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"She set my clothes on fire. And my hair," Owle continued, as if she'd never left off. "I found her there, just like I'd described her in the stories: Flare Sithfallin, a fire-wielding demoness with huge, midnight black wings and spiky silver hair. I was just standing there, staring and not believing she was real, when she asked nastily what I was looking at and threw fire at me. So I yelped, mostly just saying 'ow, ow' over and over again but in between there I must have started babbling about the stories and how I didn't think she existed because before I knew it she was leaning over me, appraising me with those crimson eyes of hers.

"'You're Owle...aren't you?' she asked me, and the fire went out. 'Get up, idiot.'

"I told her my name was Owle, and how did she know? She insisted on being half drunk before she explained, but eventually she told me that she'd been making up stories about me, too...ever since six months ago, when I'd woken up on Gaia. She told me she knew I'd been living in the forest all this time, and why didn't I hang around her for a little while? She didn't say it out loud, but I knew she wanted the company as much as I did.

"So, I stuck with her, even when she did crazy things like burning that one town down or dragging us into that Grand Wish tournament. Do you believe it? This tournament was being advertised with its prize as a single wish, for whatever it was you wanted! I didn't really want anything, but Flare did, so I figured I'd help her out...turns out that the whole thing was a set-up by this crazy goddess, though. She just wanted us to fight for her own amusement, but we overcame ourselves and kicked her a** instead...turns out she was possessed by something, and the a**-kicking freed her. Weird, huh?

"Well, we didn't get to make a wish, but that didn't stop Flare from dragging us into the next crazy thing that caught her eye..."

"And then Bob told me the awful truth: the pendants corrupted their bearers, and enhanced the powers of the element they were associated with for everyone around them. I'd already had the earth pendant stolen from me at this point, but I had to get the shadow pendant away from Rand! I found him, sitting on the beach outside the Memorial, as pallid and malnourished as a corpse.

"I told him what Bob had told me, that the pendants would eventually drive their wearers insane, and that he had to get rid of it somehow. But he wouldn't listen to me...

"As the moments wore on, and we shouted at one another, I could feel my telepathic power rising out of my control. The black snakes were writhing inside of me; they wanted the pendant, wanted to feel the power that it gave them. And eventually...I wasn't able to hold them back anymore. Maybe I didn't want to.

"They flew into Rand, raping his mind, forcing his body to seizure and try to rip the pendant off through his throat. Flare saved us both, knocking the two of us out before I could kill him, before his own body could..."

Owle's voice trailed off, and she shook her head, the words too much to say.

"And who should pay a visit the following morning, but Morgan Flare. He knew what I did somehow. He demanded that I come out, that I let him arrest me. ...I went to him willingly.

"Rand wouldn't forgive me, and I felt so awful! Maybe Morgan was right, maybe I was evil, maybe I deserved all of those names he had ever called me, maybe I deserved whatever he would do to me now. He took me, and dragged me away to what was essentially a concentration camp. I worked hard, trying to prove not just to him, but to myself, that I really wasn't evil, that I really could be good, if only he would believe me. ...he never did, and maybe he was right to.

"I betrayed my own friends. Rage, K, even Angelbell and a white mage named Sey I barely knew risked their lives to rescue me from that place. But I wouldn't go. Flare almost died, Angelbell was captured, Rage was injured heavily...but I wouldn't let them take me away from there. One night they would bring me back to the Firebrand, and the next morning I would walk, stubbornly, straight back into Morgan Flare's clutches.

"I don't think...I can ever say I'm sorry enough for that.

"I fell in love with him. He was evil and he hated me, but I fell in love with him anyway. He just kept trying to kill me, though...he couldn't stand how I was, and he hated me even more for how I felt for him. It was disgusting, he said, that I should feel that way about someone who wasn't a mutie. He ended up declaring his love for Sey, I think maybe it was just to keep me away from him...

"It didn't really work, I kept coming back, time and time again, trying to convince him I could be a real person. Nothing I did made him treat me any differently, until one day I found out I could shapeshift into a form that looked completely human.

"In this guise, he treated me well. He even respected me. I pretended not to be Owle; I called myself Laurel, and I even hid from myself the fact that I had been Owle...

