Prophesied
Her birth had been unremarkable. No signs in the heavens, no omens, no witches screeching prophecy. History would later embellish her coming into the world with all manner of portents and revise ancient texts to include details that made her appearance an event foretold. It was quite a thing to have that kind of power, and in that circumstance, it helped, rather than harmed, the fabric of the future, for what else could explain a creature such as she? No science existed then or now to provide a theory, and the humanities possessed no prior studies from which to extrapolate even the simplest of philosophical analysis. No, she had been unique among humans, and in a time when the concept of the alien, the outsider, was confined to invading hordes from the East and the occasional caravan up from the deep South, it made far more sense to derive her origin from the divine, rather than the otherworldly.
It was then ironic that a great host of opposing forces had arrayed themselves against her coming, prepared for generations by secret cults who possessed crumbling scrolls that contained true prophecies, ones penned in ichor and blood upon cured skins by the hands of immortal beings, in a separate reality from the base mortal revisions of kings. Those shadowy cabals of worshippers had long known of her impending arrival and had moved mountains to prevent it. But the age and countless reinterpretations of the scrolls had profaned their meaning, making precise augury impossible. Thus had she been shielded from evil machinations long enough to take her first breaths.
The event of her birth had happened in a regular hospital, on a Wednesday morning just as the sun was rising, to an ordinary couple whose histories are now lost to the vagaries of time and the rewrites of history. She weighed seven and a half pounds, had brown eyes and a very fine floss of auburn hair, and she did not scream when the doctors cleared her throat. As no one knew who she would become, the hospital released her to go home with her parents, where she then led a normal childhood. The agents who sought her did not even locate the hospital until she was in her twenties, and by then she had become far too strong for them to assassinate her in her sleep. That they confirmed her birth at all renewed their order, and they came once more to prominence in the political fields. It only took them a decade to re-secure their hold on parliament, something that had relaxed over the centuries, as there had been little reason to directly influence the populace. Maintaining control over the bureaucracy of nations was expensive, both in material assets and in the dilution of their ideology, so it was an endeavor pursued only in times of great need.
Her birth and subsequent growth into a young adult classified her termination as an overwhelmingly great need.
First draft: 150412
Published: 231103