Home, Finally

Do you ever feel like there's a world just out of reach? Like you were meant to be somewhere else? Like you were torn away from home? The place where you belonged, where your heart still lingers despite all your hopes, despite the whispered prayers that one day you'll wake up and find it was just a dream. That you’ll feel the rush of relief, like air flooding into a vacuum.

But then you open your eyes, and the truth crashes down on you.

It was real. And I am not home.

Deep breaths.

Inhale.

"One day, Anora." I smiled at her, bumping my arm against hers as we sat together, staring at the map-covered walls. Red and green markers traced shifting battle lines, ever changing, ever updating. "This will all end. Any plans, darling? Perhaps get a phoenix? Go to space? Go do heiress stuff?"

Exhale.

Anora just smiled and leaned her head against my shoulder. She was always like that—affectionate, warm, grounding. "Clean up after your mess, duh."

Inhale.

Michael came at me fast, a predator hunting its prey. I dodged, flicking my wrist, and my wand sent a spell crackling through the air. It struck him square in the chest. He froze, wide-eyed, staring first at himself, then at me. The silence stretched thin, a breath away from shattering—until he laughed.

Laughed and laughed, as if the world had gone mad, and humor was the only escape.

Exhale.

I shook off the paralysis of disbelief and reached deep inside, drawing from the ancient well of warmth within me. My wand cut through the air like a maestro’s baton, shaping runes that pulsed with energy. The spell surged forward.

Michael screamed—then all was silent again.

"A tickling charm?!" he spluttered from within the tangled silver chains now binding him. "A bloody tickling charm!"

I raised an eyebrow, smirking. With a lazy flick of my fingers, the chains vanished. "Unlike you, I have intelligence."

Inhale.

"And the winner of that round is…" Anora announced, grinning mischievously. She drummed her fingers against an invisible snare, making exaggerated sound effects with her mouth.

She always made me smile.

"...Gabrielle!"

Exhale.

I walked over, ignoring Michael's grumbling, and mockingly bowed to our audience of trees, bushes, and the occasional squirrel. "I humbly accept, my dear best friend."

Deep breaths.

Inhale. Exhale.

The memory fades.

I open my eyes and the lab comes back into focus. The sterile white counters, the blinking monitors, the cold reality of this world. My world. The wrong fucking world.

The sobs start before I can stop them, spilling out in silent waves as I collapse against the lab table, uncaring of the spilled chemicals beneath me. I cry for what was lost. For what will never be.

Later, I stare at my reflection in the restroom mirror. My face is the same—same features, same hair, same nose, same lips. But the eyes…

The eyes are wrong. The fire that once burned there has gone out. The spark, the endless curiosity, the life—it died the moment I woke up as a girl I no longer recognized.

There should be scars. One near my lip from a cutting charm that came too close. A thin line cutting through my brow from the time I forged a dagger for Anora. Freckles from sun-soaked journeys through scorching summers.

But there is nothing.

What kind of cruel god rips a woman from the only place she was ever happy and forces her back into a world where her own reflection feels like a lie?

A twenty-one-year-old sorceress stuffed back into the body of a fifteen-year-old girl. Like I haven’t bled for a world that wasn’t mine, haven’t killed. Like, I haven’t watched friends die. Like I haven’t sacrificed everything.

Like I’m supposed to just… move on.

Deep breaths.

Inhale. Exhale.

I meet my own gaze in the mirror and whisper, "You’ve made it a decade. You can do it. Forget them."

But I know it’s a lie.

I won’t forget them.

It shouldn’t be normal to lie to your reflection just to survive. It shouldn’t be normal to see a stranger staring back at you.

A tear slips down my cheek, and I murmur, "I’m sorry, Anora. For not trying harder to find my way back."

—

I tried to make it work, anyway.

Despite feeling like a part—no, the whole—of my soul was left behind, I did what was expected. I studied. I worked. I built a life that wasn’t mine.

