Apocryphal Family Tree: The Rough Draft

You're Alright

Visiting Heaven, this time with Winnie
I ask Winnie if we can visit Heaven together because I need help navigating shit and the last time I was here I spent most of my time looking for our former apprentices. Winnie agreed to it since there's no guarantee that wherever I end up I'll be able to sneak into Heaven. Or if I can, how long it will take me to figure that out.
I spend so much time there. I appreciate that Winnie doesn't rush me. I meet Eleanor, first of her name. I meet my grandfather. A thought ran through my head to check on the miscarriage my mom had when I was a kid. Turns out there isn't a that certain spark of life that would get an afterlife until birth, until that first breath. Which makes sense.
I talk to everyone for hours. I go from house to house. They have so much food and I really wanted to try my grandfather's cooking but everything here will make me feel ill. No one offers me food and I abstain from stealing any.
During my visit with grandpa, he tells me that dying ain't so bad. That even if I don't make it here, I'll go somewhere. The look on my face gives away my "what if I stay in the living dimension" and grandpa sucks his teeth.
"That world ain't for you. And you know it. It won't be the same. You won't get to interact with them how you want. Almost no one can see you. Or hear you. And you could get stuck in repeat there. It's dangerous."
"Danger is my middle name."
"Your middle name is Mariah."
"It's a saying."
"It's a bad saying."
I kiss grandpa on the cheek and leave. I understand what he's saying but I don't want to spend my time here thinking about stuff that's not happening here. My time here is precious.
I go to meet up with Winnie who is visiting Marie LaVeau. Of course she's in Heaven. Gave up everything else to be here, being Catholic was that important to her. She seems happy with her choice. Just because it's not right for me doesn't mean it's not right for everyone. It may be a colonizing religion that can be called the root cause of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, but I guess even social movements like religions can remake themselves for the better.
I see Winnie drinking tea and I make a note to ask her about that later. I sit and listen to their conversation. It's so interesting. She might have given up her claim to certain powers to be here, but she still knows her stuff. Part of it is the syncretism, who she generates and honors with her work counts. Of course Heaven is a place where intention counts. I wonder if wherever I end up I'll be somewhere where intentions count.
I suddenly deeply curious about things and the setup here. If I become a citizen I'll have to find out.

Winnie Check-In
Winnie checked to make sure I was properly healed from the surgeries. She said she didn't want me to have to get them every time. Her body ejects them when she reverse ages, it turns out. That was one of the reasons Hopper came down. Once she's all healed, Hopper and her surgeon friend have to replace her tracking beacons and neural translator. Very hopeful of her. If something went wrong, my body wouldn't be able to heal it.
Winnie apologizes that I'll never have children. It hadn't dawned on me, but that's probably because I hadn't thought I'd be having kids anyway. It's not that I don't like kids, I'm just not super keen to ever have another person inside of me jacking most of my nutrients. In many senses, fetuses are parasites. Adorable little chubster parasites with drool covered mouths and small tufts of hair and a need to be regularly changed after they shit their pants. That's when it dawns on me that Winnie can't have kids but she wants to. It must be an open secret, though I can't figure out why that would be happening. It's not like the reverse aging would stop that. It must be something magical. I'm lost in thought when Winnie pulls me back, asking if I want a cup of tea. Which I do. I always do. I swirl in some coconut milk and sip my earl grey. The dark brown color is mesmerizing and taking it in slowly is relaxing.
"You should go say goodbye to your little friends." Winnie tells me.
"My little friends?"
"The ones you made and didn't know they were magical beings. If you felt friendship with them, you should say goodbye. I might not want to mess with them, but you don't want to leave things unfinished between you. You should also go say bye to Glenny Mae and all of 'em."
So I do just that. I portal to the Bookshop. We all know who we are, why hide it? I say goodbye to Flor and Harlan and I explain the situation. I say goodbye to Pops and I explain the situation again. I go say goodbye to Andi at the library and I explain the situation to her. I tell her to say goodbye to Key for me. I'm hoping maybe they can figure something out to help me, like I've helped them but I'm not holding my breathe.
At Bookshop I pick up a book I'd mentioned to Glenny Mae a few times because she'd been very interested in my copy.
I'd been reading it for comfort since I was a kid, the Bone series. The collected volume is huge. It'd make a good physical weapon.
I portal directly to Glenny Mae's, as I've figured out how to go to where someone is by thinking about them. Where Glenny Mae lives is deep in the woods. Her home is a shack. A cozy warmth fills the room and she's mildly surprised to see me. We sit and talk. It's nice. I hug her and then go home.

Seeking out George and The Sass
The plan was to seek out George first, he seemed to have a more stable place to be. It turned out something I hadn't read into our situation before is that supernatural beings that are hundreds of years old sometimes get lonely and have roommates. Like George and The Sass. I know that this is what Sass now goes by because I exited to the door in front of their apartment. There's a wood door sign that says George and The Sass that looks like someone burned, etched, and embellished to look like a band posted for George and The Sass.
I knocked and waited. Someone yelled that it's open, so I walked in. I guess if you're hundreds of years old and you live in an apartment you're probably not super tied to your stuff. I didn't realize I'd said this out loud until I got an answer.
"Museums have most of the stuff I want to preserve. In my case, and possibly my case alone, the British Museum didn't steal my shit. I technically gave it to them." George said.
"Technically?" I asked.
"By technically I mean I left it somewhere they'd find it." George said.
"An abandoned home?"
"That makes it sound less on purpose."
"And also more true to fact," Sass said. "You'd forgotten where you'd been living when you came back from galavanting Europe and you kept guessing wrong until you realized that actually it'd been decades and that our abandoned shack had been demolished. For generations you thought that all your possessions were lost."
"I knew it could happen. I always know it can happen."
"Speaking of things we always know can happen: Winnie's taking me on a mission and I might die and that's why I'm hear visiting you. To say goodbye."
George and Sass looked at me, their faces went from happy with a pit stop in concerned to frowns.
"I didn't know it was already that time." Sass said. "I genuinely like you."
"You know as well as I that with all the summoning shit she'd been doing that Winnie was gonna pull her along as soon as she came to."
My turn for a face journey: although I went straight for shocked.
Sass hit George on the knee.
"We agreed to not tell her," Sass said. "You seemed to want to keep it a secret. We didn't want to intrude."
"Hardly matters now," George said.
My shoulders slumped.
"If you can't behave yourself, you can leave."
"My home."
"Mine too."
They stared intently at each other until George said, "I'm sorry. I forget what it's like. I can die but I reincarnate and remember all my past selves and all my past deaths as long as there is someone out there that believes in me."
"Apology accepted." I said. "The thing that most worries me is not knowing where I'll end up."
"Wherever you end up, you'll be able to find your way back to us," Sass said. "I believe it. The days are long but the years are short. It may feel like it takes an eternity but it won't. Out of all of the apprentices you're the most daringly and the most persistent. You'll figure it out even if those who have been doing the longer say not to."
Sass winks at me and I'm mostly embarrassed.
"Doing that is what got me here in the first place," I say.
"Doing that is what got you here faster. But you were always going to get here. They all do." Sass says.
And I relax. I had forgotten that. I'm not reinventing anything or even coming to a different end, I'm just a speed demon who getting there faster. If I had more time maybe I could think of my way out of it, but as Winnie mentioned: the magical forces are now watching me. I don't know what that means but there you go. Winnie isn't going to give me the time to figure it out. At least not on my own.