Seraphin

   "The wind whistled through the trees and everything smelled like pine. The chill in the air made the day bearable. This is what I lived for, the livelihood of the wood. The city was too much for me, or, was it too little? I never knew, not 'till now. I was seven years old when my father left and time has made it all the clearer in my mind. I guess that that one moment in my life had solidified my solitary instinct that I needed to be alone. He stormed out and left my mother sobbing at the door, this is what I remember..."

            NNNEEEEEEEEEEEHH!!! The class rushed at the sound of the bell, to them it was precious, the end of the day, at school at least. But to me it had happened in slow motion, and the world swam before my eyes. This cant be happening...

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            "You can't keep doing that, man," he was grinning ear to ear, "...fainting in class... What is this, the third time this week? It's not witch sickness is it?" He laughed at that.

            "Shut up..." this was all I could really think to say, after all, it was fairly embarrassing, "...it isn't anything important..." We continued to my house  in silence.

            It's quite an exciting thing to find something unusual in your family history, for me it was no different. Some people learn that their <multiple> great-grandparents were from another country. I learned that my family are witches. It was Jeremy who, in part, made this discovery, and he's never let me live it down.

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            I was rummaging through another one of the old, dust filled trunks in the attic on an errand from my mother when I stumbled on something that peaked my attention, a photograph. It was a group of people that I hardly recognized, all of them with my father. The room too was familiar, altho we didn't live there now. We had left it--quite a while ago.

            When I brought it to her, along with what she'ld asked me to find, an old lock box, she was resting on the sofa in the family room. "Mother," I said this timidly, afraid I might startle her, "I found something upstairs...when I was looking through the trunk..."

            "What?" she asked as she blinked the sleep from her eyes and sat up. She was truly curious.

            "It's a picture...of dad," her eyes twitched at that, they always did when I called him that.