"Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life."

  Anne Roiphe, Journalist

  “The only reason I'm not expelling you on the spot is because of your personal circumstances, Ms. Gale. You are lucky to only get a week’s suspension.”

  Calista sat in the principal’s office, looking out the window and trying to ignore the angry man behind the desk. Her fingers absentmindedly twisted the ends of her long red hair as he babbled on about her future and how she would ‘end up working someplace miserable, alone and forgotten’ if she did not shape up. Or something that like. It was hard to pay attention.

  “I don’t even remember why I am here,” thought Calista, starting at the dark cave that stretched beyond the schoolgrounds, its path forked in two. One path leading to a shining field. The other to a graveyard. She did not remember either being there yesterday, yet it did not seem to bother her that it was here now.

  “Oh right,” Calista remembered. “That little skank Laura was sniffing around Tyson. Tyson is mine. And Laura will remember that after what I did to her. Bitch isn’t so attractive now without her cute little ponytail.”

  She didn't even like Tyson, though she was supposed to. Those were the rules, right? Cheerleaders dated footballers, or whatever they were called.

  She felt a touch of guilt. but pushed it deep down inside her with the others. Mean girls don't feel guilty.

  If I show regret, those waiting to take my place in the social hierarchy would eat me alive.

  “Whatever, Mr. Peckerson,” Calista laughed dismissively. “Can I just go now? Apparently I’ve got a week of free time ahead of me, and I want to get an early start.”

  “It’s Peterson, Ms. Gale,” Principal Peterson said, the veins starting to pulse on his neck. “And that just earned you another two days suspension.”

  Calista was about to respond with another snarky comment, hoping to make it an even two weeks, when there was a knock at the principal’s door. It was the school counselor, Mr. Dedrick.

  Mr. Dedrick was the only adult at the school she could actually stand. Maybe it was because he treated her as a human being. Maybe it was because of the ironic mullet and thick sideburns.

  “Pardon for the intrusion, Principal Peterson, but are you finished with Calista? I need to speak with her,” Mr. Dedrick said, his tone lacking his usual cheerfulness. It made Calista nervous.

  “Yes, we are done here,” Principal Peterson huffed. “And she will be done at this school forever if she does not turn her attitude around. Use this time to think about who you are, Calista. And who you want to become.”

  “Whatever, Peckerson,” Calista snapped, and she slammed the door behind her before he could respond.

  “You really shouldn't antagonize him like that, Calista,” Mr. Dedrick said, but it was a token admonition. Calista could sense something was wrong.

  “Carl, what is the matter?” Calista asked, dropping the mean girl persona once she was certain there was no one around to see.

  “Look… Calista,” Mr. Dedrick started. “There is no easy way to say this. I just got word from your uncle. Your father has taken a turn for the worse. He… might not have long left. A day. Probably less.”

  Calista stopped walking Her knees grew weak and her face turn ghostly white.

  “But the treatment last week. They said he… that he… he told me it would work…”

  Calista dug her fingers into her palm, drawing blood to try to prevent herself from crying. No one at school could see her cry. No one except Mr. Dedrick and Principal Peterson even knew her father was sick. And only Mr. Dedrick knew that she'd spend everyday for the past year coming home to an empty apartment while her father lay in the hospital, fighting a losing battle.

  Carl stood in front of her to help shield her face from onlookers. “Come on Calista. I will drive you to the hospital.”

  He put a hand on her back to get her to start walking again.

  “He promised… he promised me he wouldn't go anywhere,” Calista’s voice cracked, her tears ignoring her desperate battle to hold them back.

  Her tears won that battle the second her feet touched the sidewalk.

  She didn't remember the drive to the hospital or Carl’s attempts to comfort her. She didn't remember the nurse taking her to her father’s hospital room. She blinked, and there she was, clutching his hand tightly as he stared blankly at ceiling.

  “Do you remember that hunting trip we took when you there thirteen. When we ran into that wild boar?” asked her father with a weak cough. He was hooked up to wires and tubes, his skinny frame now a shadow of the muscled outdoorsman he had once been.

  His eyes were clouded with medication that keep his pain at bay and warped his thoughts.

  “I guess so,” Calista said softly, squeezing his hand. “I remember being really scared.”

  “No, my beautiful daughter, you were so brave. You looked that boar square in the eye as it charged. You didn't show fear. You stared it down, and the boar was the one that blinked,” her father said with pride. “You were so good at hunting. You could have surpassed even me.”

  He coughed, and Calista wiped the blood from his mouth. His eyes fell on her long ponytail. “You started to grow this out after our last hunt…” he whispered absentmindedly.

