The Rebirth

Four years later…
She gave a tight smile to Jessica, Kelly, and Max. They stood in suspended silence for a brief falling second before hitting reality and nodding goodbye.
Elena’s stomach sunk, just a little. She remembered that not too long ago, she’d had really good friends, people to call up when her parents were being pains, people to tease relentlessly like they were your own siblings, people to laugh and groan with when the new cute boy turned out to be the biggest arse that could ever come into existence.
They still talked at school, still hung out at lunch. But the topics became increasingly fragile. “Had karate again last night, yes?” “No, Jiu-Jitsu.” “Oh. Sorry, my bad.” “Oh, no, it’s fine. What’d you do last night?” “Oh, just hung out with Max and the other blokes. Oh, he said the cheekiest thing…” “Yes?” “Well, it was like… It was… ah, you had to have been there.”
And around here was when a tiny block of silence would come up.
It wasn’t really hard talking to them, much. It just wasn’t meaningful. And they didn’t have any moments together, not any real moments.
But, of course, Elena had known this. She’d decided this.
She made her choice.
And every single time a monster came up, which had been increasingly often over the past few weeks, she never regretted it.
***
Nico hummed as he walked outside. It was… the best day, to say the least. The ring on his fourth finger gleamed. He touched his heart, the one that had almost combusted when Nico and Daniel had decided together, last night- “We’re going to get married.”
Hazel.
He had to go find Hazel.
He- ashamedly, embarrassingly, admittedly- was thinking over and over ways to break the news, rolling around careful words and sentences on his tongue (should he wait for her to notice the ring? Should he mockingly wave it around in her face, batting his eyes like he'd seen some newly engaged fiancés do on TV? "Legalized and ready?" Too tasteless?) when he finally saw them.
He stopped.
They couldn’t have come at a worst time.
His mind slowed, brain turning to slush. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. What would Daniel say? What was going to happen? Was Nico really going to die soon? Because that was the only time, that was the only way the Fates appeared to you-
He took a sluggish step forwards.
The Fates looked at him curiously, musing the sight of him. They glanced him over, up and down, nodding their approval. Words whispered to him, but they didn’t move their mouths- “She goes down in flames, or a sad defeat. Down in flames, or sad defeat. down, down, down, down-“’
She. For a split second, he snapped into action, lunging forwards, towards their bench, thinking of Hazel. “What?! How is she going to die!? What’s going to happen to her?! Hazel can’t, she was going to be the maid of honor, she still has a life ahead of her, she can’t-“
But they simply disappeared from his reach, over to the next bench, clucking their tongues and shaking their heads. And then it clicked. The words of Destiny. He couldn’t believe he didn’t think of her immediately.
He actually… hadn’t- his stomach twisted in horrible, painful guilt. He hadn’t thought of her in a couple of months now.
“Bianca,” he breathed. “Where is-“
His vision went red, and he ran after them again. This time they disappeared for good, and he cursed himself, over and over, again and again. The only Beings that could have helped him, and he scared them away. People looked at him screaming in the streets, wondering, annoyed, chastising him- “Nico!”- but he didn’t care. He was so close, so close, and now-
Little did he know that the Fates hadn’t really gone- they were still there, but simply gone from his eyesight, from his view. As they watched invisible from their seats, the middle one snipped the string.
***
Elena sat, legs crossed over another, hands resting lightly on her knees, on a bench in the park. It was edging into summer. Beautiful day, beautiful weather. Blindingly blue skies. Breezy, sunny, very green, very lovely. So no leaves fell as the tree behind her shook with laughter. She knew he was laughing, too, because she could hear him.
She paid him no attention.
She still had some minutes to go.
No, don’t think of that- think of nothing, think of nothing, stay in nothing-
She just managed to barely grab onto the beautiful bubble of blankness. And there her mind rested. Sounds of laughter and random thoughts drifted through her bubble, and she let them go, not fighting or resisting anything. They didn’t bother her, and she didn’t bother to notice them.
It was peaceful.
Finally, the timer’s sound burst through the bubble and Elena numbly groped to turn it off. She sighed, letting the thoughts sink back into her one at a time. Her mind slowly began to whirl again. She got up from her criss-cross leg position, kneeling down at the bench, her hands ready and clasped in prayer.
“No, no. I am not one to be worshipped. I do appreciate the gesture, though.” Oakley grinned. His hair was much more neatly groomed in the summer, and it was starting to grow out into a curled wisp just past his neck. It was changing from a light, freckly orange to a sharper sunset colour.
His face was very squashed. And very, very wrinkled. Elena was sure it wasn’t that wrinkled and baggy when she first met him, all those years ago.
“Very funny,” she muttered, before tuning him out. She focused on her message, what she wanted to say-

