Once, when she was younger, Lauralae had been a far kinder woman than the person she is today. The foundations of the girl are still present inside of her but the darkness has manipulated it, twisted it, and turned her from something sweet into something far less innocent. These founding aspects of her nature are important to the woman she becomes, however, more than just because they make up her history – they make up her choices and the way she interacts with people and reflects the differences between who she thinks she is and who she is truly becoming.

Raised to be a young woman of standing, Lauralae has had politeness and courtesy drilled into her since the moment she was old enough to read and write. She was always taught to stand straight, to mind her words, to be careful about who she speaks to and what she says; she was trained to be guarded, sly, secretive, prepared to use her nature as a woman and a spell master against anyone that would come to court her hand. When she was younger she embraced this side of herself with a playful innocence that would soon seep out of her; rather than enjoying the game for what it is, now, and using the tools she was given and raised by to make friends and alliances, Lauralae turns from them, intensely, shying from the knowledge she had forced upon her.

Where, once, she might have used her appearance to her advantage Lauralae would now rather hide in the shadows; there is nothing that can coerce her into becoming the flirtatious, careful young woman she had once been raised and educated to be. It does not mean that she is at all immune to the way other people react to her, of course. While she is shy, a cross woman with more frustration with interaction than enjoyment, she is still a person; when she is comfortable, when she is happy, aspects of who she had once been appears - the shy, quick to love young woman that had been betrayed.

This twist of her original nature, stemming from the ‘betrayal’ of both her people and the only man she dared love, has turned her away not just from the innocent nature of her childhood but also from those people that act in ways she had once thought to be 'correct'. It doesn't take her long to have a dislike for anyone that plays around with others, for people that use lies and wiles to get their way, and the idea of being false makes her distrustful and irritable towards anyone that dares even pretend to be that way. That life, and those choices, hark back to a world she had once left behind and being reminded of it makes her sour, angry, frustrated – and it makes her even more difficult to talk to and get along with. Lauralae is no friend to those that play the game of courts and alliances; she will consider herself an enemy even before making an acquaintance.

This foundation of distrust and distaste towards people is not only based upon her upbringing, however. Throughout her life Lauralae has suffered at the hands of the people she has met, not just for her exile and her choices but because of her own mistakes – putting too much trust in the wrong people and being, in her eyes, punished for the attempt. When she had fallen in love with Aramas she truly believed that this outlook on life was the wrong way to live, that she ought to change and become someone else, perhaps, try to be better for him, to prove that she was worthy despite the curse that haunts her being – but she was proven wrong. The trust she had thought right to be placed in him was abused, in her eyes, and she found that her attempts to give herself to someone had been nothing more than a fraud.

Perhaps, once, she might have been capable of recovering from this drastic emotional turnaround. When she was younger Lauralae was far more hopeful with an incredibly optimistic outlook on the world and the way that it worked: she believed in the collection of knowledge, of proving yourself, of finding your place in the world and falling in love. The society she grew in embraced the ideals of female power and the ceremony of magic and the trust required to learn and control it – trusting in yourself and in your teachers to show you the right path, the right way to learn and evolve. Having all of that ripped away from her because of her own failings (though she denies, even now, that what happened to her was her own fault) left a mark on Lauralae that was impossible for her to ignore; it was as though someone had reached inside of her and ripped the goodness out of her and stomped on it until there was nothing left. All the ideals that had been ingrained on her suddenly seemed worthless, pointless, and she turned away from them and left them to rot in the back of her mind.

After her curse, Lauralae turned and began to abandon the person she had been to try and become the person she thought she had to be in order to survive. She had been exiled from her home, forced out and pushed into ignorance and pain, and she had to try and find a way to survive that to the best of her ability; she had never been alone before, she had never attempted to survive without her family, her parents, and so she was forced to try and find a way to fend for herself. She imagines it, now, as a process of shrugging off the shackles of a previous life to embrace a new one, even if the new one felt more cursed and imprisoning than the first one had ever been.

Lauralae traded the innocence of her youth, the trust in people as individuals, her faith in her kin and her magic, for disillusion, personal strength and a means of forcing herself to become stronger than she had ever been before. Everything she has done since then has done nothing more than add weight and strength to the pillar of her independence and, now that she has grown, she refuses to allow herself to lean on anyone else. To do so would be to give them too much power over her and she refuses that; she refuses to let anyone have any kind of sway over her nature of her heart.

