Apocryphal Family Tree: The Rough Draft

Lenny and Nor, Buddies Again?

Nor Washington arrives to spend the summer finds out Winnie's there now and has minor crisis of identity. It's fine. *hand waves*
Did you know that this will bring Winnie back every year with it's power and that's one of the reasons Winnie instituted it? Because that's what happened.
I smiled and speak to the snake and the cat. Both seem to understand what I say but don't make any sounds. So I can't hold a two way communication in any way I'm used too with these creatures. It feels weird but I know not to call them animals. It's an insult. I offer my left hand to the snake and my right to the cat. They both sniff and decide I'm okay. I offer my arm to the snake and I offer to pick up the cat. The snake is much obliged but the cat would rather walk. It's weird that I can tell without speech. I've always been bad at telling what my cat wanted from me growing up. We walk back to the homestead together and I go in to find Nor. Thankfully no one is up at this hour and I'm not caught on my way to Nor's little cabin.
I knock and I'm waiting for Nor to answer her door with a big fucking grin spread across my dumbass face. When she finally comes to the door, she lets out a small scream before putting her hand over her mouth and motioning me inside.
"So the "no summoning" lectures didn't stick," Nor said.
"Summoning is like making a phone call and interrupting someone's day. So I waited until I had something important to say," Lenny said.
"How are you going to hid these creatures?" Nor said. "You gonna just take them home and care for them? What happens when Winnie finds out?"
"Ah, well Winnie is currently dead, so that can be a problem for after the feast," Lenny said. "Hopefully by then I'll have something figured out."
"Dead?" Nor said. This seemed to be hitting her differently than Lenny walking in with two deity pet creatures.
"Have you never seen Winnie dead?"
"She's never been dead when I came to visit. If she was, she wouldn't come get me so I stayed at home. That happened a few times but sometimes I think it's because Winnie forgot or didn't want me around because she hadn't reverse aged. So no I've never seen Winnie dead."
Lenny felt kinda terrible at this revelation. She took this for granted, figured Winnie died all the time. Winnie looked late thirties, which meant that it had probably been about fifteen or sixteen years since she died. Also that explained why Nor hadn't come over yet, she was waiting for a invitation, so to speak.
"Oh," Lenny said. "Well, we should head back then."
"We?" Nor said.
"I mean you gotta start prepping for Winnie's feast right?" Lenny said.
"That takes two seconds."
"Oh. If you don't want to come back with me now, that's fine. Text me when you're ready," Lenny said.
Nor's face got tight as she did something close to a grimace but not because she was in pain or angry. Like she was trying to figure something out and getting frustrated.
"You okay?"
Nor waved Lenny off and Lenny went to sit on Nor's couch. The snake had draped itself around Lenny's neck like a living scarf. The cat stayed near Nor.
"I guess I should pack," Nor said to no one in particular.
"Do you have a particular room you sleep in while you're at Winnie's?"
"Not really," Nor said, "Afraid you're squatting in my room?"
"I have my room. It's more that we're kinda full up on people," Lenny said.
"Oh?"
"Did you know there's a whole crew demideities that take care of Winnie when she's dead?"
Nor looked over at her again. "You've met them‽"
"They kinda showed up like Winnie's body called to then or something," Lenny said. "Although I think it was Glenny Mae that called them actually."
Nor finished throwing things in a duffle bag and slung it over her shoulder. "Let's do this thing," she said as she marched to the door. Lenny did her key thing and pretended to not notice Nor's jealousy. Nor really was working on bringing it down. They arrived in Lenny's room. Lenny's bed was a King. All of the beds were kings, as if Winnie had gotten a sale on king mattresses or something.
"Do you mind bunking with me?" Lenny said. "It'll be like when we were young and our parents let us sleep together."
"Only if you promise you outgrew your violent sleeping tendencies."
"None of my roommates mentioned wild thrashing in my sleep," Lenny said.
"Good enough for me," Nor said as she unslung the bag across her body and dropped it on a nearby chair. It clattered.
