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Serendipity: Shifting the Paradigm	By : Ghost-of-a-Chance Category: Dragon Ball Z > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 589 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own DBZ, any of its characters/devices, or any books/movies/song mentioned; no money's being made here. I DO own Sierra, Rio, Rowan, & all my OCs...and a very fat cat named "Heifer."

Chapter List
- 13
- 14
- 15
I haven't been doing dedications lately, but this chapter is dedicated to FoxBluereaver on Reddit; without their help with the Spanish, Sierra's lines would be so back-asswards this chapter. Thanks, Hon! You're a lifesaver!
I hope y’all are ready for this. It’s gonna be adorkable. Unfortunately, I’ve been kept busy with my novel (and real life) so I don’t have as much time or ability to write. To compensate, I’m cutting the lengths of chapters when I can so y’all don’t have quite as much of a wait. (Now watch the writer’s block descend upon my unsuspecting shoulders and commence throttling me without mercy for acting like I’m in control here.)
Thanks for your patience, and I hope you enjoy.

Suggested Listening: Imagine Dragons “Demons,” Aaron McMahon in the Wilderness “High Dive,” Michale Nyman "Big My Secret," Lifehouse “Breathing”
There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don’t know how,
Because maybe
You’re gonna be the one that saves me.
14: Big My Secret
Sometimes the passage of time is so slow we could swear it crawls; other times, it’s too quick to catch our breath. This was the case for the earth’s alien defenders and the human family now too entangled with those warriors to split off without injuries. The passage of one month felt like an entire year.
Most day-to-day events were business as usual. Piccolo trained with Gohan and occasionally Goku. Trunks and Goten found trouble between classes and studies, and Bulma lost herself in her lab. Vegeta chose violence, and the gravity chamber always paid for it.
Minor upstarts grew too big for their britches and threw down the gauntlet. Some of those troublemakers needed therapy after fighting Earth’s self-appointed defenders. Earth wouldn’t fall to anyone weaker than its defense, and some had no patience for fools. These things had gone on for many years; they weren’t about to stop over some human drama.
Various members of the Stone family caused their own share of excitement, too. Sierra’s tutoring brought Trunks and Goten’s scores back up to their previous levels, with Minotia catching up. This pleased Sierra, although one couldn’t always tell; her resting-bitch-face made sure of that.
Tapion got his learner’s permit—a step up from Goku and Piccolo. The paradigm shift encounter in Downtown West City made more of an impact on the xenophobic woman’s polite friend than one might believe; hiring Tapion to run errands for her company proved it. Unfortunately, this put him Downtown too often, and his feet led him to the butcher shop across the street from Sweet Sue’s with concerning frequency. There, he watched Rio work, sweat, curse like a sailor, and throw money into a big glass jar. He didn’t understand the purpose of the practice and kept forgetting to ask Bulma.
Gohan and Goku shuttled Rowan and Rio back and forth between school, Sweet Sue’s, and the Lookout; Robert Biers remained at large and they wouldn’t be safe until he gave up or got caught. Because of this, Dende was all but trapped indoors while they were at the Lookout, and during Piccolo’s rare visits, he, too, had to hide from them. Gohan had dumped him with take-Sierra-to-the-Lookout-when-Rio-and-Rowan-are-gone duty several times now, too. Combined, this left him growlier than usual. Rio might frighten Gohan, and Rowan might make him uncomfortable, but Piccolo was ready to remind him who among them was the real threat.
Piccolo. He was the threat. The women just posed a minor inconvenience.
At least, he told himself that. The truth was more...complicated than that. Sierra’s continued presence had him confused, conflicted, cranky, and—perhaps strangest—curious. Curiosity had to be his reason for lurking on the roof of Bulma’s home late on a Saturday night, watching through a skylight.
Thrumming through the kitchen was a song with thumping bass and a refrain about demons. Through the open window nearby, the smell of caramelized onions, seared pork, and cilantro made Piccolo’s stomach clench on itself. Unaware of her audience, Sierra tossed the contents of a skillet and turned vegetables in another. All the while, she grumbled under her breath about tiny mushy imported avocados. Whatever an avocados might be. And who cooked dinner this late in the day?