It would be so easy , I sometimes think, to just be done with it all . But I shake my head and push those thoughts away.

Sometimes, I still feel the pull—the aether that binds all realities together, the thread that tugs me toward home. When I leave the lab, exhausted after endless clinical trials, I find myself searching the sky. Looking for phoenixes soaring after a hard-won victory. Listening for the laughter of lower fae as they celebrate another day. 

I took myself out once, after completing a particularly difficult procedure. I went to a field on the edge of the city, eerily similar to the one behind Anora’s home.

I laid out a picnic, losing myself in old memories.

For a few moments, I let myself believe—just a little—that I was there again. That if I turned my head, Anora would be beside me, teasing me about my awful cooking. That Michael would be testing some ridiculous new spell just to make me roll my eyes. That Madame Black would be shaking her head fondly, muttering about reckless children.

That I was still me .

I open my eyes, tears blurring the world and the pull of the aether between worlds tugging harder and harder and harder until I had enough.

—

Years ago, hours after waking up in a body that felt wrong and a bed that was too soft. Hours after looking at the mirror and screaming at the stranger staring back at me. Hours after my aunt rushed to the restroom, seeing her niece shaking like she has just seen a ghost. Hours after I realized I was not home, I shattered.

Not that anyone noticed.

No, my body kept moving through the motions – breathing, blinking, eating, studying, working. But something inside me fractured .

Because when I first woke up, I thought, maybe- just maybe , if I reached down deep enough, if I just whispered the words, said the most earnest prayer to anything that is listening , if i just believed-

But nothing happened. No heat beneath my skin, no warmth pooling at my chest. No flicker of light at my fingertips.

It was gone. It was dry.

Maybe I’m just exhausted , I first thought. Maybe the transition between worlds had drained me, maybe my magic needed time to settle.

Days. Weeks. Months. Years passed under the concerned eyes of the only family I have left in this world.

Time passed and I knew, the world- this world has stripped me bare. I was just a human again.

The truth lodged itself deep in my ribs like broken glass.

—

Dear Anora,

It’s been years since I’ve even written your name. Don’t get me wrong—I never forgot. I could never. But memory is cruel. It slips through your fingers, no matter how tightly you hold on.

I started drawing to keep you close. You’d laugh if you saw my first attempts—gods, they were awful. You always said my talent with a wand never extended to the arts. But I kept at it. Your face, your home, Michael, Tanya, Rosalie, Robin, all of you. I sketched until my fingers ached, until I could see your smiles in my mind even with my eyes closed.

But I think I’m forgetting your voice. Your laugh. The scent of magic in the air.

I tried to make it work, Anora. I really did. I studied, researched, built a life. My aunt was proud when I became the youngest MD-PhD student in the country. I thought, for a time, maybe I could belong here. Maybe I could be happy.

But what is a world without warmth to someone who experienced every aspect of it, without those I’ve come to call family?

I tried looking for a way back. No wardrobe to Narnia. No mirror to Zala. No rabbit hole leading home. Just an endless, empty sky.

And then—

A shift. A crack in the fabric of reality.

I felt it before I saw it. A pulse in my bones, a hum beneath my skin—something I hadn’t felt in years. The air shimmered, the space before me folding, bending, opening. A portal.

I don’t know where it leads.

All I see is a frozen tundra, the sky choked with smoke, the distant sound of gunfire. It could be another war. Another world. Another place I don’t belong.

But the aether has called me again, and I don’t care where it takes me.

I stole a gun from one of the soldiers. Don’t shake your head at me—I’m doing this to see you again.

As I write this, I’m hiding in the shadows, waiting for my chance to step through.

Maybe it will take a hundred more worlds. A thousand more doors. A million more shattered realities before I find my way home.

But I will keep searching.

Because if magic still exists somewhere, then so do you.

Because there is no Gabi without Anora.

Missing you dearly,
Gabrielle

—

Dearest Anora,

This is my tenth world. Or my thirteenth. I’ve stopped keeping track.

