we'll go down in history, remember me for centuries
***
In where Hester Sāto joins a quest to return a stolen lightning bolt while trying to learn her godly parentage and control her dangerous curse.
(pjo 1-5)
(part i of the "heroes" duology)
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Chapter Three: Surprise! You're Half-God And Your Friend's A Goat!
(I Accidentally Vaporise My Pre-Algebra Teacher, Pt. 3)
***
Hester's legs burned as she walked up the stairs to the third level of the brownstone where her aunt's apartment was, but when she saw the familiar door of the apartment, the exhaustion and burn in her legs seemed to be nothing in the face of the relief and and joy at seeing it, that she was home again.
Walking up to the door, she knocked on it and waited only five seconds before it opened and saw her aunt's face.
"You're home, Hester," Sakura Sāto said.
"I'm home," Hester replied.
Her aunt looked at her, brows slightly drawn together, a look in her dark eyes before she smiled and opened the door fully.
At the gesture, Hester walked in, smiling at her aunt as she squeezed her shoulder before pulling away—the closest to a hug they would have. Once inside, Hester looked over the apartment—the wall full of books on the histories of Ancient Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages, Japan, China and Korea and the Mongols, and others along with a few classics her aunt loved and let her read on several occasions, the hallway leading to her aunt's room, Hester's room and her aunt's study, the kitchen and small dining room next to the living room, the overstuffed velvet couch in front of the fireplace that always sent delicious waves of warmth when it was lit, the artwork of her aunt's favourite painter Hiroshige hanging on the walls.
And the butsudan on the table next to the bookshelf, handed down to Sakura when Hester's grandparents passed, where the urns her grandparents' ashes were and an ihai memorial tablets with the names of her ancestors, surrounding the Gohonzon icon and amid the candles and hanging lamps, and plates for offerings and incense burners were inside the cabinet-like shrine. Where a photo of her mom rested alongside her grandparents' urns and the ihai of her ancestors.
Hester swallowed even as she bent down to take her shoes off and put them on the bench near the door, leaving her suitcase by it before she walked into the living room and right to the altar, seeing the doors were open and a candle was lit and the incense was burning, offerings of flowers, fruit and rice on the plates and a fresh cup of water in the butsudan. Her aunt having tended to it in the morning, before Hester returned home.
Kneeling down before it, Hester bowed her head and pressed her hands together, silently praying to her mom.
Please, Mom, if you're watching over me... let me know that I'm not going crazy. Because I really feel like I am.
No answer except for the sweet smell of the incense smoke mixing with the more bitter scent of candle smoke. Hester lifted her head, opening her eyes as she looked at the urns that contained the ashes of her grandparents who immigrated to America when Sakura was just a baby, the ihai tablets with the names of her ancestors, the Gohonzon icon that stood between the urns and was surrounded by lamps and ihai, and yet still drew Hester's eye, as it always did the first time she knelt before the altar and always did in the morning, evening and remembering her family on the days they passed, pointedly not looking at the picture of her mom, a picture that somehow still captured her smile, her eyes with the gentle warmth in them. That looking at it made Hester's heart ache and eyes prick.
