The girl's eyes flickered open. She found herself looking at wood paneling on the ceiling. Puzzled, she propped herself up on her elbows and looked around. The room was sparsely furnished, and warm afternoon light was spilling into the room between dark green curtains. She looked down. Someone had changed her clothes and lain her on this couch, and had covered her with a blanket as well. She groaned and lay back down. Her head was pounding.
How had she gotten here? She remembered fighting the three thieves in the alley. She had defeated one, then ambushed the other two…
Then she remembered. The magic! She had used magic to defeat the last man, and it had likely saved her life. With a smile she recalled the awesome sense of power she had felt just wielding it, but she also remembered it being extremely exhausting. Then with a start, she remembered the wound she had sustained during the fight. She threw off the blanket and lifted up the thigh length nightgown to look at her leg. To her surprise, it was neatly bound with clean white bandages.
She was puzzled. All she remembered after the fight was running through the deserted streets. She had gotten dizzy and completely exhausted all at once, and had stumbled and fallen. And after that, nothing.
She lay in silence for a few more minutes, trying to remember what had happened, when someone came into the room. It was a middle aged woman, slighter than even her, with straight shoulder length, gray-streaked hair. She was carrying a tray holding with what appeared to be a teapot and two cups.
"Ah, you're finally awake," She said. "I knew you'd pull through. The wound was serious, but you are young, and strong."
The girl bolted upright again, eyeing her warily. "Who are you? And where am I?"
She raised an eyebrow. "I? I am a simple woman, who happened to be in the right place at the right time." She nodded at the girl's wounded leg. "You're welcome, by the way." She said.
She set the tray down on a small table near the couch. "Found you lying in the street outside my house, bleeding and near death. So, I brought you in and patched you up. As for where you are, well, you're in Ionia, of course."
"Ionia? The capital?" the girl inquired.
The woman cocked an eyebrow. "Yes, the capital. We're on the fringes of the city, but it's Ionia all the same. How could you not know where you were? You must've hit your head pretty hard when you fell."
The girl's mind raced. The capital! How could she have wandered into it without knowing? Then again, it had been pretty dark when she'd arrived.
She swung her legs off the couch, and immediately winced as her headache intensified.
"Careful," the woman warned, pouring a cup of tea. "You've lost a lot of blood."
"Why help me?" The girl asked.
The woman looked up from the teapot. "It is not my way to refuse help to one who needs it. Sadly, far too many care for only themselves these days."
The girl was silent for a moment. "And you're not going to ask?"
"Ask what?"
"About the ears. And the tails. Don't tell me you hadn't noticed them."
The older woman shrugged. "I have lived a long time," She said casually. "And I have seen many strange things. You, my dear, are far from the strangest."
That was a first. She cocked her head in curiosity as she handed her a cup of the steaming drink. "Most people run screaming when they see me. That, or try to kill me."
The woman smiled wistfully. "Many fear what they do not understand. I don't see any reason to be afraid of you. So far, at least."
The girl nodded and looked back down at her bandaged thigh, and then at her arm. It had not been as serious, but it still ached dully as well. "I won't ask you how those happened," The woman said sternly. "In times like these, many find that it is better to ask fewer questions of strangers. But I know a sword wound when I see one, and I would advise you to be more careful in the future, if you value your life."
The girl nodded again, taking a sip of the tea. "It's excellent work. Thank you."
"My daughter, whose clothes you're wearing now, was quite the healer. She taught me a thing or two. I'm hardly an expert, but I managed to bandage you alright."
"Was?"
The woman smiled wistfully. "Yes, my dear Anna. She left home to help the war effort against Noxus. She was killed, a little over four years ago. Her father , my husband, died not long after."
"I'm sorry," The girl replied numbly. She didn't know exactly how to respond. For her, death was a natural part of things. If her daughter had been killed, it meant that she was simply not strong enough to survive. But she said nothing more.
The old woman sighed. "Yes, but they died bravely, for their city state, Ionia."
The girl was puzzled again. Died for Ionia? She found that to be an idiotic notion. Animals defended their territory, yes, but very few died defending it. They always moved on when they were outmatched.
The woman stood abruptly and walked over to a dusty old wardrobe that stood against the wall. She removed the girl's clothing from inside it, no longer dirty and bloodstained. On top, the ornate dagger sat gleaming.
"Here," she said, handing them to the girl. "I washed them, and stitched the cut in the sleeve."
The girl set the neatly folded pile of clothes on her lap.
"Thank you. I made them myself, and I've become attached."
"You made these?" The woman asked, pointing to the stack of folded clothes.
"Yes. It wasn't difficult." She said with a shrug. "It was my first attempt at stitching anything actually. I'm a fast learner." And it was true. She had learned to walk on two legs in only two short hours, and mastered the language of humans in the span of a few weeks.
She smiled. "Not bad. But they could use some work. I could help you with that."
The girl, for the first time in a long time, smiled back. She liked this kind woman, and felt an uncharacteristic sense of pity for the loss of her family. But she couldn't stay. "Thank you, but I have to leave now." She set the teacup on the table and stood up, pain shooting up her leg and arm. Her head pounded ceaselessly.
The woman simply watched and tried to hide a smile as she stumbled towards the door.
"You remind me so much of my daughter," the girl heard the woman say over her shoulder. "So stubborn and so independent."
The girl groaned as she tripped and landed painfully on her wounded leg.
"You aren't going to get far on that leg," the woman called with a small laugh. "Not unless you plan to crawl your way out of town."
From her place on the floor, the girl sighed explosively.
