The Rebirth

“Are monsters real?” Elena found herself asking, hesitantly. She braced herself for the answer. For the past three and a half months, she’d been struggling back and forth with inner chaos, complete confusion, total denial. Elena didn’t wanted to take any of Oakley’s advice, but she was quickly beginning to realize that she might not have a choice if she wanted to get answers.
She had to talk to her parents about the monsters.
She expected worry. Frowns. Complete seriousness and embarrassing questioning. Her parents thrown into a panic over Elena’s “visions”.
She was slammed with the reaction of laughter.
Elena recoiled and crossed her arms away from her mother and father. She bit her lip and plunged herself into a deep silence.
“Is that what’s been bothering you, honey?” Yolanda reached out towards her daughter. Elena flinched from the hand, but her parents didn’t seem to notice. “Monsters? In London? Did someone back home- was it Tomas? It was Tomas, wasn’t it?- trick you into thinking there were dangerous things here?”
Elena thought of Tilia and the last expression etched upon her faded olive face. It hadn’t seemed fake.
Slowly, Elena brought herself to nod. Her arms loosened.
“Trust me,” Chris Rodriguez took Elena’s shoulders, sincerely, kindly. “If that’s what’s bothering you, let me reassure all of your worries- there are no monsters. They don’t exist. When I was younger, I used to think that they were under my bed.”
‘But,” He paused for effect. “I realized… none of them ever came out. None of them ever hurt me. And I waited. I called out to them. But nothing ever came. It was all up here-“ he tapped his brain.
He smiled, ending his story, waiting for a signal, a reaction. Elena nodded weakly back. His smile slipped into concern, and he gave her a hug, patting her back. In his arms, she felt herself tilt into the reassurance of Oakley’s words- This is real. Monsters aren’t. How can they, when her father is so safe and strong and sure of himself?
“I’m not real, girl. None of this is.”
“Then what is real?” she’d demanded, frustrated beyond belief at the time. “How are you not real? You’re real! You’re real! I see you! I can hear you!”
Oakley had grinned. “Trust me. Once we depart, you’ll quickly realize what’s real and what’s not. You’ll see the surface. All in good time. All in good time.”

*****

A month later…
London.
Three little ladies sat perched on their own side bench. They watched as a shadow slithered its way across the walls, dancing, twisting, enlargening, shrinking, in a sort of rhythm. A young girl with blue streaks in her hair shouted some words (that were definitely not English, Latin, or Spanish) before rushing herself across the street. A symbol burned in the air, transforming into a glowing fist that reached out and attempted to grab the slippery black menace.
In a different form, different way, different path, they’d be watching the girl with blue streaks in her hair. But in this particular way, in these particular beings, knitting this one particular silver string, they were focused on the little five year old with the wild ebony curls.
The girl was holding the hand of a fierce young Hispanic woman, thirty-five years old, who sat simmering in anger with a top-knotted bun and fiery brown eyes. The girl had been squinting at the shadow scene suspiciously. She looked at the girl with blue-streaked hair in wondering skepticism.
When the girl with the funny hair shouted her funny words and ran off to catch the funny shadow, the young five-year-old seemed to be struggling to see. She craned her neck up, as if trying to see through something, like a fog of some sort.
She never seemed to be able to find what she was trying to see. The young girl with the curly hair blinked a bunch of times, sat in immense thought, shook herself once, twice, and then smiled as her mother grabbed her hand. She toddled down the road, completely ready to forget what had just happened.
The three ladies nodded to each other in satisfaction and disappeared from the scene.

