Friends For Life... And Death. - A Coco Fiction

Nothing Stopping Me

"Héctor! Héctor!" Katrina calls out, starting in her old friend's direction. He looks at her, and instantly the confusion in his eyes is replaced by mixed happiness and terror. He races over to her.

"Niña! What are you doing here? What happened?" He asks quickly, inspecting her like she might be injured. Ignoring his worry, she hugs him tightly. He hugs her back, clearly upset.

"Oh, good! Your family's already here!" The man at the desk remarks. They both look up at him. "Enjoy the rest of your death!"

Héctor leads Kat away from the bridge, looking worriedly at her. They come to a fountain, and he sits her down.

"Kat, please tell me what happened." He begs, eyes landing on her guitar for a moment before his attention snaps back to her. "H-how old were you when this happened?"

"Thirteen, I..." Kat trails off as she tries to remember the details of her death. She struggles a little with it. "I fell into a hole in the woods. Imelda was mad at me, and I ran. A lot of good that did me. I would have been better off taking a beating."

After a long moment of disbelief, Héctor sighs. Then he gives her that familiar playful smile that she missed so much the last couple years.

"It doesn't matter. There is so much to show you, niña! ¡Vámonos!" He says, quickly pulling her to her feet. She can't help but laugh at how quickly he dismisses the fact that they're both dead.

After a lengthy tour of the Land Of The Dead, Héctor leads her to a lower part of the city, where a lot of buildings seem to be falling apart. The land fades into water, and a wooden walkway stretches ahead, leading to different houses.

Héctor takes Kat to a smaller building, but looks back happily when someone calls out to him.

"Hey Héctor, who's the kid?" A guy questions, raising what looks like a bottle of alcohol. "Some poor soul who's own parents forgot she lived at one time?"

"She's my niece." Héctor snaps, his tone suddenly defensive. The man looks a little surprised, glancing between the two. "Also, this is only her first day here. Leave her alone!"

"I can see the resemblance. You two look the same, right down to the eye colors!" The man remarks, earning laughs from a few people. Kat and Héctor look at each other, both taking a moment to note that one has brownish purple eyes, the other bright green. Choosing to ignore the teasing of the men, he opens the door to the house and gestures for Kat to go inside.

Right as Héctor closes the door, there's a screech outside. He opens it quickly, and the bat alebrije from before flies in. Before Héctor can make it leave, it flies behind Kat and clings to her shoulders. She almost falls back from the sudden weight, and grabs a chair to keep her balance. It's much lighter than she was expecting, but that's still kind of heavy. Now she has a giant bat hanging onto her shoulder with each of its thumbs and its toes resting on her spine just below her ribs.

"You have an alebrije?" Héctor questions as Kat tries to pry the creature off of her. She shrugs a little, making the bat dig its thumbs into her shoulder blade. "But they only come to those who need guidance. What do you need guidance on?"

"How should I know?" She replies, trying to get it off. She's worried that it'll break her guitar in some way or another. Finally, it launches off of her and lands on the chair next to her. "It brought me here, since I guess I wasn't supposed to wake up in the same place I died, but why is it still following me?"

"Katrina, what happened before you ran away? Why did you run?" Héctor asks worriedly, glancing cautiously at the alebrije before going over to inspect the little dents its thumbs left in her shoulders.