Okay, i don't have references so bear with me here. If i recall correctly Birgitte said she was always born after the hero she worked with (i believe Gaidal?). She had stated that he had already been born out, or was at least missing from the dream world when she was then ripped out. I was wondering about this though, if this could be the minor thing we were supposed to be looking for. I'm not very good at the WOT time line but there is no way Gaidal would be old enough to take part in the last battle, so why did the pattern put him out at that time? maybe it was to stabilize the world after rand had broken it again? My theory is that we are missing some information here, maybe Gaidal was ripped out of the dream world (some dark one plot?) and to compensate for that the pattern put birgitte in a position to be ripped out, therefore making Gaidal still the older. I'm not really sure but i was wondering if anyone had any theories on this or any information about this i might have missed. I've been thinking about this for months but I'm currently on book 3 (re-read) and before i got to this section (I know it's in book 5 somewhere around the middle) i wanted to see if anyone else had any ideas or theories to shine on this area.