Although it felt like time flew by, Sierra stayed in place, stuck like a stone lodged in a riverbed, held down by the water rushing over and around. While she remained weak and easily exhausted, thanks to anti-inflammatory medication and Dende’s treatments, she rarely needed her cane. She still had nerve pain and muscle spasms in her back, and even more often, headaches and hyper-extension of her smaller joints. Cold fronts left her unable to do more than mope around and snap at people. After all this time, she still lived under Bulma’s roof, too, even though she had a serviceable house.
Sierra, her sister, her niece—Piccolo could hardly swing a dead cat without hitting someone by the name of Stone.
All at once, Sierra ceased muttering and sang aloud: “I can’t escape this now unless you show me how.” Piccolo blinked at her, and if he had hair, his heavy eyebrows may well have vanished in it. Was she...she was! The fool woman was shaking her hips to the music and singing about where her demons hide into a grease shiny spatula. Of all the obnoxious, annoying, ridiculous, endearing…
Wait. He scowled. One of those words didn’t fit the rest.
Sierra froze. Her shoulders drew up tight. Did...no, it couldn’t be possible...could it? Piccolo took a step back, then another, and another, retreating into the darkest shadows beyond the light shining up from the kitchen. A moment later, Sierra turned and searched the kitchen, visibly perturbed.
That was new, too. Sometimes now, when she wasn’t paying attention, Piccolo saw traces of emotion slip past her mask. Stress at her lips. Irritation on her jaw. Tiny wrinkles of amusement framed her eyes, and faint lines of worry scored her brow. Either she was getting worse at smothering her emotions, or Piccolo was getting better at reading her. Now, she looked up at the skylight with something akin to worry or suspicion. Human eyes could never see him under those conditions, but Piccolo would swear she was looking right at him.
A door slammed nearby, and Sierra lurched back, banging her hip on the stove. She swore—that me-yare-duh word, from the way her lips moved—but when Minotia barreled into the kitchen, she greeted him with an indulgent expression. He dragged over a chair and stood on it to watch her cook as another person with an identical hairstyle put away some groceries.
Children adjust with an ease that makes older people uncomfortable, but Tapion was acclimating with a similar speed. In contrast, Piccolo had lived on Earth, among Earthlings, his entire life, and he felt more alien with every passing year. This was the last thing he needed. There existed in life enough to vex him without a family of oblivious humans and equally oblivious aliens reminding him he could never, and would never, fit in.
Kami’s assistant was getting better at cooking. On the one hand, Rowan no longer lay awake at night salivating over the idea of biting into a big, juicy steak. Unfortunately, this also meant Rio insisted on eating dinner together and taking time to savor it instead of wolfing it down to get it over with. Rowan had a lifetime of experience keeping her mouth shut around her mother, so this should have been cake; her mind, though, had spun in circles since she witnessed Kami under the light of the moon. In that strange psychic way of his, they exchanged quick greetings and goodbyes and the occasional discussion. She never brought up seeing or meeting him again.
“What’s on your mind, baby?”
The bowl of Rowan’s spoon slid along the bottom of her dish of miso with a record-scratch screech. “Huh?” Great. That wasn’t suspicious at all.
“You’re staring off into space,” Rio clarified. “What’re you thinking about so hard?”
Rowan froze. She couldn’t get away with not answering, and her mother would see through most deflection. This could play out in several distinct ways, each with various levels of calm and crisis. With a paranoia one only learned by living with a volatile parent, she thought over each option.
Option 1: Tell the truth. Ma, I saw God. He’s hot. I feel like I need to go to church, but I also kinda think I’d get smited. Smitted? Smitten? Smote? Why is English like this, he’d smite me. Result: Rio would go ballistic. She would demand that Goku take them home, murderous baby-daddy or no murderous baby-daddy. Kami would get his psychic ears blistered. Rowan would be grounded, and her mother would almost certainly throw something...or several somethings. She might accuse the Kami’s assistant of bringing them to the Lookout to get his boss laid, and Rowan would have to run away to join the circus.
Option 2: Tell the truth, but less truth. People say they found God all the time, but I actually saw him, like, with my own eyes. He looks nothing like I expected. What did he look like? Imagine someone who needs a hug, had their puppy taken away, lost all their friends, and is the most awkward bean in the world; God’s a level worse than that. ...nope. No way could she pull that off without incriminating herself. Already she felt her cheeks warming and the corners of her mouth wrinkling. Talking about Kami would leave her looking like a teenage girl with a crush, when she was...oh. She was a teenage girl...with a crush...on a freaking deity. Greek mythology was full of warnings about that sort of thing. Going through golden showers and giving birth to some half-human-half-dragon monstrosity wasn’t her idea of a good time.