At first, I thought— finally. The air felt charged, the wind whispered with power, and for the first time in years, I dared to hope. I reached out, stretching my fingers into the unseen currents, waiting for the familiar warmth of home to embrace me.

But no.

The magic here is wrong. It lingers like the last breath of a dying man, detached from the earth, frayed at the edges. A world that once thrived but has long since crumbled into memory.

It is not home.

This place is a ruin, my hearth. A graveyard of forgotten gods and broken empires. Vines choke the bones of fallen towers, mist wraps around shattered statues, their faces eroded beyond recognition. The sky shifts—red at dawn, gold at dusk, a sea of violet at night, glittering with unfamiliar constellations.

The wind sings here. Low, mournful melodies in a language I cannot understand.

I have met others, though I do not know if they can be called people. They resemble us, but their eyes glow like smoldering embers, and their voices carry echoes of something ancient. The Keepers, they call themselves. They watch over the dying remnants of their world, tending to the last embers of a fire too far gone to reignite.

Their sun is fading. A weapon—unleashed by an enemy long dead—choked it into a slow, inevitable death. They tell me their world has only years left before everything is swallowed by endless night. They do not speak of hope, only inevitability.

I wonder— is this what our fate would have been? If we had lost? If we had failed?

But that is a question best left unanswered.

When I told them I was searching for something—that I did not belong here—one of them, a woman with silver-lit tattoos spiraling down her arms, reached for my wrist. Her touch was featherlight, but her words carried weight.

"Neither do we," she murmured.

She led me to a shrine—a forgotten sanctuary, untouched by time. Magic clings to it like the last desperate grasp of a drowning man. At its heart stands a door. Or rather, an arch of stone carved with runes—familiar, but not quite right. A dialect of a language I should know, twisted just enough to elude understanding.

She told me it leads somewhere. But I know it is not home.

And yet, I will step through it.

The Keepers gave me supplies—enough to survive another twenty worlds, they said. Food, tools, even a gun. They do not believe I will succeed, but they wish me luck all the same.

I do not know what awaits me on the other side. Perhaps another ruin, another dead civilization. Perhaps worse. But I have come too far to stop now.

It’s one step closer to home.

Wait for me,
Gabrielle.

—

Aurora,

I’m feeling a bit silly today. There's a feeling. A tiny, almost silly feeling that keeps growing stronger and stronger the longer I stay here.

This is my… twenty-seventh world? I think I’ll stick with that number. It sounds right. Twenty-seven.

It's silent here. The planet is a barren wasteland, scarred by ancient wars. The dust in the atmosphere is so thick it’s hard to breathe properly.

I managed to get my hands on some ship logs. The chronometers say the last time they were flown was exactly three hundred and eighteen years ago. Turns out this is Earth—or at least, a version of it.

Kept a copy of the logs just for you to sift through, little encyclopedia. I know you’ll find it interesting. Maybe we can use this to improve our ships? They can’t just run on magic, no matter how many times you give me that look. You need more redundancies, trust me.

No signs of life yet, but I felt a pull. Found a hidden bunker, still operational but heavy with dust. Inside, I found static-filled voices and some transcripts about a piece of technology fought over during the war on Earth. A beacon that opens passages to different worlds. I can’t help but think... if the gods are real, maybe this is their sign.

The people here have been fighting this war for so long that they can’t even decide if the beacon is real, but I know it is. I’ve already started looking for maps, signal locators, anything I can use. Though, I have to admit, I do miss being able to apparate. Not as much as I miss you, of course. Too cheeky?

Anyway, I’m heading out tomorrow. If all goes well, I’ll be cooking your horrible meals by tomorrow.

I look forward to hearing your voice again. And your laugh. Will you wait for me?

Once more, unto the breach,
Gabi.

—

No time. I’m being chased. I don’t know what’s happening. Not home. Definitely not home.

Don’t worry, Nora. I’ll be okay.