Gleaming Stones of the Sun

III - BLUE SEEING RED

Chapter Synopsis:

Christine watches as the new student makes the most interesting friend.

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August 2017

There was a big change.

I would say that this was a big change because it was related to the gods. The actual gods. Ones you heard in histories and read in books or ancient stones. Ones some people still prayed to on daily basis. After millennia, these guys apparently felt left out and wanted to join into the cluster-fuck that was our city.

This wasn’t the big news. For as far as I could remember, it was a common knowledge that the world was in the middle of preparation to welcome the gods when they finally decided to join us down here. One of those gods was this supposedly powerful one coming from Alaska who planned to bring his whole family to some houses down the street in the suburb area.

No one exactly knew why, but some people suspected that these guys needed more members in their religion because the numbers had been floundering as of late and you know ancient gods; they needed their followers to keep their skin from sagging. (And okay, by “some people” I meant Jenny told me. She was our group’s gossip source. It should be obvious. She was the Oracle, for God’s sake, she had all the dirt.)

These gods were practically a celebrity. We hadn’t really seen them yet, but they were all over the news—for years. They had this special TV program explaining the names, the jobs, and the origins of all the gods known in human history. It was that big of a deal and this was when we didn’t know yet when they were coming, only that they would, and it had been more than a decade already you’d think they’d give up, but no.

I didn’t know why it was such a big deal, to be honest. Despite being under the governance of United States as the rest of the states, Samas City had always been ruled by King Daniel Sr. Rex which everyone knew had the wisdom and power on par with those of gods’. He was an immortal wizard who was more than two thousand years old, praised for his good deeds and charisma. Some considered him a god already, and I’d met the old man, so I could see why.

Anyway, it was utterly boring for me.

I told this to Jenny once before and she gave me a look. She said, “It’s boring for you because you’re half of one.”

I shuddered and munched on my chocolate chip cookie. “Oh, please. Such horror.”

She only shook her head in exasperation. Jenny glanced at Liz desperately. “Won’t you tell this stubborn ass the truth, Liz? She will listen to you.”

Liz only gave us her enigmatic smile and stayed silent. She almost never talked; that was the thing. She laughed quietly numerous times but that was about it. Maybe to say yes or no. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her talk with her boyfriend either. Sometimes I wondered how that worked. It was a mystery.

Jenny could be delusional at times. I thought perhaps it was all because of the prophecy thing she had going on, which I didn’t mind, really. We’d known each other almost all of our lives. She lived across the street. She knew everything about me: that I liked sweets and lazing around on my couch, the boys I’d ever crushed on since I was seven—not that there were many of them.

She knew that my aunt currently lived in my house since I was thirteen, but that before I turned eight there was only my dad and me, then he re-married with my stepmother and suddenly he couldn’t stand me. She knew my real hair was the color of fire, like my absent birth mother’s, and that I hated it because it was so different than the rest of my family’s dark hair so I started dyeing it since I was little.