Banished Divinity: Learning to be Human

Three hours later, I stood at the bus stop.

The bus came. I got on. I sat in the back, because that was where Mina had told me to sit, because "the back is where the cool people sit, Sera, just trust me on this." I did not feel cool. I felt like a collection of bruises held together by stubbornness and the vague hope that tomorrow would be less terrible than today.

The bus moved through the city. Buildings blurred past. People got on and got off. An old woman with a metal basket on wheels glared at me. A toddler waved at me from his mother's lap. I did not wave back. I was a celestial being. Celestial beings did not wave at toddlers.

I got off at my stop. I walked down the street. The house appeared—white siding, small patch of grass, the same house that had been there when I left this morning and would probably be there when I came back tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, forever and ever, until I was nothing but bones and dust and a scholarship that had been lost because I could not understand supply and demand.

Mum was in the kitchen. She looked up when I walked in, and her face did the same thing Jiyoung's and Haejin's had done—relief, then horror, then rage.

"Sera—"

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine. Your face—"

"I fell."

"You fell.?" Her voice was flat. Disbelieving.

"Yes."

She stared at me. I stared back. The kitchen clock ticked. The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere in the house, a door opened and closed, and Dad's voice called out, "Is that Sera?"

And then something happened.

Something that had not happened since I woke up in this world.

Mum's expression changed. The horror faded. The rage faded. What was left was something I had seen in her face before, in the photographs on the wall, in the albums on the table, in the way she looked at the human Sera when she thought no one was watching.

It was love.

It was fierce, stubborn, unreasonable love.

And it was directed at me.

She crossed the kitchen in three strides. Her hands came up to my face—gentle, so gentle, nothing like the hands that had wielded the slipper on my first day. She turned my head to the side, examined the scrape on my cheek, the bruise forming on my jaw, the mess of my hair where Yuna's friends had pulled it.

"Who did this to you?" she asked.

"I fell."

"Sera."

"I fell, Mum."

She opened her mouth to argue. And then she saw my eyes.

I don't know what she saw there. I don't know what expression my mortal face was wearing, what celestial fire was burning behind these brown eyes that had never been mine. But she saw something. Something that made her pause. Something that made her hands fall away from my face. Something that made her step back and look at me like she was seeing me for the first time.

"Okay," she said softly. "You fell."

I nodded.

Dad appeared in the kitchen doorway. He took in the scene—me, bruised and battered; Mum, standing back from me with an expression I couldn't read; the tension in the air that was thick enough to cut.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"Sera fell," Mum said.

Dad looked at me. At my face. At the way I was standing—straight-backed, chin raised, hands clenched at my sides. At the fire that was burning behind my eyes, the fire that I had not known was there until this moment.

"Huh," he said. And then, unexpectedly, he smiled. "You look like your mother when she's about to do something she's not supposed to."

Mum snorted. "I never do things I'm not supposed to."

"You married me."

"That was a lapse in judgment that I have since corrected."

"You haven't corrected anything. We're still married."

"A work in progress."

I stood in the middle of the kitchen, bruised and aching and burning with a fire I didn't understand, and I watched my parents bicker. Watched them circle each other like planets around a sun. Watched them love each other in the only way they knew how—with insults and teasing and the kind of fierce, unshakeable loyalty that had survived thirty-five years of marriage, two children, and a daughter who had forgotten everything they had ever given her.

Mum turned back to me. Her eyes softened. She reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear—the same gesture she had made at the restaurant, the same gesture she had made in the photograph albums, the same gesture she had probably been making since I was small enough to fit in her arms.

"Dinner's almost ready," she said. "Go wash up. Your father made his famous soup."

"It's not famous," Dad said.

"It's famous in this house."

"That's not—that doesn't count as famous."

"It counts. I'm counting it."

I walked to the bathroom. I washed my face. I looked at myself in the mirror—at the scrape on my cheek, the bruise on my jaw, the mess of my hair. I looked at my eyes. Brown. Unremarkable. The eyes of a mortal girl who had been ambushed in an art room and had not fought back.

But there was something in them now that hadn't been there this morning.

Something that burned.

I did not know who Jaehyun was. I did not know why Yuna had decided I was a threat. I did not know why she had chosen today, this moment, this corner of the school, to make her claim.

But I knew one thing.

I had not fought back today. I had crumpled. I had curled. I had let them kick me and pull my hair and call me names, and I had done nothing.

I would not do nothing again.

I was Seraphyne. I was a celestial being. I had fallen from the heavens and landed in a body that was weak and mortal and breakable, and I had spent the past week being afraid. Afraid of failing. Afraid of economics. Afraid of being stuck here forever.

