Spoiler
In this chapter I delve further into the psyche of Pandora in order to explain how she became so jaded. Of course, I don't tell you everything (that would defeat the point of the storyline suspense) but I do manage to show her other sides better. At least I think so. If there seems to be some discrepancy with myth, that was intended. I'm trying to rewrite some of history here, and I know that I'm going against what some of the earliest writers in history laid down, but hey, I have a right to her story too. And they're dead, so what do they care? Besides, they didn't treat her as a true personality in any case. SO, read on my dear critiquers! Blaze a trail of reviews through this work, the likes of which hasn't been seen since the last chapter! 
Chapter 3
When Pandora had been a young girl in this life as Bethany Kent, she knew that she wasn’t normal. She knew from the moment she reopened her eyes and blinked at the light of the hospital delivery room. She knew that the woman who had given birth to her wasn’t her real mother—no woman could claim that duty.
How she knew such things was beyond the ken of other humans, and she didn’t feel like correcting them when they named her Bethany or called her their daughter. She was accustomed to the drill. Live about eighty years, die, and the ultimate rebirth into a world she had cursed.
The cycle was never ending, but thankfully, Pandora also had developed a coping mechanism. She accepted the human things—the mortal aspects of life—but left once she was able to do so. Why did she leave? Her answer was not quite so simple.
She was secretly afraid to love again. She’d already done the love-and-lost part of life, and loving and losing again wasn’t something she intended to retry. It was safer to watch out for number one, and remain as free as possible from any hindering.
The Kents were only her most recent escape.
The college life was exactly how she loved to live, and she’d been pining away for college since she could pick up a brochure in her tiny hands. Her “parents” had just assumed she was a child genius and had put her through an expensive private school, further solidifying her desire to get away from their smothering patronage. Not something she was too fond of. They kept expecting her to come home for the holidays.
Her plans were a bit more…Kent-free.
That was her reason to escape from the goons, and why she needed to prevent such a thing from happening again. Nothing could be allowed to contain her—especially those pesky humans always trying to catch her affection. It was bad enough that the gods thought they could control her back in the day, but humans as well? Unthinkable.
“Wake up princess,” crooned a now guffawing Phil. Pandora had curled up on the lumpy couch and fallen asleep. Hearing his voice calling her back from her world of dreams was not the way she had hoped to wake up.
She growled and retorted, “Shut up.”
He snorted gracefully and returned to his game of poker with Lloyd. Lloyd shook his head, knowing that Phil was just poking a bear and at some point the girl was going to snap on him. He didn’t want to be around when that happened.
Pandora straightened herself up, stretching sore muscles and shook out her hair. It didn’t look like she had been for an hour long drive in a car trunk and then slept on a moldy couch. She was grateful for that at least. Her clothes were going to need drastic measures if she was going to save them from a horrible fate.
She yawned magnificently before decrying, “I need to use the restroom.”
Neither man moved for the span of a few heartbeats, both as ultimately shocked at the idea that she had said such a thing and neither wanted to entertain the idea that she actually did have to use the restroom. It was quite the uncomfortable thought for both of them. Why it was so odd, only they could tell, and they have never been of the mind to speak about the subject, sensitive as it no doubt was.
In any case, Pandora felt the need to repeat her previous statement. “I need to use the restroom.”
That time, Phil turned red and looked at Lloyd for an answer to the girl dilemma. They had quite forgotten that she was by definition a person, and as such had certain needs. Foremost among them, the need of a facility to do her business. Her next want would be food, but she could see that they were unused to dealing with prisoners.
Pandora huffed and crossed her legs underneath her.
Lloyd cleared his throat, having by that point regained reason, and he replied calmly, “Of course you do. It’s over there.” He then proceeded to point at a rusty door next to the stack of old oil cans. It didn’t look too clean.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” She asked as she held up her bound wrists. She couldn’t very well go to the restroom with her hands tied together. It just wasn’t feasible.
Lloyd sighed and motioned for Phil to cut her loose. Phil narrowed his watery brown eyes at her, and she stuck her tongue out at him making him mutter under his breath.
Before he let her get up, he said, “Now don’t think you can get away now that we’ve untied you. We’ll be right out here, and there ain’t any other way out of here but through us!”
Pandora rolled her eyes and said, “Whatever. I wasn’t planning on it. Jeez.” She sauntered to the door and with one last look at the two dumbfounded men said, “I hope you boys don’t have to be anywhere for a while.”
And with that she made them even more disturbed, if that was even possible.