Option 3: Lie. It’s nothing, Ma, I just have a...something...ache. Yeah. Miso sick. Hur-hur. Result: Rio may laugh. She may double down and get bullish. She may accuse Kami’s assistant of poisoning them or decide Rowan needed a doctor right now. She may assume Rowan got her period and proclaim to the assistant, “My daughter requires tampons, Midol, and chocolate” if only to watch him squirm. Either way, it would be embarrassing, stressful, and messy, and Kami’s assistant would side-eye her for lying in a sacred place.
Option 4...
“How do you think they flush the toilets up here?”
Option 4: spout something so freaking random her mother won’t even question it.
Rio stared at her. A cube of tofu slipped from her chopsticks to land on her plate with a saucy plop. Rowan doubled down. “I mean, it can’t vanish, right? And there’s no sewer. Do they collect everything in a septic tank and just...drop it in the atmosphere when it’s full? Is what killed the dinosaurs?” Stunned, Rio let her hand drift to the table, still holding her chopsticks, but Rowan couldn’t stop the deluge of awkwardness. “Is that where America came from? They went a little too long between clean-outs, then boom, crap-continent?”
Wait...she had dual citizenship. She just insulted one of her countries. Did that count as treason?
Squeaky air wheezed out Rio’s nose, then she landed face-first in her dinner, shaking. Sniggering, she smacked her hand on the table a few times and shook her head. A noise similar to a braying donkey ripped from her lungs, and she sucked in another breath like a dying bullfrog.
Row-Ann used “distract” on Ri-ogre; it was super effective.
“Hey Kami? What is a bird’s favorite school subject?”
Dende smiled down into his book as the neat pictograms blurred to squiggles. He could almost see the grin he heard in Rowan’s voice. How he ever mistook her for a blonde-curled blue-eyed child escaped him because every word out of her mouth spoke of a sassy teenage redhead.
“I don’t know.” Why was he whispering? He was alone in the library, and Mister Popo always pruned the tea trees on Monday evenings. Still, he whispered, as if speaking aloud would make this too real. “What is a bird’s favorite school subject?”
“Owl-gebra,” Rowan hooted. Dende snorted. “By the way, totally unrelated. What’s the square root of 24,649?” Once, he would have thought she wanted help, but after almost a month of random moments like this, he knew better. She was just lonely and bored.
“Homework trouble?” he teased.
“Algebra is for the birds. Give me history, biology, languages, or mechanics any day. I’d rather help Ma rebuild a radiator. Heck, I’d rather be the radiator, and I’ve seen the abuse she heaps on those.” What an image: Rowan the radiator. This girl had one strange sense of humor. “Well, thanks for the chat. I guess I’ll take a break or something. It feels like my brain is about to melt out my nostrils and run down my shirt.” That image wasn’t so humorous.
Dende’s reading went undisturbed for some time after that. Not that the book was riveting stuff; Earth history, apparently, had its dull points like everything else, and between plagues and wars, Europe volume 17 read like watching mortar harden. He had no experience with algebra, but if it was half as boring as this, he pitied Rowan. Still, he nodded, blinked, shook himself, and nodded off again for another chapter, only to wake to the sound of the book hitting the floor. That, he decided, was a sign to shelve it for the morning.
He stilled. What…? He turned to the windows and the balcony and expanded his senses; footsteps sounded on the tiles outside. Popo had migrated to the kitchen. Based on the cherry blossom-scented steam hanging in the hallway like an ominous mist, Rio decided on a shower. Dende thumbed through his mental Rolodex and located everyone liable to visit. Only Piccolo’s energy signature was in an unusual place, locating him in West City—wait, Bulma, and thus Sierra, lived in West City, right? In the end, he realized everyone was elsewhere.
...everyone except Rowan.
Of course. Rowan did say she planned to take a break. By the time he remembered this, music filled the air outside. Dende wrote it off as curiosity, but whatever the reason, he crept out onto the balcony and peered over the balustrade. Almost immediately, he choked on his spit and lurched back from the railing. It was the afternoon Sierra accused him of guardian-stalking all over again. Barefoot, Rowan sang along to the song playing from her tablet and danced like no one was watching, unaware that someone was.
