~Four Years Later~
Jae'sa watched as Eletis and Gedrah bounded about the forest. She was attempting, rather successfully, to teach the two to hunt for her. Eletis and Gedrah had grown quickly from the time she'd first found them. The wolves had been inseparable as puppies, and now they were inseparable as adults. Only in inclusion to each other, Jae'sa was now a part of their small "pack" of three. She still had no idea why they had taken such a liking to her, but she'd never thought to question it too much. During her first month back, Jae'sa had worked on healing herself and building the wolves some "stairs" up to the treehouse. She'd decided it was too risky to live inside the town, so instead, she'd settled for the treehouse.
There were still many unpleasant memories, and for the first two years she found herself in tears every time she bathed in the river she'd once almost drowned in, but she was learning to cope. Her emotions were all but gone. The only time she ever truly felt anything was when she was with the black and white wolves. They represented a better part of her. Eletis, the pure white wolf, had never grown out of his childishness. He still wanted to play constantly and always dragged his darker brother, Gedrah, into it. Gedrah represented everything Jae'sa had become—dark, suspicious, and spiteful. While Gedrah never once hurt her or his brother, he was wary and vicious towards every unknown creature he came across.
Together, Eletis and Gedrah represented the two sides of the one coin that was Jae'sa.
She smiled as she watched the two of them bounding across the forest floor. She rested atop the treehouse on the desk, her legs dangling off the edge. She didn't really care that they weren't exactly doing what she wanted them to do. Let the wolves live a little; there were still young, she supposed, and Eletis wouldn't get much done, anyway. Gedrah was the "no-nonsense" wolf out of the two of them. She would get them to hunt for her later.
Jae'sa turned her head upward towards the sky. The canopy of trees covered most of it, but from what she could see, she saw a blue sky dotted with white, fluffy clouds. She would never truly be happy again, no. She knew that. It had been ingrained in her blood. Plus, she'd spent the last four years continuing her life as an assassin. She'd killed close to a hundred people now, and she had no intentions of stopping. This was the life she had been raised into, and the life she would die in. She'd already promised herself she would never take on an apprentice, even if someone came to her and asked for her tutelage. She would never bring another human being into the misery this life had caused her.
The only good thing that came out of it all was that her emotions were practically nonexistent now. She could look someone in the eyes as she drove the dagger into their chest and not feel a single thing. Some would consider her a monster for being able to do so. Hell, she considered herself a monster. But that had been her first decision as a "freed woman."
She was the monster Ceseth had always wanted her to be.
But after his death, she'd decided it was the monster she wanted to be.
The innocent child she'd once been was fourteen years dead, never to be revived. And she hadn't even tried. Didn't want to. She'd died naïve. She'd killed the only friend she'd ever had, or ever would have. She'd killed her mother, and she'd killed the man who'd practically raised her.
Yes, Jae'sa was a monster.
But she was fine with that.
~ End ~