. She is also fearless, or at least has not yet discovered something to fear, and so has no hesitation despite what others may have viewed as physical shortcomings.
Creative
Maybe it's because she was born so tiny, or because she had a peculiar combination of mutations that encouraged it, but Aoife is a master of thinking outside the box and coming up with unusual and creative solutions to achieving her goals. Whether it's teaching herself new skills or making something new, Aoife is endlessly inventive and delights in it.
Musically Inclined
Aoife is fascinated with sound, with rhythms, and with the combinations of sounds into a pleasing aesthetic. She has perfect pitch, and adores a good clear note while a mucky off pitch sound is mild torture. Luckily for her self-love and her sanity, her singing voice and her howl both are pleasantly in tune and a lovely - and surprisingly low pitched for her size - warm tone, and even from a young age she experiments heavily in the making and using of musical instruments to entertain herself and her family, and eventually others.personality

Reduced Height x6
Mutation List:
Sabreteeth, porcupine hair and quill mohawk, dextrous handpaws with opposable dewclaw thumbs, retractable cat claws

Companions:
Tay - common swift - female - 19" wingspan
Anja - amur leopard - female - 25" - in the summer a deep rusty golden color with green eyes, in winter coat a pale gold barely off whitemisc