Rootless

She was beautiful in the way only a child can be, but if her parts were imposed onto a mature figure and given the airs grownups prefer to assume upon reaching this mystical adulthood, she would have been homely – eyes would slip off her like she had been doused in oil, and words would brush her by as if she was as insubstantial as the wind. They would do this, of course, if she were an adult. She was merely a child, not yet ten summers old, and therefore had yet to assume the mindset of maturity, of being superior, grander.

She was in possession of exceedingly knobby knees, with a sharp ridge of bone in the left one from when she toppled down the stairs at the tender age of three and the delicate, still forming framework of her body had snapped and fused together wrong. Straw like bright auburn hair coiled around her bony face like bundles of twigs; she was the type grandmothers cluck at and stuff another blueberry muffin into (she hated blueberries). She was tiny, and her fingers were too long for her hands – though not in the elegant way, like a pianist or a violinist. Her fingers were too wide to be delicate, with jutting, defined knuckles and wide tips. Her nails were ragged from her habit of gnawing on the quick when she was distracted or lost in thought, and in the winter the thin flesh would easily crack and leak crimson tears. Her skin was pale, easily freckled, but unlike most people of her coloring she never burned – only freckled. Her shoulders promised too be too broad for her slender body, and occasionally she would remark that she wished she possessed a wider ribcage, as hers felt too small to possibly hold all of her organs without crushing them. Her neck was graceful, her elbows too pointy and covered in dead, dry, flaking skin that was two shades darker than the rest of her, no matter the time of year.

Her eyes, though – huge, deep as the ocean blue eyes, ringed in a deeper shade of almost evening indigo, the color that touches at the sky when the sun is just considering whether it is time for bed. Flaring out like a supernova round her pupil shot streaks of dark sea green and lighter spring grass in the mountains green. Thick black lashes curtained these astonishing eyes, and they lifted slightly at the edges, giving her a look of infinite wisdom even as they widened in confusion. In her eyes, universes died and burst, grew and shrank, tore themselves apart and pieced themselves back together. Her eyes, with the universes and the stars, could pierce the illusions all children weave for themselves as they grow into adolescents and later adults.

The components to be beautiful were present within her at the age of ten years, although many children possess the potential to be beautiful but are turned bitter and in doing so, warp their features so they grow up not as beautiful as they might have been, had they not shut their eyes to the world. Her eyes were too astonishing, too universal, to ever shut – they were made far more gorgeous because she was unaware that they were so unusual in their loveliness.

Her name was Alexandra. Alexandra Rebekah Leon – her first name for a woman her father had been in love with, once upon a time (a Grecian, with hair as black as the night and skin as white as snow, who he had met while traveling as a post high school student looking to find himself, and Alexandra had given him a gyro in a nameless little town along the coast when he ran out of money and told him that she thought he would make a wonderful police officer, which he ended up becoming and loving every moment of. This was before the dawn of computers and cell phones, and they had kept in touch with snail mail when her father went back home to Oregon for two years, but times change and one day Alexandra stopped responding to his letters. He never figured out what happened to her, although he still loved her with all his heart.). His daughter was named Alexandra, then, for the lost love of her father’s life, and although her father never told her mother why he was so insistent on naming her Alexandra, it tore something between them, for her mother had long suspected that Alexandra’s father’s heart belonged to another and he only settled down with her to pleased his parents. This would one day led to their divorce, but at the time when Alexandra was ten, that was still a few years off.

So she was Alexandra, named for the woman her father truly loved, and Rebekah – a name to honor her mother’s best friend who had died the year before starting college. A mysterious death it was; some said murder, others suicide, and others said accident. Rebekah had been found along a road in California, which was suspect because she had left her home in Utah two days before she was found, driving in the opposite direction to attend a college located in Virginia. Her clothes were missing but there was no sign of assault. Rebekah had had a full head of bright golden hair, and she was rightfully proud of the shiny locks and so had grown it down to her waist so it could flutter elegantly behind her as she strolled along, revealing in her beauty and her intelligence, but when she was found her head was shaved, with the word PRIDE tattooed in dark red gothic script along the crown. There was an X carved into the flesh over her heart, not deep enough to kill, and no clear indication of what had killed her. She was Alexandra, for the woman her father loved, and Rebekah for the friend her mother adored and admired and who never got to really live.

