Sorry about the skipped chapter, but when inspiration strikes, one must write.

Any flames should be sent to me, please.  Anything that might be
discussable could be put to the list, but the moderators might not like
that.

Here it is...a little late, tho it be.

			Dragon's Eye View
			Chapter (tentative) 4.


	Suddenly I find myself floating in a white void, with only me,
Bunny, and Dracat with me.  I look over at Bunny, asking, "What are we
doing here?"
	Bunny looks up at me with tears in her eyes, "We are in your mind,
Cat...I'm here because I'm dying...Dracat's here because she's linked to
you."
	I stare at her in shock, "You're...dying?  How?  Why?  How can I
save you?"
	Bunny looks down at the ground, "You can't save me...not yet.  You
have to get your power back before you can even try to save me, Cat..."
	I stare at her in shock, "Get my power back?  How can that be?  I
don't even have any power!"
	Bunny's head snaps up and she glares at me, "Yes, you do have
power...you just locked it away from yourself a long long time ago."  I
stare at her in shock as she continues, "It was close to two hundred years
ago.  What I remember of the time is simple."
	The white void shifts around me as Bunny talks.  Dracat glides over
and lands on my shoulder as Bunny continues, "Back then you and I were in a
party of adventurers.  You, me, and two others."
	Before me, I see a group of four people standing lined up.  There
is me on one end of the line, with wings?, a long ivory staff with an
ornate tip, and some weird looking armour.  Standing on the other end is
Bunny, and she is wearing some plated armour, and she has a nice looking
sword on one hip, and a rapier in her hand.  She also doesn't have the
wings she currently has...curious.
	Between the two of us are two men.  One is obviously part
dragon...his wings and scales over a human looking form give it away
immediately.  He also carries a mace at his side, some nice looking robes,
and a symbol on a necklace around his neck.  Unbidden, a name filters
through my thoughts ~Storm~.
	The other person looks almost like an elf from a Tolkien
novel...pointed ears, silvery chain mail, and a bow in his hands.
Everything matches what you'd expect to see in an elf.  His eyes are a
glittering gold, and his long, silver, gorgeous hair comes down to his
waist.  His hair is tied up at the nape of his neck, tied with a golden
hair clip.  The hair clip I recognize instantly.  It's the one that I've
been wearing ever since I can remember.  The jade wings and the ruby flames
of a phoenix in flight, exactly matching my own.
	I look over at Bunny, asking, "Who's that one?  The one...with
my...hair clip?"
	Bunny stares at the ground, "That one was your husband...His name
was Danis."
	My voice trembles as I ask, "W...was?  He's...dead?"
	Bunny nods, and I can feel the tears flowing down my cheeks.  "What
happened?" I ask, my voice trembling.
	Bunny's voice is tinged with regret and sadness, "That's what you
need to know...you've been hiding from the truth for a long time.  The
other one...his name is Storm...he was my betrothed.  We were going to
settle down and get married after our...last quest."  I can see Bunny's
tears falling from her eyes, and she sobs slightly as she continues, "The
day before the battle, I was injured...I broke my leg after slipping on a
set of stone stairs.  I was left behind at the village we were at then...I
wanted to come, but you and the boys convinced me that it would be better
if I stayed and healed up.  So, I stayed behind.  I watched for the rest of
that day, and all through the next.  On the evening of the second day, I
felt...*sob*  I felt you and Storm and Danis scream in pain.  There was a
great flash in the sky in the direction that you three went."
	The scenery around us changes as Bunny talks, and I can see a
beautiful sunset.  Suddenly, I see off to the side where the sun is
setting, a huge flash and a mushroom cloud...almost like one of the modern
nuclear weapon blasts.
	"I feared for the worst, and two days after that I was about to
give up hope.  Then you came back to the village, with your sword in one
hand, Danis' hair clip in the other, and all your fur and hair and armour
was burned off.  Your wings...I can remember that so clearly and I can't
believe how you could even stand the pain back then...your wings were
burned completely off.  Even the bases of your wings looked as if they were
shorn from your body."
	I see myself, stumbling closer to where Bunny is standing.  All my
fur and hair that I can see in the image is burned off, and I can see that
the wings I had earlier aren't there anymore.  The image of me stumbles and
staggers forward, and I can see tears flowing from my eyes, tears of pain
and anguish.  My eyes have the haunted look of someone who's seen the death
of everyone they loved.  And it was probably that way, too.
	"Your enchanted armour was melted...all that I could see that was
left of it was a single coin shaped piece, which was laying on the diamond
tip of your sword.  You couldn't remember _anything_...not what happened,
not your name, nothing."
	The image of me does hold a sword, and I look as close as I can
dare myself to.  The sword, itself, is about a meter long, with a tip that
looks more like a diamond than a triangle like all the swords you see in
stores nowadays.  The edges of the sword look like they have ruby edges all
over them, and a diamond edge between the ruby shard-edges.  On each tip of
the diamond tip is a single sapphire.  The entire sword glows with what
looks like completely random pulses, and then a flare of blue runs down the
edge of the sword.  After a minute of watching, I see a pattern that looks
almost like music running along the edge, and at the end of each run of the
small piece of music, each sapphire tip of the sword pulses, one at a time,
three times each.
	Then the coin on the diamond shaped tip of the sword finally
catches my attention.  The coin itself looks like the coin that I spent
earlier today, with no real inscription on one side.  The coin falls off of
the sword and I see the other side, and I can tell now that this coin is
the same as the one I sold.  The other side of the coin has a single
dragon, etched in very fine lines.
	My eyes travel up the sword, along my body, up to my eyes.   The
eyes, the container of the soul.  My eyes from my image are as blank as a
brand new sheet of paper.