Dende hesitated but peeked over the ledge. At least this time, she had pants on. And a shirt. Not that she was shirtless before. Why did seeing her always turn him into a blithering idiot? He had no answer. Instead of worrying about it, he sat on the stone balcony, scooted toward the balustrade, and regarded her through a gap between columns. He could no more walk away than introduce himself, but this way, at least, he would stay hidden.
...he really was stalking her. Even Rowan’s music seemed to agree: I could watch you all night long, dancing to someone else’s song.
“The noise is not bothering you, is it?”
Dende yelped and scrambled back into the corner. Mister Popo’s suspicion proved correct: Dende never heard his approach or the library door opening. Popo stared down at him, scrutinizing his charge’s body language for all the clues it held. Traces of eggplant and lime splashed across his cheeks in shades of embarrassment. Dende’s eyes, wide and nervous, darted back and forth, unable to meet his. He was slouching again, too; the boy still hadn’t adapted to his increased height from that last growth spurt, and he hunched over even more when uncomfortable. Altogether, Dende seemed the picture of a chastised and guilty young man caught doing something he shouldn’t. Popo said nothing of it. “Shall I ask the young lady to lower the volume, Dende-Kami?”
From the look on his face, Dende struggled to find any way to answer that without jamming his foot between his pointy teeth all the way up to the knee; in the end, all he had was the truth. “She’s...not bothering me.” He swallowed around the stress clogging up his throat with an audible ulp. “Humans aren’t used to being cooped up and isolated, Mister Popo. Row—I mean, Miss Stone is a bit stir-crazy. She just needs to burn off some excess energy. Unless...is she bothering you?”
Rowan. Dende’s first instinct was to use the girl’s given name. Surnames offered a measure of distance and encouraged respect for boundaries. Given names had a more intimate meaning than that; they said, I know you, and you know me. That Dende had to stop himself from using that name meant he already left that distance behind in his thoughts, and it only now showed in his words.
Popo gave even less away than usual, and that said something. Squirming, Dende worried at a fraying hem on his robes. Finally, Popo relented. “I am…not bothered by her music.” He turned to leave. “You are weary. I will prepare tea.” Dende hadn’t been sleeping enough lately, and now Popo understood why.
At the library door, he stopped and looked back, and what he saw stunned him. No longer penitent and guilty, Dende looked out over the tiles below, eyes locked on the human girl. His eyes were soft and calm—the eyes of a Kami far beyond his years, but also the eyes of someone witnessing something breathtaking. The smile on his lips was at once gentle and humbled, protective and wondrous. It felt like disaster waiting to strike.
Popo recalled another guardian, long before Dende, lost to history’s interpretation. Many centuries past, the Lookout was not so empty and hosted many deities from many places, and Popo grew to consider one of those visiting deities a friend. It didn’t end well; the deity cast off his immortality in pursuit of a woman and was killed for it, and his mortal lover took her life. Popo still recalled the softness in the young man’s black eyes, the tender smile on his face, and the way his heart lightened when he spoke of his lover.
At that moment, it hit him; Dende had smiled more since Sierra’s first visit; in fact, he’d smiled more since that first accidental contact with Miss Rowan than he had in all the years since he took Kami’s place and began training. Perhaps…
Popo slipped through the door and padded down the hallway on silent feet. Maybe this mortal’s presence was a benefit to Dende’s well-being. It might prove wrong—she might instead hurt him, and Popo would be left picking up the pieces, or Dende may grow unsatisfied with his lot in life. Popo might see another young friend leave the pantheon for love and die among the mortals. Or...perhaps…
Well, it had happened before. It rarely ended well, but there were cases where it did. Whatever happened, all Popo could do now was bide his time and support his Kami as well as he could.
South of Nicky Town, the wasteland
Elsewhere on the continent, Spring had the air full of birdsong, blooming flowers, and cool breezes; in the bluff-lined canyons, one found only dust and decay, and the occasional cold wind blistering the skin of all who dared trespass. Piccolo was no trespasser. He belonged here, at least as much as he belonged anywhere.
Sheltered from the heat and heavy winds in a cave, Piccolo hovered in a lotus position, but he found no peace. His mind was far too discordant for meditation. Four days had passed since that night on Capsule Corp’s kitchen roof—four Kais-damned days—and Piccolo was no less conflicted today than he was then. If anything, he felt even more torn between logic, determination, and the multitude of irrational things he noticed.
