August had turned the garden a rich, shimmering gold.
The roses had bloomed and faded in the summer heat, while the lavender grew thick with bees and filled the air with its heavy floral scent. Outside, the lake reflected a sky that was more often brilliant blue than dull gray, and the warm days stretched well into the evening.
Morwenna had seen none of it.
The nursery curtains remained tightly drawn against the sunlight, keeping the room in a constant, artificial twilight. The fireplace was only lit at night, when the temperature dropped and small flames began to dance against the soot-stained bricks.
Cinder had barely left the bed in weeks. The little fox remained curled up at Morwenna's feet, a quiet, watchful presence, while the green snake stayed pressed against her side.
Roxane and Nicholas took turns watching over her. Their shifts were quiet, and they rarely spoke. Sometimes they sat in the chair by the window and read. Other times, they simply stared out at the garden or closed their eyes and listened to her breathing.
Jane and Jack also spent their nights in the nursery. Some evenings, they slept there beside her. On others, they returned to their own room, only to come back at dawn.
Jane usually sat in the chair by the window. She had long since stopped counting the days, measuring time instead by the dust motes drifting through the thin shafts of light.
More than two months had passed. Morwenna had needed several weeks to recover from her first ritual bath, but this was different. She remained completely unresponsive, as though there were no end to the silence surrounding her.
Nicholas came to the nursery every morning. He would sit beside Morwenna, place his hands on either side of her head, and close his eyes. He remained like that for hours, breathing slowly as he examined her soul, until the light behind the curtains began to change.
On the fifty-eighth day, he finally stepped back.
"Her soul is whole," he said quietly. "All the tears have healed."
Jane looked at him, a desperate hope flickering in her tired eyes.
"Then why is she still asleep?"
"Because she needs to wake up on her own. Her soul is ready, but her mind still needs time to catch up with her body."
He left the room without saying anything more, his footsteps soft against the floorboards.
Another two weeks passed. The light behind the curtains shifted from gold to amber, then faded into the thin gray of rainy days. Jane continued to eat only when Jack brought her food and drink tea whenever Tilly placed a fresh cup on the nightstand. Even so, she never left her daughter's side.
On the seventy-second day, Morwenna finally opened her eyes.
Jane didn't notice at first. She was looking out the window, watching a small bird land on the sill before flying away again. When she turned back toward the bed, she found that Morwenna's eyes were open.
But they were no longer the eyes she remembered.
The right one was a deep, smoldering red, like embers slowly cooling in a dark fireplace. The left was silver, with the cold, sharp gleam of polished steel. Charcoal-black rings around both irises stood out starkly against her pale skin.
Yet it wasn't their unusual colors that made Jane catch her breath. It was the expression behind them.
Morwenna looked dazed and confused. Her eyes seemed to be focused on something far beyond the nursery, as though she were looking at a world that didn't belong to this place.
"Morwenna?"
The name reached the girl, but it felt unfamiliar. She wasn't Morwenna. She was someone else, someone who had existed for a very long time before this moment.
Her other life felt closer. More familiar. More real.
The small apartment with the brick wall. The laptop on the couch. The stories she had read alone in the dark.
Her eyes moved slowly across the ceiling, following something that wasn't there. Her lips parted slightly, but no sound came out.
Jane rose from her chair and crossed the room. She sat on the edge of the mattress, careful not to startle her.
"Morwenna, can you hear me?"
The woman's face was familiar. The girl knew her. She knew that she loved this woman, too. But the feeling seemed distant, like something she had once read about in a book rather than something she had experienced herself.
Morwenna blinked. Her focus wandered, returned for a moment, then slipped away again. She seemed to be looking through Jane, past the walls and into a place that had nothing to do with the room around her.
Her soul had returned, but her mind hadn't yet found its footing. It was still tangled in decades of memories, caught between two lives and two entirely different worlds.
Jane reached for her daughter's hand and held it gently. Morwenna's fingers were warm, but they didn't move or return her grip.
Then Jane lifted her other hand and touched Morwenna's cheek.
The girl flinched.