"You're welcome to stay here, you know." The older woman invited, smile broadening. "In fact, I'm going to have to insist. As funny as it might be to watch you try and walk, I can't have you hurting yourself again."
The girl scowled as she made her way back to the couch, the woman laughing lightly.
"What can I call you?" the woman asked.
The girl hesitated. What should she say? "I…" She stammered. The woman was looking at her expectantly. This woman had gone out of her way to save the life of a stranger. She deserved the truth. "I don't have one," She said at last.
The woman had a look of mild surprise, but it passed quickly, to be replaced by another warm smile. "Then you are in a unique position," She said, intrigue shining in her eyes. "Not many get the chance to choose their own names. You have the unique opportunity to choose something that has meaning to you."
The girl considered her words, but nothing came to mind.
"You don't need to choose now," the woman said, laughing again. "You have your entire life to choose one, if you need it. When you die, your name will live after you."
"Like your daughter." The girl said before she could stop herself.
But the woman was not offended, and only regained that wistful expression that she had worn when she first mentioned her daughter.
"Yes, like my dear Anna, and Jarod, my husband."
The girl leaned back into the couch, suddenly very tired. She blinked quickly, trying to fight it. It was a losing battle. "Good names," She said with effort. "And what . . . do they call you?"
The woman smiled thinly. "I am Ahri."
Ahri, that has a ring to it, the girl thought as she drifted off to sleep.
The next few weeks passed in a blur, but the girl would remember them fondly. As the days drew on, the woman called Ahri and the fox girl became close, and for the first time in her life, she wasn't forced to skulk around back alleys, homeless and hungry.
She talked often to the Ahri, and learned many things from her. Much to the girl's interest, the woman was able to expand her knowledge of Ionians. Once, the war came up.
"I did not know Ionia was at war," the girl had said.
Ahri had raised an eyebrow. "Really? How could you not? Those brutes have been ravaging the countryside for months."
"Why?"
"Why do you think? To steal our land of course!"
"Why would they want it?"
Ahri had paused, thinking. "Why does any mad tyrant desire anything? Because he knows he can have it."
"Perhaps they have no other choice," The girl said, recalling the murders she had committed for the sake of obtaining humanity. "Perhaps they desperately need the land for something."
Ahri almost laughed. "They don't 'need' it for anything, except perhaps the hard-won gold of the citizens. You are smart, girl, I can tell, but naïve."
"You don't think very highly of Noxus." the girl remarked.
"I lived there for ten years." She said with a wistful smile. "And they don't change."
And then one day, Ahri showed the young girl her garden.
"It's my own little spot of beauty in this ramshackle old town," She said as the girl gazed out at the tidy rows of colorful flowers. She bent near a row of plants with bright white petals.
"Daisies," Ahri said from behind her. "I always thought they were so plain, but Anna loved them so."
The girl picked one and smelled it, as she had seen humans do sometimes. It was nice.
The fox girl picked several of the pure white flowers. "If she liked them so much, maybe we should take some to her." She said brightly.
Ahri smiled in agreement.
Ahri knelt and set a bouquet of the white daisies on her daughter's grave, right next to her father's.
The fox girl looked on, at a loss for words. She hadn't known them, and she didn't know what words would be appropriate. So instead, she left the woman and left to explore the graveyard on her own.
She walked in silence for a long time. The city-state was very old and very large, and so of course the cemetery was quite large and sprawling to match. She wandered quite a distance from Ahri when she paused to watch the clouds drift lazily across the pure blue sky. Something about this place called upon memories she'd rather forget; memories of her past victims. They flooded her mind then, accompanied by that strange feeling of regret.
She stopped walking. A thought struck her. They hadn't deserved it, had they? Surely the thieves and those mercenaries had. They had tried to kill her, right?
And what of the men she had lured away to die? Did they deserve death?
The girl shook her head. Whether they deserved to die or not was irrelevant. The ultimate goal was humanity, and nothing, no one, would stand in the way. She'd kill as many people as it took to get there. She was tired of people not accepting her because she was different. If a few humans had to die for her to realize the dream of walking down a human street without receiving looks of terror or hatred, then so be it.
A voice whispered in the back of her mind.
You will never be human.
You kill and deceive. You will never walk among them.
The girl screwed her eyes shut and put her hands to her temples. It wasn't true! Once she was fully human, she wouldn't have to kill any more, damn it!
Why wouldn't this feeling leave her? And what the hell was it?
It wasn't fair! Why had that mage cursed her so? If she was still a fox, she wouldn't have to be dealing with this! And at least as a fox, she wasn't an outcast!
She let out a frustrated sob, falling to her knees in the soft grass.
Her thoughts drifted to the woman called Ahri. She hadn't looked at her with fear or hatred. She had healed her and sheltered her, and though the girl was now able to walk, she was reluctant to leave the woman. She liked her kindness and warm demeanor. She hadn't really known her own mother, but she thought that having one must be something like this.
She also noticed for the first time that she was the first human she had spent more than ten minutes with that hadn't ended up skewered on the end of her blade. She could kill her, of course. It would be easy. Sneak up on her, end it with one blow. She'd never even see it coming. And though she knew it was possible, and would bring her that much closer to her goal, she couldn't bring herself to do it. And yet, would not some of the men she had slaughtered sheltered her the same way Ahri had? She had seen the kindness and selflessness humans were capable of. It was one of the reasons she had wanted to be a part of their world in the first place.
And wasn't what she was doing now, killing innocent men, exactly contradictory to that?
She screamed aloud in deepening frustration. It echoed through the tops of the tall trees, lightly rustling in the breeze.