The Rebirth

Two months later…

“But we went to the river yesterday.”
“So, let’s go today, again!”
“We can’t go to the river every day. Some of us have work, you know.”
“Again!”
“I have work.”
“Work later!”
“Elena,” Yolanda snapped. “He doesn’t have time! He has to work!”
Elena shrank back. After five seconds, she straightened up and stared. Few things nerve Yolanda and Chris. The fact that their six-year-old daughter stares with quiet blankness instead of crying is one of them.
Elena turned around and went into her room.
After minutes of hushed whispers outside, her mother followed.
“What about the parks, Elena?” Yolanda offered, as a compromise. “Didn’t you want to go to the parks when we first came here?”
Elena blinked. Oh. Yes. What was the tree’s name again? For a brief moment of panic, she forgot it.
Oh. Oakley. Relief seized her heart, replaced by fear. What if she forgot it later? What if she lost Tilia’s instructions and never remembered his name, losing the one person that could help her in this city- besides the river nymphs? She needed all the help she could get, Tilia had said. Elena needed to meet Oakley fast.
Another thing had jarred Elena. A sight she couldn’t forget, one that made her feel lucky to sleep in her parents’ bed.
Once, while running to the bus- with her father screaming about disobedience behind her- she was stopped dead by a two-headed dog. It narrowed its eyes. Elena couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak. She could only look at the dogs’ eyes- which were very red, very narrowed, very determined.
And there were four of them.
And she was sure it was going to eat her.
And she screamed. And screamed and screamed.
Her father snatched her away and glared at her while she buried her face in his sweater. He apologized to somebody- if Elena wasn’t hyperventilating, she might have asked who that person was- and launched into another one of his lectures, expressing his worry about letting Elena grow up in a big city like this.
His daughter hadn’t been listening, though she could feel his anger shaking through his chest.
She was remembering the four eyes.
And suddenly- Elena couldn’t help herself; she was doing it before she even realized what she was doing- she looked back.
One of the heads was still glaring at her. Elena’s scream was stuck in her throat, and she started hyperventilating again.
It was around then that she noticed the sheep.
There were a lot of them.
No bigger than chihuahuas, these tiny sheep were cuckoo, all bleating and running into each other and confused. And they were bright, bright, bright, bright blazing red. Her parents didn’t seem to notice, as they continued scolding Elena and walking farther away. The head that was glaring at her now drew his attention to the walking pedestrians, growling and barking when they came near to the herd of weird, scarlet sheep.
Elena also noticed, just as she was about to turn the corner, that they were all on leashes. Her eyes traveled up to find an old cowboy with a long, long, long white braided beard- he had a tattoo on his bicep, ripped sleeves, and a set jaw. He whistled as he walked down the street, slowly herding the bustling cherry sheep along with him.
She’d stared until her father took a sharp left, still talking about the dangerous things that were in the city, and how it was a wonder Elena hadn’t managed to run into anything yet. (And thank god the dog-walker and his dogs were so nice; and why would she want to bother those cute puppies by screaming like that?)
That’d been a month ago.
And that was only the beginning.
Since then, Elena’d been starting to notice some… other things.
Things that her parents couldn’t see, not even when she pointed them out.
A group of teenagers decked in all black, in the middle of a hot day- mostly all Asians, though not all of them were- chasing after some sort of hopping creature, yelling in some language Elena’d never heard before. Not English. Not Latin. Not Spanish. If she squinted, she could see a…
A three-legged bird?
Why were they chasing a three-legged bird?
It made her dizzy looking at it. She thought she was seeing it in triple-vision; in one form it was bright red, in another form it was glowing; in another form it looked just like any other crow she’d seen, except for the fact that it had three legs.
One of the teenagers had stopped in the middle of the street, concentrated, and reached out. Cars swerved around him. His black hair dangled in front of his face. His eyes were closed. A luminescent, almost ghost-like wisp of fog curled from his hand, swirling into feet hopping against the air. A translucent rabbit the size of Elena seemed to leap out of a breeze, racing and racing, clawing at the air, until it finally leapt at the crow, grabbing it by one of its legs and pinning it down. It seemed like the gang had finally caught the creature, as they whooped and reached out and clapped the collapsing boy on his back, until the crow shimmered and grew. They faltered.
A white flash blasted through Elena’s eyes, and she screamed. It was as though she’d just looked at the sun taking her photograph. When the dancing spots finally subsided and she managed to see again, she was sure there’d be eight puddles of human on the pavement, melted from the explosion.
Instead she saw a luminescent ghost dragon shrink back into the shivering form of a Chinese boy. It hadn’t hit her then, but the dragon must’ve somehow protected them from the blast.
And suddenly they were gone.
Just a smoldered blast, and the fading memory of a ghostly dragon, was all Elena could see.
There were more. Elena witnessed a girl blast down a door by drawing a funny symbol on it. She’d seen a small dragon casually trot down the sidewalk, setting off car alarms wherever he went. She’d seen a statue stretch its legs, yawn, and wander around town. She’d seen a gray flying horse land on the ground, eat some hot dogs from a hot dog van, and then continue flying off into the sky.
And more. So much more.
