The trouble with being a hermit—
No.
It would be comforting, to think this was all an accident, unforeseeable, a bolt of lightning snaking between the trees, and it is a comfort she does not deserve.
When she was a child, she didn't understand. About what she is. About what that means.
When she grew up, she chose not to learn.
She chose to be alone, friendless, to go years at a time without seeing another face. Again and again, there would come a chance meeting, a rumour, a suspicious stare, and she would leave, abandon everything she'd built, carry her life on her back and build anew somewhere else, somewhere deeper in the woods. The woods were endlessly accommodating of this strategy.
The rumours were not.
One night they found her. She didn't think she'd left a trail. She didn't think anyone knew she was here. It didn't matter.
She woke up in chains.
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