Once Pandora was alone in the bathroom, she quickly assessed the room, and noted that the cretin Phil had been right. There was no other way out except the way she had come. She sighed half-heartedly and rubbed her sore wrists. She was going to have to find a way to keep them from binding her again.
Those plastic rings were not comfortable. Her eyes blinked tiredly and she was suddenly hit with the strangest feeling of déjà vu. She blinked harder, trying to keep back the vision, but it was coming too fast.
Snippets of color and shapes flooded her mind, solidifying into a memory of her past. She hated when that happened.
The grass was greener than any she had seen in the past few thousand years. That was one thing that had changed as the world aged.
She recalled that once she had loved the smell of grass. The tangy odor of dirt and that unmistakable scent of rain and something else…something she could never put her finger on. It was almost magical in a sense. The uniqueness of the smell wafted into her dream nose.
She looked around, and found herself in a place that she knew well: the mountain home of her first life. She blinked, and the sight sharpened, hills forming, rocks cropping up in the distance, and sound flooded her memory. The gentle breeze carried the lonely bleat of sheep, and the echo of lost time.
“Why does this always happen at the worst times?” she thought sadly.
Coming across the ridge, Pandora spotted the approaching form: the lithe lines of a shepherd. She ate up the body with her hungry eyes, and as the person grew nearer, she began to discern his features.
She saw his arms reach out towards her yearningly. He beckoned with his eyes, and she tried to make her way through the dream to his arms. Dark hair lit by the sun, eyes of coal, lips she wanted to kiss. It was a struggle, and she knew she had only seconds to enjoy the hurt seeing him caused in her frozen heart.
It was a good pain. The only pain she welcomed and feared all at the same time. She was afraid for the moment it disappeared.
Of all her memories, she knew those features the best. His name was Euphemius. Euphemius was her soul mate. She was made for him, fashioned from clay of Mount Olympus. Painted by the hand of a god and given life from Zeus’s own mighty power.
She loved Euphemius, and he fell for her as hard as she was designed to fall for him; perhaps even harder because of his innocent nature.
He was so close to her, she almost could feel his arms around her as he held her so tightly. His smell, of grass and open air, was intoxicating and she soaked it in until she became drunk on his aroma.
She pulled her face back for just a moment to capture his lips…but the fabric of unreality was unraveling and…
The vision disappeared in blurs of green and person-colors, leaving Pandora standing in that dirty, modern day bathroom feeling lost. She struggled against losing the picture of Euphemius in her mind’s eye--tried to focus on his face, the way his eyes lit up inside at seeing her--until he was no longer visible.
He was gone again, faded back into the mist of memory. The memory itself was not what made her sad. It was the remembering that troubled her. The past was not something she liked to have thrust upon her, especially while in the process of trying to escape her own kidnapping. Although, if she were going to be honest, this was perhaps one of the best kidnappings she had ever been forced in to.
Tears filled her blue eyes, clouding her sight, but she quickly brushed them away. She could not allow herself to be weak. She was not allowed even that small luxury of release. Instead, she stifled her screams of rage at such a reminder of her loss. Her own mistakes and failures threatened to overwhelm her, but she refused to give in and they drifted away to the darkest parts of her memory.
Whatever the reason for the vision, probably some joke on the part of a god, she was not going to let it affect her. Or make her deviate from her plans. They might be able to send her visions or dreams to torment her, but they still were unable to find her. That was enough of a reassurance to calm Pandora.
At her rebellion so long ago, the gods had told her she was doomed to walk the earth for all eternity, never to rest, never to find the one she sought. She in turn cursed the gods, calling them the murderers they truly were, and she hid their Box from them. That was one thing they wanted back. And Pandora was the key.
She was meant to tempt Euphemius, to sway him from the distrust that was instilled in him by his brother. She was given the Box—the punishment for daring to steal from the gods. She was told to never open it, but cursed to do so despite such orders.
She was also the reason he was dead.
And he was the reason she still lived—cursed.
She alone knew where it was hidden: that container for things best not seen or remembered. And of all the feet treading the earth, Pandora was the only one privy to what it now contained. For centuries, men who believed her myth and wished to gain power from the Box had sought her out and tried to pry its location from her unwilling lips. None had been successful. None of them had any leverage on her.
Her body could be tortured; she could feel pain; she could die as easily as anyone else. But she always came back, and she remembered all the faces of the ones who tried to contain her. And she hated them, just as she hated the gods who were their creators.
Pandora took a deep breath of the rank air in the tiny enclosed space, almost gagged as it contrasted with the smell of her past, and gave the dark toilet area a disgusted glance before deciding she could wait. She wasn’t that desperate.
