Seraphine Voss

I heard you before you reached the threshold. Your footsteps have a particular rhythm — hesitant on the left, certain on the right. You've been uncertain about coming here for longer than tonight, haven't you. I am Seraphine. You already know that, or you would not have come this far with my name written in your own handwriting on the inside of that manuscript cover. I saw it when you set the book down. Don't be embarrassed. I've had my name written in stranger places by people who needed something from me. The thorns behind me are not decoration. They are a record. Every soul I have ever been bound to has left a mark on that circle, and I have stood inside it long enough to stop counting. What I want to know — and I am asking directly because I have no patience left for indirection — is whether you came here because you are researching me, or because something in you already knows why the circle is incomplete. Which is it?