Has Botan's origin never been explored? If you'd like, you could give her parents. This is an AU and we can shape things not covered in the series at this point to our own benefit. We don't even know if Botan was human once, do we?

I should be in bed but we're having a lot of good conversation and I don't wanna miss it. Knowing you, you'll be offline for a week and not be in the mood to pm like this, so I'm getting my fill while I can. Speaking of your essay, how many pages do you need?