Mal's earliest memory was of a time when she was perched on her mother's lap. She couldn't for the life of her jog up the memory of her mother's song—perhaps she'd lost it at the peak of her addiction—but she remembered that to be her firsthand exposure to music's potency. Although Mal's father was a mere distant memory, at that very moment, she knew he was very much present. He loomed, a steadfast warmth that she'd known to be absent later on in her mother's life. She sought after the sublimity of that memory ever since; always dissatisfied, never contented. She went in pursuit of it ever since the government deemed her young mother unfit of raising her own daughter, though Mal had known it to be lost long before then.

EN RETENANT:

Ten years old. In her earlier years in foster care, she often asked herself if she was taken away because she cried too much, asked for too much. Perhaps it had been her fault; if she hadn't whined so much about food, or loneliness, then she would still be with her mother. Silence and restraint were two valuable lessons she'd immediately committed to memory until it was writ in the way she held herself against the world. She'd regarded any sort of affection then with silent hostility and incredulity. They baited her with promises of undying affection and understanding only for her to be whisked away in the home of another stranger. Another poor simulation of what she wanted most: family. At thirteen, she'd been welcomed into the Wi residence with the same promises forged on foundations of love, and she merely waited for the cycle to assume its course. She would be gone soon enough. She waited, and waited, and waited, yet not once did they waver.