“You have your whole life ahead of you, darling.” her father took a swig of his beer and laughed “You don’t need to worry!”

And so 6 year old “Nessie” Javelin ran away from home. Well, phrasing it like that implies it to be a singular event. Which would be quiet the misunderstanding indeed. Allow me to rephrase:

And so 6 year old “Nessie” Javelin ran away from home for the first time.

She had spilled her heart to her father, she had told him everything. How lost she was. How out of place this world made her feel. How she didn’t want to remember the things she did. The memories that weren’t hers.

She had remembered ever since she was born, she just hadn’t had the mental prowess to recognize and react. She had seen dreams too clear and vivid to be dreams in her sleep. The Memories.

Of being a different person, in a different world. The life of the woman known as Janette Kennedy had been flashing through her young mind for as long as she could remember. She would live weeks as Janette in her dreams every night.

For every year she lived as Nessie, she lived 10 as Jane.

In her first year, she dreamed of a decade of childhood. Playmates and toys, parents and playgrounds. Magical… things that her young brain didn’t have words to describe until her grandmother taught her the meaning of “Magical” in a fairy tale when she was 5. Carriages without horses, fancy squares that could capture any moment, and and huge windows that could play them back. big dark disks that could sing better songs than the royal bard. She’d know. He played for her and her mother quite often.

In her second year, she dreamed of a decade of education. Of doodling in classes and ignoring teachers. Of stressful exam nights and the bitter taste of failure. Of teenage romance and ignored crushes. Of many many nights out drinking and the price for alcohol paid in grades instead of grands. Of dropping out, to take her doodles and make them her career. To become an artist. Of her parents protest. Of the night Janette Kennedy ran away from home. Singular event.

In her third year, she dreamed of a decade of art and desperation. Of trying to become better at her passion while ensuring she had enough to pay the rent. Pay the rent and not starve. Of doing her best to produce something iconic. Something she’d be remembered for. Something she’d be famous for. Of starving not just for food but for fortune. And of falling in love. Of marrying a young car mechanic that had helped fix her rental Honda Civic when she was worried she’d have to pay the full price for it. Of having a child of her own.

In her fourth year, she dreamed of a decade of success. Of finally finding the breakout hit she always dreamed of. Of drawing an album cover for a rather obscure band, and witnessing that music become an instant classic. Of finding a surge in popularity, a surge in income. Of buying her own house. Of buying her own car. Of finally reuniting with her parents properly, instead of just calling them whenever she felt lost. Of returning home a proud woman. Of, against all odds, having a second child.

In her fifth year, she dreamed of a decade of retirement. Of the pain of losing her parents, and the joy of having grandchildren of her own. Of spending her days in her house with her husband, having all the time in the world for all the things she’d always wanted to do. Of finally learning to cook a good meal, only so she could impress her bratty grandkids. Of living life in the slow lane, for once. Of growing a garden. Of stopping to smell the roses, literally and figuratively.

In her sixth year, or rather, on her sixth birthday, she dreamed of death. Of a painful, sudden end. A gas stove explosion, while cooking for her 2nd grandson. She woke up, panicked. Did he survive? Was her daughter okay? Her husband?

Her,

Her?

And so “Nessie” Javelin realized she was indeed not Janette Kennedy. And she burst out crying and ran to her fathers room with snot running down her nose and told him she felt lost and not herself and uncertain and sad and she just wanted to forget.

Her father, assuming she had experienced her first real nightmare and was dealing with anxiety for the first time, took a swig of his beer and told her so:

“You have your whole life ahead of you, darling. You don’t need to worry!”

And so 6 year old “Nessie” Javelin ran away from home. By the incredible fortune of several connecting coincidences, none of the guards or staff noticed her frantic actions. She bolted from room to room to grab food and blankets and a small dagger and a quill and ink and paper. She didn’t know why those items were needed, but she needed them. She didn’t know she was replicating Janes escape from her own parental home perfectly. She hadn’t quite yet figured out that holding that quill gave her peace of mind in a way she’d never felt before.

And so she bolted out of the backdoor in the kitchen, holding a little rugsack with all that was needed in her hands and running to reach a destination that was unknown. So focused she was on the pure physical act of running that she didn’t even notice when the road curved in front of her and she ran straight into the woods. So focused she was, that she didn’t notice the howling of the wolves.

Being surrounded by a pack snapped her out of her daze.

Their teeth, she remembered their teeth quite clearly. Vividly. Sharp sharp sharp sharp sharp. Her father had told her many times not to play with sharp things. he had shown her a scar on his elbow from a great battleaxe, and said “With your size, a butter knife might as well be a bloody battleaxe!”

She had taken offence, then. In her own childish pouting way. She would do anything to have him with her now. Him and his battleaxe. The reality was slowly settling in, she was going to be bitten and mauled to death by these wolves with strong jaws and sharp teeth. Having had an emotional roller coaster already, she was speeding through the stages of panic and denial. Slowly and surely settling into the numbness. Her eyes glazing over, her grip on the rugsack becoming sluggish. The rugsack. That held the quill. That she could never draw with if she got mauled to death by wolves in the woods.

And at that moment, as the consciousness(?memories?[soul?]) of Kanessa “Nessie” Javelin gave out to the wonderful bliss of acceptance, Janette “Jane” Kennedy took over with a vengeance. A fury, a sudden spiraling inferno of will. Will to run, to survive, to live.

Her(her?) brain kicked into high gear, using processing power her young body shouldn’t have had. She noticed a weakness, a crack in the encirclement. An old, massive grey wolf with a limp leg. She threw the food in her rugsack at a younger wolf near him, and with a running start, threw the rugsack itself at the old wolf. It was filled with nothing but paper and blankets, but it made for a good enough distraction. Her running didn’t stop. She ran past the two wolves, hearing the rest of the pack turn and follow. She ran with fury in her veins and no thoughts on her mind except to survive. She ran, knowing full well that they would catch up eventually. She ran.