And when Elena said something to her parents, they never seemed to see what she saw. “No, Elena, don’t point, that’s rude- yes, that was very rude of that girl to kick open the door, but you know better than her, don’t you?” “Oh, my goodness, Chris, look at that! That dog is huge! Who lets a dog like that off a leash, huh? And look at it- it’s completely terrorizing those cars! Should we call the Animal Control?” “Elena! Don’t make funny faces at that man! It’s not his fault he’s so tall. Would you like it if someone made faces at you because you were short?” “No, we can’t go for a horse ride right now. Perhaps later.”
So, in a way, she agreed with her father.
London was a dangerous place for Elena.
The only thing that made her feel safe were the river nymphs.
It was true; Elena had been dragging her parents to the river six days a week for the past eight weeks. And when they finally got there, she'd run off on her own, sit, and stare at the water. And then she'd just wait.
It was aggravating to no end for Yolanda and Christopher.
Finally, after ten minutes of watching their daughter watch the water, they'd turn their backs, grumbling and looking at their watches and calculating just exactly how much time they were wasting by staring off into nothingness.
By then, the nymphs would come.
They spoke Latin fluently, which was a tremendous relief. Elena was at first a little intimidated by the very beautiful, much older ladies, who seemed to just giggle all the time and talk among themselves and sigh and look at Elena in slight interest. The main one, Naida, was the only one who listened intently to the little girl stammer about her troubles running into monsters. She smiled gently when Elena paused in embarrassment. She nodded at all the parts she was supposed to nod. And occasionally she’d laugh at something Elena said and ruffle the girl’s hair- something Tilia had done. It was Naida that encouraged Elena to keep going back, those first few days.
But then-
Tilia.
One day, Elena remembered something her old tree friend had said- talk about boys.
Talk about boys.
What about? Elena desperately wished she had asked. What did she mean?
Talk about boys.
Boys.
“Do you… talk about boys?” Elena had hesitantly and very woodenly blurted one day.
The result was immediate.
“Oh my gods,” one of them had squealed, examining the six year old. “No WAY, guys! No freaking way! That is too adorable. A puppy crush! Who is it? You have to tell us, so we can keep updates!”
“Don’t scare her, Brooke! That’s so you- to just jump on her like that? Who even does that? This is why you were always the worst mother,” another had raised her eyebrows at Elena. “What do you want to know, girlie? Kissing? Do you even kiss at your age? I think you should stick with holding hands, but preschool boys are so overrated with the whole cooties thing; he might not go for it. So you tell him, you tell him, just like I did to this one guy I met on that bridge over there- he was mortal, but so gorgeous; I was surprised one of the goddesses themselves hadn’t already snatched him up- you have the lucky chance to get all of this, and if you can’t see that, you’re a fool. You have no idea what you’re walking away from, honestly. And all because you’re scared of a little kiss? What even are you? Can you not be like that right now, right when it matters? It’s just mouth to mouth, it’s not like I bite- And vóila! He went for it! Oh, my goodness, I think he was the best heart I’d ever broken… Some of the best years of my eternity-”
“Ellie, honey,” a girl with bright green eyes butted in, “Trust me when I say- you’re too young to have your heart broken! I’m serious. It’s adorable and everything, but do not get head over heels- trust me! I know. I mean, I was only one hundred when I had my heart smashed on, and it was probably the worst decade ever. The first one is always the worst one, just remember that. And you’re only- what, three? One and a half? I know you mortals get it on fast, but slow down, you little player, you!”
And on and on and on. They couldn’t stop. And once one nymph took a breath, another nymph interrupted, and they were all babbling all at once, recounting all their old love stories. Elena didn’t even have to talk; all she had to do was be there.
Tilia was truly a genius.
When it was finally time to go, and the nymphs insisted that “Ellie” come again tomorrow, Elena’d felt a burst of pride. She hadn’t felt like she belonged since… the ghosts. She still really didn’t feel like she completely belonged, here, in the water nymph pack, but at least she was liked, somewhere.
And that was a really good feeling.
Looking back, she made eye contact with Naida, the only one remaining. The nymph had smiled, winked, and disappeared into the river, like she knew exactly what game Elena was playing.
As Elena continued to visit the river, she realized that not only was she now accepted…
She was also protected.
Upon waiting for the river spirits to appear, Elena had seen a stick along the banks pulsing with a weird white light. Fascinated, she grabbed it to examine it further.
A snake had immediately squirmed in her grip. With a choking sob, Elena had thrown it across the ground, only to have it hiss angrily, grow larger, and slither nearer to her. She backed away, crying, grabbing for anything around her, when suddenly the hissing had stopped and a roaring sound had started. The nymphs had been there immediately, encircling the serpent in a water bubble and sending it down the river in a breeze.
As if nothing had happened, Aquarius- the only boy nymph- had begun to inform Elena on the “latest water talk” of the rivers. She had been from then on determined to listen to every single one of their stories, no matter how pointless they were or how hard it was to keep up.
But what if she wasn’t near a river when she got into more monster trouble?
She needed more help.
Elena looked up at her mother. “Yes. Let’s go to the parks today.”

Notes

SO SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG TO UPDATE. LOVE YOU ALL. soooooo much.