The night was cold, and Tatiana was feeling vulnerable as she paid her last goodbyes to her godparents. She had felt unease wavering inside her as the clock ticked, feeling as though she was gradually getting pulled away from the world she had once loved and placed in a new, open one that had unfamiliarity etched all over it.

Her godmother must've felt the change in Tatiana's usual atmosphere when she crossed the hall as she had a soft, reassuring smile on her face when she sat down on Tatiana's bed and put her arms across her shoulders, cradling her as she had when Tatiana was left on her doorstep the first time that she'd vowed she would become a mother only for her little girl.

“What's wrong, my dear?”, she asked softly, pinning Tatiana's dark hair behind her ears. Tatiana sighed. “I don't want to go,” she managed to spit out. Her godmother laughed warmly, not to mock her goddaughter, but because she found it quite amusing that someone like her wouldn't want to go and unlock their potential in magic. “But, baby, of course you have to go,” she said, placing her hand underneath Tatiana's chin.

“But that would mean I had to leave you and Pápere back here,” Tatiana pouted, her dark eyes shining with defiance against the dimly lit candle's glow, “I wouldn't want to do that,” she added, her voice becoming smaller as she reached out for her stuffed black cat that fell on the floor.

Her godmother stood up quietly, leaving Tatiana sitting in her duvet alone, utterly confused. But her godmother was humming a tune that was unusually familiar, but Tatiana couldn't place why, under her breath before saying, “You know, you remind me a lot of your mother when she was little.”

Tatiana could feel her breathing become slower, but her heartbeat had now become unusually fast. This was the first time that her godmother had shared anything largely relevant to her biological mother other than the time where she told a small Tatiana that she was left by her biological family because they were not ready to raise her yet, which had been excruciatingly painful for the child.

“We were neighbors before,” her godmother said, tracing the window's ledges, “and with that, we were very close as kids,” Tatiana didn't move, she couldn't move, not when her godmother was sharing something that was probably so heartbreaking to her. The sky began raining softly, the the drops pattering on Tatiana's bedroom window. It seemed to know what was going to happen before Tatiana did.

The silence was unbearing, but Tatiana had to exercise her patience for she knew how painful this must've been, talking to you best friend's abandoned daughter about her past. “She had gotten her letter before me,” she finally said, with a great gulp because, Tatiana knew, she was trying her best not to cry. “Her birthday was earlier, I was so happy that she got accepted, but with good news came a bad one,” she added, Tatiana sensed something was about to drastically go wrong, “but that time we had to move to the US, and your mother couldn't accept it.”

“I promised to keep in touch and would send her letters everyday, but she just wouldn't let me go, she refused to cooperate with her parents and stayed in front of our house day and night, protesting of our move, but in the end, when moving day came, she couldn't do anything to stop us because she knew that I had to go,” she continued, wiping a tear now, “And you know? I did keep my promise, I did, in fact, wrote to her everyday, but it seemed that she was too busy to write back as the replies never came, but I still kept writing, hoping...”

Her voice drifted off, and Tatiana knew, by then, that it was all too much for her. She stood up and made her way to her godmother, squeezing her hand to say that she was there for her, and in return, she squeezed back. “I promise i'll write back, you raised me right, after all,” she told her godmother, her eyes determined to prove her words, “pinky promise,” and she saw her godmother's smile again.