Hello, everyone! This is an all-new perspective of my old (very old) ROTG fanfic, Rise of the Dark Guardian, which you can read here: s/9173411/1/Rise-of-the-Dark-Guardian

Thank you for reading!

2000 YEARS AGO
ANCIENT GREECE

I ran through the streets, dodging passerby and peddlers who shouted and shook their fists at me as I vaulted over their carts in my worn down sandals.
A yell of anger rang out from somewhere behind me.
"Stop, thief! You will not get away with stealing from the Caius family!"
I took a chance to look over my shoulder as I continued to run.
"Oh, really?" I taunted. "I just did!"
It was the Caius family guards again, no doubt. They were strong and well skilled with a blade, but not as fast as I was.
This was to my great advantage. If I got caught, it would not end well for anyone, and even more so for me.
And with that, I sprinted as swiftly as I could around a grand villa and finally lost the guards who had been in pursuit.
"Dimwits," I announced cheerfully.

I proceeded to stride back down between the villas, grinning down at the my prize, although it wasn't as much as I had hoped for.
A full loaf of fine bread was a well-earned achievement, however, 'borrowed' or not.
I stopped when I saw the elderly man resting beside the otherwise busy streets. He had wrinkled hands and face, a creased and stained chiton and looked up at me feebly as I passed.
"Here." I ripped off a large chunk of the bread and offered it to him.
He took it, and smiled gratefully up at me.
"My thanks."
"You are welcome." I replied, and bowed my head in respect to my elder.

I did not remember the last time an elder was courteous to me. At the very least, I had had no such family to remember in the first place.

I was walking down another long, winding path on the streets, until I saw a well-worn building with drapes covering the gaping hole in the roof.
I smiled, but it was bitterly.
"Now, time to go home."

MORE THAN 2000 YEARS LATER

"Stop, thief! You will not get away with stealing from my Workshop!"

A huge man with a bushy white beard, mustache and hair, waved his fist as the small figure who was already flying away laughed, saluted with two fingers, and disappeared into the distance.
"I just did!" were its last gloating words before it vanished.

Nicholas St. North, AKA Santa Claus, sighed and shook his head.
"She is much trouble," he muttered to himself, before getting back to work.

In a satchel slung over one shoulder, the girl took out her prize as soon as the tall, majestic towers of the Workshop were far out of sight.
She gave a satisfied chuckle as she pulled out not one, but TWO large snowglobes.
She spun one around experimentally in her hand, examining the beautiful multicoloured light that danced around inside it.
A fine and quite lovely prize she had taken.

Oh, and she also had some sort of white gem that had been hidden under the floor.
Although it was an extremely large gem, almost at the height of her shoulders, it was surprisingly light, and her satchel had interesting properties. It could easily hold very, very large and normally heavier-than-average objects that she had. Plus, she just couldn't resist taking it. It was so mysterious and interesting that she just had to...er...'borrow' it for a while.

Finding it had actually been no easy matter. She had just been tiptoeing across the polished floor when a sort of trigger had been activated, and all of a sudden this glowing golden pedestal with the gem on it rose out of the ground.
It was almost as if she had been drawn to it.
Strange. Very strange. But, oh, well. She was totally fine with strange. In fact, she embraced it.

But no time for that thinking now. Day was coming, and she had to hide before it got there. She could see the tall, dark pine trees rapidly getting closer and closer in the distance. With a final burst of speed, she kicked her legs back and swooped down just above the forest clearing for her landing.
The girl landed softly in the grove of pine trees, sighing softly as she walked through the trees, the first daylight creeping into the sky.

She didn't really have an official home, not really, but the little place she had had its comforts. In no time, she was approaching the small, worn wooden cottage with the rusted hinges on its door. It was really tiny for a house, more like a hut in actuality. It had a triangular roof with roughly chopped wood, and a small stone chimney at the top, sort of like a witch's lair. Or so she thought. The point was, the place had been abandoned for at least a century. No one came here but her.

She got to the entrance and pushed the door open. It made a loud creaking noise as she entered the building.
There was only one room: with a empty bed shoved against the wall, and some 'souvenirs' she had gathered over the centuries.

A very sharp, jagged, intricately jeweled knife hanging off the wall (she had forgotten where she had taken it from, although it always looked rather sinister in her opinion), a colorful painting from the Tooth Palace (filled with laughing children, fairies, and the like), a large hourglass from the The Island of the Sleepy Sands (mere accessory, really), and a few other knicknacks and whatevers, and whatsits she had previously acquired.

She pulled the huge crystalline gem out of her satchel and set it down gently on an empty space on the floor.
"Ok, now I just have to make sure I do NOT knock that over later."
She continued to take out the items from that day's "work" until the magic bag was completely empty.
When she was finished, she sighed loudly and flopped down onto the bed, ignoring the fact that it had only one blanket and was pretty much only a frame, which creaked and groaned loudly under her weight.

"Sweet dreams," she muttered, as she closed her eyes.
It was sarcastic of course. Her dreams were always strange, slightly frightening, and made little to no sense. They were hardly ever in the category of what she would call "sweet".

They were often about flashes of her past, or what she believed to be her past.
A troop of guards in crimson and bronze chasing after her, a bird with gold feathers, an emerald snake, a rabbit with silver fur, a desolate, crumbling building.
The dreams usually ended with her waking up in a cold sweat and feeling an echoing sort of pain in the back of her head.
Whatever they were trying to symbolize, the facts that she already knew about her past life were barely connected to them whatsoever.
Or at least, she thought so.

She appeared to be a 13 or 14 year old girl. She had lived a long, long time ago, almost 2000 years ago, in Greece. She had a hobby of stealing things from people and sometimes giving them to the poor. Sometimes. Most of the time what would happen is that she would drop items on doorsteps and whatnot. It's not like the humans could actually see her or anything.

The girl let out a deep breath and curled up, intent on taking a LONG nap.
After all, there wasn't much use in flying around during the day. Especially because of who she was.
Jada Shade, the Girl Who Wanders, legendary Shadow-Thief.
A lonely Spirit who had nothing to do except wander the world and obtain whatever mysterious or fanciful object she saw at the time.

A weak Spirit who occasionally would visit her other Spirit companions, but on the whole was not believed in.
Most of the children could not see her.

And that is where our story begins...