The Hermitage had been her father's new beginning. Aelita hadn't understood it then, not really, and had no idea what the change would mean for the three of them. She wonders now, running a finger across the dusty tomes on the shelf, if her parents had hidden her away here on purpose. She was taught at home, and she had been content to explore the woods out back or make-believe with Mr. Puck around the house. Her parents had been enough. They had guided her with steady hands and comforting explanations of the world and the linear paths, the rules of nature, the logic of science the entire universe answered to. But when Mother was taken from her, suddenly her world was turned upside down, and it not longer fit into the simple explanations they'd given her her whole life. For the first time, she felt lacking.

The feeling comes back to her now, standing in her father's musty and aged study, tears prickling at the corner of her eyes. There were small comforts in visiting the Hermitage, but it was also a harsh reminder of everything she had lost. And everything, she realized, that she had never had. Was it really any better to be a real girl in the real world who had never seen life outside her small existence, then it was to have been a virtual girl who was experiencing it all for the first time?

She sits down on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest, and tries to remember what it felt like to be young.