  “It… just looked better long, that’s all,” Calista said, grasping her hair in her hands self-consciously. She had kept it short as a kid - it was easier to care for when they went hunting. That ended when she started high school. Suddenly popularity was everything, and going hunting was an embarrassment.

  “Those were happier days,” he whispered, his eyes looking at something Calista could not see. “Before you grew cold and mean and distant. Before you turned your life to ash.”

  He turned, looking into her tear-filled eyes and gave a sweet smile.

  “That final hunt was the last happy memory I have of you.”

  Calista’s tears fell onto her lap. There was no menace in his voice. Only the certainty of medication-driven truth.

  Her father turned back to stare at the ceiling. “Maybe if your mother had stayed with us, I would have done a better job of raising you. I wonder what happened to her. Do you think she is waiting for me on the other side?”

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Anger cut through Calista’s grief. She knew it was his disease talking - that this rambling was the prelude to his last moments - but it still hurt.

  “I don’t fucking know, Dad. I don’t remember her. She abandoned us when I was three, remember?”

  “She was so beautiful. You got your hair from her. And your eyes. I did my best to raise you, you know. It’s not my fault you turned out broken. Do you think she will forgive me?”

  “Someone has to,” Calista said, grabbing her backpack and standing up abruptly. “I’ve got to go, Dad. I’ve got… schoolwork to do.”

  “Do you remember that hunting trip we took? The one with the boar?” he asked again. “Why did you stop coming hunting with me? It broke my heart.”

  Calista wiped away her tears and left her father staring at the ceiling, his mind lost in the fog of illness. Head down,she ran for the exit, only to collide with the nurse standing in the doorway.

  “Move,” Calista mumbled, but the nurse just stood there. She tried to go around her, but the nurse didn't move.

  “Get out of my way!” Calista demanded, desperate to leave the room.

  This is the last time you saw him. You didn't even attend his funeral.

  The nurse's voice echoed off the walls of the hospital room, calm and filled with sorrow.

  “What are you talking about?” Calista began to protest, but her words opened up her memories.

  She remembered this day. Her father had died an hour after she left him. She'd hidden in their apartment for a week, ignoring her aunt and uncle and Mr. Dedrick and the slew of others who had tried to make sure she was safe. She grew angry - angrier with each passing day - until she smashed their television and threw a vase at her aunt and uncle when they arrived to take her to the funeral.

  There are crossroads in life that define who we are. This moment in time was yours.

  Calista looked up at the woman. She was young, dressed in thick hides with white fur in the Inuit style. Her shimmering black hair tumbled from beneath her hood in two thick twin braids that reached her breasts. She shimmered with an aura that matched the blue of the sky, and she carried a simple spear composed of driftwood with an ivory point, tied together with a complex bands of leather.

  “A… crossroad?” Calista asked.

  You used this moment to close yourself off to the world. To justify the hatred you had for yourself. Your father’s final words to you would become the foundation of the self-centered behavior that would become your security blanket against the world. And with each day that passed, you drifted further away from the person you wanted to be.

  “My aunt and uncle kicked me out of the house when I turned eighteen,” Calista said, remembering. “I didn't finish high school. I moved to the city and could only find a job at Acicentre. At the Castle of Glass. I didn't think I deserved anything better.”

  The choices you made in this moment led you to the God Contest. It is why you are here now.

  “Who are you?” asked Calista with an awed whisper.

  I am the Manifestation of Pinga, Inuit Goddess of the Hunt. A guide. And I am here to offer you a choice.

  Pinga rested a weathered hand on Calista’s shoulder.

  As one hunter to another.

  Calista swallowed hard. “What choice?”

  Pinga smiled sweetly.

  We all make poor choices in life that diminish us. I give you a chance to right this wrong. To make peace with your father before he passes on and disrupt the foundations upon which you built your adult life. To change who you would become, that you may lead a successful and happy life.

  “Just like that? I make peace, and become someone new?” asked Calista cynically.

  Just like that.

  Pinga smiled, an open palm stretched out towards Calista's father.

  Do you accept? A new life. A new Calista

  Calista turned around and took two steps towards her father. It seemed like such a simple choice.

  She stopped. Something wasn't right. She turned back to Pinga.

  “If I make peace, I become someone new? I make real friends, live peacefully with my aunt and uncle, and have a real career. I make different choices and my life takes me in a new direction?” Calista reasoned.

  Pinga nodded.

  “And that means I wouldn't work at Acicentre. I wouldn't be brought to the God Contest.”

  A fresh start. A new life.

