Melete

Melete

Panther Girl of Etna’s Band

Nature: Feral, independent, observant, fiercely loyal to those she chooses

Position: Panther Girl, member of Etna’s band

Primary Skills: Hunting, tracking, stealth, wilderness survival, knife fighting

Temperament: Fierce, guarded, curious, irreverent, difficult to intimidate

Greatest Strength: She trusts her own instincts

Greatest Weakness: She trusts her own instincts even when they lead her somewhere dangerous

Her Nature

Melete is not a woman who was made for cages.

She has always possessed something wild within her that could not be trained out, softened, or civilized. Even among Panther Girls, she is considered unusual. She belongs to Etna’s band, but she has never truly belonged to the group in the way the others do.

Melete is a solitary creature.

She will sit among the others, hunt beside them, fight beside them and defend them when necessary, but there is always a part of her that remains somewhere beyond the firelight. Watching. Listening. Thinking.

She does not follow simply because everyone else follows.

If she believes something is wrong, she will say so.

If she believes something is foolish, she will probably say that too.

And if someone tells her that something has always been done a particular way, there is a very good chance Melete’s first response will be to wonder whether that is precisely why it should be questioned.

Her Heritage

Her mother’s history has shaped her in ways Melete herself does not always recognize.

Her mother was once a She-urt before becoming a Panther Girl, carrying with her memories of another existence and another understanding of the world. Before that, there was the strange influence of a heathen woman born of Earth, whose words found their way into the family and were passed from mother to daughter.

Among those inherited treasures were Earth-born curse words.

Melete learned them young.

She has perfected their use.

There are few things more entertaining than hearing an otherwise eloquent Panther Girl suddenly unleash a string of colorful Earthly profanity when someone has irritated her sufficiently.

She considers this part of her inheritance.

The Hunter

Melete is an exceptional hunter.

She does not simply pursue animals; she studies them.

She understands that every creature leaves a story behind it. A bent blade of grass. A disturbed patch of soil. A broken twig. A footprint barely visible to another eye.

She can follow a trail long after another hunter would have abandoned it.

But there is something different about Melete’s relationship with animals.

She does not view them simply as resources.

She respects them.

She believes animals possess their own nature and their own place within the world. She will kill when she must, because she understands that survival sometimes demands blood, but she does not take pleasure in pointless killing.

A creature that has fought well deserves respect.

A creature that has fed her deserves gratitude.

And an animal that has earned her trust may discover that Melete’s loyalty toward it is every bit as fierce as her loyalty toward a person.

Her Weapons

Melete favors weapons that allow her to remain close to the earth and move unseen.

Her knives are her constant companions. She knows how to use them for hunting, defense and combat, but she is at her most dangerous before an enemy realizes she is there.

She prefers stealth over spectacle.

Why announce yourself when you can simply appear behind someone?

She is also exceptionally skilled with a bow, particularly when hunting. She has the patience required to wait for the perfect moment rather than wasting an arrow through impatience.

Her Relationship With Other Panther Girls

Melete cares more about the women of Etna’s band than she will readily admit.

She may argue with them.

She may disappear without explanation.

She may question their choices.

But threaten one of them and the loner suddenly becomes a very different creature.

Melete does not require constant companionship to feel loyalty.

She simply does not express that loyalty in conventional ways.

She is the woman who might tell you that you’re being an idiot while simultaneously placing herself between you and the danger.

She doesn’t need you to thank her.

In fact, she would probably prefer that you didn’t.

Her Thoughts on Men

Melete’s beliefs concerning men are complicated.

She has never been with one.

Not once.

This is not because she fears them.

It is not because she believes herself incapable of wanting one.

It is simply that no man has ever stirred enough within her to make her surrender her independence or even consider doing so.

Until Scar.

Scar

Scar is a Wild Forest Man, and Melete finds him deeply unsettling.

Not because she believes him weak.

Quite the opposite.

There is something about Scar that catches her attention in a way she does not understand.

She watches him.

She notices where he is.

She finds herself curious about him.

