There was nothing nice or fair about the circumstances of her upbringing, and there certainly wasn't a great deal of options when one was born into abject poverty, except for the nagging thought that perhaps it was easier to simply surrender, to lie down for a little while. Vida imagined it was easy enough to do, she had certainly seen it happen enough times to recognize the apparent peace in their eyes in the exact moment they decided to welcome that dreamless sleep. It seemed all very simple - the only thing holding her back was a healthy balance of fear and arrogance, it was what always stopped her when even Vida's own body rebelled against the choice.

As with a great deal of things in life, there was always a coping mechanism. Even when the vultures circled.

She may have been vain in thinking that her fate was something more than succumbing to the elements or malnutrition (from her perspective!), but it was that vanity which she clung to in the darkest days, helping harden her resolve against whatever life threw her way. She found it was easier to cope with the depressing reality by inventing a sense of purpose originally denied to her; denying her own autonomy by contextualizing her struggles as something pre-arranged by fate; denying even death against all other odds.

Vida found her own fuel this way, stoking the flame of her determination with nothing else but an aggrandized sense of self-importance.

The streets belonged to her, they answered to her.

Vida's tale began in Dornoch; since then she spent every waking moment to guarantee that it would not end there. Why should she? She was never given the opportunity to call it home, it was always a fleeting concept that she was never able to hold on to for very long. Her parents were no different, only ever figurative; an abstraction where the closest people she may attribute the title to were the caretakers of the orphanages or boarding houses she often frequented in childhood.

Unfortunately these caretakers were rarely the role models one expected from their parents, it was often enough the contrary; for they seemingly did their best to act as yet another tool to be wielded by an unjust world. Vida knew of a few whom she favored with gentler depictions, but rarely did it outweigh the memories she had of others who enforced their arbitrary rules through punishment.

Why should she ever call this home, when it was nothing but a painful memory?

Vida hadn't dared to dream of a better life in her childhood, for the moment she could talk; she could also watch, and listen, and see that there was... absolutely nobody watching out for her, nobody to right the injustices committed by a world she came to despise, nobody to balance any cosmic scales. There would be no trial in this life for all the wrongs she had suffered, since the only judges fit to render any such judgement were human, with all of a human's flaws and imperfections.

Rather than submit, she found her own ways to survive; in ways she might make her own rules, design her own fate.

Therefore she decided to answer this quandary in the only way she could think of, the only way her personality allowed her.

There was no crime too savage nor victim too innocent to the childhood delinquents she found herself associating with as a teenager with... less than ideal job prospects. It was also around this point as well when Vida invented her little ladder, she saw how the rungs were climbed by the poor and the rich alike; for how were her actions so different from the merchants and the lords who held similar disregard for those who dared get in their way?

'This is their world' she'd tell the pack of positively feral teenagers huddled around a fire, 'is it not fair to play by their rules?'.

How the years flew by, months and days became a blur of pages in a book stained with shameful things.

This was a book she rarely opened, to read her story was to remember all the years between then and now.

… And it was something she had no desire to do, she had even less desire to share it with others as those close to her would come to discover at some point. As the years went, she'd only grow more certain of this; further cementing her resolve to weave an impenetrable veil over those innermost memories, to become someone unrecognized by her past. Her thoughts were her own.

Eventually, Vida developed from the socially maladjusted young lady of her youth to an equally maladjusted killer, one who often resorted to banditry on the outskirts of Dornoch. These were the years of her life she had taken less pride in, though it was easy enough at the time to get caught up in the moment.

She found herself fitting in effortlessly, finding immediate camaraderie with those she rode with. Most of these bandits and thieves were familiar faces from the years she spent growing up in Dornoch, rubbing shoulders with the dregs of polite society. Wanting to learn from them. Wanting to be taught by the wisest about how a child was to survive on luck and ability alone.

Their wisdom was evident: she'd proven it time and time again by surviving, by seeing another day, by relishing how her heart still pumped beneath her breast. How she proved it to herself whenever the rush of blood deafened her ears and blackened her sight. She was addicted to the adrenaline, the way she was assured beyond a doubt that her life was still her own.

There was even a certain poignancy to the feeling; she found a strange sort of beauty to the struggle, in the way that a rose's thorns were always prepared to draw blood, even as wilted as she felt.

Understandably the banditry became as dangerous as it was dull and the novelty of living under open skies had worn off, she knew this chapter in her life was ending. It was time to move onto the next one.

And if one were to be as frank as possible - there was more than enough coin to be made in legitimate mercenary work.