Fatale, current appearance.
I remember waking up in the mornings, smelling fresh pancakes that my father was cooking. He was a wonderful cook, always knew what he was doing. Whenever I tried to cook pancakes, there were always eggshells in them, and no one wanted to eat them. "Don't worry, Fatale," my father would tell me. "You'll get it right someday."
Fatale's father speaking to young Fatale.
My mother was never home. Why? Because she was running her school, an acadamy for aspiring assassins. Of course, rarely did a little girl or boy walk inside and say honestly that they willingly enrolled to become an assassin. Most of the time, the parents brought their children in and forced them into it, often times having the same reason my mother had for me and my younger sister: They didn't want their child to be weak.
Fatale's mother, still known for her unbelievable beauty.
By the time I was five, I knew how to properly hold and attack with a sword. I also knew the difference between all kinds of medical herbs, but that was my father's doing, not my mother's. "You'll never know when you'll need that kind of information." Unfortunately, I never did pay attention to him, for my mind was on school, and what mother would think of next. I believe I still have some of my father's old plant books on my bookshelf, untouched since the day he died.
When I turned seven, I was sent back to school after a short summer vacation. I remember my father packing my lunch and kissing me on the forehead, telling me to have a nice day. When I arrived at school, I realized that my father was the only one who really cared about me, for the first thing I heard from my mother's lips was, "From now on, things are going to be tougher around here, Fatale. My policy is, when a child turns seven, if they don't do an assignment efficiently, then they are either killed or expelled, based upon the circumstances."
"What do you mean, Mother?"
"I mean, Fatale, that if I were to give you a project to do, such as write a fourteen page essay, and it is not to be done my the due date, you will be expelled. But if I were to put you in a battle with another girl your age, and you didn't win that fight, then you'd be killed by your classmate."
I remember my eyes growing wide at this. Was my mother insane? She would really put her daughter's life on the line if it achieved perfection?
My mother knelt down, her eyes at the same level of mine, and she continued: "Fatale, you're my daughter. I love you and your sister very much, and that's why I'm driving you as hard as I do my other students, maybe even harder. If you didn't learn what the world was like as soon as I'm telling you, your mind wouldn't be able to develope properly, and you'd be killed by a top assassin in an instant. But that's not going to happen, because you're going to be the top assassin. The only one. Understood?"
"Yes, Mother."
"Good. Now get to class."
I couldn't bare the thought of my own mother willing to risk my life in order to obtain the perfect assassin. But I had little time to worry about that. My younger sister's seventh birthday was in two years. She would soon have to deal with this dilema, and if I didn't do something about it, she would be just as shocked and terrified as I was.
So, I went home and walked straight up to my sister. "We need to talk, Beau."
"Pardon?" She looked up at me from her book, which was beyond that of a high schooler's level. As I tell you this story, I am just now recalling exactly how intelligent she was, even when she was only five years of age.
"I said, we need to talk. Meet me in the forest. Sneak out of your room tonight. You know the way."
And I left it at that.
Beau, Fatale's little sister, at age five.
Beau failed to forget what I had requested of her. She met me at the clearing of the forest after bedtime. I could hear her small feet plodding against the leaf-covered ground. No matter what season it was, where I lived, everything was dead.
I led my sister into the forest and handed her some things. A few loaves of bread, some cheese, spare clothes, water and two books to read. "Run, and don't come back," I ordered her. "Run until your legs get weak, and even then, walk. Don't give up. I want you as far away from this place as possible."
Beau's big, gray eyes looked up at me, but she didn't question me. She nodded and took the supplies. "Won't Mother be upset that I had run away?"
"Very," I replied honestly. In fact, I had just started to realize the concequences of doing this. "But that doesn't matter right now. Just run, and get away from here." I embraced my sister for a good five minutes before whispering into her soft hair, "I love you. You know this, right?"
"Of course," she whispered back, and before I knew it, her shadow had disappeared behind the thick layer of trees.
