RoOfToP pAtIo, pEnthOUsE, Sly Pen?, Cougarsville!, DeKalb Duchy, Aigroeg. Wendy's Day, Octopus 30th, 2019. 01:30.

MDW: Mary's POV.

Mary woke up with a startle and rushed to the restroom. Not feeling asleep at all, she wandered through the penthouse, admiring the decoration. She stopped by the door to the patio.

Sara was holding a glowing white feather with golden stripes. It glowed like 100 LED lights, dispelling the darkness and shadows everywhere on the rooftop. The whole world lit up as the veins of magic underneath the Earth became visible.

Suddenly, the feather started to dissolve into glowing motes which quickly fled inside Sara's hand, leaving glowing trails under the girl's skin as they moved toward her heart. Sara screamed as if they were made of liquid fire as if she was being seared alive. Steam wafted from her skin.

She could taste blood, hear her blood drumming inside her ears. Sara clawed at the deck and it gave, scratching furrows on the wood.

Jets of fire erupted from Sara's shoulder blades. Black stuff bubbled through her skin, then burned and sizzled as they were forcefully ejected through every pore and orifice in her body. Sweat and blood oozed along with that, but the holy fire purified and sublimated it all.

Then the fire erupted and burned all around her. The cotton dress was the first victim.

The hot tub full of filthy water boiled and evaporated. The wooden deck caught on fire. The fiberglass of the tub softened and bent. The water in the swimming pool boiled. The glass door leading to the penthouse shattered.

Behind her, Mary could hear Bella and Brutus barking.

With abject horror, the other girl watched as Sara's bones creaked as they shattered and reknitted in seconds. Her muscles coiled and stretched like snakes around her new skeleton. Her skin changed colors on a dime. Two long tongues of fire still burned on Sara's shoulder blades.

A thought ran through Mary's mind. That's why people had trouble pinpointing her ethnic origins. Sara was only half-human. That's why her skin changed color so easily.

Sara was not human.

As her body was reforged on the crucible of magic, Sara stopped screaming. Mary winced at each pop and creak of the girl's bones.

The tongues of fire bent at odd angles and slowly something appeared inside the flames. Feathers.

Sara breathed and her lungs burned as they inflated like a newborn baby. She cried and screamed as her body desperately struggled for air. The girl pushed the floor with her hands and raised her torso. With a primal scream, she stretched her arms as she moved to a kneeling position. The shoulder flames exploded and shattered the glass. Shards flew past Mary, cutting her face and limbs. Yet Mary couldn't move as she was frozen in place, witnessing Sara's transfiguration.

Wings of pure white, with a few sparkling golden barbs running along the edges flapped where the flames were. It was dazzling and Mary couldn't stop admiring them.

Sara looked behind her and yelped, trying to turn around.

"What the hell?" She gaped. "Wings? For real?" She paused for a while. "Is the number of wings a status thing? Like a dick measuring contest?" Another pause, "Why are these things so ridiculously large?"

Sara stood up with some difficulty and checked. Her wingspan was over five yards which she found rather ridiculous. The wings started on her shoulder blades, which had doubled in size and grew enough muscle she could pass as a hunchback now. When folded, the first articulation, the equivalent of the elbow joint, was below her butt. Then they went all the way up to a foot above the crown of her head, and the longest pinions reached back below her knees. She could even tickle the backside of her knees with them.

"This is going to be a problem," Sara remarked. "These wings are too bulky."

As Sara spun around, she met a flabbergasted Mary, staring at her. Bella and Brutus were there, by Mary's side, looking worried about Sara. Mary was actually holding them away from the broken glass.

"Sorry I woke you up!" Sara said as she flapped the wings behind her awkwardly, struggling to keep her balance.

Sara waved with a stupid frown. She had just cooked the whole patio, of course, Mary would wake up.

Mary waved back and commanded, "Bella, Brutus, sit! Stay!" The dogs obeyed.

"Hey, Mary. Sorry, I woke you up," Sara tried.

