Being in her old room in her grandmother’s house had always had a cocooning effect on her so that every time she returned home, she would fall in to a sleep so deep and long that her grandmother would ask if she ever slept fully in New York. In fact, Sera usually needed only a few hours’ sleep when she was elsewhere other than home. This time she had dreamt so many strange and disquieting dreams, she felt as if she had been asleep for a hundred years and lived many lives in that time. It took her several minutes to realize what day it was or that she no longer lived here. It was only that morning that she had driven as fast as she could from that old Victorian and all it contained, and once home, had run upstairs blindly to fall into forgetfulness. Time had stood still there and here so that she had difficulty shaking off the potency of the past. Sera sat up and looked around her old room. All the furniture had been left exactly as it was when she had lived here-the desk by the window, her bed next to it, her bookcase with all her books in it still.
