Chosen

All Alice wanted was some hot cocoa. And maybe it didn’t justify a trip to a supermarket in a full-blown blizzard, but far worse things had tried to kill her before and she was still alive, wasn’t she?

The bell jangled behind her as she bustled into the store. The scrawny teen behind the cashier did not even bother to look up from his phone. That was one good thing about taking the form of a friendly-looking middle-aged lady. No matter where she went, people looked right through her. That had saved her life more times than she could count.

A gust of wind slammed against the store’s windows, making them rattle. She’d have thought that a fancy place like this would have at least a bit more structural integrity. But she shouldn’t be surprised. If there was one thing she had learned from her many years of existence, it was that if you looked close enough, even the most secure and infallible-seeming could be torn apart in one fell swoop.

Passing empty aisle after empty aisle, Alice felt the premonition of trouble creeping its fingers across the back of her neck. Not that she hadn’t expected a supermarket to be mostly empty during a blizzard. But still, something was wrong. Or something was going to be

Crack. The row of fluorescent lights closest to the entrance of the store flickered off. Alice turned. The path she had taken was now drenched in shadows, hulking store shelves looming in the dark. On the display beside her, the matronly-looking woman holding onto a slice of cake smiled at her with hollow eyes. Everything was quiet, and the sound of her own breathing seemed to grow and fill the world around her. She stopped in her tracks. When did the store’s speakers stop playing its vapid music tracks? And how had she not noticed until now?

Crack. Crack. Faster this time, another two rows. Alice turned down the baking aisle, her steps curt. Who knew what was after her, but she’d be damned if she couldn’t get her cocoa powder first. The faster she got out of here, the better. She picked up a container from the shelf. 

As if on cue, a brittle wail sounded behind her. She turned to find a baby lying on the ground by her foot. Butt-naked, wrinkly, and definitely non-existent until about five seconds ago.

“Oh fuck no,” she said, turning towards the pitch darkness of the aisle she’d came down. So this was what it had all been about. How dare they. The audacity of the Ones, after everything that had happened… Elora. How dare they.

The teenager who had been behind the cashier stepped out of the shadows and into her path. When he looked up, his eyes were blue as ice and sharp as flint. “Would you truly turn down a quest from us to bring up the Chosen Child, who is destined to save all of existence when the Others rise again?” 

The Chosen Child. The last time she’d been asked to do the same, she had felt nothing other than honor. She had been so naive. When she’d picked up little Elora on her doorstep, the child was so small, so fragile. And Elora had looked up at her with those brown eyes bright with fearlessness, wrapping a hand around Alice’s finger. And Alice had never been fond of children, but it struck her out of nowhere like a punch in the chest, the realization that she would do anything she had to keep the child safe. Little had she known that she had been wrong about who she would have to protect Elora from. Or maybe she should have realized there and then, that there was nothing she could have ever done. 

She glared down at the teen before her. “Well now, let’s see. I’ve warded my entire house from you and refused to respond to any of your summons for roughly the past eight hundred years. What does it take for you people to take a hint? Also, leave that poor boy alone. Having to work a minimum-wage job at a place that won’t even cancel his shift during a blizzard is rough enough, he deserves better than to be possessed by you, Hlodin.” 

“Look, I understand that your last experience with this was… unpleasant.” Hlodin shrugged, the corner of his mouth curling into an attempt at a placating smile.

Unpleasant. God, as if they couldn’t even pretend to care. But that was the truth to it. They didn’t. To them, Elora was the Chosen One, and that was all. All they knew were of the monsters she’d slain, the battles she’d led. What the prophecy had to say about how she’d help them, whose interests she’d serve. Alice wondered if any of them knew that Elora loved insects, that she built her own ant farm when she was eight. That she hated peas and loved broccoli. That she’d get quiet when she was upset, but that when she was happy, she’d laugh the rowdiest laugh Alice had ever heard. That ever since she’d learned about her destiny at age ten, there was this heaviness that had settled in her eyes that would never, ever go away. 

“Unpleasant, is that what we’re calling it now?” She took a step forward and noted with satisfaction how Hlodin flinched before holding his ground. “You killed her. You might not have done it by your own hand, but that doesn’t really make a difference, does it?”

When she’d found out what they wanted from Elora, her earthly form was comatose, a result of a particularly violent attack from the Others. The Ones had all they needed to stop it from happening. She remembered turning her face to the heavens then, begging them to do something, anything. They had stayed quiet. She found out much, much later they thought it was necessary to help Elora build character. It had shattered her, the realization that the Ones were far less powerless than they’d like everyone else to believe. And it had made her wonder. If they had chosen not to help her then, what other choices had they made that she knew nothing about? What was there stopping them from ending this war with the Others, there and then? Maybe Elora didn’t matter as much in the grand scheme of things, or at least not as much as she’d thought after all. Maybe this sacrifice wasn’t necessary, maybe there was some other way. And she’d searched for answers high and low, as what was left of her life crumbled around her. When she found out, she fought her way into Elora’s dreams. 

“Don’t go,” she begged, cupping Elora’s face in her hands. “There is no way for you to survive this. You will die. Please don’t go.

“I have no choice, do I?” Elora stepped away from her hands. Her tired eyes those of a seventeen-year-old who had grown up too fast, too soon. Her shoulders heavy with the weight of the world. “It’s my destiny. And if I must die trying, so be it.”

And then she was gone, disappearing into mist before Alice’s eyes, emerging back into the hard edges of the real world. It was the last time she ever saw Elora. She never got to say a proper goodbye.

“You must understand,” Hlodin said, dragging his words out as if he were speaking to a child. “Sometimes, sacrifices are necessary.”

“Are they? Are they really?” She sidestepped him, making her way to the exit of the supermarket. Hlodin’s footsteps thudded behind her as the baby floated by his side. “Okay, let’s talk this through. Without the Chosen One, the world ends. So what happens after that?” Maybe a part of her had known the answer to this all along. But she needed Hlodin to confirm the worst of it all. Of what she’d hoped never would be true. 

“Exactly. Does the end of the world not frighten you?” Hlodin asked, tilting his head. She had confused him. 

“I mean, yeah, sure. But what does it matter to you? When this world ends, you build a new one. What stake do you have?” 

Hlodin tensed. She should have known. She was right after all. Eventually, he said, “We care about humans, and for all that is right and wrong. Of course we have a stake in this.”

“If you really do care, why not just fight the Others yourself? And don’t you dare tell me you can’t. Any one of you has ten times the power of what that little thing ever will. But you don’t do it, do you. Because the entire point of this is you want to see humans try and fail. This is all just some elaborate play for you, some entertainment you get to watch every couple hundred years. Go on, tell me I’m wrong.” Alice tossed two dollars onto the counter and turned back to look at Hlodin. His lips were pursed, his face tight. There was still a part of her that wished he would say that she had been mistaken. But he stayed quiet.

So be it. Alice stalked out of the store. Who knew if it would make any difference., they could easily find someone else. But she could not bring herself to do any of it again. The wind whipped at her face, the sky muddled with streaks of white turned blurry with the snow and the tears in her eyes.