Guinevere Leander

Shy . Anxious . Sweet

The night Guinevere Metis Leander was born was one of the very few nights Christian and Carrie were not drunk or high. Not that that had helped them make any good decisions that night- they refused to go to the hospital or the local clinic. Despite it being their third child together, they didn’t have the wherewithal to go seek help when her contractions had started. Their daughter was born in their dirty hovel with no heat or running water.

The undersized infant somehow managed to live—probably because her oldest brother had found and cleaned her, as well as clothed her as best he could. There was some generosity in the slums- a wet nurse offered to help feed the undersized girl while some thievery kept her clothed as she grew. Her older brothers doted on her and protected her from the arguments and violence her parents wrought soon after her entrance to the world.

She was a small & sickly baby- no doubt thanks to the alcohol and drugs her mother couldn’t stay away from while pregnant but there were also moments where it was obvious there was something more wrong. Though she had learned to walk and talk like any normal child, as she grew older her ability to move and communicate had diminished slowly. There were days she could not get out of bed and those were the most dangerous. It made her an easy target for the addict parents to lash out at, though her brothers often stepped in to take the abuse for her, it made her crawl even deeper into her shell.

Guin didn’t get to go outside and play with other kids because of her weak days, she didn’t get to go to school, though her brothers would teach her what they could when they came home. Her education and her social skills were stunted as a result. She developed a stutter and became almost a princess locked in a shack instead of a tower. Anyone who knew the household knew of the girl that never left, but no one did anything, there was too much to worry about in their own lives.

Eventually her parents left the shack abandoned to their kids. Then her middle brother took off to learn about the city outside of the slums they lived in, though he would show back up every once in a while, to give her a present or to tell her about the world for a brief visit before telling her to take care of herself and then disappearing. Her oldest brother fell into drugs much like their parents, though he never laid a hand on his sister, he did struggle in taking care of her. Guinevere couldn’t leave her bed anymore, needed help bathing and dressing, it was hard to get her fed between his lack of money or focus and her inability to lift a fork anymore.

It was soon after her 20th birthday that he found her ill in bed. He was so tired and unable to take care of her anymore that he made the decision to carry her to the nearest hospital. He didn’t stay with her, just gave her to the doctors and disappeared into the night as she laid in the hospital bed and slowly died. She did not make it through the night.

Somehow, though, she felt warmth and calm. There was a flicker of light, almost like a candle out of the corner of her vision that announced the deity that visited her. She had always thought it would be blinding and almost painful if gods were to meet humans but somehow this was comforting. When she woke back up to the world she couldn’t remember the words the deity had told her, why he had said she was being given immortality as an angel and she also couldn’t remember the family that raised her, her age, where she lived, nothing important. Nothing but her name, Guinevere Metis Leander.

The hospital mortician found her alive and functioning with more than a little surprise, that she could walk and talk normally had been miraculous given how she had arrived the night before. After many questions, and requests to run tests that she wasn’t quite comfortable they finally let her go. Without a home or a purpose she somehow found a life in the army, learning to read more and defend her new body with swords and daggers. She discovered a small healing ability by accident when helping cover a comrade’s wound in the field, there had been a pulse of warmth and the skin had mended itself. A welcome surprise to the girl whose body couldn’t heal itself originally.

But despite the new skills and abilities, she was still painfully shy and a lingering fear of abandonment seemed to have settled into her blood. Being alone was torture to the small angel. She took to pinching herself until she bled to ground herself in the moment, silver crescents of scars lined her arms and thighs from the repeated abuse she gave them. Even her angelic healing abilities gave up on getting rid of them. Forever marked by her failings, she thought, always showing how weak she actually was despite the training and strength she now possessed.

This was how she started her gifted life.