2 1: Serenity

"Momma!" I called into the empty house before sighing. Training was rough today with my mentor who pushed me hard to get my powers under my control. Dad wouldn't be back for another few hours, but normally Mom was here when I got back. She would ask me how my day had gone before feeding me whatever she found.

This was weird. But I didn't read too much into it as I found a plate on the counter full of songpyeon* and grabbed a handful to eat in my room as I did my daily school work that Momma and Dad would have assigned me to do after my daily training was completed. I looked out my window once to see the sun beginning to set in the distance with the forest thick around our house. A driveway ran for about 2 miles down to the main road, and no one ever visited that I had never seen before.

I continued to work as I heard the door open and close a few times, followed by voices speaking in hush tones.

"Momma, Dad, are you home?" I asked into the darkness. I could feel the trepidation of the shadows around me as the darkness enveloped me. Something was off. Someone was here that wasn't mean to be.

I created a small shadow doll to come with me. Her eyes were hallow, only looking at me. She followed behind me with silent steps.

I did my best to sneak downstairs, but the floor continued to creak under me.

The voices sounded more panicked now, but I recognized the voices of my parents as they spoke frantically. I heard hidden messages in their words that we had discussed many times before, but I never thought I would need to remember them. They spoke trigger words for my brain to know to escape and hide, but my body moved on its own. I wanted to fight.

I stood in the door to the living room, staring at my parents bound with their backs pressed together. A man stood in the middle of the room with a spot of light behind him.

I stood silently, listening to the words from the man.

"You will regret the day you ever messed with the Demon Lord of the Underground."

A tiny gasp escaped me then, causing all the men in the room to turn to me. Their eyes swept over my features and took in every piece of me.

The man in the middle was suddenly right in front of me with his head tilted to the side. "And who might you be, little mouse?"

I scrambled out of the room and into the kitchen, only to be dragged back by my hair. Curse me for wanting to keep my hair long. He dragged me all the way back into him and grabbed me by the front of my shirt.

My breath caught in my throat as he stared into my eyes, refusing to let me look away. I was forced to see everything he would do next, from the murder of my family to my own murder if I didn't escape.

"I'm speaking to you-" his voice was cut off by his own yelp. He dropped me to the ground and I scrambled back as more men rushed to grab my arms. My doll stood behind the man with a dagger of shadows in her hand.

I felt the pain before I saw the light disintegrating my doll. I screamed and felt the earth shake beneath me and watched the lights in the house all flicker. My parents kept the lights dimmer to not hurt me a long time ago by accident when I had a shadow puppet out with me, the dimmer lights of the house didn't hurt them, so what had caused this strong of a light to hurt me like this?

The men holding me were suddenly flung away as I scrambled up and out of the house.

Screams echoed behind me as I ran through the woods on a hidden path.

"Serenity, run!" The voice echoed behind me. My father's chilling screams only followed the words. I had to go, I had to escape.

I had to live.

"Go, my daughter! Run and stay alive!" My mom called through the trees.

I pushed my seventeen-year-old body just a little further until the old cabin came into view.

I collapsed onto the steps in front of me with my body feeling incredibly heavy and weighted down. I knew I needed to keep going, but something was pulling me here. Some part of me wanted me to go inside.

I heard the yells and footsteps soon after I reached the cabin and fear hit me again. The same fear that coursed through my veins as the day that my power came into existence.

Power… that's it!

I ran up the stairs on all fours and scrambled into the broken door, careful to mind the broken glass and smell of metallic alcohol as I ran into the main room. The cabin had been through some rough years and it had fallen into disrepair when the son of the man who lived here abandoned it. The story as a sad one that the house still told. A husband killed his wife in a drunken rage after finding her cheating on him. The broken furniture, glass, and air told the story of the wife fighting to escape her angry husband before it was too late. The man murdered her with a broken bottle through the left side of her face, causing it to break her skull as it went straight into her brain, causing irreversible brain damage and bleeding.

It was sad, but I didn't have time to dwell on the details yet. I needed to survive. Meaning, I needed to hide myself in the shadows, exactly where I belonged.

The shadows would shield me from the fear.

As I curled up in the corner of the room, the shadows around me started to bend and cling to my skin, making me almost completely invisible to the dark house left to rot.

"She has to be in here!" I heard as a man came in. His eyes were a dark grey that make some extra fear enter me. His eyes scanned the room before he spoke in quiet Japanese.

"Little mouse, come on out," he called into the silence. The shadows covered my mouth to muffle the whimpers.

He stepped closer to my corner and I had to stop myself from crying out when he stepped onto one of the shadows in my control. He seemed to make it a point to stomp onto each of the shadows in the room as he searched for me. I noticed him visibly tense back up as he began to realize I couldn't be hiding in these shadows because hurting them would have hurt me.

He was gone faster than I could blink, leaving me to wonder what had just happened. One single bloodcurdling scream sounded in the night, then silence took over.

I don't know how long I stayed in that old cabin, but the sun began to rising soon after. I felt the numb sinking into my bones as I stood and quietly walked back. I didn't notice last night with the adrenaline pumping through my veins, but the absence of shoes finally started to hit me. The sun shining brightly through gaps in the trees prevented me from attempting to use shadows to cushion myself along the path.

Two cars were parked next to the house with my mentor frantically running around, calling out my name and a few police officers on the scene, seeming to be searching for me.