She was Alexandra Rebekah Leon, but she hated the formality of Alexandra. Alexandra is not a name for children – Alexandra is a weighty name, loaded with history and past Alexandras who have done good deeds and terrible, and it is an ancient name, so there have been many Alexandras. She could feel the weight of all these Alexandras, and so, to escape, she became Alexi, or when she was feeling particularly un-ancient, Lex. She switched between the two like a fussy child switches his ideal food choice.

Alexi (or Lex, but when her story starts she was Alexi and didn’t change her mind about being Alexi to being Lex until she was thirteen) had the universe in her eyes, and the ability to pierce the illusions that people craft for themselves. She could be called cynical, or pessimistic, but in truth, she believed in the best of people and thought that the world could be saved if people just stopped dithering about and actually buckled down and did something. She thought she would quite like doing something, for the world was gorgeous and the world was all she knew, so she wanted to help it and save it from the silly mistakes the adults who knew everything did.

 …

The tomcat was a fat, lazy cat with dull golden eyes and a scraggly tail with a bent end from being slammed in the backdoor once, a long time ago, that belonged to her neighbor, Mrs. Katherine Rogers (there never seemed to be a Mr. Rogers, and Mrs. Rogers was young, although not attractive in the convential sense), who lived right next door to Alexi when Alexi was ten and still Alexi and not Lex. The tomcat wasn’t particularly bright, or active, but he was sweet and his purr would resonate reassuringly through Alexi’s tiny, thin body when she scratched him under the chin. Mrs. Rogers never seemed to settle on a name for the tomcat, so Alexi referred to him as the chubby cat next door. The tomcat never seemed to age – his fur remained thick, the color of a newly born fawn, and although he was a lazy slob of a cat, he remained in perfect health. He had been there when Alexi’s parents moved into their tiny, two bedroomed house with an out of control color garden, three years before Alexi was born, and by the time she reached the age of ten summers the tomcat was still going strong – even though the most he had to do was haul himself to his can of Fancy Feast and snooze in the always sunny patch on Mrs. Rogers’ long driveway.

On the day when everything flipped, Alexi tucked herself into the nook of the enormous old maple tree in her front yard with a tattered worn book of German folklore she’d bought for three dollars and thirty-two cents from a library sale. Sweet June air with clouds of willow seedlings floating on the summer breeze surrounded her, buoyed her as she slipped into the strangely violent and turbulent world of German mythology. The genre of mythology, of the stories people create to describe their world, fascinated her – in her cramped bedroom she possessed a stack of books nearly as tall as she was on Greek mythology, and even more on Japanese, Hopi, Ute, Lakota, Norse, Russian, Mongolian, Aboriginal and Celtic. The discovery of the book of German myths was something that she could not just leave – she had yet to explore Germany and the dark, twisted sensibility of the stories that seemed to reflect the society she occasionally heard about in the news drew her like a moth to flame.

She was so drawn into the tale of the Bull and the Maiden that she barely noticed the slip of sunlight on sleek, inky hair – hair without shadows or highlights; just pure darkness flowing down - when it passed below her old tree. But the shimmer of light on the hair was so unusual, just strange and mysterious enough, that it pulled her gaze away from her book and to the woman striding along the street, heading purposefully for the tomcat lounging on Mrs. Rogers’ driveway.

She was abnormally tall and slender, with paper white skin and hair as dark as the bleakest, loneliest corners of the universe pulled into an elaborate braid that tumbled down her back, ending just above the gentle curve of her hips. Clad in flowing black and pale blue garments that draped themselves over her skinny limbs, she didn’t seem to notice the oppressive press of the summer humidity as she strolled to the sprawled tomcat. She kneeled beside him, and glanced hurriedly around the neighborhood. Alexi shrank back further into the tree trunk, clutching her worn book to her chest. Bark dug into her back. She was almost holding her breath.

