When he looked at me then, he only saw me as the witch he had known me to be for his entire life. I have often wondered how much may have been prevented, were I only to have been able to maintain any shred of memory, any fragment of maternal instinct. Acceptance just was not possible, and... that is what I must live with.

[ Her hands tremble in his, ears remaining cast downward. He is not the first to ask her not to hate herself for it, that person she had been before arriving at the self she is now, the person she had been before then, being so weak for all of this to happen at all.

Perhaps if it were anyone else, she would not judge them at all for it, but since it is herself, how could she not be harsh? She can only look back at lost lifetimes through a clouded veil, only to ironically come back into contact with a mere concept of who she had once been for all of it. She does not even blame her husband as much as she focuses her own displaced hatred on herself. Feeling the fresher memories of being so much younger and happy only contrast with everything else.

It's a lot. But she's -- here, not there. The future is ahead, not back. And her son is... beyond her reach. As he's always been. ]

But the past, as it is, cannot be changed. Moving forward is the only way, and not ever going back to that life.