This is my first attempt at entering the world of writing. I've been thinking about writing for a long time, but only now have I felt truly determined to do it. Regarding posting regularly, I'll try to maintain it, but I can't guarantee much. I work, I'm in college, and I write in my spare time. That's it. Thank you, and enjoy the story.
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The trip from the Heliópolis favela to Guarujá was a transition between worlds. Léo left the tangle of exposed brick and electrical wires for the salt air and palm trees of the coast. The tip from the hill's shot-caller was strange: "Look for the forest inside Alphaville. The monster you want is in there".
Léo didn't find a forest, but a guarded gatehouse, tall as a fortress wall, with a security guard who looked at him like he was a typo in the landscape. Using the name "Cleber Almeida" and the excuse that he was a delivery guy, he got in.
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 patch of preserved Atlantic rainforest at the back of a gigantic property, complete with an infinity pool and a gourmet barbecue area worth more than the entire city block Léo came from.
Sitting in an obscenely expensive designer wicker chair, watching an 80-inch TV playing an old match, was the ogre. An albino one.
He was immense. Easily seven foot two, with muscles that looked sculpted from marble. His skin was pale, and his white hair was pulled back in a sloppy samurai bun. He wore only a pair of team-branded shorts and flip-flops. On his arm, a tattoo of the Libertadores cup.
Léo approached, heart in his throat, 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 a man shooing a fly.
— Depends. — the voice was a deep, slow thunder. — If you're from the IRS, Cleber doesn't live here anymore. If you're here for an autograph, you talk to my agent.
— No, I... I came about my father. And this.
Léo pulled the feather from his pocket. It shimmered for an instant in the coastal sun, looking completely out of place next to the pool.
Cleber glanced at the feather, and a rare flicker of recognition crossed his face. He let out a sigh, the kind of sigh you make when you have to get off the couch during a commercial. 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's long, and I'll be honest, it's pretty crap.
Léo, paralyzed, just stood there.
— Zé Fiapo? My father? — he asked.
— That's the one. 'Wisp' Zé, Sarong Zé, Henna-Tattoo Zé... he had a new name every season. Your dad was an artist, you know? The art of surviving on the beach, selling trinkets and a silver tongue to tourists.
Cleber shifted in the chair, which groaned in protest.
— Look, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. There's no lost kingdom, no prophecy. Your dad was a beach vendor back in Rio, great guy, but a total zero. One day, summer of... I dunno, twenty years ago, he met this 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. The whole quest, the mystery...
— When your dad found out, the fear of paying child support was bigger than any monster he could ever face. He hopped the first bus to São Paulo, changed his name, and disappeared. End of story. He wasn't hunted by demons. He was hunted by a process server.
A heavy silence settled in, 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 bark.
— Phoenix? I wish. This is... more complicated. And grosser. Zé, in his escape from fatherhood, got mixed up in some juju, some stuff even he didn't understand. Pissed off some outside gods, beings from other dimensions. One of them, a thing that looks like a squid with wings, ate a pigeon here on Earth. And well... it pooped.
He pointed at the feather.
— That right there, kid, is divine shit. Apparently, the extra-dimensional digestion gave this feather... 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. For us, it's just a piece of celestial waste. Pretty, but useless.
Cleber stood up, stretching.
— Sorry for the disappointment, kid. The world's just like that. 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 inside the mansion, leaving Léo alone in the sunny garden, clutching the most pathetic relic in the universe.
Léo stood there, frozen, for a long time. The search for his father, the magical inheritance, the hero's journey... it all dissolved into a mediocre story about a deadbeat dad. He looked at the shining feather. Bend reality... but not by him. What a joke.
An emptiness filled his chest. A listlessness. A profound sense of "what now?". If none of it mattered, if there was no grand destiny, then what was he supposed to do with this useless power in his hands?
That's when an old memory, warm and sweet, came to him. The smell of cinnamon and sugar, the sound of rain on the tin roof, and his late grandmother's smile as she pulled a new batch of bolinhos de chuva—rain fritters—from the hot oil. The best recipe in the world. A recipe that died with her.
Léo looked at the divine shit in his hand with a new kind of determination. A determination that was petty, selfish, and wonderful. If the universe had given 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 in his pocket, turned his back on the ogre's mansion, and started walking. 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 all day:
— Grandma... I hope you can forgive me? But nobody else knows if you used baking powder in that batter or not.