Chapter Thirty-Nine

Lonnie didn't respond until after two, in the middle of Cierra's workout. He seemed to have spent the night chasing a coyote through a vast desert, and only when he was about to wake up had the coyote turned around.

Nearby a man dropped his deadlift bar to the ground, rousing Cierra from the chat. Looking around her, she realized she had been sitting on the leg press machine staring at her phone for the past ten minutes. Another girl glared at her, as if she had been waiting for Cierra to get up.

Hastily, she stood up, deciding to end her workout early.

'This means we're all being trained in different ways, right?' Cierra typed up from her car.

'We should share our training with each other here each day, it'll help us make better plans in the future,' Nora followed up.

'What have we all learned so far?' Cierra asked. Still new to the group, she didn't want to step on Nora's toes, but Cierra was finding that Nora seemed to lead the pack. Maybe that was natural since she was known for her planning and strategy.

Why did it bother her so much anyway? It wasn't as though Cierra had ever led an event.

'I think I'm getting lectures on how 2 protect animals?' Hans offered.

'I'm just chasing a coyote.' Lonnie added.

'Fer Benn said I was going to learn to fight using a bunch of different weapons and that my power is time based and low-key sucks.' Cierra thought for a moment before changing the wording. She didn't want to come off as too negative.

Instead she sent: 'Fer Benn said he's going to train me to use different weapons. My healing ability is only useful within a certain timeframe, so my best bet is to learn how to fight.'

'??? What timeframe?' Hans asked.

'Not sure, maybe like ten minutes? After that no heal possible.' Cierra tried to clarify, explaining the situation with Fer Benn burning himself and then forcing her to wait to heal him.

'What about you, Nora?' Cierra asked, hoping to change the topic.

'Mostly reading on strategy and reenactments of wars. He mentioned weapon training later.'

'Why do the girls get to learn how to fight?' Lonnie asked.

'I literally get 2 bite faces off as the creature of my choice, I think it's just u who isn't fighting, man.' Hans retorted.

Cierra laughed in her car, Lonnie still had a lot of growing up to do, but at least Hans had put him back in place. It's such a waste, Cierra thought to herself, that Hans had never been around when she was visiting her grandparents.

She was certain they would have gotten along.

After collecting everyone's information, Nora typed up everyone's information and sent it to the group chat:

'To recap:

Lonnie: Coyote; mythological trickster from indigenous people of North America

Hans: Leshy; demon-god/shapeshifter; Slavic mythology

Cierra: Fer Benn; god; Irish mythology

Nora: Murugan; child-god; traceable to Tamil people'

Cierra felt a twinge of something unfamiliar blossoming in her chest; Nora was clearly a natural born leader. Cierra had been planning on doing something similar when she got home, but not in the group chat. It hadn't even crossed her mind to collect the information for the group, she had simply wanted to organize it for herself.

'We can also keep track of the different pantheons we've encountered,' Cierra suggested, 'There's Freya and the Skogkatts from Norse mythology, and Sekhmet from Egyptian.'

'We'll probably encounter a few different types of beings through-out the dream realms. I downloaded a book series to help us get started. It only covers Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Norse, and Celtic, but it's a good starting point.' A minute later Nora uploaded a file to the chat.

'…Are you telling me we have required reading for our dreams?' Lonnie asked before sending a series of GIFs of a man screaming 'Noooooo' over and over again.

'Just wait, this is way more interesting reading than anything u'll do in uni.' Hans added.

Without thinking, Cierra found herself typing a private message to Hans.

'I never asked, what are you studying?' She asked, curious.

'Biology,' he answered, before following with 'Apt, right?'

'Hahaha, you're telling me your whole life is studying life and then becoming different forms of it?' Cierra joked.

'Life is all about finding that 1 thing ur good at…' He answered.

Cierra started typing 'How did you know,' paused, and then deleted it. She wanted to ask, 'How did you know what you're good at? Or wanted to study?,' but couldn't bring herself to.

They had only just met, and she wasn't sure she could one hundred percent trust him yet, why would she ask him a question that gave away one of her biggest insecurities? And how convenient was it, that his power in the dream realms aligned with what he wanted to do in real life?

She picked at the steering wheel while she drove, pulling at the stitched seam. Was she supposed to have her life figured out by now?

Unable to take it any longer, she called Dawn.

"Cierra?," She asked, feigning confusion, "You never call me, why are you calling me? Are you ok? Has there been an accident?"

"I have a serious question," Cierra said, ignoring Dawn's attempts at sarcasm, "What do you want to do with your life?"

"What do I want to do with my life?" Dawn echoed, "I don't know, I was thinking accounting or taxes? Something that makes money. I mean, I like reading, but no one gets paid for having studied literature."

"Ugh," Cierra sighed, "When did you figure this out? Why wasn't I informed?"

"Cierra," Dawn's voice turned serious, "Have you seen where I live? Have you thought about why we always hangout at your place?"

Cierra felt a pang of guilt and shame. Neither of them had openly acknowledged why they went to her place instead of Dawn's.

"I don't plan on living the same life as my parents. Of course I've thought about what I'm going to do in the future to live better," Dawn's voice was uncharacteristically serious.

There was silence on the line.

"I'm sorry," Cierra started, "I've just been really stressed out wondering what I want to go to college for or what I even want to do with my life. It's like everyone has something figured out."

"Well," Dawn said, sounding cheerful again, "You like lists, right? Why don't you make a list of things you enjoy? Or! You could take one of those online career tests and see what it comes up with? That could be fun!"