She got off at the closest stop and traversed disinherited memories to navigate old neighborhoods. She recalled the park that she would escape to every other night to ascertain privacy when it was not so simple as to blockade the arguing downstairs and intended to unearth a shortcut that she knew but alas, she found the gate bolted down and a notice that it had been closed, and six years was far longer than she thought.  

Her former neighbors had been weeding their garden when she arrived. She did not know them on a personal level, so they did not react when she entered their periphery. She could not find their eyes. When the social worker pulled her aside to discuss the finer points of their earlier discussion, she could not find theirs, either. She could not readily recognize them, but formless and indecipherable abstractions of color smudged across the page. It felt like she was being spoken to in a garbled, foreign language; her mind struggling to process and her vision seesawing, submerged in roiling nausea.  

Her mother had died in an unforeseen accident. And for some implausible reason, she had included her disowned child in her will despite the fact that she never made an effort to reach out or reinvite her into her life when she was struggling and alone and in spite of everything, she found herself crying for her mother. It was a basic, primal reflex, but she hated herself for years because she continued to regret the fact that she had to leave her behind, even though Seraphina had been abandoned first.  

She hadn’t been able to take along any of her things when she was given the boot. Whether she decides to keep or sell the house, at the very least, she wanted to use this provided chance to rediscover her roots, even if six long years has long since muddled whatever positive memory she retained of her childhood.  

She passed by the pier table that was situated near the foyer and next to the shoe rack, which she had helped herself to as she unlaced her boots. Evidently, they never thought of replacing the vase. Seraphina unconsciously scratched her head and overstepped the uplifted threshold. 

Reclaimed furniture had been covered in tarps when Seraphina ingressed. The hallways felt narrower than when she was a child somehow. As a child, she had been none the wiser to her predicament. Seraphina coped by building castles in the air and frolicking in the fields of her imagination, but she seldom traveled beyond the perimeters of her room. It might have been difficult to traverse back then, too, for she has always been unconsciously watching her step to avoid the potholes in her path, the raging disparagements, and swinging fists. It had never been so innocent, she realized as she traced the hollow vestiges of old picture frames that have since been torn down. 

 She wondered when exactly her mother began to doubt her answerability for what became of the child she had brought into this world, and how long it took to successfully chisel its proceeding consequences from her mind and memory. How many years had she festered alone in this too-large house with its thin, suffocating walls?  

She agilely bypassed the workers who were busy moving out the sofa in the living room. Afterward, she made a beeline for the stairwell and raced upstairs like she had just returned home from her midterms and had every intention of holding herself up in her room until further notice. When she reached said room, she hesitated for a moment as if she was dithering before the crossroads of destiny, squeezing her shirtfront and breathing, recalibrating her mounting heart rate— but there was no one left in this house who could hurt her. Victoriously, she can throw her fist in the air and proclaim that after all this time, she could safely attest to the fact that she was truly, completely alone.  

... The doorknob gave easily as the old hinges on the door groaned when Seraphina forced them open. Inside, she suspiciously found her old space well-kept, evidently undeterred by the mountainous passage of time, and she could only reason that it was because her mother had painstakingly cleaned it for her while she was away, immortalizing the memory of the son she had lost, perhaps. It was a bit ironic that the only time her mother wanted to participate in her life was after she was already gone, but it was not as if human beings were designed to be particularly rational creatures. It could have been her innate motherly whim, or maybe she intended to reutilize it as a guest room. 

“... I never asked for very much, you know. I only... wanted to be your daughter.”  

Well, it would be best if she did not overstay her welcome.  

Seraphina managed to dig out an old suitcase to pack her stuff in. Honestly, there was not much that she intended to preserve amongst the cheap childhood paraphernalia that no longer held any such sentimental value. Sketchbooks filled with cheesy comic strips of demons and angels duking it out across a bloody battlefield, grotesque graphic novels that she was banned from bringing to school because of their contents, moth-eaten clothes that were much too tight on her now, stuffed animals, which were meticulously arranged on her bed like they had been awaiting her arrival, including a bear she had sewn back together with her own hand albeit sloppily with a pair of mismatched eyes since she lacked the needed materials and an overt suture slashed across its belly, and miscellaneous gimcracks and occultist sculptures she scalped with her savings— they would make good additions to her current collection, actually.  

She refocused her efforts on the closet after she finished sweeping her desk and wardrobe. Therein she discovered hung jackets and rows of carefully arranged shoes on the floor underneath, though what ultimately seized her attention was the broomstick that was awkwardly wedged in the back, alongside the ratty cloak and supplementary hat. Seraphina yanked it out, crowned herself, and mindlessly posed with the broomstick as she recounted years of consistently going as a witch for Halloween and how her obsession with the fantasy and wizardry had essentially aged with her, even if she did not necessarily believe in magic at the end of the day, she always had fun creating elaborate storylines and even had a whole diary of made-up spells she had written out somewhere.  