It was an instinctive reaction. Her body moved before her mind could make sense of the touch.
Jane didn't pull away.
"It's alright," she whispered. "You are home."
Home.
The word seemed to pass through Morwenna without finding anywhere to settle. It meant nothing, yet somehow it meant everything. She tried to hold on to it, but the thought slipped away before she could understand why.
She closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, the light in the room had changed. The golden afternoon glow was gone, replaced by the gray light of late afternoon.
Jane was still there.
Her hand was still resting against Morwenna's cheek.
"Welcome back," Jane whispered.
Morwenna didn't answer.
. . . .
The first week after Morwenna opened her eyes was the hardest.
She didn't speak or make any attempt to sit up. Most of the time, she lay in bed watching the ceiling and the light shifting across it. Sometimes she looked at Jane or Jack, but more often she stared at them as though she had never seen them before.
She ate and drank when they held cups to her lips, but never asked for anything herself. She didn't reach for the green snake beside her or run her fingers through Cinder's soft fur.
Jane talked to her constantly. She told her about the garden, the roses that were beginning to fade, and the bees that kept the lavender busy. She also mentioned Tilly, who had taken to polishing the silver three times a day because he didn't know what else to do with his worry. Then there was Saoirse, who had started sleeping in the morning room because she couldn't bear the silence of her own bedroom.
Morwenna listened, or at least Jane hoped she did.
On the fourth day, Jack brought a book and read aloud a story about a dragon who collected stars. For a moment, Morwenna's eyes shifted toward his face before slowly drifting back to the ceiling.
On the sixth day, her hand suddenly twitched. Her fingers brushed against the fabric scales of the green snake. She didn't pick it up, but Jane noticed the small movement. She said nothing, afraid that drawing attention to it might make her stop.
By the third week, Morwenna's mind had begun to work properly again.
The first thing she noticed was that the light seemed wrong. It was too bright and too golden, falling across the ceiling at an angle that suggested late afternoon. She didn't know how she could tell, but somehow she did.
She also didn't know where she was.
The ceiling was made of dark wood, with heavy beams crossing overhead. A fire burned in the hearth. A green snake lay beside her, while a russet fox was curled up at her feet.
She blinked, but the room remained the same.
Her body felt strange and heavy, much smaller than the consciousness inside it. When she lifted a hand, she saw five small, pale fingers.
A child's hand.
But she remembered being older.
She remembered an apartment with a brick wall outside the window and a laptop glowing in the darkness. She remembered reading a story about a girl with white hair and green eyes.
That girl was her.
No, that girl was a character in a story she had read. But she was also Morwenna. She was both, yet neither. She couldn't tell which reality was the truth anymore.
The door opened, and Jane stepped inside.
She stopped as soon as she saw Morwenna's open eyes. Her hand flew to her mouth, and tears immediately filled her green eyes.
"Morwenna."
The girl recognized the voice. She knew this woman. She remembered how she had held her through the nightmares after the first bath.
But she also knew Jane as a name written on a page, a character brought to life from the story she had read.
The two realities collided in her mind, leaving her unable to catch her breath.
Jane hurried to the bed and sat down, pulling her daughter into her arms.
The warmth was immediate, almost overwhelming. Morwenna's body stiffened. Her arms remained pinned to her sides, and her hands curled into tight fists. She didn't know how to accept comfort from someone who felt both real and unreal at the same time.
"Ma chérie," Jane whispered, her voice thick with emotion. "It's alright. Everything is alright. You are back here with us."
Morwenna said nothing.
"It's alright if you don't know how to act around us," Jane continued softly. "We can try again, slowly, from the beginning. You don't have to force yourself."
The words echoed in Morwenna's mind.
We can try again. Slowly. From the beginning.
Jane knew. The family knew that something had changed. They understood that the girl who had climbed into the bath was no longer quite the same.
The realization made Morwenna even more frightened. Her body grew stiff, and her breathing quickened as fear washed over her.
Jane noticed immediately. She gently held her daughter's face, waiting without asking her to explain.
Morwenna began to tremble. The words she wanted to say seemed trapped somewhere between her two selves, and she couldn't make sense of them.