"It was Bob Roberts that convinced me to drop the disguise. It was the right thing to do, he said, the honest thing, and I believed him. So I got down on my knees in front of Morgan, admitting everything, and begged his forgiveness. I expected him to try to kill me, like he always did, but he just said 'Go. Just go.' I got up, walked to the gate, and finally I asked 'Will you ever let me come back.' He told me I would know when I was ready...and with that small bit of hope, I left his presence."

Owle took a deep breath, steadying herself.

"I don't know how it happened. And I don't know why. But Laurel was somehow her own person: a repressed part of my personality brought to life. I tried to deny it; I kept yelling at Bob when he implied anything of the sort. I couldn't keep it up, though, when Laurel dragged me inside my own mind to have a chat with me.

"The snakes weren't just monstrous things I had no control over...they were my base desires, the negative emotions I rejected and repressed. Because I kept denying they were a part of me, they had taken on a life of their own, and taken control of my telepathic power. Laurel was just a piece of me I didn't know I had...

"It was her, not me, who understood what had to be done. We needed to acknowledge we were all a part of one another. Me, her, and the snakes. Then, we would merge into one...we would all be changed, but we would all be whole. And that was the way it should be. Bob watched while it happened...the two of us twisted and changed, merging into one another in a creepy dance of light, and then the snakes rushed into our merged form...emerging not black as they had been, but a dim gold flecked with green and red. At long last, we were whole.

"But my troubles had just begun, really. Rage somehow figured out who Bob was, despite the trouble Bob had gone through to disguise his appearance. Since I was the only one who knew, Bob thought I'd told him...convinced I'd betrayed him, Bob threw me out of Washu's and set up an energy field to make sure I stayed out. I took to sleeping in the doorstep at night, just hoping I would catch him to beg his forgiveness for a crime I didn't commit. I was an idiot, and I never got my chance."

"It was a bright and sunny day, and things had finally settled down in the aftermath of the broken city. It seemed like a good time to rest, relax, maybe grill a nice juicy steak in the Firebrand, which is what we'd named the rebuilt Memorial. So you can see why about the last thing we expected was for shade lord Omikron to come walking down the beach, looking for Flare.

"She didn't want to trust him, but he opened his mind to me, proving he had no ill intentions against us. He had broken away from his evil master the Forgotten, and had come to warn us that he could feel the Forgotten's power on the rise again. There were others like him, shade lords and shades that now had wills of their own. Some, most in fact, were still working to serve the Forgotten.

"For a time we tried to fight them, but they always seemed to slip from our grasp. One day, they just sort of vanished entirely, and Omikron, our only possible link to them, had fallen into a coma from which nothing could wake him. As if this wasn't enough to deal with, I was dragged off by some muses and warned of some strange game played by the gods using mortals as the pawns. And then things just got weird.

"Trying to understand what the hell was going on, I made my way to this temple in the middle of nowhere. A lot of strange things happened there, and this creepy older man named Rafe gave me a ride back to the Firebrand, where the mercenaries who had helped us against the shade lords were still staying.

"As things turned out, Rafe was a god. Oneiros, the god of dreams. And apparently, I used to be a goddess...and a long time ago, Rafe and I had loved each other. Some instinct in me told me it was true, and foolishly I tried to embrace the mere memory of those feelings, making them my own. The attachment I felt to Vahn, a mercenary who had joined us against the Forgotten's lackeys, should have been enough to clue me in that I was only fooling myself by pretending to love Rafe, but...

"It was a chaotic time, quite literally. Unadulterated chaos had descended on Barton, Gambino, and Durem, twisting and warping ordinary things into madness. Penguins re-enacted the Civil War, empty suits of armor sprang to life, and Rage ended up flying with some kind of weird fairy. I don't remember too much that makes sense...I remember being angry at Vahn, because he swore to protect me, sealing the promise with a kiss I wasn't about to forget. I thought I was going to die; Rafe had told me that if this game for the Petals of Chaos turned out the wrong way, the gods I had spurned long ago would simply kill me. I didn't even know why they wanted to destroy me. All I knew was that I was scared, and I wanted Vahn by my side...

"He wasn't there through the whole game. Rafe, though, occasionally appeared to me. He told me again how much he loved me, and I believed I loved him back...so when he told me the Furies would take him away once the game was over, I begged to be able to help him in any way I could. But the only way...was to become pregnant with his child. I did it; he was a god, so nothing messy had to happen. All he had to do was kiss me, and that was that...I could feel the life stirring inside me.

