***
“Gracias,” Ashlyn told the handsome and muscular elf when he handed her the Coke, blushing slightly.
“So I suppose no one has named you, mija?” she asked the little dog, lifting it up to her face, giving the cute face a kiss.
“Are you boy or girl?” She made a cursory examination.
“How about Blanca? Does that sound good to you?” she asked the puppy. She fed it a bit of hamburger.
And then a rift suddenly opens in the ley line. Tension rushes through the diners at the hamburger stand, as no one knows what could come through the rift, but Ashlyn relaxes when she sees it is Krysesia. But what was that large box?
When the shifter opens the box, however, Ashlyn isn’t the only one to go a bit pale. Even a staked vampire was dangerous if the stake came out.
“Madre de Dios!” Ashlyn mutters, crossing herself.
Blanca growls softly, and Ashlyn hugs the puppy close, as much for her own comfort as the puppies as she stares at the pale face of her mother.
Ashlyn’s voice is thick with emotion as she speaks.
“Be pleasing to get me big tub agua. Water,” she tells Slyn.
“And pleasing to move box. We do not want disturb people eating,” she told some of the nearby heroes.
With Serena standing guard over Ashlyn’s mother as the box was moved away, out of sight and off aways behind the team’s Zone Ranger, Ashlyn picked up Blanca and turned to Krysesia.
“Muchas Gracias, mi hermanita,” she told the shifter.
“Is time mi madre now rest in piece.” Her back was stiff as she walked off toward the Zone Ranger.
Ashlyn put Blanca into the truck, and the puppy stood up on her hind legs, whimpering. Slyn and some workers brought the tub and set it down beside the casket.
“Please be leaving me,” she said, tears tracking down her cheeks.
Alone now, staring down at the perverted remains of her mother, Ashlyn sobbed as she relived that night of horror from her childhood. She pulled out her rosary, her fingers moving over the beads as she prayed. She ran her hand over the water. With the proximity of the ley line, she had nearly infinite magic to bless it, and soon it sparkled with a holy light.
“Jacinta Anjelica Juarez y Alvarez, via con Dios, mi querida madre,” Ashlyn choked out.
She grunted as she lifted the tub of water, dumping it slowly over her mother’s prone body. The eyes flew open, and the vampire screamed in agony as her body sizzled, echoing throughout the small encampment around the hamburger stand.
Ashlyn steeled herself, her face set, her eyes burning with unshed tears and hatred for what her mother had become. Jacinta Alvarez thrashed and screamed, until her voice choked off in a gurgle of pain as her body sludged away to nothingness under the holy blessing of the water.
Steam rose from the watery coffin. It seemed to swirl in the energies of the ley line as it took a vaguely human form. A hand reached out toward Ashlyn.
“Gracias, mi querida hijita. Mi, como has crecido. Te amo. Siempre te amo.” the quiet, familiar voice said before the winds of the ley line ripped the vague form apart.
Ashlyn broke down, collapsing to the grass in the watery mess of her mother’s remains that had sloshed out of the coffin. Her chest ached as great, gasping sobs tore free of her throat, her fingers clenching and unclenching in the wet sod beneath her as she shook, her agonizing grief almost as loud in the encampment around the hamburger stand as had been the death throes of the vampire.
Blanca jumped down from the window of the Zone Ranger and trotted over. She whimpered and nuzzled at Ashlyn, and the broken young woman pulled the white dog close, matting mud in her fur as she hugged the puppy tightly. Blanca licked at Ashlyn’s face and tears, trying to offer comfort to the bereft young woman.
Ashlyn wasn’t sure how long she lay there in the mud, clutching the puppy and sobbing. But she finally picked herself up. She tucked the muddy Blanca into her arms as she strode back to rejoin the others, her back erect, her clothes dirty, her face streaked with tears and mud.
“Esta terminado,” Ashlyn said in a hoarse voice as she sat down, staring at the cold remains of her burger and her warm Coke.
***
Conditions:
- Twice PPE max from ley line, and full PPE.
