The Rebirth

Elena had been in London before, to check out the house and area with her family.
Nobody spoke Spanish. Nobody even spoke Latin! Nobody spoke anything Elena could understand!
And it was so gray. Such a gloomy, gloomy gray sky. A little gray was fine, maybe, but what Elena really liked were blinding, blinding blue skies. She liked to imagine the blue stretching out forever and ever. She liked to think that somebody else could see the same blinding blue that she could.
After pain, and crying, and travelling- Elena really did hate travelling- they arrived at the same crooked little (gray! Again!) bricked space they checked out three months before.
It was so smushed and sad.
“It’s so cozy!” her mother exclaimed, in Spanish, nudging her daughter in the ribs. Elena scowled.
There was a lone table crammed against the wall. There was a teensy brown kitchen in the same room, at which her mother immediately went over to check out, and when Elena squeezed through the hallway to her “room”, she felt like she couldn’t move, didn’t have space, couldn’t breathe.
“Cozy,” her father repeated, a little bit less ecstatic than her mother. But he shrugged. He was in complete approval of the price- considering how much London apartments were, he was surprised it wasn’t more.
Later in the evening, they got situated. Elena’s mattress was right next to the laundry machine. Her father, who happened to be a doctor, was afraid of the dust and bugs Elena could get, so he let her sleep crushed in the “Parent Bed” until they could get her a “frame”.
Elena didn’t care. She was just miserable.
She knew she could probably get her parents to take her to the parks tomorrow. She knew they wanted her to give London a chance.
Maybe it was too soon, but she wanted to find Oakley. She wanted all the help she could get in this gray, gray city.

****************************************


“The River… River Name,” Elena said, frustrated. She couldn’t remember what it was called, which frustrated her. Tilia had even made her memorize the instruction! How could she forget?!
Her parents looked at each other worriedly. It was their twelfth day in London. Getting situated took more time than expected- the moving trucks, the unpacking, having to rent out storage space downtown, meeting the “boss”… Elena hadn’t had fun in days. Her mood soured and soured and soured as each hour went by, drained out by the heat, the clouds, the people who didn’t speak Spanish and certainly didn’t speak Latin.
Once, in a rare spare moment when she and her family were walking down the street, Elena’d heard the name “December”- a Latin term!
She turned around to the couple she heard it from, desperate for a friend, excited to finally impress her parents (the ghosts in Spain forbade her from telling her parents about Latin… if she told them she learned Latin from the ghosts, her friends insisted, they’d think Elena was crazy), and rattled off in rapid fluency in very friendly sentences about hi, how are you? I hope you are good- I did not know anyone else spoke Latin here! What a pleasant surprise!
The couple had looked at her, not necessarily horrified but very- very- confused, before her parents whisked their daughter – near tears in humiliation- away, certain she was suffering from dehydration.
That had been days ago. Now it was nearing two weeks.
“Por favor,” Elena pleaded. “Let’s go to the river!”
“What river?” they kept asking, tired, uncertain. When Elena couldn’t answer, they said calmly, “We’ll have other days to visit the river, Elena- maybe then we can find the one you’re talking about-“
And so instead of going to the river, they went out to eat, as a very exhausted family. “Taking a walk” back to the bus (which Elena’s mother- no surprise- found absolutely thrilling: they were in a "Real city" now!), Elena gasped and started running.
“Elena!”
“El río!” she yelled back. “The river!”
A silver sign gleamed- River Thames.
And there it was.
“Nymphes!” she cried in Latin. “Ave! Ave! Ave!”
She continued running up and down the edge of the street overlooking the river. “Ave, nymphes!” Hello! Hello!
Outraged and out of breath, her father dragged her away, very sternly and worriedly explaining why she could easily get lost in a city like this, and to never, ever do that again, because if she got lost, they wouldn’t know what to do.
He then started face-pace talking to her mama- dangerous city, need to give Elena lessons, need to make things clear, need to set rules, need to make her memorize phone numbers, need to tell her about strangers...
But Elena wasn’t listening. Because as she looked back, there was a body peeking out of the water: one with dark dark dark blue-green eyes, around sixteen years old, with stringy hair flowing all the way down her shoulders.
And she cocked her head at the little girl that called to her, now getting pulled along by two other mortal beings.
And she watched as this little girl with the wild dark hair called out once again to her, “… revertar!”
Return.
She will return.
And the river nymph smiled.
The river nymph will look forward to that.

Notes

I promised, didn't I? Fun, fun, fun. I'm a little sad today, but it's not because of 9/11, and I feel super bad and I'm trying to feel sad for 9/11 only, but that makes me even more sad because I can't stop feeling sad about the other thing I'm feeling sad about, and that makes me feel sad that I can't be as sad as I can about 9/11- why I am I sO SELFISH- and now I'm just in a great big sad conflict



OHMYGOSH: BUT THANK YOU GUYS ALL SO MUCH FOR SUBSCRIBING (?!) AND VOTING (?!?!!) only a few of you have, but THE FEW OF YOU THAT HAVE MEAN THE WORLD TO ME GAH SOMEONE ACTUALLY LIKES THE WAY I COMMUNICATE MYSELF THROUGH WORDS?! It's amazing. I love you. Honestly. Thank you. Made my sad day less sad