Yesterday, he hauled that confounding woman up to the Lookout for her weekly day with Dende. The entire time, his skin crawled and burned, and Namekku obscenities ran through his brain on an endless and furious loop.
Her skin left an invisible, indelible mark everywhere it touched his, and each burned like too much sun. Every time he saw her, he remembered that December gathering when he lectured her in the privacy of his thoughts, and she heard him as though he spoke aloud. Every insult she flung at him—at least he assumed those nonsense words were secret insults—left him equal parts offended and bewildered. What kind of person insulted someone just to stare at their teeth? Sierra fucking Stone, that’s who. Her parents must have dropped her when she was a child.
Piccolo couldn’t understand. For the longest time, he couldn’t get away from the woman fast enough. He caught himself making silent excuses, now, to remain at the Lookout during the day, and even stranger, near her.
He retreated to his old stomping grounds once he returned her to the Briefs’ care, and there he had remained. It took hours to shake off the itch in his palms and the heat in his cheeks and throat, never mind that the itch and heat made no sense. Never mind that he had more important things to think about than a dead-eyed stray. Never mind that she shouldn’t affect him, that she was just another human, and that he only thought about her at all because she was a puzzle to solve.
“Did you spend your childhood sucking lemons?”
No. He spent his childhood trying and failing to be accepted by the people of her world; he spent his teenage years trying and failing to kill the idiot who killed his sire. The years since, he alternated between protecting that idiot and that world, babysitting the idiot’s various spawn, and questioning the choices that led him there.
“That’s the only reason I can think of for anyone to have such a sour attitude.”
Another reminder that humans would never, and could never, relate to him. They all fit in with one another; Piccolo fit in with no one, neither humankind nor Namekians, and he never would.
“No tienes sentido, maldito lagarto...tú y tus estúpidos dientes.”•
That statement, although he didn’t understand any of it, sounded like an insult if he ever heard one, which finally got the reaction she seemed to have sought. For the rest of the visit, she and Mister Popo had puttered around the garden in companionable silence. Now and then, the skin at Piccolo’s nape and brow would prickle, and he’d look up to see her eyes darting away. Staring was nothing new—humans were often ill-mannered—but something told Piccolo this was different. Different in what way, he didn’t want to know.
If not for the lecture that the ageless djinn would have prepared at his next visit, Piccolo would have left the infuriating woman on the Lookout to rot. Instead, he threw her over his shoulder like a bag of rice and flew her back to Bulma’s, all the while wondering why he smelled fish every time she squirmed. Why couldn’t humans sit still?
...it was fish...right?
Outside the cavern’s mouth, a thunderous roar echoed through the canyons. Following that was another sound—a long, sharp, drawn-out hiss, something like static or wind through trees. Rain, he determined; the earth heaved a sigh of relief with every drop, and humanity never noticed. Piccolo ducked his chin into the folds of cloth shielding his neck and sighed through his nose. His skin still burned, and itched, and ached, but nothing could be done about that now.
Through the sounds of heavy rain and wind battering the canyon walls, Piccolo’s mind drifted back to the expression on Sierra’s face last night. Like the day Gohan discovered her, sunset had painted the sky and her skin in shades of amber and rose. This time, instead of empty, dead, soulless eyes, Piccolo looked at her and saw a weak distress. “Mierda,” she grumbled and shook her head, walking away, “maldigo a mis estúpidos ovarios.”
Piccolo’s eyes flew open in the darkness. Estupidos. Wait. Did she call him stupid?
...that damned woman. He liked it better when she was trying to break his skull with her cane. Violence, if nothing else, made sense to him.
Nicky Town’s Food-Mart on a Thursday afternoon was, in a word, boring. Sometimes Mariko would rather watch mop-water dry on the floors than work that shift. The most interesting customers did their shopping on weekends or late at night, and the entertaining coworkers worked other shifts or days. At least, this was the case most Thursdays.
“Miss Stone is purchasing more than usual.”
In early winter, the manager hired an overweight foreigner with distant blue eyes and wavy black hair. Stone Cordelia had no talent for gossip and no interest in making friends, and every payday, she bought groceries after clocking out. People who didn’t socialize had secrets to hide. If contemplation of those secrets was the only entertainment Mariko could find at the store, then she’d take it.
