Banished Divinity: Learning to be Human

We were on the third album—the one that apparently covered “the high school years, which we do not discuss in polite company”—when the front door opened.

“Sera’s out of her room,” Dad called without looking up. “We’re looking at pictures.”

Footsteps hurried down the hall. Mum appeared in the doorway, her coat still on, one shoe half-off, her face a mixture of hope and fear and something that looked almost like panic.

“You’re out of your room,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “I was told this is a notable event.”

Dad snorted. Mum shot him a look that could have curdled a beast milk, but when she turned back to me, her expression was soft. Almost fragile.

“Sweetheart,” she said, and crossed the room in three quick strides.

She sat down beside me. Her hands reached out and took mine. Her fingers were warm. Calloused from work. They held mine like I was something precious.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she said again.

And then she hugged me.

It was not a gentle hug. It was fierce. Tight. Her arms wrapped around me like she was trying to hold me together, like she was afraid I might disappear if she let go. Her chin pressed against my shoulder. Her breath was warm against my neck.

I had seen humans do this. With their shrivelled young, their babies, when those babies cried. The hug was meant to soothe. To comfort. To communicate something that words could not.

But I was not crying. I was not a baby. I was a celestial being trapped in a mortal body, sitting at a dining table covered in photograph albums, being hugged by a woman who thought I was her daughter.

I did not know what to do.

My arms hung at my sides. My back was rigid. My face—my face was doing something that I did not have a name for, something that felt like cracking.

“Sera,” Mum murmured into my shoulder. “My Sera.”

And then, from across the table, a sound.

A wail.

A sob.

A noise that was so loud and so sudden and so utterly ridiculous that I looked up in alarm, certain that some creature had breached the house and was about to attack.

It was Dad.

He was sobbing. Openly. His face was red, his eyes were streaming, his shoulders were shaking with the force of his emotion. He had his hands pressed to his face like he was trying to hold himself together, but it wasn’t working. All sorts of liquid was coming off every hole in his face. The whole thing was a mess.

“We love you, Sera!” he managed between sobs. “Don’t you worry! Even though you’re all weird! We’re here for you!”

“Daniel, control yourself,” Mum said, but her voice was thick.

“I CAN’T CONTROL MYSELF! MY DAUGHTER IS OUT OF HER ROOM FOR ABOUT AN HOUR!”

“She’s been out for an hour?!”

“AN HOUR I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT! I’M MAKING UP FOR LOST TIME!”

Mina—Tangled Menace, the sister, whatever she was called—appeared in the doorway. She had her phone pressed to her ear and an expression of profound annoyance on her face.

“Yes, sorry, I have to go,” she said into the phone. “My father is having a mental breakdown now instead of my sister. Yes she is still weird. No, it’s fine. This happens. Yes. Okay. Bye.”

She hung up and looked at the scene before her: Mum hugging me like a life preserver, Dad sobbing into his hands, me sitting perfectly still with the expression of a lost creature that had just realized it was standing in the middle of a very hungry pack of lincons that could devour me at anytime.

“Huh,” she said. “The hermit crab emerged.”

“She was looking at photographs,” Dad managed. “She wanted to know about the fish.”

“She wanted to know about the fish?” Mina’s expression flickered. Something soft passed behind her eyes, there and gone. “Did you tell her about the time she tried to cook ramen and set off the fire alarm?”

“She did what?” I asked.

“Freshman year. You decided you were going to be independent. You almost burned the house down.” Mina walked over and dropped into a chair, pulling her legs up under her. “Mum was so mad. You didn’t eat solid food for a week because she was convinced, you’d poison yourself.”

“I was not convinced she would poison herself,” Mum said, finally releasing me from the hug. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, pretending she wasn’t wiping her eyes. “I was convinced she would burn the house down. The food poisoning was a secondary concern.”

“The smoke alarm went off for twenty minutes,” Dad added, his sobs subsiding into occasional hiccups. “The neighbours called the fire department. Twice.”

“They did not call twice,” Mum said.

“The first time they hung up because they thought it was a false alarm. The second time they came anyway.”