Fueled by curiosity, Seraphina hunched and returned to the closet, feeling around blindly until she stumbled upon a box filled with a random assortment of related accouterments like flasks filled with suspicious though likely toxic substances and fake jewelry that moonlit as legendary armor. When she rediscovered her old diary, she scooted out and retraced her past, giggling embarrassedly to herself when she recanted the names of the incantations aloud, spotlighting classics such as Darkfire Blast, Raging Blizzard, and last but certainly not least: Intergalactic Hypernova Spontaneous Death Ray of Doom.  

Inquisitively, she flipped around the fake spellbook for a bit and eventually paused when she came across a series of dubious drawings. From what she interpreted given that she was certainly no gifted child, it featured a sky of silver stars with a pair of young children dancing thereunder, one that distinctly resembled herself albeit with sharp elf-like ears and a lace ballgown while her counterpart was a boy with striking lavender hair that was tucked in a small braid at the curve of his neckline. It perfectly resembled the dreamscape she met the previous night and has recurrently met for several years now— right, Seraphina remembered as she brought the page closer to her eyes, heavily scrutinizing the prince. This was her imaginary friend, though she could no longer sensibly put a name to his face— it was the stories she reenacted with him that allowed her to brave the worst of her youth.  

Chasing dragon beetles in the White Rose Garden while avoiding his stern retainers, practicing the basic principles of magic in the private study that adjoined his quarters that doubled as a planetary as she eagerly searched for worlds beyond their purview. When she once mourned that she would never be able to own a star, the young prince had gathered her wrists and asked her to hold her palms out, to which he shut his eyes and muttered a brief incantation, and she distinctly felt the sting of his magic, fleeing like a brief thunderclap of hot fire that zapped through her veins and reemerged when she found a small globe of flickering stardust suspended thereover like she was cradling the universe itself.  

At the time, her flights of fancy were less nebulous per se, more so like... faded echoes of what had already been lost. Inscrutable, but something invitingly tangible that she could reach out and draw close to her chest, enfolding herself in shapeless warmth: the memoir of a whilom friend. Of course, as adults, we know wiser than to overindulge fantasy. We were slaves laboring to compete with our bleak reality, and this was but a tomb as coldness splashed down her cheeks and smudged the colorful scrawl, grieving her innocence. Grieving the clueless, trapped boy who could have simply settled for finding solace in her daydreams.  

Something occurred to her, then. Seraphina set the diary down and scooched over to her bedside. Blindly, she peeked thereunder and rummaged through the darkness, eventually coming into contact with something concrete. She then shuffled back and dropped the dense tome on her lap, fingertips curiously mapping out the ornamental, gold-leafed detailing that adorned the edges, encircling a complex pentagrammic symbol with syntaxes of incomprehensible runes dotting the circumference and intertwisted with a depiction of a crescent moon. As she swiped her hand across the brazen cover, banishing the clustered dust, she could distinctly sense a tingling pressure like the subtle aftershock of fresh laundry, staticky and pulsating as if alive. Her nose twitched as the urge to sneeze overwhelmed her, but she held it in to rotate the piece up and around, scrutinizing it thoroughly. 

Presumably, Seraphina had purchased it to pair with her costume many years ago, albeit as she painstakingly wracked her brain for the whys and wherefores, she would slam into roadblock after roadblock. Especially considering that it did not give the impression that it was some cheaply contrived prop; it appeared authentic, displaying gorgeous, idiosyncratic artisanship, expensive leathering, and inordinate attention to detail. She highly doubted that she would have been able to afford this with her meager allowance, and as her family did not take exceptional interest in their child as a person including her outlandish hobbies, she was usually left feeling rather disappointed after any such holidays. So, it felt very much like she had gone fishing and ended up reeling in a chest filled with gold coins. In itself it was a miraculous discovery, but...  

... The book purred as if it was enticing her to disentomb its dark secrets like Pandora before the box, scratching insistently at the inner cavities of her brain, neatly untangling her innate sense of caution— hypnosis. Overtaken, her now-sentient appendages moved on their own accord, fingertips peeling back the corner to unleash whatever manner of world-ending anathema onto the helpless passersby; its paper-thin heart quickening, intense vibrations emanating cryptic, electric heat like an overheated machine—  

But when she noticed the darkened sky in the corner of her eye, Seraphina abruptly slapped the cover shut before the after-quakes could ooze out and zipped to her feet in bewilderment. “Shit,” she hissed, securing the thick tome under her armpit and grabbing her excess luggage. She evidently spent more time walking down memory lane than she would have cared to, so now she would have to make a mad dash for it if she wanted to catch the last bus back home. This probably would not be the last time she would see this house, at least not until the finer details of her inheritance were squared away— 

... But it felt like an overdue farewell all the same.