	"We were fighting," I hear myself say, then I start.  My image
didn't say that...
	"We were fighting the red dragon, Ash.  Storm stayed back to throw
lightning bolts and healing spells.  Danis took his magical bow, and fired
at the red dragon before us."
	The image changes again, and I see Danis and Storm in their
positions, then I realize that I'm in the position that I was then...
	"I had Flare in my hands, and we were attacking Ash.  Flare wanted
to fireball him, but I tried to hold it back."  Dracat is flying behind me,
and I can tell, through Dracat's eyes, that Bunny is watching from the
side.  "After the first pass, Ash breathed in and spewed flame at Danis and
Storm.  Both of them had fire protection, but they were singed nonetheless.
The tips of my wings were caught in the cone of fire, as well, and the pain
was excruciating..."  I watch in horror as Danis and storm are engulfed in
the flames, and the stab of pain at my back is almost incidental compared
to the pain from my heart as I see Danis bathed in the searingly hot
flames.   The flames die after a minute that seems like eternity, and I
see, to my relief, that Danis is still okay.
	"When my attention got pulled away by Danis' flaming, Flare took
control of my body, and had me swing him against Ash."  The sword seems to
take on a life of it's own, and it hurls itself, in my hand, at the dragon.
Just as the sword impacts, the sword-music crescendos and all the gems on
the sword flare up.
	"Flare said one thing to me, before he threw all of his power into
his final attack, 'thank-you, puppet, for letting me kill your beloved.'
The world went white, with Flare at the center...then there was no more."
When the gems flare up, I hear the words in my mind, that I just said.  The
words themselves have a sickly smooth tone to them.  I can feel the power
building, then the entire world explodes.  The pain in my body is
excruciating, but the pain in my heart is worse.  I know that the sword is
right, that it will kill Danis and Storm.
	"When the flame and pain disappeared, all that was left around me
was a quarter mile of ash.  The dragon, Danis, and Storm were incinerated
in one final blast.  My armor, magical though it was, melted into a small
coin-shaped thing on the tip of Flare."  I look around me at all the ash
around me...even a few flames are still burning.  My heart cries as I can't
see Danis...or Storm.  I feel the heart crying doubled as my past self
notices the same thing.  I look down at the thing that caused all of this,
and it sits in my palm, seeming to smirk at my plight.  The little
coin-shaped piece of metal is sitting on the tip of the sword again.  My
tears well up as I feel my past self finishing her story.
	"The pain in my heart was so great, that my grief threatened to
take my mind with it.  For once in my life, I didn't have the power or
strength to defend the ones I loved.  My grief peaked and when it left, it
took my mind with it."  Tears keep falling down my cheeks as a second voice
takes over for the first.
	I notice the visions stop at this point, as though the
consciousness is too young to remember pictures.
	"I wandered for what seemed like forever, seeking to find some way
of remembering myself.  But part of my mind didn't want to remember...part
of me felt guilty.  'Guilty over what?' I'd ask myself.  After the first
long darkness, I come across a friendly person.  I asked him to help me,
and he said he was going to go save souls that died in the great fire.
'what fire?' I asked, but he had already left.  I continued wandering,
looking down occasionally at the long piece of metal in my hand.  I
wondered, again, if I should throw it away.  The part of me that wouldn't
speak to me told me that I shouldn't.  So I didn't."
	"I kept wandering, and after the second long darkness, I came
across this nice bunny.  Well, she was almost as tall as I was...at least
at a distance.  I walk closer, stumbling occasionally.  The bunny asked me
who I was...I told her I couldn't remember.  She asked me questions on a
lot of things that I couldn't remember.  Even some silly thing about
wings..."
	"After we talked for a bit, she brought me to my mother.  I'm
wondering how I can be the daughter of such a big thing, then I realize I
must be a child or something.  I drop the piece of metal over by a small
pile of things like it, then I go up and hug my mother."
	"My mother told me a lot of things about me, some that didn't even
make sense.  The ones that didn't make sense I threw away in my mind, and
then everything else made perfect sense.  Mother asked me to tell her
everything she said, and I told her everything that I didn't throw away.
She had tears running down her eyes.  Why?  Did I hurt her?  She changed a
little and became a person the same size as me and the bunny from before.
She hugged me close, then all of a sudden she's larger than me again.  But
this time, she's sort of the same size.  I look down and see that I shrank
down to my proper size as a baby.  I smile and do baby things, forgetting
everything I don't need."
	The voice continues on for a long time, telling things that I now
remember are my past.  It tells how I first met my friend who called
herself Bunny.  Bunny, too, it seems, changed her age down to a child's, so
that she could be with me, still.  A sharp pain starts in my back, and I
lean forwards.  My clothes start seeming to be way too tight, so I rip them
off.  The voice reaches the point that I can remember fully, and then
stops.  My back is aching with a pain of sore, long unused muscles.  I turn
and look at Bunny, then notice, through Dracat's eyes, that I've grown
something on my back.  I reach a hand around, and caress the thing that I
grew.  On my back, I can feel some soft, sensitive wings.  I look up at
Bunny, and she nods.
	"You have accepted the truth, Rayne-chan...you've accepted who you
are, and you have become yourself again."  I blink at the name she calls
me, then all the little parts of different languages that we both learned
start seeping through, and I smile at the title.  Little Rayne.  I walk
over to her, trying not to stumble with the new weight on my back.  I hug
Bunny.  A small thought enters my mind as I think of Bunny. "Skye"
	I hug Bunny...Skye, replying, "It's been too long, Skye-chan...too,
too long without grief."
	After those words, I feel the darkness shifting, ripping slightly.
Then I open my eyes, looking up at the ceiling of a hospital's post surgury
room.