Chieko tallied up her drawer at the next register over as if nothing was happening. “It’s none of our business,” she chided. “Would you wish for others to speculate on your purchases? I have seen your junk food binges. It is a wonder you are not fat.”
Mariko waved the statement off like a circling insect. “She is unmarried and has no children or family living with her.” Pausing, Mariko greeted the elderly couple who had just walked in, then leaned over to continue the conversation under her breath. “Anyone who doubles their grocery purchases without explanation is hiding something, and that ‘something’ is often a someone.”
The woman in question rounded the corner, basket in tow. Chieko and Mariko pasted on too-wide smiles. “Is there no heavy cream left?” Cordelia asked with a pinched expression.
Chieko shot Mariko a warning look. “The supplier could only send milk this week. We should receive more soon.” Cordelia sighed, snapped the rubber band around her wrist several times, and returned to the coolers. Once she was out of earshot, Mariko nudged Chieko with her shoulder. In all her trips before, Cordelia bought nothing heavier than skim milk.
“Which do you think? Has she found a man, a woman, or a child?”
Chieko rolled her eyes and shut her drawer harder than necessary. “Remind me why we are friends?”
“Because I do not shame you for buying too much chocolate when you are on your menses.”
Family Friday. Most of humanity never heard of it, much less cared, but to Rowan, it was everything.
Now? It was nothing—just another Friday night, albeit a night spent in a floating castle in the sky inhabited by an adorkable deity. Wonder aside, Rowan still longed for the Fridays before, the smell of achiote and aonori and the sound of laughter, and being able to feel like she belonged. She sat up on the hard bed, clutching her knees, and sighed. She didn’t belong here. She could hardly breathe here with no one to talk to.
What would Auntie Dai do? Absent or not, Sierra was always Rowan’s best example of how to handle life’s craziness, be it stress or Rio’s drama. Rowan closed her eyes. Behind them danced a memory: Sierra’s creased, tired expression, the perfume of herbs and flowers, and an old floral teacup full of steaming amber liquid. Tea. Sierra would fix herself a cup of tea, take some Advil, and retreat to her plant-choked sunroom with a novel until the world started making sense again.
This castle in the sky didn’t have a sunroom. There was the garden, but while it had never been stated, she got the impression she shouldn’t be out of her guest room after dark. She had some books on her school tablet, but without access to electricity after work, she had to be careful with using it. Textbooks aside, she’d also read all the interesting ones several times each. The temple’s kitchen was small, but they must have tea somewhere, right? They had a kettle—a simple copper affair rather than the glass-and-plastic electric kind she used at home—and she recognized a pair of tea trees in the garden. Kettle plus pampered tea camellias meant tea was a thing that existed, even up here.
Wait—would she have to perform a tea ceremony? Was there proper etiquette for drinking divine tea in a Kami’s kitchen? Should she bow and give thanks, or could she just toss in some sugar and chug? What if they only had matcha? Would there be snacks to go with the tea in case it tasted like licking a lawn mower?
Rowan shook her head to dislodge the ridiculousness, climbed off the bed, and pulled on her yukata over her shorts and tank top. She padded out the door barefoot. Why was her brain like this? Tea was just tea. Tea would help her relax, so she would fix herself some tea; overthinking everything was unnecessary. The moment she reached the kitchen, however, she froze.
Kami.
At this hour, the kitchen would normally be silent; instead, soothing sounds and smells filled the space between the walls with comfort. Bubbles shuddered, burst, and rang inside the old copper kettle on the stove; countering them, the tap and scrape of a mortar and pestle rendered tea leaves a fine powder. The earthy scents of dried sencha and hot water and the fruity zing of yuzu rind hung in the air. Through the open window came the perfume of blooming gardenia and the sound of distant crickets. Everything here calmed the senses, so why did Dende feel on edge?
There was war in the east and children dying in the west; there was hunger in the north and drought in the south. The Americas were falling apart at the seams and the Pacifics would see another volcanic eruption any day. Closer to home, a family struggled to get by, full of old hurts and new hopes, and Dende dared not even leave his quarters without listening for footsteps. His eyes rolled up to the ceiling, and he huffed a deep sigh. No wonder he couldn’t relax. The world was a dumpster fire, and he was the only sucker around with a bucket.