***

Much later…
“Elena,” the child introduced herself shyly. Her hair was combed back into a purple headband, her long raven tendrils brushed down to her waist. Her dress was a silk red. Her eyes were round, deeply warm, and facing the floor. “I do not speak a lot English.”
“My name is Jessica! Jessica! I’m a really, really good teacher. I can teach you!” the other one exclaimed as she dragged her new friend away from the four parents and their conversations about life in Spain and the shortage of kale in the grocery stores.
***
Much later still…
The daily visits to the river began to decrease to weekly visits. Naida and Aquarius and Brooke and the others watched from below.
***
Much later still…
A feathered snake flew by Elena along the streets of London. She saw the creature out of the corner of her eye, did a double take, blinked once or twice, and watched as a parrot flew to the end of the block and turned the corner.
A parrot in London?! She recounted later to her father. Wow!
He chuckled. You don’t see that every day.
***
Later still…
“Monsters aren’t real.” Mark stated proudly. He was still holding the hot pink birthday cake. His chest, along with his chubby gut, puffed out. “I know so.”
Some kids looked at Mark and made a comment, but the rest began to argue about cars. One of the girls started crying.
Elena watched this solemnly. She still didn’t know a lot of English, but she did understand what Mark had said. When she finally caught his eye, she nodded at him, and said, “Yes.”
***
Months later…
Elena skips along the river bank. Her parents held her hands as they swung their arms all together- up and down, back and forth. Elena breaks free and runs ahead, laughing and collapsing along the grass.
She and her parents neglect to see the fog of poison rolling up from the NorthWest wind, from the burning ruins of a sulfuric fight.
A small block of evaporating water covers Elena and her family, shading them from the acidic air just until they get out of the range of poison. If Elena had really tried and looked very closely, she would have seen a familiar lovely figure with aquamarine hair relaxing her arms and sinking back into her river.
**
Months later…
“Yes, my name is Elena. I moved here from Spain. I am sorry if I don’t speak English very well. I am working on it.”
She beamed as she listened and was able to understand all but one word of the other person’s response.
***
Later…
Her Latin was fading, but out of complete habit, she still spoke it when she spoke to the river. And yes, she still did speak to the river. Just because.
***
Later…
As she walked around the park with her new friends and complained about their new mean teacher, a tree smiled inside. If her biggest problem was a stern scolding for sitting on the table, she must be doing well.
***
Later…
“Do we believe in God?”
“Well, I don’t have any control in what you believe, but yes, I do happen to believe in God.”
Something tugged at the back of Elena’s mind. She couldn’t quite place what it was, or why it was there. She frowned. “But why?”
Her mother looked at her daughter warily. “I don’t really know. I just feel like He’s out there. It’s nice to have someone watching over us. It’s nice to have a direction and set of principles that can make me a better person.”
Elena didn’t understand. She furrowed her brow. She wasn’t really sure what she was confused about. “But… other people… don’t believe in God.”
Her mother waited a bit before sighing. “And?”
“So… are they wrong?”
“I think…” her mother pursed her lips, considering the question. “I think we’re both right.”
“But…” Elena stamped her foot. “How?”
“Elena,” her mother scolded, before getting into detail. “For some people, there’s a God out there. And so he helps us, the ones who believe in him. For other people, there is not a God out there. So they’re on their own.”
A small click went in Elena’s brain, but there were so many questions still. And she still didn’t fully understand.
“But are there other things to believe in?” Elena asked, unable to form what she was trying to say. She struggled so hard internally, she stamped her foot again. “Like… Like…”
“Other religions?” Yolanda asked, not quite understanding Elena herself. When Elena couldn’t find the answer, her mother continued on. “Yes, there are other religions. There are other gods, Elena. Some people worship other beings. And so those gods are there for them, just like my God is there for me. There were, ah, let me see… There’s Hinduism, Buddhism… There were the gods from, let see… Greece, of course…”
Yolanda began to get excited, recounting old information and stories from memory, while Elena stopped dead ever since her mother had said “There are other gods”.
Something had suddenly made sense.
Suddenly, there was a connection. She could see all the connections, somehow: there were other gods, which meant other possibilities, other monsters, other things, other beings… She was imagining this big buffet of- what was her mother calling them?- "beings", and everyone crowded around the table, choosing which ones they liked and believed in, and Elena could see the whole buffet table...
And then the connection faded, because monsters didn’t exist. She didn’t believe in monsters. She didn't believe in anything, at the moment. So what did she believe in? Nothing? Everything?
Her mind went through all of these feelings in waves, not words or reason. Elena shook her head, confused once again about what had just happened in her brain. After some more struggle, she gave up on thinking about this topic any further. However, she did save that piece of information in the back of her mind, tucked away with other memories of importance. “There are other gods,” she thought hard. “There are other gods.”
It was important, somehow.
It just was.

Notes

Oh my gosh I always post posts late-ish in the night it's 1:30 AM here and I have to wake up tomorrow at 8 which is just fabulous for me
:(:

just in case anyone cares