The woman seemed satisfied that no one was actively watching, and turned her attention to the tomcat. His eyes had slid open, wary and bright in the sunshine.

“Really, Sun Wukong?” the woman began, tilting her head and raising an eyebrow. “A cat?”

“I could say the same thing to you,” the cat snapped back, pulling back his lip to show off his yellowing fangs. “A woman, really? Although I must say, you look damn fine, Loki.” A pink tongue flashed out and dragged itself across the cat’s cream-and-coal spotted nose as his lips curved into what could charitably be called a grin.

“At least I’m human,” Loki responded irritably, slipping forward and crossing her legs. Her clothing fans out around her, and even as far away as Alexi is, she can feel the chill pouring out from her. “Anyway, so Hermes is arranging a get together.”

“Oh?” the cat stretched, extending his claws and rolling over onto his back. Loki scratched at his stomach absentmindedly. The tomcat purred before he asked, “Who’ll be coming?”

“The usual rabble. Kokpelli, Iktomi, Anasazi, Coyote, Eshu…”

“I haven’t seen Eshu in two or three centuries.”

“Yeah, me neither. He’s been pulling extra times at the crossroads. Hermes mentioned that Susanoo was invited as well.”

The cat shuddered, flexing his claws again and swiping at Loki’s bony hands. She dodged with expert grace and returned to massaging his stomach before Alexi could blink. “I hate Susanoo,” the cat muttered irritably, eyes slitting. “But I’ll come. When?”

“Next week. Hermes’ mansion in Hollywood.”

“Right, he’s a big shot movie star now.” The cat peered up at Loki, looking puzzled. “What are you doing these days?”

Loki’s smile was very thin and bitter. “Hunting.”

“Frost giants again?”

“No, they’re dying out.” She pursed her lips, gazing into the distance – Alexi could see her eyes; chips of sapphires woven with ice and the frigid apathy of the farthest reaches of space, with tiny little sparks of something so much more dangerous than anything humans could ever invent igniting and fading away in the time it took to breathe. “I can’t hunt ice giants any more. Thor’s taken over that duty. I’m hunting wendigos, mainly. Some shapeshifters, a few vampires, the occasional werewolf. But I’m looking for the Sins.”

The cat hissed, spat, and this time Loki wasn’t so quick to draw her hand away. The trail of blood dribbling down her arm was alarmingly dark against the whiteness of her skin. She glared at the tomcat, even as the cut knitted itself back together. “That was rude, Sun.”

“Don’t hunt the fucking Sins! Are you goddamned stupid, Loki?”

She shrugged slender shoulders. “I’m not asking for your permission; I’m a goddamned fully fledged Trickster – and might I point out that more people know my name than yours. At least I’m not spending my eternity as a fat cat.”

“Hey, I keep a lady company. That’s a damn good deed, if you ask me.”

Loki snorted, and stumbled up to her feet, adjusting her wispy clothes. “Whatever. I don’t have the time to argue with you, Sun. I’ll see you next Wednesday at Hermes’ place.” She winked, curtsied, and twirled, rising up on the tips of her bare toes, and all of a sudden, the tomcat was alone on the driveway.

The cat glanced at where Loki had been, yawned, and scratched at his ear with his foot. “Bitch,” he muttered irritably, and settled into washing the fur along his plump back.

Alexi shrank back into her perch against the tree, opened her book again, and tried to not dwell on what she had overheard – she was an expert on the non-dwelling; concepts outside of the myths she read in books tended not to stick with her, much to the despair of her teachers and the frustration of her parents.

Adults were strange. Cats were even odder. She didn’t think much of it.

I wonder if the Sweden people still miss me.

I think it’s bad to hope that they do. 

But god, I’m so excited to see them again. 

That moment when you’re reading Daily Odd Compliments and decide to use one, only to realize people wouldn’t think much of it because you say things like that all the time anyway.