No more.

I was done being afraid.

I walked back to the kitchen. Dad was ladling soup into bowls. Mum was setting the table. The smell of garlic and ginger filled the air, warm and familiar and somehow right.

"Sit," Mum said, pointing to my usual chair. "Eat. You look like you haven't eaten properly in days."

I sat. I ate. The soup was good—better than good, actually, rich and savory and comforting in a way that made something in my chest loosen.

Dad watched me eat with an expression of quiet satisfaction. "Good?"

"Yes," I said. And then, because I was feeling something I didn't have words for, I added, "Thank you."

Dad's eyebrows rose. He looked at Mum. Mum looked at him. They didn't say anything, but something passed between them—something that looked like hope.

I finished my soup. I helped clear the table. I did the dishes while Mum sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, watching me with an expression that was somewhere between surprise and something softer.

"You don't have to do that," she said.

"I know."

"You've never done the dishes before. Not once. You always said it was 'beneath your dignity.'"

I paused, my hands in the soapy water. "That sounds like something I would say."

"It sounds exactly like something you would say." There was a pause. "You said it last week, actually. When I asked you to help with dinner."

I thought about this. The human Sera had refused to do dishes. The human Sera had called it beneath her dignity. The human Sera had climbed out windows and gone to concerts and gotten caught in explosions and forgotten everything.

But I was not the human Sera.

And I was learning, slowly, that there were things that were not beneath my dignity. Things like washing dishes. Things like eating soup. Things like letting Mum tuck my hair behind my ear and Dad look at me with hope in his eyes.

Things like falling and getting back up.

I finished the dishes. I dried my hands. I turned to leave the kitchen, and found Mum standing in the doorway, blocking my path.

"Sera."

"Yes?"

She looked at me for a long moment. Her eyes were bright. Her hands were clasped in front of her, twisting together in a way that told me she was nervous—more nervous than I had ever seen her.

"I don't know what happened today," she said. "I don't know who did this to you. But I know you, Sera. I know that look in your eyes. And I know—" She paused, swallowing. "I know that whatever you're planning to do about it, you're going to be okay."

I stared at her.

"You're not going to tell me not to do anything?" I asked. "You're not going to call the school? Call the police? Demand justice?"

She smiled. It was a small smile, a tired smile, a smile that had seen her two children grew up and now a daughter who had forgotten everything and was slowly, painfully, learning to remember.

"I'm going to trust you," she said. "That's what mothers do. They trust their daughters to make the right choices. And if their daughters make the wrong choices—" She reached out and took my hands. Her fingers were warm. Calloused. Strong. "—they're there to catch them when they fall."

Something cracked in my chest.

Something that had been frozen since I fell from the heavens. Something that had been cold and hard and untouchable, something that had kept me alive through the burning and the falling and the waking up in a body that was not mine.

It cracked.

And something warm began to seep through.

"I don't know how to be your daughter," I said, and my voice was not steady. It was not celestial. It was small and mortal and real. "I don't remember anything. I don't remember the fish or the scholarship or the—the grandmother who you called old and shrivel. I don't remember you."

Mum's hands tightened around mine. "I know."

"I might never remember."

"I know."

"I might be stuck like this forever. I might never get back to—" I stopped. Swallowed. "I might never be who I was."

Mum pulled me into a hug.

It was not a gentle hug. It was fierce. Tight. The kind of hug that said I am not letting go, I am not giving up, I am here and I am staying.

"Then you'll be someone new," she said into my hair. "And that's okay. That's allowed. You're allowed to be someone new, Sera. You're allowed to not know. You're allowed to be scared. You're allowed to fall."

I stood in my mother's arms, in the kitchen of a house that was not mine, in a body that was not mine, and I let her hold me. I let her warmth seep into my frozen places. I let her love fill the cracks that were forming in the walls I had built around myself.

And I did not cry.

But I came close.

From the living room, Dad's voice floated in: "Are we doing a group hug? I want to be part of the group hug."

"Get in here, Daniel."

"I'm coming, I'm coming—"

Dad appeared in the doorway. He took in the scene—me, wrapped in Mum's arms, my face buried in her shoulder, my hands clutching the back of her shirt like she was the only thing keeping me standing.

He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. He just walked over and wrapped his arms around both of us, and we stood there, the three of us, in the middle of the kitchen, holding each other like we were the only things in the world that mattered.

And somewhere in the darkness of my mind, the what-ifs fell silent.

What if she never comes back?

Then I will be someone new.

What if I'm stuck here forever?

Then I will build something here. Something worth staying for.

What if I fall?

Then they will catch me.

They will always catch me.