Chapter 45: 41. A Smiling She-Devil (I)

If succeeding in a life of struggle and strife could be an Olympic sport, Jhara Luckrun would be a bronze medalist. Silver and gold went to others she thought started way further down in the dumps than her and built entire empires from scratch.

But Jhara could openly admit to herself that she had it decently hard.

Decently.

She slipped out of Haiti on a smuggling boat at five years of age, escaping the life of a child servant of a Haitian household to become a child servant of an American one. In most cases, the fear of deportation would’ve pinned Jhara down and forced her to patiently work her way to a green card or get punted back to Haiti out of cruel fate.

She was a child with a reckless disposition and divergent mind, however.

She learned passable English, escaped her American captors, and got in and out of the child services system by playing lost and dumb. She was lost, but she was not truly dumb, ensuring she was indistinguishable from other mysteriously orphaned children by speaking less and listening more. Until the next best opportunity revealed itself.

The Luckrun surname was made up, of course. It sounded good to her childish on-the-lamb mind and represented what her life consisted of, anyway.

Luck.

Run.

By ten, she cleaned sheets and tidied up rooms for under-the-table pay at fringed motels.

By thirteen, she birthed a child by herself and barely survived the blood loss. For the next five years, she didn’t know the meaning of rest.

She lived off three to four hours of sleep until she crashed and got fired for missing one of her jobs and had to find another one. They were minimum-paying or very temporary illegal jobs, but they put a meal in her child’s belly, kept the lights on, and helped snatch up old gaming systems and games from bargain-bin yard sales. She would never regret getting the PS2 that Jay delighted himself on, even though it took her longer to fix her car’s engine issues at the time.

She battled for every scrap of meager governmental and nonprofit help she could claw up without getting her family snatched up and split apart. She raised a special boy with a propensity for finding high places and throwing himself off the edge. She grew up too fast and gave herself no room to deal with her problems.

Sheer willpower and being a voracious consumer of fantasy and anime saw her through the worst parts of single motherhood. Falling in love with fictional stories was the bond that kept her and Jay strong when they were down to eating one small meal a day while Jhara was out of work.

When tears should’ve fallen in the realization that Jay’s growth would get stunted compared to other kids, Jhara wore a smile instead. Her son loved it when she smiled.

Yeah, that was what she called decently hard.

Then she started writing and posting online at seventeen from a public library. That was the most chill job ever. And she started getting a following. People liked her writing, strangely.

Her fanfiction from a famous romantic fantasy series built up a huge following. When she eventually launched her original fiction as a web series with a page for donations, she had enough to quit one of her two jobs, keeping the library one. When she took those works of fiction from niche parts of the web and made full-fledged books sold to the public, she became a full-time writer at the age of nineteen.

She stopped struggling for the first time in her life.

Then she started living.

Like, get-out-the-front-door living. Alternative lifestyle to the max, type of living. Build an army of collectibles for her son and ignore the price tags, type of living. Enjoy an untraditional but fun sex life, type of living. And most importantly, hold her head high and give every bastard and bitch that looked down on her a hard and happy survivor’s grin, type of living.

And she could live this way because her son never stopped being good to her. They were more like friends with a passion for rum, anime marathons, and having her serve as audience and constructive critic when Mike wasn’t available for Jay’s b-boy sessions.

So, when Jay Luckrun explained to his mom there was a Multiverse, magic was real, and he got his powers from his childhood crush, Jhara sat and listened. She asked for a big example.

Her son obliged by walking on the wall and sitting sideways like it was normal. She stared at him for a while until he mentioned he should conserve mana.

She examined the little [Faerie] creature, a cute bundle of chaos.

Then she regarded the teenage goddess with awe, inspiration, and a base urge that made her feel guilty. Godling or not, she was still under Jhara’s hardline age limit. But she couldn’t help herself pour more food onto YoAnna’s plate as the hungry godling mowed through everything. Food dishes disappeared down that girl’s throat like she was eating air.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Jay said, sticking an arm in front of another plate Jhara was giving away mindlessly. “At least save a few scraps for the potluck.”

Jhara blinked.

Oh, that thing?

How could a monthly neighborhood potluck compare to having magic, a visiting deity, and a son loaded with powers? She almost told him they could postpone it till next month. 

But her son’s heterochromia eyes glimmered with independent lights that stopped her in her place. His left eye made her feel exposed. Guilt welled up for all the sins she’d committed to survive. His right eye pulled at her invitingly, telling her to take that step off the ledge and fall fully into an unknown embrace.

It was scary. And impossibly sudden.

Jhara froze. Then she took a moment to sit down and regather herself.

 “Did I change that much?” Jay asked.

The kitchen fell into a heavy hush. From what she could tell, the world beyond her cozy and frugally chosen home may not exist anymore.

“Mezanmi,” she said, a Creole phrase for expressing shock. “It was Friday night when I saw you off.”

“Three different timelines,” Jay explained. “Magical Multiverse stuff, am I right?”

“As long as it’s not Madoka Magica shenanigans,” Jhara said. “And it’s not Evangelion bad, right?”

Jay winced. “Bigger and badder than both combined. Though, there was a risk with a certain magical godling having a dark side to her.”

“I must apologize to you, Miss Luckrun, that I nearly harmed your son in my arrogance and fear,” the living and breathing deity said.

Jhara couldn’t even look at YoAnna without losing her train of thought. “Can you do something about how you’re affecting me? I want to look you in the face, please.”

The magic that surrounded YoAnna dimmed.

Slowly, Jhara got to her feet. YoAnna got up from the kitchen table and to her full height. Wow, she was tall. And she was imperfectly gorgeous, the scar adding depth that robbed her of peerless beauty while making her every expression more engrossing, sometimes darkly so.

