📖 Chapter 2: Aurora Doesn’t Fit
She remembered the day they named her.
It came back sometimes — not clearly, but in flashes.
A white room. A man in a tweed jacket. Martin holding her like a porcelain doll. Lawrence smiling nervously.
She was barely two years old.
Her birth name had been said once, quickly, in passing.
A social worker, her tone low, almost embarrassed.
"Oyena."
She didn’t say what it meant. She just folded the paper and tucked it away.
“I like Aurora,” Martin had said.
“Oh yes,” Lawrence replied. “Aurora Page. Sounds so... lyrical.”
And just like that, Oyena was erased.
Aurora Page Bermingham was born — crafted, styled, and loved... but not known.
---
Now sixteen, Aurora walked the polished halls of Silvermist Academy, a private school tucked on the slope of Constantia, surrounded by vineyards and overly manicured gardens.
She got A's without trying, but never felt like she belonged.
The other girls called her “mystic” behind her back. Some admired her calm. Others mocked her silences.
Teachers adored her — except the ones who were unnerved by how deeply she read, how she questioned everything.
No one understood how lonely it was to be brilliant but spiritually hollow.
No one knew she often cried in the shower — not because of pain, but because something ancient was clawing at her insides, trying to be remembered.
---
It happened on a Thursday.
Lunch break. The quad.
She was sitting under a tree sketching a waterfall from her dreams.
Her fingers suddenly froze.
The pen dropped. Her vision blurred.
She saw water pouring through the school's marble staircases, rising fast.
A woman stood at the top — the same one from her dreams — but this time with her hand outstretched.
Students were screaming.
But it wasn’t real.
Was it?
---
“Aurora!”
Someone shook her. She gasped. Eyes wide.
She was soaked in sweat, her eyes unfocused.
A crowd had gathered.
Her art teacher knelt beside her, whispering, “It’s okay, sweetheart. You're safe.”
But Aurora wasn’t sure she was.
She had felt the water. Heard it. Seen it flood the school.
She looked down at her sketchpad.
The sketch had changed.
Where once was a waterfall... now there was a woman, painted in charcoal and blue ink, standing ankle-deep in a river.
Aurora dropped the pad and stood up fast, backing away from it.
---
Later that day, Martin and Lawrence sat with her in the car, worried but composed.
“It’s stress,” Lawrence insisted.
“A vivid imagination,” Martin added. “You’ve always been creative, darling. Perhaps too much pressure lately?”
Aurora stared out the window, numb.
She knew what she saw.
And more than that — she knew what she felt.
It wasn’t a panic attack. It wasn’t stress.
It was a vision. A calling. A memory from a life she was never allowed to finish living.
---
That night, back home, she stood at the bathroom sink again.
She let the tap run.
Watched it carefully.
Nothing happened. No ripples. No whispers.
Only silence.
She almost turned away. But then...
Just before she closed the door, a soft mist rose from the tap.
And on the mirror, written in condensation, just three letters:
“O Y E”
She ran her finger across the mirror, wiping it away.
But deep inside her, something whispered:
> You are not imagining this.
You are remembering.
---
