Apocryphal Family Tree: The Rough Draft

Look, you done fucked up

The house feels so empty without anyone here but Winnie. I pad around in my cozy and slightly damp slippers because even though it is honestly too hot for them today and will be for the foreseeable future the keep my feet cleaner then flip flops. I make myself a cup of tea and go to the dining room to sit down.
Winnie is already there, petting the snake. The cat is purring at her feet. So we gonna do this now then. I brace myself for the lecture and disappointed faces of Winnie. They don't come. I'm not sure why until I look her in the eyes. She's smiling this huge ass grin.
"I see that you continued undeterred by my warnings and your friends' warnings. I don't know how you lucked into this shit, but you've summoned familiars of death and water."
Lenny smiled egregiously large, like she knew more was coming but as if to say, "see, it's fine."
"I'm going to give you a few weeks to get your shit in order but you gotta come with me," Winnie said. Winnie was looking right at Lenny and Lenny couldn't tell if Winnie was just or not. Lenny barked out a single laugh and Winnie's stern face said she wasn't kidding.
"You know that's why your apprentices die, don't you?"
"you've also apparently been going through my things and found the doorway to Heaven." Winnie sighed.
"I summoned Key. Based on what everyone at Bookshop said, I'm assuming you know who she is."
Winnie's eyes widened. "You have been contacted by supernatural beings! The other apprentices always told me. They also never tried to summon things, so I guess I should be less shocked."
"While you were in your resurrection coma I had an exciting few months. Found out that pretty much everyone I befriended at the Bookshop is actually a supernatural creature and about half of them had other agendas. I'm beginning to think that only supernatural beings and me live here," Lenny said.
"Who else have you met?"
"Papa Legba, Flor, and Harlan. And Key's girlfriend Andi." Lenny rattled off.
Winnie pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. Her head sagged down and stayed that way for a few minutes. Then she looked up and opened her eyes.
"It has never been a mystery to me why the apprentices die. They die how I died. How I still die. I'd always keep them at arm's length for as long as I could but eventually too many supernatural beings, predators all of them, would seek to get to me through them. And if I have to choose between a death brought on by humans or possible eternal enslavement to a supernatural creature because I don't know their rules, I'll choose death. You are really forcing my hand because you could end up binding yourself to someone or something because neither of us know enough and we don't even have ancestors we can trust. Which is why I wanted your help in finding the ancestors. All the other reasons too, but the main one is because I want to know who I can trust who's been around longer than George or Sassy, they really likes their newest nickname."
"You could just invoke them or whatever like Nor's told you. Be their horse. See if anything clicks for them while they are inside of you."
Winnie made a face, a grimace. "That does not appeal to me. Especially since some deities ride their horses hard. I'm not into it. And I don't know when they'll let go or even if they'll let go when I die. Plus deities are as dumb as humans and make terrible decisions. One could say their terrible decisions are worse than dumb humans because their powers make the fuck up grow exponentially. No, please."
"Okay, I get it. So this is you being protective. Leading me to my death."
"I'm giving you something no one else got: time to put your shit in order. The danger you are in is mostly coming from yourself, so I'm hoping you can behave long enough on your farewell tour that I don't regret this."
That's when it hit Lenny how deadly serious Winnie was being. And that Winnie really meant it. And that'd she'd need to make her peace and say her goodbyes and because she didn't want anyone to be worried about her and she hadn't told anyone why the apprentices had died, she'd just make it seem like this was normal and fine and probably not going to end in her death. She'd just be going out on a mission. No one else needed to know that's where the death sentence came in.
"When you're in Boston, have Hopper implant a neural translator in your ear and a tracking beacon in your hip and neck. I've had a few close calls with body parts being completely severed and Glenny Mae not being able to find them. I want to make sure we're able to find your body. All of your body. Give you a proper burial."
"There is so much to unpack there. And I don't really wanna. Plus I might not die. I've been pretty invincible. And maybe I turn out like you." Lenny shrugged.
"That invincibility shit is because you are in your early twenties. That passes by your late twenties, if you get to see it. Which is looking less and less likely for you."