“And there was a firefighter,” Mina said, her grin returning, “who was very handsome, and Sera spent the next six months trying to find him on social media.”

“I did WHAT? FIND A SPECIMEN?” I startled and felt heat in my face.

This is so unacceptable. Celestial beings do not feel heat in their face. What is this feeling?

Mina’s grin became a full smile. “She remembers the firefighter.”

“I do not remember the firefighter.”

“Your face is red.”

“My face is not—” I touched my cheek. It was warm. This was at all levels unacceptable. “That’s from the hug. I was being hugged. It was aggressive.”

“I hugged you for three seconds.”

“You hugged me like you were trying to extract my soul.”

“That’s just how Mum hugs.”

Mum made a sound that might have been a laugh or might have been the beginning of another lecture. She was still holding one of my hands. I hadn’t noticed she hadn’t let go.

“Sera,” she said, and her voice was steady now, “we’re not going to push you. We know things are confusing. We know you don’t remember. But we want you to know—” She glanced at Dad, who nodded, still sniffling. She looked at Mina, who shrugged but didn’t look away. “We’re here. Whatever you need. However long this takes. We’re here.”

I looked at her. At the three of them, gathered around a table covered in photograph albums, waiting for me to say something. To be something. To become the daughter, they had lost and found and lost again.

“You are strange,” I said.

Mum blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You are strange people. You work too hard. You keep photographs of everything. You leave food at doorways like you’re feeding a stray animal. You cry about programs and fish and a daughter who does not remember you.” I looked at each of them in turn. “You are the strangest humans I have ever encountered.”

The silence that followed was heavy.

And then Mina laughed.

It was not her usual snort or giggle. It was a full laugh, surprised out of her, bright and genuine. “She’s not wrong.”

“I am never wrong,” I said, and the words came out automatically, without thinking, and they felt right in a way that nothing had felt right since I woke up in this world.

Dad laughed too, a wet, hiccupping laugh that turned into another sob halfway through. Mum just shook her head, but she was smiling, and she didn’t let go of my hand.

“Come on,” she said, standing and pulling me up with her. “You’ve been living on tray food for four days. I’m making dinner. Real dinner. And you—” She pointed at Dad. “—are going to wash your face. You look like a slobby tomato.”

“A handsome tomato,” Dad said, but he went to the bathroom.

“And you—” Mum turned to Mina. “—are going to set the table without being asked.”

“I always set the table.”

“You set the table when I threaten you.”

“That’s still being asked.”

I stood in the middle of the dining room, surrounded by photograph albums, while my family—my family—moved around me. Mum was already in the kitchen, pulling things from the ice box. Dad was splashing water on his face in the bath chamber, occasionally making sounds that were somewhere between laughter and crying. Mina was pulling plates from another box that is not made of ice but wood, stacking them with the efficiency of someone who had done this a thousand times.

And I—

I stood there.

I stood there in a body that was not mine, in a house that was not mine, surrounded by people who were not mine, and I felt something that I did not have a name for.

It was not power. It was not fear. It was not the cold, distant satisfaction of watching lesser beings struggle beneath me.

It was warm. It was quiet. It was something that settled into my chest like a small, green creature curling up to sleep.

I did not know what it was.

But I thought—I thought I might like to find out.

---

That night, I slept.

Not the exhausted collapse of my earlier attempts. Not the desperate reaching for power that never came. Just sleep. Deep and quiet and dreamless, the kind of sleep that mortal bodies needed to heal and grow and become whatever they were meant to be.

And somewhere, in a place far from the human world, in a place between the spaces where the stars forgot to shine, something stirred.

It was small. It was green. It was dreaming of a girl with brown hair and brown eyes and a smile that meant something, even if she didn’t remember it.

And in the house with the white fence and the garden with the swing, a small creature opened its enormous eyes and looked toward the window and whispered a word into the darkness.

“Moo.”

In her room, surrounded by posters of nine young men who continued to stare at her with varying degrees of intensity, Sera turned in her sleep.

And for the first time since she had fallen from the heavens, she smiled.

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