The first person Notte ever turned into a Night Child, albeit by accident.
Her name is unknown. When the First War started, she was chosen by lot as a sacrifice by her village to keep them all safe. Why? Because she was unable to bear children.
According to the people she lived with, that made her damned, and that meant no one would mind all that much if she had to die for the greater good.
Notte first encountered her by the lake she’d been sent to give herself to the large, carnivorous creature living in it – a reptilian thing, surviving on the hot-spring warmth and the fresh-water fish constantly flowing into it. She found a different kind of predator.
When he attacked her, she wept – as anyone would, really – and disliking her sorrow, he shared his blood with her. (Hey, blood makes everything happy, right?)
In the process of taking her blood and giving her his, he transformed her.
Finding herself with the power to fight for the first time in her life and fueled by the madness of the newborn Beast, she committed one, horrible act: she attacked the village she’d come from, murdering everyone there.
The regret of it haunted her and solidified the way she hunted from them on: no children, no elderly, and preferably no death at all.
She figured out Notte was damaged early on, but by that point, she’d grown to love him in all his clumsy, weird, silent ways. Her decision to stay with him – as well as her hunting preferences – shaped Notte for the rest of time.
She was a survivor, an intelligent and resourceful woman – and patient, which was important, given Notte’s condition. Unfortunately, the First War caught up with her, and being trapped between two warring factions, she was pierced with too much wood to recover, and she died.
Notte hopes that she waits for him, though he doubts – deep down – that she misses him as much as he misses her. He even fears she might not like him anymore, since he’s quite different after Death’s strange gift.
She is waiting. She’ll like him even better now that he can talk.
He’ll find out someday.