"Fine. I'll get my things together and go say my goodbyes to everyone I love and also not let on that I know I'm going to my death now."
"Fine."
It was such a weird scene where it looked like a pissy teenager arguing with her pissy aunt, when in was in fact a twenty something arguing with her teenage aunt. Hands slamming on tables and chairs quickly scraping against floors. Stomping up stairs and not slamming doors. Lenny's dad hating slamming doors, thanks to his now amicably divorced parents but that was another story entirely.
Once in her room Lenny sat down at her desk and pulled out the nice paper and pens she'd bought from Bookshop. She wondered if there was any magic on them she should be worried about and she thought about checking with Winnie first, but then Lenny decided if there was enough power to be harmful woven into the paper, Winnie would have already sensed it and figured out what was going on earlier. The door opened and both familiars came in. It was weird to think you could hear slithering like walking, but you could if you knew what to listen for.
The snake curled up in Lenny's lap, tail curling around her left leg. Lenny wondered if the size of the snake changed based on anything or if it was random. The cat sat on Lenny's feet like a weirdo. But then again her lap was currently occupied and she didn't currently have enough lap for both creatures. Lenny got up and sat on the bed, she felt it was important for both familiars to be touching her and stretching out her legs essentially embiggening her lap.
With the cat snuggled between her lower legs and the snake settled cozily on her ham hock thighs, Lenny began writing. She wrote letters to mom and dad individually, because they were still two people even if legally they counted as one.
She wrote letters to Sep and Bay and Nor. She had a feeling Nor would guess what's up but she wrote her a letter anyway. She wrote letters to Flor, Harlan, Andi, Hopper, Glenny Mae, George, and The Sass. She wrote letters to Mama Washington and to the leaders of the Wild Hunt. She got out everything she wanted to say to everyone. Including people she'd never met but wanted to or never met and still didn't. She had the time to empty herself out completely of thoughts that she wanted to send everyone.
Even though she didn't need to pack, Lenny did. She put together a small duffel bag and yelled down to Winnie that she'd be back soon. Winnie yelled back she had two weeks and don't forget the surgeries with Hopper.
Lenny stepped into her room in her parents house from her room in Winnie's house. It smelled like home. It was also a little more packed with stuff then it had previously been. She knocked some stuff over and cursed.
"Lenny, that you?" Lenny's mom yelled up.
"Yea. When did you start using my room for storage‽"
"About a week ago, after the Winnie Feast. It was very clear you'd found your place. You took to this like a duck to water. Which now that I'm saying it is such a weird saying."
"You made the decision and immediately started moving stuff into my room?"
"You know me. Hell, you like me. I made up my mind and I shifted my environment to match with my expectations."
"I'm going to shift my environment so I can comfortably stay here again."
"What‽"
Footsteps, not stomps, came quickly up the stairs. Her mom stood in the doorway wearing an apron.
"Are you joking with me?"
"It's only for two weeks, but Winnie likes the work I've done. She's impressed. Wants me to come out on a mission and catalog it for prosperity."
"So she's giving you two weeks off?" Mom knows more than I do about apprentices in some respects. I have to be careful.
"Okay, I'm half on time out and half on early release for impressive behavior."
Mom just started at me.
"Winnie has a doorway to Heaven, I figured out where it was and how to use it and I visited the previous apprentices, Fanci says hello by the way, and now Winnie's both disappointed and impressed. She wants me to get two surgeries to make going on missions less dangerous: one for tracking beacon implantation and a neural implant that will allow for translation."
"You talked to the apprentices, what did they say about their deaths? Are they all in Heaven? Do they watch over us? I want to know everything." So Lenny proceeded to tell her mom the pertinent, non-scary things she'd learned. It felt like before. Technically Lenny never said the words I forgive you outloud to her mom but it didn't seem to matter. The relationship they'd always had was still there, just a little different because Lenny'd become an adult under her mother's watchful eye and now the protections her mother was so used to providing were now restrictive and ultimately hurt Lenny instead of helping.