Mary narrowed her eyes. "Sara, please tell me the truth," Mary said as she walked out of the penthouse, over the broken glass, and into the burnt patio. She could feel the searing hot concrete underneath her naked feet. "What did I just see?"

"Did you like my wings?"

Mary nodded. She crossed her arms under her chest and made a pose. "Yeah, I saw your fucking chicken wings, you stupid bitch!" Mary said. "Who's the mutant now, whore?"

Mary flinched, then opened her eyes. What did she just...

She ran to the rooftop patio. She had to make sure it was really a dream.

*

*

Rooftop patio, penthouse, Sky Pencil, Panthersville, DeKalb County, Georgia. Wednesday, October 30th, 2019. 01:30.

MDW: *_*_WARNING_*_* some readers may find this section too disturbing.

Abby's revelation was not something that one could grasp immediately.

On a superficial conscious level, she understood the words, but Sara failed to truly absorb the concepts. It was a subconscious defense mechanism people used to cope with such life-changing revelations. They detached themselves from the situation, putting a doppelganger in their place to suffer the consequences. They refused to believe, to accept that was about them. Bombarded by fiction on all forms of media, XXI century denizens were perfectly able to switch their personas and basically reject reality.

Sara was no different, the zeitgeist of her generation held as much power over the girl as any of her contemporaries. She withdrew back into herself and became once more the hapless forsaken child who had nobody to rely on.

She was once more alone, outcast, and disenfranchised standing before the bakery, entertaining thoughts of larceny and enduring Washington's winter chill.

She was on her bed, hopelessly waiting for a phone call she knew would never come and yet hoped, yearned for.

She was hidden in a building's cramped technical gallery, sleeping while sunbathing with dark clothes during the day and burning what little firewood she had during the night to melt snow and keep herself warm during the night, while a street gang she stole from sought her out to do unspeakable things to her.

She was in a social worker's car, bouncing to yet another crappy foster home. Many times.

And more importantly, she was sitting in a nondescript room, watching a version of herself become some sort of post-apocalyptic heroine. She started out weak and then gained confidence, became outspoken, and even made friends.

In the first season finale, she discovers part of the truth about her origins. She was touched by the beyond, set apart from the mere mortals, a unique existence.

The girl couldn't accept that it was about her.

Yet, a tiny voice inside her head, not a hallucination created by the crystalline parasite she was goaded into accepting but her own consciousness, told her she had to...

...believe? Why would she believe what Abby just said? What guarantee did she have that it was not just gaslighting with extra steps?

Sara pinched her forehead, thought again about tossing the feather off the building, cursed, cried, grunted, stared at the starry sky, cursed Verachiel, the Horsemen, felt impotent, froze the chair again, cursed Abby, cried a little more, cringed, thought about jumping off for just a moment - she reached the conclusion that she might not die - cursed herself for letting that thought slip in, felt sorry for her mother, understood a bit what she meant by "my precious Christmas gift", the words on the back of the photograph, then felt even more sorry for her mother, cried again, felt sorry for her foster parents, the most decent ones she had in a decade and a half in the foster care system, wished to let the world fuck itself, wondered if she could dive in the lake if she jumped with a running start, decided she couldn't, then cried some more.

Then she went back through everything in no particular order a couple more times.

Dungeons, ghouls, wraiths, Hell, Heaven, her father being a ball of feathers and eyes, her mom and the love story the two shared, the fuckers from Hell that murdered her father, the opportunity lost, the corrupted dogs, Verachiel, Abby, the golden crystal she saw falling on the lake and disappearing into the past to create the same lake, people cooking in the same kitchen but at different times, life, the universe, everything else, British humor, how stupid she felt when dancing and singing on the boat for a stupid ghost, how she would stab the next ghost no questions asked, Catherine, Christine, and the good ghosts, Mr. Taylor, Timmy, and the bad ghosts, how she had to clean the hot tub and scrub Eric's goo, retched when she thought the goo stuck to the fiberglass was people, and then she cried some more.

