105 My aunt is weird (1/2)

Ellie was having a very confusing day.

She was planning on enjoying another peaceful afternoon with her aunt in the park while shooting tin cans with her crossbow.

This was Ellie's favorite way of passing time.

Her aunt was one of the coolest persons she knew. She was always joyful, always giving good advice, always letting her play with dangerous toys, always spoiling her, and on top of all that, she was just so freaking weird.

The first time Ellie ever met her aunt she just knocked on her door looking like a total mess appearance-wise while bringing some weird lady dressed in a white blanket with her. She had black hair just like Ellie, but her hair was much shorter and looked like an absolute disaster.

Ellie had heard about her aunt from her mother. How she one day simply vanished without saying a single word and completely scared both her mother and her grandmother to death with worry.

They both looked all over the place for her but never even got a clue as to where she had gone.

Ellie was just a baby when this all happened so she didn't fully grasp why this was such a big deal.

But then the missing aunt finally showed up one day. Wearing some weird clothes and carrying some weird wooden object while also bringing a weird woman with her. Everything about Ellie's aunt was weird.

Ellie didn't want to get too close to her at first, but her mother insisted that she was a good person and needed support now more than ever.

”Do I have to…?”

”She's your family too Ellie. You two need to learn to get along. She's been through a lot and needs our help right now.”

”Fiiiine...”

Been thought a lot. What exactly did happen to her aunt? Every time they asked her story she simply turned her face and went ”It's too much pain...”, or at least that's what her mother would hear, but for Ellie, it felt like she was saying ”Sigh… Too much of a pain to explain...”.

Not once did Ellie ever feel like her aunt needed help. In fact, her aunt at times felt like she didn't need anything at all.

She was crazy strong for her age, always helping her grandmother clean the house by carrying some heavy objects that would give trouble even to her dad. She had a really easy time handling people during difficult situations. And always smiled no matter how bad things looked.

One time Ellie, her mother, and her aunt went shopping together and they saw a rob in progress. Her aunt somehow predicted where the robbers were going to go as if she had dealt with it on a daily basis and went to chase after them on foot. She actually found their hiding spot and managed to lure them into a trap by making them chase after her and delivered all to the police.

How did she figure out where the robbers were going? How did she trick them? How did she not turn into swiss cheese by being shot by the robbers? How did she look so calm during all that? Ellie had no idea.

After she was done she simply walked towards the girl and her mother and smiled with peace. She then released a very bizarre line towards the two while thinking out loud.

”Oh, man… It's so much easier when they don't have silver metal...”

Ellie's mother smacked her aunt for almost giving her a heart attack and started to lecture her.

”Have you lost your mind??”

”Wha… What?? What did I do??”

But Ellie was feeling something else. She felt like she was looking at a superhero. She didn't know what the deal with her aunt was, but she was sure of one thing...

”Aunt Evie… You're sooooo coooool!!!!”

”!!!” x2

Ellie's mom smacked her aunt again after seeing that reaction.

”See what you did?? Now she thinks doing dangerous things is fun!!”

”She needed me here to find that out? How exactly have you been raising he- Ouch!!! Stop smacking me!!!”

After that, Ellie stuck to her aunt like a flea to a dog.

She wanted to know everything about her. How she thinks, how she acts, how she became so weird, where did she get that crossbow, what the hell even was silver metal.

The young girl would often try to sneak out from her mother's sight and go visit her aunt in secrecy to hang out with her.

They would play in the park, watch action movies, buy video-games, and pretty much, do a ton of things that would make her mother ground her forever if she ever found out about it.

But her favorite thing to do was to listen to Evlin's stories.

Just like everything else about her, her stories were so weird. Tales about some warrior girl who would go around punching people in the face carrying a crossbow and tried to run away from some knife boy alongside a group of friends with different powers and abilities, which resulted in all of them fighting on top of a mountain against a giant dragon.

