mother of melon 🍈

Melon's Mother (メロンの母, Meron no haha?) Zafira is a leopard who, when mating with a male gazelle, gave birth to her son Melon, a hybrid of gazelle and leopard whom she raises alone since her husband left her.

She is a middle-aged female leopard, approximately 32 years old and of slim build, she has a fairly groomed, light brown coat covered mostly in evenly spaced solid black spots, being longer and fluffier on her head.

She always maintains a permanent smiling expression. She wears a purple sweater with a long black skirt and a white ruffled apron.

Reserved and perceptive: In the manga, Melon's mother appears as a very passive figure; she barely speaks, but she has a strong gaze. This suggests she wasn't stupid or weak; she just learned to keep quiet to survive. That's why I described her as perceptive but silent.

Melancholic: Her life was very hard: she was a lioness captured by a mobster who imprisoned her, gave birth to a child without love, and lived in isolation. This inevitably leaves emotional scars, hence the sad tone of her personality.

Silently strong: Although she didn't openly rebel, emotionally surviving for so long in that situation demonstrates strength. That passive strength is different from what Legoshi displays, for example, but it's valid.

Sensitive to art: This is a creative expansion, but it makes sense: many people suffering from confinement find solace in art. I imagined Melon's mother taking refuge in the beautiful, soft things she could control.

White flowers / music / novels: These tastes reflect your need for peace and beauty. They are forms of escape. White flowers symbolize purity, which may represent a desire to cleanse your life of violence.

Smell of blood / raw food / forced contact: These annoyances are linked to trauma. As a carnivore locked away and possibly forced into things by Melon's father (a mafia lizard), it's understandable that she'd reject aspects of her carnivorous side or be reminded of the abuse.

Empty Conversations: People with trauma often find themselves fed up with superficial things because they've faced the depths of their pain. This completes their image as someone who is introspective.

Complex and silent: Melon never knew real love. His mother loved him, but she was so damaged that she couldn't express it well.

Overprotective but distant: She probably wanted to protect him from the world… but also from his father. At the same time, maintaining emotional distance may have been a defense of herself. Hurt: The manga shows that Melon didn't fully understand her mother, and she seems torn. Her inability to express her love or pain likely made her feel guilty.

At some point in his youth, Melon's mother would end up being in a romantic relationship with a young gazelle whom she loved very much, a feeling that would turn out to be only one-sided. Due to the fact that the young man could not stand how everyone looked at them when they walked down the street and for fear of the hypothetical case in which she would end up devouring him, he simply ran away and abandoned her when Melon was just a baby. Later, Melon's mother managed to settle with her son in an apartment complex, whose living room she had decorated like a fairy tale castle. A place where she and her son could take refuge in an imaginary world where everything was fine and nothing bad could happen, establishing that neither of them could say their bad thoughts inside their home nor talk about Melon's absent father. Because the neighbors were prejudiced and gossiped with rumors about her relationship with her ex-husband and son behind her back, she considered them "bad." So Melon's mother rarely went out, and consequently, Melon was responsible for going to school only and sending him out to do some household shopping. Even though she never spoke to Melon about his father, other than the fact that he was a gazelle, she cared for him like a cheerful, loving mother, to the point where she was the only good thing in her son's life, who was bullied at school for being a hybrid.

The only thing she remembers about him was that he is a herbivore, a gazelle, and that when Melon was born, he abandoned her, so she is afraid of loving someone again.