She felt tired. Both physically and emotionally. Wrung out. But not sleepy. Her brain didn't even entertain the idea of shutting down.

The idea she was half-Celestial was so surreal she started to question her own reality. The ultimate gaslighting, the flickering light of sanity. Self-doubt. Not even Composure could help her that deep into her own psyche.

She felt numb, she felt like she was falling backward without moving. The stars in the sky, too many for a civilized urbanite, seemed to spin, leaving trails of light in her retinas. Sara knew no Heaven hid behind that abode, and that thought made her remember the war she alone witnessed. Was that all fabricated? What is the matrix?

She decided that all chosen stories should go fuck themselves. Why did all of the tales of heroes she read made it look so easy? Why was she considered herself the heroine of this story? Fuck that, she wasn't. People considered her a crazy drug junkie girl that went around doing crazy, wild drug-fueled things. Maybe it is not them who didn't understand her, it was Sara who didn't understand everyone else.

Maybe she should try some drugs. Or maybe she was like Obelix, she fell into a cauldron of the stuff when she was little.

Hyperactive, she felt her fingertips numb. Her lips were numb too. They felt like rubber. Her tongue was dry like sandpaper. Her eyes hurt and she believed they were swollen almost shut.

Her mind, exhausted but not sleepy, winded down. She stood up and went to get some water, then drank four cans of soda instead. The sugar helped. Sara used the restroom, then went back outside.

The cold didn't bother her. She wished it did. Sara broke a piece of the wooden deck around the swimming pool and scratched her left arm. It didn't leave a white mark. She stopped and looked at what she had just done. Was she going to dive into self-harm? Was she even able to cut herself with a knife? Well, she could always infuse...

"What the fuck is wrong with me?" She argued out loud. "Abby, are you messing with my mind?"

She waited to see if the fairy would say something but nothing came. Sara sat down and did some house cleaning inside her head.

"What do I need the stupid feather for?"

Oh, now she responds. Sara had to remind herself Abby had her own agenda. And her momentary lapse of reason might be some mental assfuckery or brainwashing by the "fairy". Worse, she had no way to fight back. But she could always struggle and misdirect. Better play along for now. Or Sara might be subjected to yet another mental assault. If that's what happened, and not her going bonkers on her own.

"Like a catalyst?"

"Will I grow feathers all over my body?"

"Why would I want... Will I gain the power to fly?"

"Pass as human," Sara snorted. "Why should I do this?"

"Yeah. Will I get invulnerable too?"

Leaning against the cold metal of the balcony railing, Sara narrowed her eyes. The girl sitting in the nondescript room, watching the adventures of Sara, a post-apocalyptic heroine, jumped into the screen. For a moment, she seized the script and ripped it apart.

Abby was trying but she was a terrible salesperson.

"Abby do you know what I'm thinking right now?"

"Please, entertain me."

"Fuck, no. There may come a day when I become half-person, half-chicken, but it is not today. Promises of power or not, I'm only trusting you as far as I can toss you, which is not at all. I can't even take you off my chest. So, fuck off, Abby. Unless you can either tell me the whole truth or spin a convincing and encompassing lie, fuck off. Accepting you was a mistake, but one I can live with, so far. Here's where I draw the line."

"Don't fuck with my mind again," Sara stared at her hand. "Don't even try to deny it. The feather goes back in the drawer."

The girl turned around and saw the other girl, standing by the door to the patio, staring at her. Sara climbed down from the pool deck and walked toward Mary. She made a note to clean the stupid hot tub sometime.

Then she looked at the glass door leading back to the penthouse, and completely scared and out of herself, Mary was there.

"Sara, who's becoming half-chicken? And who are you talking to?" Her eyes appeared unfocused at first but sharpened as they went to the object in Sara's hand. "What bird did that feather come from? It's glowing!"