Jane pulled her close again.
"It's alright," she whispered. "It's alright."
Morwenna still couldn't speak. She only trembled, caught between the instinct to lean into the warmth and the deeply ingrained habit of preparing herself for loss. Jane felt how tense she was and held her a little tighter, patiently waiting for the fear to pass.
. . .
The first two weeks of Morwenna's consciousness passed mostly in silence.
Her eyes were open, but she rarely seemed to notice what was happening around her. She usually lay on her side with the green snake pressed against her chest, staring at the wall.
She barely reacted when Jack, Aldric, or Seraphina came to visit. Jack often sat in the chair beside her bed and read aloud. Morwenna didn't seem to follow the stories, but the low, steady sound of his voice gave her something familiar to hold on to.
She ate very little. Jane often had to feed her broth one spoonful at a time, and Morwenna swallowed without seeming to notice the taste. She didn't sleep much either. Instead, she lay awake staring at a crack in the ceiling, with Cinder resting beside her.
Nicholas visited twice a day to check her pulse and examine the alignment of her soul.
"Her soul is stable," he assured them. "Her body is healing. Her mind will follow in time."
Morwenna didn't care.
Her memories were a tangled mess. One moment, she was a five-year-old child lying in an unfamiliar bed. The next, she was a woman in her late twenties, sitting alone in a dark apartment.
She remembered reading about the ritual and the stars on the ceiling. She had read that story, yet somehow she was living inside it now. She couldn't tell whether either life was real.
The memories of her adult life were stronger. They kept pushing the child's memories toward the edges of her mind, making it difficult to recognize herself as the little girl everyone called Morwenna.
Sometimes, she felt as though she were a stranger who had taken the place of a dead child.
She didn't want to be here, but her family never forced her to do anything. They left food within reach and spoke to her in quiet voices. No one demanded that she behave like the little girl they remembered.
She was grateful for that, yet she also felt angry. She didn't understand why, and she didn't have the energy to think about it.
So she remained in bed and let the days pass.
. . . .
Two weeks after waking, she finally spoke for the first time.
Jane was sitting in her usual chair, watching the late afternoon light fall across the room.
Morwenna turned her head and looked at her.
"Water."
Her voice was hoarse and rough from lack of use.
Jane immediately stood and poured a cup. She returned to the bed and carefully held it to her daughter's lips.
Morwenna drank. The water was cold, and it hurt her throat as she swallowed.
"Thank you," she said.
The words were flat, without any warmth or recognition, but Jane's expression remained unchanged.
"You are welcome."
By the third week, the silence had begun to break.
Morwenna started noticing things again. The dark circles beneath Jane's eyes. The careful way Jack adjusted her pillows. The quiet sound of Aldric placing books on the nightstand before leaving the room.
They never asked her to do anything. They didn't demand that she smile, speak, or act like the child they remembered.
They simply stayed.
The realization sat heavily in her chest.
One afternoon, Jane entered with a cup of tea and settled into her usual chair. Her red hair caught the light as she moved, and Morwenna watched her quietly.
She had been watching this woman for weeks. She had seen her crying in the corridor and staring at the wall whenever she thought no one was looking.
Morwenna still couldn't understand why this woman cared so much about her.
She swallowed, trying to find the words.
"Why?"
Jane turned toward her. Her eyes looked tired, with worry etched into the skin around them.
"Why what?"
"Why do you keep coming?"
Jane was quiet for a moment. Then she put down her tea and sat on the edge of the mattress. She didn't reach out or try to touch her.
"Because you are my daughter," she said gently. "You have always been my daughter, and you always will be."
Morwenna's eyes began to burn, but she had stopped crying a long time ago in that other life.
"I'm not her."
Jane shook her head.
"You are her. You have changed, but you are still my daughter."
Morwenna didn't know how to answer.
She turned toward the window instead, looking at the roses that were slowly fading in the garden.
Jane remained seated on the edge of the bed. She didn't press the matter or ask her to say anything else.
After a long while, Morwenna's hand slowly moved across the quilt. Her fingers crept toward Jane until they finally touched her wrist.
