It starts with dreams.
"Daddy, why is our clan symbol a circle?" – A little girl asks, wide curious green eyes tracing the embroidery on the fabric of her dress.
The older man is a mere blur, but even though she can't make out his features, she knows he's smiling.
"Are you going to keep a secret, little flower?" – She nods emphatically, her pink hair obstructing her vision for a second.
"I can keep a secret! Pinky promise I can!"
The man ruffles her hair and her stomach swells with love because she knows he is proud of her response.
"This symbol is not a mere circle; this family's emblem is called Ouroboros.
She always wakes up before she can ask what is Ouroboros.
And, like any other five-year-old, dreams are forgotten in favor of more interesting things – like playing with her brothers, whom she loves fervently.
"Ayla! Hello, anyone home?" – She blinks when a small hand waves in front of her, and she sees her twin looking at her curiously. Something in her chest hurts every time she sees those blue eyes, his blond hair, and the childish, innocent expression on his face. He looked... looked like... someone else. Someone important, someone she loved like a brother too.
"I'm sorry, I couldn't protect you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
Ayla smiles, ignoring the strange thoughts she sometimes hears. She asked about the voices once, and her parents got really worried – she even had to go see an old man in a lab coat for an eternity after that! Then she realized it would be simpler if she just ignored it. Her parents would be reassured, Camden would stop teasing her about being her crazy little sister, and Isaac wouldn't worry about her anymore.
"Yes, Isaac?" – Her voice is kind and she gives a delicate smile. She keeps blinking repeatedly, struggling not to rub her green eyes, until the urge to cry passes.
"Are you okay? I called you a bunch of times and you just stood there, looking at the forest." – Her twin asks and she smiles wider, dimples appearing on her small face.
"I'm fine, really! Just thinking about how beautiful the trees are. But not good enough to run in them. See? The branches are not thick enough."
"Run in them? That's impossible, Ayla. You are so weird sometimes. Are all girls like this?" - He says, snorting and the little blonde girl narrows her eyes, irritated by the mocking tone. She almost wants to punch him and say "I'm not weird, you baka!", but something tells her that her punch will really hurt him because he wasn't... And here her thoughts get confused, and she continues to play with Isaac in the Beacon Hills playground.
She is seven years old when Miranda Lahey, her mother, dies. And Ayla Lahey starts remembering her dreams.
They did everything medically possible in the operating room, but Miranda Lahey did not survive, the doctors said.
"I would have made it. I would have saved Mom." – Her voice growls, and she feels in the tips of her hand something wanting to come out, but it's only a moment. Isaac holds her hand tightly, and Camden hugs them both in sobs, as her father lets out a howl of pain so agonizing, she almost imagined he was dying too. She would learn that, in a way, it was true. But it was a slower and cruel death, killing him from the inside like poison.
The funeral is just a blur, but Ayla can remember her mother's peaceful face, and how beautiful she looked, she only seemed to be sleeping.
"But underneath her body, there are marks from the stab wounds the killer put on her, aren't there?"
She can remember how there were police at the funeral. They hadn't caught the suspect yet, but the Beacon Hills police force was on high alert and would catch whoever was responsible soon, the officers said. Her father pushes one of the policemen, and nearly hits him, saying how incompetent policemen who couldn't catch his wife's killer should be elsewhere, but Camden stops him. The policeman who was nearly punched left, along with the others, sympathetic to his father's anger.
We will arrest the person responsible, they said.
And she will kill him, Ayla thought.
Ouroboros: the serpent that devours its own tail. Perpetual return, the spiral of evolution, the sacred dance of death and rebuilding.
One night, two weeks after her mother dies, Ayla Lahey disappears. Newly promoted sheriff Noah Stilinski finds her, in the forest of Beacon Hills, in a strange tree with the trunk cut off.
The little blonde girl is a little disheveled, but not bruised.
Everyone assumes it was just a case of sleepwalking.
"My son has it too, the doctor said it could be due to a stressful event and it may go away with time." – The sheriff informs the concerned father that he treats her like she is a glass doll about to break.
But from that night forward, Ayla Lahey knows she's anything but a delicate glass doll.
In her past life, she was many things. A doctor. A professional assassin. Soldier. Wife. Mom.
Before she was Ayla Lahey, her name was...
"Why, oh why, doesn't she remember?"
Ouroboros: Rebirth