Not glowing per se but it was so white it was catching every light source, including starlight and the electric lights from the penthouse. Regardless it was enough to distract Mary. Maybe Sara could misdirect her but then she would stoop to Abby's level.

Sara let her shoulders slump. "Let's go inside and I'll make some coffee. I'll tell you everything."

They walked inside, closing the glass doors behind them.

*

*

Penthouse Kitchen, Sky Pencil, Panthersville, DeKalb County, Georgia. Wednesday, October 30th, 2019. 03:00.

Sara put the aluminum capsules in the automatic espresso machine and it buzzed as it poured two cups of black goodness. At the girl's feet, her two foxhounds gleefully gnawed on raw cow bones, trying to suck the delicious marrow out.

Sara sniffed, "Huh, smells like George Clooney."

"Too bad he isn't here to let you sip straight from his lips, eh?" Mary teased.

"Uh-hum," Sara agreed absentmindedly, eyes closed as she slowly took in the aroma of the roasted beans.

"That's weird," Mary rebuked. Sara raised a questioning eyebrow. The other girl explained, "You, having a boner for wrinkled old men."

"Not just any wrinkled old men, my well-endowed friend," Sara dallied. "Wrinkled old men who aged into fine specimens. Well-aged men who can make paying a buck on a cup of homemade coffee worth it just because he let them borrow his face."

"Get a room!" Mary playfully protested. "You're getting off just from—"

"Mary, I never fuck where I brew," she advised sagely while sipping her coffee.

"Eww!"

"I never fuck at all," Sara admitted.

"Double eww." Mary twisted her nose. Then she picked up the feather, "so, what's the story on this one?"

Sara sipped her cop o'Clooney again to summon some courage.

"So, back in the seventh. When the world ended. It was Armageddon. The Biblical battle between Hell and Heaven. The meteors that people saw falling, were debris from those two places. But debris wasn't the only thing that fell from the sky. The owner of that feather too fell down on my roof."

Mary stared at the feather, then at Sara, waiting for the girl to call her prank. When that didn't happen, Mary exclaimed, "shut up!"

"I wish. Do you want me to speak or not?"

"No, go on."

"This Celestial gave me a task, this feather, and the fairy."

"Abby."

"Exactly. And it seems that my biological dad might be a Celestial too. He died fighting in Armageddon. That makes me only half-human. Not a mutant. A hybrid," Sara preempted the criticism.

"That's the half-chicken part?"

"Yeah. Apparently, there's a way for me to use this feather to awaken my bloodline. It would make me grow wings."

Mary's chin dropped, "Like in my dream!" She then told Sara what she remembered from the dream.

Then Sara's chin dropped, "I burn the whole patio?"

"Yeah. And your wings were huge. Like giant-sized."

"Did they look good on me, at least?"

"They looked like... oversized chicken wings!" Mary said really fast.

Both girls started laughing. Sara flexed her elbows mimicking wings, then clucked, "Bakaw!"

Then Mary's mood did another hundred-eighty. She started to cry as she confessed, "I thought you were going to jump! I thought you hated me!"

"What?" Sara flinched in surprise. She struck Mary's cup by accident and tried to catch the coffee cup before it could spill it all. She failed. Hot coffee, fortunately not McDonald's hot, spilled on Mary's legs.

Sara quickly removed the water reservoir of the espresso machine as she circulated as much Cold mana inside the other hand as fast as she could, using it as a sieve to chill the water as she poured it on Mary's leg, to stop it from burning any further. Leaving the reservoir on the counter, she hugged Mary with her free arm while the other hand cooled her damp thigh.

"Sorry!" Mary cried.

"You have nothing to be sorry for."

In another remarkable mood swing, Mary went from crying to cackling. "Your 'George Clooney' dripped down my thigh."

Sara pretended to swoon as she removed her chilling hand from Mary's leg. "Lucky girl," she purred, then prepared the machine to brew another two cups.

Two girls not entirely right in the head enjoyed their cup o'Clooney in the Apocalypse.