Until she reached a cabin, old and made of sturdy wood. If you asked her, she would say she ran for hours before she reached it. But it had barely been 2 minutes. And when she got there, in a body too young to be running a fucking marathon with a pack of hungry canines on her tail, she saw an old man sitting on a rocking chair. Polishing a gun.

She ran for him, she didn’t get to choose whether to put her faith in him or not, she didn’t have such luxuries. She simply ran for him and screamed and shouted something unintelligible that could potentially be translated to “WOLVES!” if a team of linguists were to put their minds to it. But he didn’t need to hear her shouting. He knew. He smelled them, he heard them, he sensed them in his very bones. He was a hunter, you see, it was his job to know where the wolves are. And so he took his rifle and his hatchet and got up from his creaky chair onto his creaky bones.

Aged and weary though he may have been, he was a hunter still. And his first shot rang true.

It sang as it sailed through the air, a one note song of death. And it hit the leader of the pack in the chest. The wolf sputtered and tripped over its legs, and the momentum of the pack was killed by one bullet. They all stopped, as the girl ran to hide behind the hunters back. They seemed nervous, scared. They knew the terror of hunting rifles. Of technology that defied the law of the jungle so brazenly. There was no contest of the strongest, just a pull of the trigger. Who could pull it first?

Well, who knows. But certainly not a bloody wolf.

And so the pack remained frozen and uncoordinated. Some of the wolves edged back, some forward. Eyes jittered between the hunter, who could kill them in seconds, and the little girl who could feed them for days. The tension in the was air thick and palpable, and the growlings were deafening.

If it had continued as such, it would have been an easy victory for humanity and technology. He still had 4 bullets in the clip. he would have been arrested for using a military issue rifle for hunting if the lords men found out, but as he was currently standing between a pack of hungry canines and that very lords daughter, he doubted they’d mind. And everything would have gone exactly as he had planned if not for one grumpy old mutt.

The huge, limp grey wolf was mad. And so he charged at the hunter. And by some lucky instinct the younger wolf next to him, who was also quite angry, did the same moments after. The hunter put a bullet clean in between the old mutts eyes, but before he had time to bolt in the next, the younger one was on him. Biting at his arm, scratching at his rifle. However, he wasn’t to be felled so easily. He took his hatchet with his other hand and split its skull in half. But the wolf wasn’t to be felled so easily either. Well, it was dead already, but its jaws were locked tight.

And the poor old hunter simply didn’t have time to get them off, nor could he use his rifle with one arm.

He managed to slice and slash two more wolves to death before they got him.

And the thing about starving wolves is, well, they have no patience. Once they realized all perceivable threats were gone, they started to feast. Tearing him apart limb by limb. Eating every organ, every scrap of meat, every bit of fat. Biting onto every bone, and shaking them free from the rest of the carcass. Making his screams slowly fade away.

She barely had the presence of mine to get inside and lock the doors, before she was struck frozen at the sight of the feast. At the sight of the man that saved her life being devoured whole by a horde of hungry teeth. Those strong jaws could be easily upon her instead, if she ran a little slower. And when her brain started to think about ifs and buts, she realized a single fact with startling accuracy.

If she hadn’t ran away from home, he wouldn’t be dead.

She killed him.

She.

Killed.

Him.

Her mind melted. Turned into a cold slurry of liquid darkness. The consciousness(?memories?[soul?{persona!}]) of Janette “Jane” Kennedy melting alongside it. Joining that of Kanessa “Nessie” Javelin in staring at the abyss. Shivering. Ignoring. Ignoring the growlings and the cold and the guilt and the guilt.

She sat there, broken like a porcelain pot. Her mind a jittery mess of persona. Her body a shivery mess of terror. Her eyes a teary mess of guilt. Rocking back and forth, in a motion her instincts told her would soothe. The way her mother would have rocked her in her little baby bed. Soothe. Soothe. Rocking back and forth on a creaky floorboard and thinking of old nursery rhymes and fairy tales to lock her mind away from acknowledging what had just happened. But that could only last so long.

She couldn’t keep herself sane.

She would sit there, just like that, until the morning when her father and his men finally found her.

And when she looked at her fathers eyes, tense and worried and nearly crying, she realized she didn’t know who she was anymore. She realized she didn’t care. She realized none of that mattered, because she had three lives on her shoulders now. Her, Her, and the man that gave his life to save them. She had to live for three.

So she decided not to be Jane, decided not to be Nessie. She decided to live as someone that brightens the day of others. That gives them second chances. She decided she would sacrifice everything to pay back her debt. And she didn’t care who she was paying instead of him.

She decided to live as the hero, because she was tired of being the damsel in a story without one.

And so, held in her fathers arm as he shouted worried questions, she smiled and asked of him to call her Janessa.

Janessa Javelin would run away from home many times after that night, but for very different reasons.

She would take the entire cookery staff and make them work for their pay in soup kitchens at 8 years old, when the population suffered droughts as nobles enjoyed lavish meals. She would take every doctor or healer under her fathers employ and rush to nearby villages at 12 years old, when the Silver Plague was plucking lives like petals. She would convince her father to let her build carehouses at 15, when homelessness was running rampart as a side effect of the War.

She would become a local saintess, to her people. She would spend each and every moment selflessly thinking of others because that was the only thing that made the burning in her chest stop.

She would shiver every time she saw the canines in someones smile.

But she tried not to worry about petty, selfish things like that. She had her whole life ahead of her, after all, she didn’t need to worry.