Work Text:
Prologue
Is it bad that she doesn’t remember how old she is? Probably, by human standards. She has no memory of being born or having a mother or a father or siblings. There are few like her. Few guardians. Few avengers. The only thing she remembers is the soft grass and trees cradling her as an infant. She remembers a mother wolf keeping her warm as a child, until the leaves and grasses and flowers wove themselves together on her behalf and clothed her. She doesn’t remember her beginning. She doesn’t bother with dwelling on thoughts of her end.
Everything must die. Eventually. What happens after that, she does not know, nor does she fear it. She fights only for the balance of life. She fights for nature in all things. She takes no side. She brings life and also death. Things were peaceful for her for millennia until the humans started rising. Their deaths were no bother of hers. She was not in charge of them. She cared only for her precious animals and plants and elements and the things that keep the balance on earth.
But the humans, precious and unique as each life may be, did not know their own strength. They destroyed and plundered the four corners and overpopulated and decided to use their mechanical and technological advances to upset the balance and tear down precious forests and take away animals’ homes and murder murder murder everything. And they did it without remorse. Just because they could not see life in everything did not mean there wasn’t. There is of course the need to kill to for sustenance among other things, but they did not kill for survival. They had everything they needed, but still chose to live extravagantly and kill more than was needed and the balance of life is uneven. In her eyes, they deserved nothing short of death.
Her true name is Zoë, for she is life. And she will protect nature with her very essence. If it takes everything she has. What she did not expect, was to be dragged into a battle that was not hers. And least of all, she did not expect to fall in love and lose the very essence of herself.