“The scar is a punishment I must bear for my transgression against your son,” YoAnna said.

Jhara gaped at Jay.

“We had a heated spat. Things got biblical hella quick. I had to see it through, or my [Faerie] would explode,” Jay explained.

“Ka-blooey, Kleo guts everywhere!” the little terror yelled, floating to Jhara’s shoulder.

She tensed up as Kleo’s little form settled onto her new perch, Jhara. It was uncanny and wondrous how such a small humanoid could exist. Every close-up detail of Kleo spoke of her liveliness even though a part of Jhara wanted to see her as a black and purple doll.

But that small body left a strange impression on Jhara. Like she needed to be careful that she didn’t get on the wrong side of the [Faerie]. It wasn’t quite as bad as having a knife to her throat. But she could tell the [Faerie] wasn’t afraid to cut a punk.

“Jay, I believe you’ve underestimated the gravity of this information,” YoAnna said seriously.

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Jhara snorted.

Jay chuckled.

Then the two broke into laughter that sounded similar but unhinged in their own ways. Some folks looking from the outside might call it horrid how they paraded their divergent minds and laughed it off.

But they were Luckruns, the only two around. They either laughed or died.

The eyes on her son were different, but they were still her son’s eyes. And looking at them encouraged Jhara to do the most sensible thing.

Get out the rum!

She got out the white stuff since drinking dark rum before noon was the pure essence of depravity. She served her seventeen-year-old boy first before herself with giant thirty-two-ounce mugs filled with ice.

“Mango?” Jhara asked.

“Mango,” Jay said.

Mango juice flowed.

“Strawberry?” Jhara asked.

“Strawberry, for sure.”

Strawberry juice went in until the glass was nearly overflowing.

“Wait, wait, wait, I’m being mad rude,” Jhara said and gave YoAnna and Kleo looks. “Y’all want some?”

“Mortal drinks have little effect on me,” YoAnna said. “I’ll still be delighted to partake in the flavors.”

“I wanna get drunk!” Kleo yelled.

“Can a Health crystal clear that before we go to the junkyard?” Jay asked.

“I’ll clear it for you before I depart,” YoAnna said. “I’d like to stay and see your Potluck, Miss Luckrun. I’ve done much on earth but haven’t partaken in many communal gatherings since daycare.” She wrinkled her nose. “And I rather not count school rallies and their ilk.”

Jhara’s first instincts were to blurt out why a deity would want to hang around a mortal potluck. She’d started it up because she wanted to get with Lilith’s hottie of a dad when he mentioned wanting to meet the neighbors more. He was older than her usual tastes but counted as one of her few outliers. She failed to get with him, though, even after setting up the potluck herself.

Instead of dying quietly, the potluck quickly took on a life of its own for the past half year. And Jhara became de facto head of it. So, she could shut it down. But that would deny a deity her desire for community. And food.

“Okay!” Jhara agreed.

YoAnna smiled.

Jhara bolted away to get another big mug for YoAnna and a little shot glass for Kleo.

“Just a heads up,” Jhara explained. “It’s afro-themed to the heavens–which I now have to question since you exist.”

Jay picked up from there. “All vibes from the Caribbean and to the black diaspora worldwide. Everyone’s invited, of course, but mom likes pushing that piece since it seems to bug some of our neighbors who like things more traditional.”

“I may have an outfit that’ll be quite fitting,” YoAnna said. “It’ll show more skin than usual for me.”

Jhara watched her son slurp loudly from his drink. She swallowed her laugh when Kleo stamped her little foot on Jhara’s shoulder and pointed at the mug and shot glass. Jhara obliged and gave the [Faerie] her share.

“What’s this about the junkyard?” Jhara asked.

“Taking it to the 90’s grunge style of comics,” Jay said. “Gonna break out all my magic powers and figure out some maneuvers with Kleo. We can use some of each others’ powers under certain penalties, and I think there’s like crazy combinations we can pull off together.”

“Like how crazy?”

“Acrobatic gravity explodey magic crazy.”

Jhara gave her son a stern look.

“I want in,” she said.

Jay’s shiny eyes stared her down, making her uncomfortable in her mortal shell. But she didn’t shy away. She endured the feeling of being exposed. She teetered on the edge of insanity as if she had been friends with it for years. She was a bronze medalist in the Olympic games of struggle and strife and had what it took to be seen by her inhuman son.

Jay smiled. “Can you keep notes?”

“Yeah!”

“Will you get tonight’s writing done for the current book?”

Jhara steeled herself. “Yeah!”

Jay nodded slowly. “You’re in.”

They raised their glasses in a toast and filled the house with cheer!

YoAnna showed off some more overt magic that made Jhara feel all tingly and ecstatic. In a shower of gold sparks, her dress changed to a colorful top and bottom of greatly minimalistic portions. The new outfit covered the female necessities while revealing her tone hourglass waist and long shapely legs. A multitude of white, gold, and black beads flowed in broad circles from a neck choker while simple white sandals with thin straps adorn her pretty, pedicured feet.

To top it all, she wore a white and gold tribal mask with a black lion’s mane flowing down from the back of her head. It made her body a more prominent feature underneath the mask. And that body looked like Photoshop perfection.

“Aight,” Jay said. “I’mma head to the shower.”

“I wanna shower, too!” Kleo darted after him.

Jhara suddenly felt self-conscious as a mortal left alone with a beautiful and powerful deity.

She slowly turned to face YoAnna.

The godling slowly turned to look back at her as well.

YoAnna seemed to grow greater over Jhara as the space around them faded into a fuzzy background. The tribal mask became scarier by the second, too.

Jhara felt like a little girl again. Without luck. With nowhere to run.

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