  “A fresh start,” Calista whispered. “A chance to forgive my father. To forgive myself. To succeed in a life of failure.”

  She took another step towards where her father lay, delirious.

  Yet something stopped her from taking another step. She hated her life. She hated what she had become. She hated playing the bully. Hated how she used her anger as a shield against the world.

  Hated that, deep inside, she also believed her last happy memory was that final hunting trip with her father.

  If this had been a week ago, she would have changed her destiny in a heartbeat. Except…

  “Except I like who I am becoming in the God Contest,” she finished aloud. “I have people that rely on me every day to survive and to thrive. I have devoted friends, and perhaps the spark of something even greater. What happens to all of them if I choose another path?”

  Calista turned back to her father. “I miss him. Every single day I miss him. I hate how it ended and who I became. But I would not sacrifice this past week for anything. This is the first week in a long time that I have liked who I am, and I need to see where tomorrow takes me.”

  Pinga smiles and moves aside from the doorway.

  Then pass through this door and resume your life as it has been. Be content with the knowledge that you chose the God Contest over the chance at a new life of your own free will. Embrace it. May the choice give you the strength you need to survive what is to come.

  Calista nodded a silent thanks. She pointed to Pinga’s spear and asked, “Can I borrow that for a second?”

  Pinga wordlessly handed her the spear. It was light - far lighter than it should be - and Calista’s fingers wrapped around its shaft protectively. She walked over to her father’s bedside, looking into to eyes that stared down the barrel of oncoming oblivion.

  “I’m sorry I didn't make you proud, dad,” she sniffed, the last of her tears falling onto his chest.

  She grasped her long hair in her hands and used the speartip to slice it clean off at her shoulders. The long strands fell to the ground in a scattered pile, and her hair fanned out in a messy bob.

  For a moment she felt like a child again, staring down at that boar. Scared but brave.

  “But, perhaps, I can make you proud of who I will become.”

  She turned her back on her father and walked towards the exit. She held up the spear for Pinga, but Pringa shook her head.

  A huntress needs a proper weapon. Take that one with my blessings. May we see you raise it up, victorious at the end.

  Calista felt lighter than she had in years. “I intend to.”

  She marched through the door with purpose, towards sunlight gliding through forest leaves, and her world faded away.

  * * *

  Vivian was ten years old. She sat on the floor of her father’s house, playing with her growing collection of dolls. Her father always got her a new doll after every business trip, and…

  “Okay, no, we are not doing this,” Xavier shouted, wincing at the little girl’s voice that came from his throat. A voice he had chosen to leave behind a long time ago.

  “Are you okay, sweetie?” came the voice of his father, laced with a love that Xavier knew would turn to hate once Xavier became who he truly was.

  “I’m not talking to you, asshole,” Xavier shouted in the girl’s voice. “Where is the puppet master behind this god damned farce?”

  “Young lady, you watch your mouth,” her father demanded, emerging from the kitchen. He was dressed in his business suit, including his plain black tie, and stood imposingly tall. His short-cut hair and striking features spoke of a man that liked things his way and more often than not achieved it. “How dare you take the good lord’s name in vain. Apologize this instance.”

  Xavier pushed past him into the kitchen. He reached up on his frustratingly short legs to the block of knives high up on the counter. He managed to knock over the knife block, tiny hands grasping the longest one. His father always kept them nice and sharp.

  “Did you hear me, young lady?” he shouted, following her in a growing fury.

  “Tell you what, father. Why don’t you deliver my apologies to the Lord in person?”

  As his father reached down to grasp his skinny arm, Xavier thrust the knife forward and impaled it through his father’s throat. His father’s eyes flew open in shock and betrayal.

  Xavier watched as his father clawed at the knife in vain, growing weaker, until he finally collapsed on the floor in a pool of blood.

  “Damn it,” Xavier mumbled, stepping over the body. “I forgot. You won't be able to deliver my apology to the Lord. Not where you are going.”

  Xavier stared out the window into his childhood backyard. A dark path forked beyond the fence. One path to a shining cleaning. Another to a graveyard. He already knew which way his path would lead.

  “Well? Can we move this along?” Xavier shouted to the world around him. “I have places to be.”

  He tapped his tiny foot irritably.

  “And I really hate being in this body.”

  The house faded away, and Xavier was left standing in a void. He was back in his normal body, though his father’s corpse still lay at his feet.

  In the darkness beyond, Cizen, the Mayan God of Death, the Stinking One, ruler of the lands of the dead, grinned.

  Oh, yes. You will do nicely.

  * * *

  The Non-Canonical Aftermath: