Female hysteria was something I, unfortunately or fortunately however you chose to look at it in the moment, was incredibly well versed in. No matter which of my teachers you looked at be it one of my sisters or their children or my very mother, there was always a woman in my life that had offered me some kind of information as to how to treat women in times of dire... emotional explosion. Be those times the kind of situations you can describe such as "Shark Week" when everyone is bait, or times when the woman was faced with the past of a man she may have been interested in. My eldest sister wasn't emotional, so I never was faced with a caretaker whose emotions were her instructions, but the rest of my sisters? They were made up of a material that was solely emotion and heart, though sometimes that material was itchy and too hot. Struggling under distress, they lashed out in every way imaginable and while it gave me a lot of practice utilizing methods to console them, I don't think I would ever understand that form of hysteria regardless of the amount of times that Finley and Elenore told me I had stronger emotions than an eddy in the Amazon River. Needless to say, I wasn't excited about that label even though it had garnered enough use in the past to stick with me at present day. Even then, though... I was used to hysteria in a woman I could easily console and control. My sisters looked to me for guidance and safety; never before had I dealt with a woman whom I cared about in a moment where they might look at me as the source of their hysteria. Plenty of times had I been the source for my sisters, but for someone like Serafina? Her obvious distress ran rampant through the room like a loose, wild dog inclined to get it's stench on everything. If her distress didn't come from a hallucinogen stolen from ... me, likely, then there was a key piece of this mess I was missing.

Don't throw any clues at me, now.

The blonde woman would gently nudge the baby's hand from her chest, fighting with the obvious attempted dominant behavior from the child. The baby watched his mother with wide, bright blue eyes that swung from the familiar youthful face of his mother, to the face of the witch that owned the townhome they were located in. The pretty gray eyes had the baby smiling â€" he hadn't seen pretty gray eyes like that before, only the blue of his father's and the green of his mother's. With a squeal of delight instead of the frightened wails, the baby returned Serafina's confused look until the temperature of the room began to fall further, and the curiosity that might look vaguely familiar as it was reminiscent of his father's gaze slipped away quicker than the last shadows of daylight. The baby nestled against the blonde woman's chest, hiccupping cries emanating from the blanket he was wrapped in killing any kind of silence and more than obviously fueling the young witch's confusion. "I know you don't know him as you may want to... But let me help you, please. For all of our sake.

The only clue I was erratically thrown was that whatever it was currently bothering Serafina, it was getting worse instead of better. If it wasn't some form of hallucination, what could possibly bother her to a point of panic surfacing? The woman had been unmoved by a vampire attack, by a magic-spawned earthquake, and by the extreme injuries I had sustained after the vampire attack... What so simple as a man in her kitchen would prove distressing to this magnitude...? I had yet to give Serafina a reason to distrust my intents with her; it was all but uncomfortably obvious to me that I had done something sacrilegious to get such a reaction from the stable woman. Concern began to gently touch my features though they were already muddled with prior agitation and confusion coming from her remarks about the company I had kept on my trip to the grocery store. There was no woman with me, no.

"Take a deep breath Sera. Panicking won't fix anything."

The blonde shook her head at the same moments that the words would have come from Davante's lips. Her movements were now taut with a sort of fear-stricken tension. The witch hadn't heeded her words, and she hadn't tried to make him understand. Davante's fingers curled onto the corner of the table at the same moment the baby let out another cry, as if some kind of phantom had allowed his hurt to ebb through a partially closed door and find his human body. "He can't see me, Serafina. He hasn't seen me in ...

The description of the woman I could have returned with was familiar enough that it could have been any woman that I knew. When the description became riddled with questions and implications of a woman that Serafina would never have known, the blood began to draw from my face. How could she be here? There wasn't anyone in the room. There was nobody in the room except for our two very tangible bodies and - ... My blood pressure rose as quickly as the frequency of my breaths, like I was several feet below surface and reaching for that single breath that would make the entire difference between survival, but something was caught in my throat. I hadn't thought of the person that she might be insinuating and even if it was the woman Sera meant, how could she be here now? I hadn't seen her... I hadn't held her, I hadn't smelled the sunshine in her hair or the - ... My lips parted, my gaze hardening and twisting all at once with an anguish matching only that found in tragic survivors.

"... I h- ... " I didn't have words for the woman that Serafina might have meant, especially as she was gone. "I haven't seen her in over ten years... She can't possibly... Can't be here..."

The blonde softened immensely, though prior to that moment she had wanted to fling something at the daft man's head. He knew, and he knew somehow that she stood close enough to touch him. His brilliant blue eyes had shifted to a lighter color, alerting Serena that he was upset and quickly growing afraid of the situation. She had been buried in a recess of his mind that was condemned and often relegated to visits on dark and stormy nights. Her fingers gently touched his cheek as if he could feel her, though she quickly shook her head after and put distance between the two of them as if for the benefit of the young witch surely watching. "I was his mentor, Serafina". The words were soft, but rang out only as a gentle harmonic, melodious enough they somehow penetrated a barrier, and Davante's piercing eyes moved directly back to the place where her shadowed figure rested as if searching for a time when he could have seen it.