There were some things Ellie didn't fully get though. Why did the girl used a crossbow if she attacked with her fists? Why was there only one mountain with a giant dragon while all the other mountains were normal? Why didn't the girl just let the dragon and the knife kid fight each other?

But Evlin would always say something to try and convince the girl to not think too much about it.

”It's just a story Ellie… It's not meant to make sense, it's meant to be fun and engaging while teaching some life lessons.”

”You can be fun while making sense, can't you?”

”Well… I guess...”

Evlin and Ellie were on her aunt's bed while discussing the story and eating a slice of pepperoni pizza. Her aunt was obsessed with pizza. It seemed that the place she had vanished into didn't have any kind of junk food.

Ellie then started to question the logic on her aunt's stories.

She was commenting about one time where the hero of the story simply allowed her sister to turn herself into a dryad.

”I still don't know why the girl let her sister fuse with a monster plant… That was kinda dumb of her...”

”Y- Yeah… A bit...”

”I mean… It's her sister!! How could she just let her fuse her with a monster? It was so obvious that the monster would try to take over her mind.”

”... Right… Obvious, yeah...”

”And also… I feel that the final battle was kinda weak...”

”Eh…!!??”

”I mean… All the girl did was basically shoot the dragon and punch him really hard… Doesn't she kinda already do that all the time??”

”I… I guess...”

”That's boring… If she was a real mage, she should have tried to make a bigger spectacle!!”

”... A spectacle…?”

”Yeah!! Mom once took me to a circus with dad, and we saw how the magician would use tons of tricks to make us go ”Whoa!!!”, you know?”

She would move her arms while making sound effects with her mouth as if trying to replicate the emotions she felt at the circus.

”I see… You would have liked something more epic...”

”Yeah!! Yeah!!! What if the dragon actually had nine heads instead of three like a hydra?? What if he was so big that he actually could swallow the whole mountain?? What if the mage had a catchphrase like ”It's showtime!!!” or had more than three powers to fight him??”

”More powers…?”

”Yeah!!! You said the mage used three kinds of powers to beat the dragon. What if she had a ton of different magics and used one after another to make the dragon go ”Boom!!!”. Wouldn't that be cool??”

”... … … Yeah… It would...”

”Can you tell me a story like this next time aunt Evie??”

”Sure, Ellie… Next time... But it seems like you have a lot of ideas yourself... Wanna try telling your own story one day?”

”Me?? My own story?? That would be so cool!!!”

And so their days continued. Day after day, the small child would play with her aunt, listen to the adventures of the aggressive crossbow mage, and become closer and closer to her.

Until that fateful day came when everything changed.

Ellie is nine-years-old currently and was enjoying a peaceful afternoon at her favorite playground while her aunt watched over from a bench.

She was setting up a line of tin cans to shoot with her crossbow, or rather, her aunt's crossbow that she had received as a present during the day they first met. She wanted it for herself because it looked like a plane and she loved the concept of flying, but her aunt then said that she would never play with anything related to leaving the ground. It appeared she was afraid of heights.

But just as she was about to shoot them, a strange girl with twin ponytails approached her.

”Hi!!”

”Oh, hi!”

She seemed to be twelve-years-old and was wearing a short-sleeved purple shirt and looking at Ellie with a weird smile. The reason it was so weird was because one of her eyes had a weird glowing green color.

”You must be stick-girl's daughter...”

”Huh… What…?”

”That crossbow… It belongs to stick-girl, right?”

”Stick what....? No, that's from my aunt Evlin… She's over there...”

”Oh, her niece… I see… All the same in the end...”

”...??”

”Say… Do you know how to really use this?”

”Huh, yeah… My aunt taught me...”

”Did she now? Can you show me?”

”Sure!!”

Ellie wasn't really feeling ok talking with this girl with weird eyes, but she couldn't resist the idea of showing off her skills with a crossbow. She felt like she was the hero from her aunt's story whenever she used that thing.