"Rafe told me, that in the moment the Petals of Chaos came together, I had but to drink a small vial of water from the river Mnemosyne, and my memories of him and all my past lives would return. I did so...just in time to watch him kill the daughter we'd conceived thousands of years before.

"I can't tell you what I remembered then; I've repressed most of the memories now. Apparently a long time ago I served Thanatos, the god of death, and I really got on his nerves...he was a b*****d who hated me and Oneiros. Eventually, Oneiros was ordered to kill me, which should have destroyed me. Instead, thanks to something Oneiros' mother Nyx had taught me, I was banished to the mortal realm. But that story doesn't fit with the meaning of the name Owle; something must have come before that lifetime with Oneiros, though I remember nothing of it.

"I managed to tell Rafe I didn't hate him for killing our daughter; it had only set her free to have a mortal life. But I couldn't do anything back then to keep the Furies from dragging him away...

"And Vahn showed up, expecting a hero's welcome from me, as though he'd been fighting for me this entire time. I wanted to hit him, but instead I just yelled at him...and then I couldn't anymore. Even after I hurled my feelings for Rafe in his face, even after I told him I was pregnant with Rafe's child...he swore to me that he would help me rescue Rafe from the Furies.

"...he backed out of that promise, too.

"Flare, Rage, a man named Athan, and someone called Charles accompanied me instead. We marched boldly into hell, and won Rafe back from the god of death.

"Not long after, Omikron awakened from his coma and set off on a mission to free more shades from the service of the Forgotten. Pregnant as I was, he didn't allow me to come with him. But I made him promise to keep in touch.

"About the same time, I followed Vahn to the town of Latent. The two of us...shared some time together, but when I woke up the next morning he told me someone else held his heart. By perfect accident I found out this someone was a man named Sunstrike. And even though it hurt...I swore to help Vahn get him back, just as Vahn had sworn to rescue Rafe.

"I kept my promise.

"Months later, Sunstrike came to visit me in the Firebrand, and comforted me in my time of great distress. See, even though we had rescued Rafe, I had no idea where he was...some b***h named Tatiana had kissed him, and he poofled away...she said he was at peace, that maybe we'd meet again, but I would probably have killed her if she wasn't our only way out of hell. So there I was, three months pregnant, no father in sight, and hating every minute of it. Sun broke the gloom for a little while...and then Rafe walked in through the door.

"He didn't remember anything, which gave me another breakdown. He was still obviously attracted to me, but how could I love him? He wasn't the same Oneiros I believed I had loved...he remembered nothing, so how could he possibly be the same person?

"My friend Kalis helped to keep me calm...I met him when he came into the Firebrand late one night, and he found me sitting alone in the dark and crying. I gushed to him about Vahn and Rafe...how Rafe might be dead by the time I found him in hell, how Vahn had someone else who held his heart. I feel like I'm always using his shoulder to cry on, but he never seems to be annoyed by it...anyway...

"Not too long afterwards, Sunstrike came by again, asking me to look after his young friend, a girl named Tijae. Turns out she used to be a deity, too, just like Sun and me...and, like me, she'd been a servant of Thanatos. Which made her family. She was annoying as hell, especially since she kept flirting with Rafe, but since I promised Sun I'd look after her, well...

"When I was almost six months pregnant, I broke my resolve not to force Rafe to remember his past. I sat him down, and began telling our entire story to him. Strangely...he remembered. Then he took the essence he had used to make the life within me back, returning me to my normal state. No more child, no more aches and pains that kept me from going on adventures. I wanted to shout for joy...but things are still awkward with me and Rafe. The goddess who loved him...she wasn't me. Maybe I believed I loved him before, but I know now that I'm just not the same person he loved. I don't feel the same way...not anymore.

"For now, though, I'm just going to be Owle. Things may be quiet right now, but maybe a shade lord will walk in through that door, or some robots will start rampaging again, or Flare will decide she needs my help in some other crazy endeavor. We'll just wait and see what the next sunrise will bring.

"...and that's how it begins, happily ever after."

(( http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9792677&page=379

Rand meets (and annoys) a couple of customers at the Firebrand))

(( http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9792677&page=405

Rand talks to Rafe (who he still thinks is named Oui) and receives a parting gift.))