She never opens the door. Never.
It's simply not done.
It's not that she's afraid, or something juvenile like that.
It's her house, after all, and she's lived there for almost twenty years, there's absolutely nothing for her to be scared of.
But before it was her house, it was her grandfather's. And one place forbidden to her had been his study.
But only after she'd grown up had she ever been denied access. After she'd gotten married, the door had been latched and locked. The room had become a vault.
And it was forbidden.
She never opens the door.
Until the day she does.
The room is smaller than she'd remembered it to be. There's a desk in the corner, with an old computer monitor sitting on it, but mostly there are shelves. Bookshelves take up two of the walls, filled with historical texts, classic literature, a few science theoretical journals, the like. She sees The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes next to a leather-bound copy of A Mid-Summer's Night's Dream, and she chuckles. They'd always been Granddad's favorites, long before he'd started stargazing. "Mystery and magic," he'd said, "What else could I wish for?"
She wonders if that's why he always stared at the stars: Because he was wishing for that 'what else.'
Then the last wall grabs her attention. It's just a single shelf; the type one would use to hold knick-knacks. It's spectacularly unremarkable, actually, to the point where one would almost find it suspicious. But the items on it, however, are exactly opposite.
First, there's a string of coins on a chain, each punched with a square hole through the center. Upon closer inspection, they appear Asian. Chinese, she suspects.
Then, there's an old clay bowl, faded black drawings wrapped around the side. A man in a chariot, women with spears, an absolutely beautiful woman leading the march, all lined in perfect order.
Setting on top of a large, orange book, there is a strange little carving. A wolf, carved out of a transparent, heavy material that catches the light in ways she'd only seen diamond even try to mimic. Two golden yellow flecks of light catch the areas of the eyes, and she has the urge to both shiver and grin.
The book itself is familiar, one she'd seen in every library. The Complete Works of Agatha Christie. An inspection of the inside covers shows that the woman herself has signed it.
And last, covered in dust and a few cobwebs, there is a picture frame. She picks it up, dusts it off, and stares.
The image is one she can't remember being taken. She and Granddad, sitting on a bench with a wiry man with wild hair. Granddad's in the center, smiling, while she and the man lean in from opposite sides, grinning almost identically manic grins.
She's almost jealous of the self in the picture, the way she seems so free, so sure. She can't remember ever feeling the way she looks in that image, and she knows she can't act well enough for the expression to be faked. The back of the frame bears an inscription in her grandfather's messy scrawl: My Children, of whom I am Proud.
She smiles at that, and at the manic grin of the man she feels as if she should know. She swears she's starting to recognize him from somewhere when a sudden splitting headache starts in her temples.
And just like that, in a flash of life and pain, she remembers.
She remembers travels, and bits of time and places she could've never visited, things it's impossible for her to remember. And for one bright, shining moment, she remembers the importance she has in her universe. For one second, she is again the warrior she was, the fighter, the vagrant burst of flame and energy.
She grins, and it's manic, and she runs from the room, from the house, accidentally tackling her neighbor on the way out.
"Donna? Something wrong?"
She smiles, again, but it's slightly weakened by the waves of pain in her head. "John. Good news. Great news. Molto benne! I've remembered."
His expression chills, goes almost stony, yet so sad. "Remembered what, Don?"
"The truth. Everything. I just remembered."
He nods, and his entire being seems to flicker for a moment. "Yes, Donna. You remembered. And then you forgot."
His face is the last thing she sees before the world dissolves into pain and blackness.
She never opens the door. Never.
It's simply not done.