Then she becomes annoyed with herself for noticing.

So she avoids him.

Or at least she tries.

Melete understands the tracks of animals better than she understands the tracks Scar leaves upon her thoughts.

She can tell when a panther has passed through the forest hours earlier.

She can tell when a deer is frightened.

She can sense when danger is approaching.

But Scar?

Scar makes her feel things she has no name for.

He makes her curious.

He makes her aware of him.

He makes her wonder what it would be like to stop running from whatever is happening inside her.

And that frightens her far more than any beast in the forest.

So Melete does what she does best.

She retreats.

She disappears into the trees.

She finds another hunting trail.

She busies herself with anything that keeps her from having to examine the strange pull she feels toward him.

Because Melete can understand hunger.

She understands anger.

She understands fear.

She understands the instinct to fight, flee or hunt.

But this?

This is something entirely different.

And Melete has never been a woman who willingly walks into a mystery she cannot control.

Unfortunately for her, Scar may be the first mystery she cannot simply outrun.

Her Feelings About Slavery

Melete dislikes slaves.

She has difficulty accepting the idea of a woman being reduced to property, particularly when she sees women who seem to have no say in the circumstances of their lives.

Yet she is not blind to Gorean reality.

She understands why Gorean Men value slaves.

She understands their usefulness, their place within Gorean society and the needs they fulfill.

Her position is therefore not simplistic.

She does not have to approve of something to understand it.

And she does not have to understand something to accept it.

Melete’s opinions are her own.

Her Greatest Contradiction

Melete fiercely guards her independence.

She believes no one owns her.

She trusts herself above almost everyone.

She is happiest alone beneath the trees.

Yet beneath all that ferocity lies an enormous capacity for connection.

She simply does not give that connection easily.

Once someone earns her trust, however, it is difficult to take it away.

Her heart is much softer than she allows the world to see.

That softness is protected by teeth.

What Makes Melete Dangerous

It is not simply her skill with a knife.

It is not her ability to disappear into the forest.

It is not even her reputation as a hunter.

It is that Melete thinks for herself.

She cannot easily be manipulated by tradition, intimidation, flattery or fear.

She watches.

She listens.

She waits.

And when she finally decides to act, she does so with the certainty of someone who has already considered the consequences.

Melete is not tame.

She is not meant to be tame.

She is a creature of the forest who has chosen her own path through it.

And perhaps the most dangerous thing about her is that she has yet to discover what happens when the one thing she cannot hunt, outrun or reason away finally catches her.

Scar.

When Scar finally caught Melete, he did not break her spirit.

He broke her certainty that she could live forever beyond the reach of a man.

His lessons were relentless. He challenged her, corrected her, tested her patience and forced her to confront a part of herself she had spent her entire life refusing to examine. He taught her his understanding of the Gorean order—not simply through words, but through the expectations he placed upon her and the unwavering confidence with which he treated her as the woman he believed she could become.

He never bothered to collar her.

Perhaps because, to Scar, a collar would have been unnecessary.

There were moments when he called her Mate and others kajira, almost casually, as though the words required no ceremony or explanation. And somehow, those two words both unsettled Melete more deeply than any collar ever could.

For all her resistance, his lessons awakened something within her—a fierce new fire that she neither understood nor entirely wished to extinguish. The woman who had once insisted she needed no man discovered herself yearning to please this particular man in ways she had never imagined possible.

Yet Melete remained Melete.

When she wasn’t learning Scar’s ways, she was hunting.

She ranged through their territory with the same feral grace she had always possessed, bringing food to their home and watching the forest for threats. Together, she and Scar guarded their small domain against the apex predators of the wild—those with two legs as well as those with many.

Perhaps that was what made them work.

Scar taught her the ways of the Gorean Man, reminding her that a woman could kneel without ever becoming weak.

And somewhere between his lessons and her wildness, between possession and partnership, they began building something neither of them had expected:

a home.

I am here to role play a great adventure and story line, nothing less, nothing more. I can only be here now and then but when I am here, I will give it my all, so I expect the same from whoever comes along into my role play.