As mentioned, much of this twist of her personality was developed and inflamed by her idea of a relationship with Aramas. There had been a spark inside of her after her exile that, while she had wanted to smother it, had been inflamed by him. She had given her heart over to him and this is where we see the softer side of her nature, something long buried but still ever present. She was kinder, sweeter, and supported him, attempted to offer her magic as a means of protecting him, of saving him from anything the world might throw at them. Lauralae, losing her home so young, held a shyness that lead to her being willing but uncomfortable with the sudden flirtation and intimacy that a relationship offered her: she didn't know how to handle it, how to control herself.

It's times like this where we see just how dedicated and determined Lauralae can be – she threw herself into the relationship entirely, gave everything that she had to this man, only to be betrayed, shattered and heartbroken. The last remains of any trust she had in people was taken from her – and while it might have been unjust for Lauralae to pain the entire world with the brush of the actions of a scant few it is impossible for her to deny that every interaction she has had has left her with nothing but pain. Turning away from them seemed to be the best and only option. Having hands that, even now, curse and burn people only made this choice all the more obvious to her.

The betrayal and distrust harked back to the relationship she had imagined to have with her parents, before she read the book that cursed her. She had been raised as an only child, the pride of her father and the loving daughter of her mother, and she had truly believed that, no matter what were to happen, she would be safe and cared for in their arms. What became true, however, was something entirely different – her parents shunned her, turned from her, abandoned her when she needed them the most and that is something she will never forget. To Lauralae the ties of blood and loyalty are meaningless in both name and practice: if even someone who gave birth to you, who was supposed to love you no matter what choices you made and what ills befell you, could cast you out without a second thought what was to stop a stranger from doing it? An ally, a friend? The twisted view she now has of her parents (two people who saw their daughter cursed by evil and suffered for it, forced to give it up) has lead to her dismantling the idea of kindness and tenderness even in the closest of bonds – she tells herself that she will never again believe that such a thing is possible.

It is this that has made Lauralae into the quiet, dark and shy woman that she is now. She keeps to herself, both out of the necessity of her own nature and because of the way people look at her with fear, and she is loathe to make contact with people unless she has to. Some people might mistake this for arrogance, or the idea that she thinks of herself as better than someone else, but it stems down to a shyness and insecurity; she doesn't want to get hurt again and believing that all people are out to harm her or break her is easier than believing that, somewhere, there might be someone that might embrace her with open arms. While she is more than content to make an alliance for her own benefit she will continue to be quiet, subverted, dangerous – a true reflection of the wolf she can become with her magic. She is determined to prove herself to anyone she meets even while keeping her nature and her life a well kept secret.

This determination, her proud nature when it comes to her gift of magic, is one of the few things that is obvious about who Lauralae is as a person. She is obsessed with finding out a means to control and use her power – while she might not be entirely comfortable with breaking her curse, considering it's one of the most obvious aspects of the person she has become, finding a means to control it, or manipulate it, is an obsession; it's why she trades services for coin, why she travels across the Drabworld seeking answers and why she is so obsessed, at times, with locking herself away and desperately researching all the magic she has in her possession. She truly believes that if she can find a way to break her curse she might be able to crawl out of the pit she has found herself in and make a new life, recreating herself once more.

All of this doesn't mean that Lauralae is empty or shallow, however. Despite her failings and her hatred of the things around her she is still a person and she cannot deny that she finds some joys in her life, as much as she might be loathe to admit it. She has a special place in her heart for flowers, for example, and the trees and roots that her magic speaks to. She also can never help but fall helplessly in love with artisans that create comedy; the fictional nature of it is enough to delude her, at least for a short while, and she can believe that there is some good in the world – even if reality soon comes crashing down upon her. It's very easy to imagine her to be far older than she is, that the world has broken her spirit entirely, when really she is just a young woman that has been hurt and has decided to shut herself off from the world to protect herself from it.

The trouble with the person she is becoming, however, is that Lauralae is terrified of herself. Becoming stronger and allowing her power to slip around her, to draw on her energy, to strengthen what was inside of her, is leaving her terrified of what is to come. She fears losing control again, she fears losing herself to the power inside of her and she is terrified that there might come a time she won't be able to step back from the edge and will end up destroying herself.

While Lauralae might be magically strong and capable of defending herself she is, at heart, still a broken, fragile woman. She has been betrayed, constantly, and finds it difficult to talk to people, to interact, without suffering for it. Her relationship with strangers is an obvious example of that; rather than using them to try and dig out information she turns from them, shies from them, and attempts to bury herself in the shadows to keep herself safe and warily protected. Her only true source of arrogance is her power, but even then she keeps it to herself, hiding her pride behind her distrust of people and her dislike of the world as a whole.