Hello, God- she prayed. It’s Elena.
She wasn’t sure if that was the way you were supposed to start out prayers, but it always felt right to her. It'd always felt right.
I’d like to thank you for the life I’ve been given so far. I’d like to thank you for another day on this Earth. I’d like to thank you for all the opportunities I’ve had. I’d like to thank you for this wonderful day.
Thank you.
I’m asking for another meeting, with the boy. Like always. (It was her default request. She didn’t mind that it never had happened yet. She knew it was more like an off-limits, unnecessary demand.) I’m asking for extra strength to deal with the monsters. I’m asking for clarity on what’s right and wrong in this approach. I’m asking for my family to stay safe, no matter what I have to do.
Thank you. I love you.
Amen.

“I never understood why you believe in Him,” Oakley mentioned, for the millionth time that year. “He’s the only one you can’t see.”
“Exactly,” Elena countered. “And that’s what I need. Faith in what I can’t see. Destiny. I need to believe in that.”
“But why?”
“I just won’t always be able to control everything. It’s comforting to know somebody else has my back.”
“But why?”
“It’s just what I need, okay?” Elena snapped. “It fits me. It doesn’t fit everyone else. I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Ah, you know I am messing with you, girl. It’s just… a Catholic Buddhist?”
Elena rolled her eyes. It was an ongoing joke. Oakley seemed to find it hilarious, for no apparent reason. “Technically, I am everything. I believe in everything.”
“But-“
“But, yes. I, in my own spare time, practice Buddhism and Christianity. Is going through this conversation for the trillionth time enough for you?”
Oakley chuckled in response. He walked around his tree. He always grumbled about human form, but Elena knew that he liked walking, and he liked swishing his beard when he walked. He might have thought Elena didn’t notice, but she did.
Maybe he just liked admiring his own self from a different perspective.
In fact, that was one of the ways Elena finally coaxed him to come out and talk to her, four years ago. She continued to make remarks about the differences in his tree before he came out and had a look himself.
He was eternally grouchy to see her, of course. She was supposed to be "safe". She was supposed to live a normal life, and she ruined his plans to help her live a normal life, and he wasn't too happy about that.
But he came around.
Especially to make unfunny jokes about her religious beliefs.
“I just can’t believe you worship a being named after cheese,” Oakley relished the word. “Cheese!”
“Excuse me? God Cheese? Never heard of it.”
“Buddha! Buddha cheese!”
It took her a beat. “Gouda,” she stared. “Gouda cheese.”
“No, no, that can not be right…”
Elena shook her curls left to right as she walked out of the park. “No goodbye? How rude” called after her, and she couldn’t help a smile.
Oakley.
What an odd little tree man.
She hesitated before looking down towards the river. It really was getting late…
Oh, blimey. She might as well… it’s right there, and she hadn’t visited Naida and the others in a week now-
Right as she started to turn down, she caught the sight of three ladies watching her on the bench.
And this wasn't a "They might be watching me" paranoia.
They were watching her. Clearly her. She made eye contact with them and everything, for a solid long, lingering ten seconds.
It was eerie. She studied them, and the way they studied her. They were knitting this large, silver blanket, with some other threads woven among them- some blue, some red, some brown…What really stuck out to her, though, was the tiniest patch of gold near the end. It was small, and shimmering, and only seemed to appear once in the whole pattern.
Elena hitched the bag further up on her shoulder, forcing herself to not narrow her eyes. She gave the smallest of smiles. She was sure this was some sort of animal, some monster, but if by the slightest of chances it wasn’t…
The three ladies did not smile back. They continued to watch with curiousity.
There was a burning minute of stares.
And then the third lady finally raised something in her hand.
And she cut the string.
Something twitched in Elena’s mind. She knew this. She knew it was supposed to be something important, it was definitely in some cultural story she’d been studying, but what… what was it, what was it, what was it-
The old ladies had disappeared.
She whipped out her knife- some sort of silver metal that was the only thing that seemed to work on monsters- and waited, tense, for a full four minutes. A full four minutes. (And if you think that's unimpressive, you stay in a fighting stance unmoving for a full four minutes and see if it's easy.)
But the ladies were really gone.
They didn’t seem to be monsters. At least, none that Elena knows of.
So what were they?
Uneasily, she headed down to the river.

Notes

SPORADIC CHAPTER MORE SPORADIC CHAPTERS TOMORROW WE'RE REACHING THE END GUYS