The trip from Heliópolis to Guarujá was a transition between worlds. Léo left the tangle of exposed brick and electrical wires for the salty air and coconut trees of the coast. The information from the slum's kingpin had been strange: "Look for the forest inside Alphaville. The monster you want is there."
Léo didn't find a forest, but an armored gatehouse, as tall as a fortress wall, with a security guard who looked at him as if he were a typo in the landscape. Using the name "Cleber Almeida" and the excuse that he was a delivery guy, he managed to get through.
The place wasn't a forest. It was a carpet of grass so perfect it looked like plastic, dotted with white mansions that hurt the eyes. The ogre's "forest" was, in fact, the backyard of one of these houses. A preserved area of Atlantic Rainforest at the back of a gigantic property, complete with an infinity pool and a gourmet barbecue area worth more than the entire block Léo came from.
Sitting in an expensive designer wicker chair, facing an 80-inch TV playing an old soccer match, was him. An albino ogre.
He was immense. Easily seven feet tall, with a musculature that seemed sculpted from marble. His skin was pale, and his white hair was tied in a sloppy samurai bun. He wore only a pair of team shorts and flip-flops. On his arm, a tattoo of a Copa Libertadores trophy.
Léo approached, his heart in his throat and the feather hidden in his pocket.
"Excuse me... Cleber Almeida?"
The giant turned his head slowly, his red eyes focusing on Léo with the boredom of someone swatting a fly.
"Depends," the voice was a deep, dragging thunder. "If you're from the IRS, Cleber doesn't live here anymore. If you're here for an autograph, my agent handles that."
"No, I... I came because of my father. And this."
Léo pulled the feather from his pocket. It shimmered for a moment under the coastal sun, looking completely out of place next to the pool.
Cleber looked at the feather, and a rare flicker of recognition crossed his face. He let out a sigh, the kind of sigh of someone who has to get off the couch during a commercial break. He picked up the remote and paused the game. A prime Vágner Love was frozen on the screen.
"Ah... so you're Zé Fiapo's kid. Sit down, kid. Grab a coconut water from the fridge. The story is long and, I'll tell you, it's kind of shitty."
Léo, paralyzed, just remained standing.
"Zé Fiapo? My father?" he asked.
"The one and only. Zé of the Sarong, Zé of the Henna Tattoo, he had a new name every season. Your dad was an artist, you know? An artist of surviving on the beach, selling contraband and sweet-talking tourists."
Cleber shifted in his chair, which groaned in protest.
"Look, I won't beat around the bush. There's no lost kingdom, no prophecy. Your father was a beach vendor back in Rio, a nice guy, but a real nobody. One day, in the summer of... I don't know, twenty years ago, he met a spectacular brunette on Ipanema beach. One night, a few caipirinhas, you know the story. Long story short: she got pregnant."
Léo felt the ground disappear from under him. The whole quest, the whole mystery...
"When your father found out, the fear of paying child support was greater than any monster he could ever face. He took the first bus to São Paulo, changed his name, and vanished. End of story. He wasn't hunted by demons. He was hunted by a process server."
A heavy silence settled, broken only by the hum of the pool filter. Léo looked at the feather in his hand, feeling like an idiot.
"And... and this? The phoenix feather?"
Cleber laughed. A short, humorless laugh.
"Phoenix? I wish. That thing is more complicated and disgusting. Zé, in his escape from fatherhood, got mixed up in some weird magic, stuff even he didn't understand. He got into trouble with some off-world gods, beings from other dimensions. One of them, a thing that looks like a winged octopus, ate a pigeon here on Earth. And well... it pooped."
He pointed to the feather.
"That, kid, is divine poop. Apparently, extra-dimensional digestion gave this feather some unique properties. They say it can bend reality if used by someone who can channel its energy. A unique, cosmic energy that neither I, an ex-athlete ogre, nor you, a human who looks like he hasn't eaten in two days, can even dream of using. To us, it's just a piece of celestial waste. Pretty, but useless."
Cleber stood up, stretching.
"Sorry for the disappointment, kid. That's the world for you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to see the end of this match. Corinthians is about to concede a ridiculous goal in stoppage time. It's a classic."
He went into the mansion, leaving Léo alone in the sun-drenched garden, holding the most pathetic relic in the universe.
Léo stood there, motionless, for a long time. The search for his father, the magical inheritance, the hero's journey... it all dissolved into a mediocre story of a deadbeat dad. He looked at the shimmering feather. It could bend reality... but not for him. What a joke.
An emptiness filled his chest. A sense of absurdity. A "what now?" feeling. If none of it mattered, if there was no grand destiny, then what would he do with this useless power in his hands?
It was then that an old memory, warm and sweet, came to his mind. The smell of cinnamon and sugar, the sound of rain on the tin roof, and the smile of his late grandmother as she took a new batch of *bolinhos de chuva*—her rainy-day fritters—from the hot oil. The best recipe in the world. A recipe that died with her.
Léo looked at the divine poop in his hand with a new kind of determination. A petty, selfish, and wonderful determination. If the universe had handed him the key to reality only to tell him the door was locked, he would use it to break in through the kitchen window.
He put the feather back in his pocket, turned his back on the ogre's mansion, and began to walk. The great quest was over. A new, far more important one was about to begin.
He muttered to himself, a thread of hope in his voice for the first time that day:
"Grandma... can you forgive me? It's just that no one else knows if there's baking powder in that batter or not."
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This was made with all the love I have for my bedroom walls, thanks for reading and give me constructive tips if you can, I don't know much... See you next time