My hands gripped the table hard enough that suddenly? I wasn't in the confines of that kitchen any longer. Instead, all I could see was the brightness of the afternoon sun as a very young blonde woman wrapped her arms around the neck of a boy that was my exact replica. He was absolutely all sunshine himself, happily carrying the blonde girl in a group as they wandered an afternoon in a land that was so visibly different the ground that the townhouse I'd left from was built on. The blonde girl and I were inseparable, flanked by Finley and Elenore as we made our way through the grass that would be visible in it's brown, burnt glory behind the shack that had been our home, dilapidated and tilting as we passed it. Our voices had been so loud and jovial that there were shouts coming from the house that had the blonde girl waving the noise away as I had put her down and she ran, absolutely ran, from my arms and towards the hills that overlooked the ocean. I called for her and - the name was so very foreign on my lips that I was so distracted that I could hardly smell the salt lacing the air as we trailed down the very same hill under a suddenly black sky. The scenery was perfection. It was one of the hundreds of nights that we spent under the moon on the hot sand warmed by more than the mere heat alone. I watched my body resting serenely on the sand with her head on my chest, melded so tightly against my younger body that I could almost feel the weight, standing yards away and watching. Like a whirlwind begun in Tornado Alley of the United States, the sand spun the saccharine memories towards the foothills. Instead of nights on the beach, they became nights shared in the corner of a very small bed in the very same shack that smelled of burnt oil and sweat as the space on the bed grew less and less. The excitement never waned, but the happiness left with the tide.

If it were only so serene in every bit of my memory of her. The peaceful pictures of heartwarming touches and chaste kisses evaporated into cold morning, the metallic scent of blood and dirt heavy in the fog. It was always alarming, how the fog arose when circumstances required some kind of mystery; the kind of mystery I would have rather that particular morning stay. The barrage was quick, beginning with our ascent into the home rife with labored breathing and panicked voices calling for the neighbor in a tongue I almost didn't understand. Voices would rise, stale air would penetrate every room that the small, foreboding house had. Nothing could penetrate a silence that followed that petrified noise, not even the cries of a child. A child that should have been wailing as hard as its new lungs would let him. From my vantage point, I could watch my shoulders go rigid as the neighbor all but shook me, handing my younger self the bare, soiled body of a child asphyxiated during birth to a mother who lost her life in the same battle. From that vantage point, I was unaware that my fingers had run over my lips, clamping there as if to keep me from making a sound. From my vantage point, I could see the dysphoric terror spreading like a disease over my adolescent features, horror fighting a winning battle as my baby blue eyes couldn't find their specific destination, roaming over the two bodies that were my charges. The images moved so quickly that I was unsure which version of myself I saw holding that shovel, that felt heavier than all of the weight on Atlas' shoulders at once. I was unsure which version of myself it was that wiped the sweat from my brow and walked through a death-riddled silence of a home torn to bits by something that should have been wonderful. I wasn't sure which version of myself it was that walked through rousing blood-red dirt streets towards a home that wouldn't look the same, in blood-stained clothes that turned at the sound of my name. I don't know which version of me it was that saw Finley rushing down our side-street in our shanty town, wrapping his arm under my shoulders to keep my catatonic body upright though my veins were harsher and filled with a substance I wished I hadn't seen myself use on that long, long walk.

"Serena..."

Her name fell from my lips like a bottle expired of its liquor. The name was so foreign, and fell from my lips so many times before that it should have felt as familiar as every breath I took but instead, it tasted like soot and dirt and I wanted to sputter but somehow, the feminine voice emanating from the brunette witch - ... Serafina? How was she here... brought my attention to the blood dripping gently from the hand that had curled on a knife that was waiting to be used to carve the chicken I had completely forgotten about. I clenched my fist, without thinking, and brought that hand to my lips to bite my nails in an anxious fashion I hadn't in years... Since that very same sitting room. I ... "Alright." The word was flat, clipped and betrayed every effort I had made to attempt to look composed of any sort. Anguish was written over my face instead, the word a gentle answer to her request to 'Just go away'... Lord, there were so many other places I would have wanted to be in that moment. I ... I went to stand, but was betrayed again and found myself unable to move after the barrage of memories, stuck to my seat at the table by the window.

The blonde woman wiped a slow, solitary tear from her eyes before looking to the witch who had heeded her words.He isn't trying to hurt you. Do you see that, now? Please, Serafina, tell him to move, too... They're watching.