"Do you have things besides clothing in there?"
"I know the chronicles of the Washingtons are supposed to stay here and not with me but it's easier to write in them throughout the year instead of trying to remember everything or catalog it in a separate notebook. Plus then I don't have to worry about Winnie forgetting me." The edge of sad disappointment in her voice cut Lenny to the core. Lenny never was forgotten. Made all the more special by her mother's failed rescue attempt.
"You rebel! I knew you could break some rules if you put your mind to it."
"We're not all you. We can't all break rules with impunity and expect it to be fine. Which, speaking of breaking rules, has literally no one told you how different ATRs work?"
"ATRs?"
"I'll take that as a no. ATR stands for African Traditional Religion but I also include diaspora religions like voodoo and hoodoo, Santeria and candomble, along with Vodun, Yoruba, and Dahomey and Akan, and Odinani. And there's not really summoning in those practices. There's communing with ancestors, which I think for all people descended from the Atlantic Slave Trade includes deities or loa or orisha— that's how we survived. The strongest of the strong- a whole bunch of demideities whose heritage had been forgotten but strength was passed down in the blood waiting to be reawakened. There's also a practice of invoking beings and calling them down to ride you, like a horse."
"To hear you tell it, all of us should have a few powers under our belts," Lenny said.
"I mean I think it's how to unlock the powers that has us stuck. Winnie lucked out in the way that is luck for us- something incredibly shitty happened but something even better came from it. I was hoping you'd be a better researcher so that I could figure that out so I could make myself special like you." She left off "like I've always dreamed of."
"You have given this a lot of thought," Lenny said.
"Not all of us get handed a thing, some of us have to work for it. Most of us have to work for it," Nor said.
"You angry that I tried to summon our ancestors instead invoke them in a way that invites them down?" Lenny said.
Nor did not answer.
"Because I don't really want to be a horse," Lenny said.
"You lucky a demon didn't take your invitation and try to make you its horse."
Lenny could see that Nor was mostly mad because she couldn't try these things, she knew too much and sometimes knowing too much means knowing that the risks outweigh the benefits by a lot and getting paralyzed into not taking any action. That makes sense. Lenny huffed. Nor looked back at her, expectantly.
"I'm not going to apologize for doing what I thought was right and getting a as yet to be determined result, although I'm leaning toward a cool result, especially when no one was harmed."
Nor looked at Lenny and her stare wasn't angry, which is what Lenny had thought. It was still expectant.
"Will you help me figure out if what we have our occurrences of deities or some kind of familiar situation?" Lenny said.
Nor broke out into a dumbass grin that she tried to hide but Lenny could even hear it in her voice when she said, "I'll see what I can do." Nor leaned down and came back up with the cat. A real beauty. Medium length, all black fur with bright green eyes. Were the cat's eyes glowing? No, Lenny shook her head. Were they? Maybe, I don't know. Lenny thought. Guess we'll figure that out eventually.
The snake had slithered off of Lenny's shoulders and curled onto the bed. The snake and the cat were making an effort to not look at each other, which Lenny found interesting. Lenny also noted that no one seemed to notice the power the two extra magical creatures had brought with them to the house. Lenny and Nor were unable to sense that type of thing, but the way Glenny Mae and 'em spoke, Lenny thought she'd have had a party in her room with everyone curious and full of lectures.
Lenny was glad she could technically get in and out of her room without leaving her room to go through the house because she needed to figure out sanitary feeding and food evacuation without alerting the other tenants of the presence of these beings. She could get food for the cat and snake, a litter box with litter from the pet store. She was going through it in her head when the cat meowed and looked at her in the eye and then rubbed against her. Lenny had a balcony off of her room, so she tried opening the door to outside and the cat went out. She shimmied down to the ground and went into the wooded area near the house. Was the cat hunting? Lenny thought about how maybe she didn't need to worry about feeding the cat or a litter box. Lenny wondered if the snake would be the same.