Tears and Flowers

I picked up the hair tie and tried to pull my several pounds of hair through the small stretchy circle. It didn't work. I tried to pull it out. That didn't work either. I picked up a pair of scissors and felt around until I was able to snip the hair tie, and I tossed it into the small pile collecting in the garbage can at the foot of my bed. I flopped back onto my purple and orange triangle patterned bedspread, the purple and orange pillows of various sizes almost swallowed me. The canopy of my four-poster was an image of the sun setting over the ocean. All of a sudden, I felt a warm glow on my face and sat up.
A woman with pale brown skin like mine, curly, dark honey colored hair wearing simple milk-chocolate colored robes was standing in the middle of the newly-built Hestia Cabin.
I rubbed my eyes as if I were dreaming, but she was still there.
"Mom?!"
"I would hope so."
"Whaaaa-"
"Sweetie, I know you have been questioning where you came from. Just as Athena's kids are born from the brain, my children, or, child was born from my kindness, my human decency."
"How-"
"Well, as you kids say, 'roll with it.' I'm afraid very few godly things make sense. And what I came here for was, well, people don't act the same as they did so long ago. Very few families eat together, everyone texts, and my power is draining. I need a priestess. Who better than my daughter?"
"Will I need to sacrifice people?!"
"Oh, of course not. There is a grove of pine trees in the woods, and the branches of the larger trees come together to form a room, a shrine if you will. In the center is a smaller pine. Every day at sunset you must go there and cut off the top of the tree and blow it out of your palm."
"How would that-"
"You will need this."
There was a bright flash of light and a gold and bronze swirled dagger appeared in Hestia's hand.
"Now, for this to work, ehem, well, give me your hand-this may hurt a bit."
She took my right hand in hers, and carefully sliced three upward swirling lines into the back of my hand. The pain was excruciating, much more than you would think. It felt as if someone were driving a hot metal rod through my hand.
I screamed, and she sliced another line beneath the three, slightly curved, and horizontal. The blood stained the cuts, and all of a sudden, the pain was gone.
Where the cuts had once been, there was a fire in one of those campfire style pits, rocks in a circle.
"How-"
Hestia snapped her fingers and I wearing a long white dress, very priestess-y. Wow Ginlee, priestess-y? Impressive. Anyway, it looked a bit odd against my brown leather ankle combat boots, but Hestia snapped her fingers again and I was in Greek sandals. Gone with the knee-length white skirt, gone with the blue, pink, yellow and white plaid top, now it's priestess Ginlee!
"The items you were wearing will be with your other clothes." Hestia said dismissively, like it didn't matter that she had just teleported my favorite outfit.
And with a puff of smoke, Hestia was gone.

Notes

Sorry this took so long! I wrote it up once, but that deleted it. I switched browsers, and now all of the issues are fixed, so.......
yeah.

Peace, love and Nico di Angelo

-Emily