It was a weak grip, and it didn't last long.
But this time, she had reached out on her own.
. . .
She didn't leave the nursery.
The days passed in much the same way. She ate and drank only when someone offered her food or water, and she rarely spoke unless someone spoke to her first. She never called Jane by her name, nor did she use any name for Jack.
Whenever she needed something, she simply said so.
"More broth. Blanket. Light off."
The memories of her adult life remained deep inside her, like stones resting at the bottom of a river. She remembered the loneliness of her previous life, the kind that came from being surrounded by people who never truly saw her. She didn't want anyone to see her now, either. So she pulled the quilt up to her chin and turned toward the wall.
. . .
As the golden days of late summer gave way to the yellow leaves of early autumn, Morwenna remained in bed.
But little by little, some things began to change.
She no longer flinched whenever Jane touched her. She stopped pulling away when Jack sat beside her. She allowed Roxane to check her pulse without her body going rigid, and she let Nicholas examine her eyes without turning her head away.
The walls she had built around herself were still there, but cracks had begun to appear.
At the end of the third week, Morwenna sat up on her own for the first time.
She didn't know what had prompted her to do it. Her body had simply moved before she had given it much thought.
Jane looked up from her book.
"Are you hungry?"
Morwenna shook her head.
"Would you like to go outside?"
Morwenna glanced at the rain-streaked window and the garden beyond it.
"No."
Jane closed her book and looked at her daughter.
"What would you like to do?"
Morwenna remained quiet for a long time. The only sound in the room was the gentle crackling of the fire.
"I don't know," she finally answered.
Jane simply nodded and let her lie back down.
. . .
By the end of the fourth week, the walls around Morwenna had begun to soften. It wasn't a sudden rush of emotion or a dramatic change in her behavior. It happened gradually, like the slow thaw of ice after a long winter.
She started listening when Jane told her stories. She paid more attention to Jack's face when he spoke, and sometimes she even reached for the books Aldric left beside her bed, though she often held them without actually reading.
One evening, Jack sat on the edge of the bed and began telling her about the manor's ledgers and the quiet work involved in keeping the estate running.
Morwenna watched his hands as he spoke. They were long and slender, with a jagged white scar running across his left palm.
She reached out and traced the mark with one finger.
Jack stopped talking.
"How?" she asked.
"A ritual," he replied. "When I was seventeen."
Morwenna looked down at her own hands. They were small and pale, without a single mark. Then she raised her eyes to his face.
"You stayed," she said.
"Yes."
"Why?"
Jack met her gaze. The firelight caught the white streak in his hair.
"Because you are my daughter. Because I love you, and that's what love does. It stays."
Morwenna lowered her eyes. When Jack placed his hand over hers, she didn't pull away.
. . .
The following morning, Morwenna pushed the quilt aside and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.
Her muscles trembled beneath her weight, weakened by months of lying still, but they held. Jane stood near the door with her hands clasped together. She looked ready to step forward and help, but she remained where she was, giving her daughter room to move on her own.
Morwenna slowly made her way toward the window. Her steps were unsteady, and she had to pause once before reaching it.
She pressed her palm against the cold glass and looked out at the autumn leaves drifting through the garden.
Her reflection stared back at her.
Dark hair with streaks of pure white. One eye the color of cooling embers, the other with the cold gleam of frost.
A face caught between two lives.
It belonged to her, yet somehow it didn't feel entirely like her own.
"Morwenna."
She turned and saw Jane standing a few steps behind her.
"Your name," Jane said softly. "You haven't said it in two months."
Morwenna looked back at her reflection.
"Morwenna."
The name felt strange and heavy on her tongue.
"That's who you are," Jane said again, her green eyes glistening with tears.
"I don't know who that is," Morwenna admitted.
Jane took a step closer but didn't reach for her.
"Then we will find out together."
Morwenna remained by the window, watching the leaves fall against the bare branches beneath the gray autumn sky.
She said nothing more, but she didn't turn away either.
For once, she allowed the silence to remain between them without trying to hide from it.
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