A tug from my stomach tried to guide me into the house. It was unfamiliar to me.

Everything around me felt so far away and words felt as if they were being said under water. It felt as if I couldn't breathe anymore. Like all the air was replaced with metal as it weighed in my lungs.

David saw me then and he called the officers' attentions back to him as he ran to me and knelt in front of me.

"Serenity, where have you been?" he asked, but his voice was muffled. I couldn't make myself answer him, nor move from where his hands held me into place.

He looked back at the officers with what looked to be panic in his eyes. The brunette man stepped in front of me and began to speak.

"Serenity? I'm Officer Rodrigo. What happened here last night?" he asked me, looking up into my eyes. Officer Rodrigo then looked back at the woman with worry in his gaze at my silence to his question.

They all moved away from me to talk and I looked back at my home. There were blood splatters on the windows that sent fear into the pit of my stomach.

I walked to my house and stepped onto the porch and let the tug of something deep inside me guide me through the darken entryway of my house. The blood left a trail into the living room where I fell to my knees.

My mother once upon a time had a beautiful smile. Her eyes would light up at certain things that I would do. My father had once told me she had lost the light in her eyes the day they lost one of their babies. She was cold to everyone outside our tiny family. Slowly, for the years I had been with them, I had tried to put the light back into her dull eyes through everything I did. Now, they were open wide and forever dull, staring at me in the doorway. Her black hair was pulled out of its normal bun and fanned out around her. She seemed so doll-like now.

My father was a generous and kind man once. He gave to charities that supported children like me, without a related family to care for them. He would hold me on the days my powers would hurt me inside and let me cry when I needed to. He was my guide and my protector and he was the closest to a best friend I had. Now, he was on the wall with his head hanging low, his cold gaze fixed onto the floor. Two dagger-like objects were stabbed into his arms, which was the only thing holding him to the walls. I stumbled to my feet to examen the objects, they burned me to the first touch and my shadows in the house shrunk away from their glowing light.

I reached up and cupped my father's cheek and a familiar tug in my stomach pulled me towards him. Words began tumbling out of my lips before a hand covered my mouth and muffled my voice. I fought against it for a second before I stopped struggling, falling down into a pool of blood below me with sobs racking my body.

Suddenly, the words were loud and deafening in my ears as the two police officers looked over the scene, making sure I didn't mess anything up within the scene of my parents'...murder...

The word stabbed me in the gut as I realized exactly what this was. This was a murder. Someone murdered my family.

David pulled me outside then and sat on the ground with me in his arms as more officers arrived and were going in and out of my house.

~They were murdered.~

A scream finally ripped its way through me and I let it ring through the trees.

Whoever had done this, they would pay. Pay for everything they had ripped away from me.

With their lives.

~~~~~~

The dress was itchy as I pulled it over my body. It was tight around my waist as I adjusted it and tied the black sash around it. The sleeves were belled at the ends and the dress went to my knees. Black tights covered my legs and feet. I worked on putting the black lace gloves over my hands. They had once covered the hands of my mother on the days she would mourn the losses of her natural children. David had left a black veil on my bed along with a pair of black wedged heels to wear today.

He had taken over as my primary guardian once everything had happened.

I stepped into my bathroom to pin the lacy veil into my hair. Once it was thrown back over my hair, I took that moment to examen myself in the mirror. My brown eyes were dull, not any light was left within them, and the once bright silver ring around my pupils had darkened into a dark gray color. My dark colored bags were underneath from a lack of sleep and my cheeks and the whites of my eyes were red and puffy from my crying. My raven black hair was dull as well and it fell to my waist, the same length my mother had always wanted me to have. "You are more beautiful than any of the goddesses in existence, my daughter," she had always said when I asked her to brush that same hair and braid it before my normal training to keep my powers at bay.

At the memory of her words, disgust filled my features and I immediately hid myself under the veil.

I walked downstairs after grabbing the shoes off my bed and stared into the living room through the doorway at the bottom of the stairs.

The carpeting had been ripped up and there were still blood stains on the concrete. Plaster was over the holes in the wall and the white of it clashed with the black of the walls.

Anger ran hot in my gut as I walked the other way and into the kitchen.

David, Nana (my late father's mother), and halmeoni* (my late mother's mother) had been cooking all day, making many different Japanese, Korean, and American desserts to serve to people after the funeral today.

Platters held dango, daifuku, dorayaki, sakura mochi*, dasik*, songpyeon, and a cake.

My heart sank as they looked at me dressed all in black and covering almost every inch of my skin from the bright light of the sun. Shadows snuck under the skirt of my dress to provide me some sort of comfort today.

I don't remember much of the funeral, all I really remember is crying while touching the hands of my parents. They had been cleaned and the blood once staining them was gone.

I remember David leading me to the closed caskets of my parents to say my final goodbyes after they were loaded onto the platform that would lower them into the ground...forever.

The last thing I remember from that day was placing a kiss on each of the caskets before all of my memories are black.

*Songpyeon = a type of traditional Korean rice cake made from rice powder. Traditionally eaten during Chuseok (Korean autumn festival)

*Halmeoni = grandma in Korean

*Dango, daifuku, dorayaki, sakura mochi = Japanese dessert foods

*Dasik = traditional Korean tea cookies