He tilted his head to crack his neck, set aside the mortar full of matcha, and stood before the old wood stove. Whatever convinced him this would be a good idea, anyway? Why did he agree to take on this task? When he took up the old Kami’s staff, he was a child—born on Namek and raised among Namekians, with no clue how this upside-down planet worked. He went from pulling weeds in the Ajisa fields and learning his letters to carrying the spiritual burdens of an entire world, all before puberty hit. How was that healthy? How was it fair?
Fair. A certain distracting human might describe that as a four-letter F word. A fond, lopsided smile spread his lips enough for the points of his teeth to pinch. The kettle bubbled merrily as he stared through it. If Rowan Stone could handle her lot in life without complaint, maybe he…
Dende froze. A familiar sensation crawled along his skin, stiffening his spine and antennae, and chilling his blood. He was not alone. In the doorway, an intruder hung back with their thoughts spinning and racing in a confused, panicked, dizzying whirlwind. Hoping, fearing, breath dead in his lungs and heart pounding, he turned to look over his shoulder.
Rowan. Dressed in her nightclothes and fishpond yukata, green eyes wide and stunned, she stood in the doorway, looking right at him. There was no way she hadn’t seen him.
Rowan never expected to stare down a literal god tonight, but here she was...staring down a god...a god who seemed ready to wet himself in terror.
In the moments following, several things happened all at once, and like a bystander witnessing a train wreck, Rowan could do nothing but watch. Kami reeled away from the stove in a blind panic, and his sleeve snagged on the kettle and dragged it off; it skidded across the floor, spraying scalding water and sending up a violent hiss when it doused the burning fuel. He jerked back to avoid getting burned, stumbled, and caught his balance on the hot iron grate. The pained yelp that burst up his throat broke Rowan out of her stupor.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you, I—”
Apologizing over and over, Rowan snatched up the spilling kettle and returned it to the banked stove. Kami stared at her like he expected her to attack, cradling his wrist. Those were some wicked sharp nails...Rowan looked down at his burned fingers with a wince—not now, intrusive thoughts—and led him to the sink. He gave a weak sound, something like a shaky breath or a whimper, looking from her to her hand holding his, and back again. Terrifying, interesting, and funny, but more terrifying than anything else—that was how he described her that night in the garden, she recalled. Getting hurt the first time they met face-to-face was unlikely to improve that opinion. She just had to decide on a cup of tea, didn’t she?
With the faucet on a cold trickle, she shot the Kami an apologetic wince and held his burned fingers underneath. A hissed word burst through his clenched teeth—wicked sharp teeth, too, damn—that sounded nothing like any language she’d ever heard before. “I’m so sorry,” Rowan said again in a gentle murmur. “I know it hurts. This’ll help, I promise.” Although he complied without complaint, Kami studied her with wide, nervous eyes that Rowan couldn’t meet; instead, she tracked the water as it followed the valleys of his tendons, spilled down between his knuckles, and dripped off the ends of those wicked sharp nails.
Gradually, Kami’s tension-tight shoulders lowered and his expression calmed. He stared down at the water circling the bottom of the basin in silence—or was he, too, fascinated by the juxtaposition of her hand and his? They looked nothing alike, but his skin felt no different from hers. When he finally lifted his eyes, the warmth muddying his cheeks confirmed it; whatever he was, he blushed like a human, albeit in a color closer to eggplant than red. He cleared his throat, and with his free hand, shut off the faucet. Realizing she still held his wrist, Rowan released it to wrap her arms around herself. Kami examined the swelling, pale marks on his fingers, each of which would soon blister. He heaved a vexed sigh. “I was afraid of that.”
If there was any doubt in Rowan’s mind before, his voice erased it. This awkward, nervous young man was Kami—the same Kami who told her to be safe, and who offered her his home when she couldn’t. He was the same Kami who put up with her corny jokes and chattering when she got bored. Divinity had a face, and it was freaking adorable.
Wait, did no one tell Kamis that they shouldn’t touch injuries?! “Don’t—”
With his free hand hovering over the burns, he glanced at her. “Trust me.” He gave her a reassuring, and rather teasing, smile. What other option did she have? She trusted. Right before her eyes, a pale glow grew at his palm, enveloped his injured limb, and flickered in the stillness like moonlight through fog; right before her eyes, the skin soothed, healed, and returned to normal as if it was never scalded. The healing light faded into the ether along with Rowan’s ability to think. Clenching and stretching his fingers, Kami turned his hand this way and that to check his range of movement and detect any lingering pain; finding none, he smiled down at it. “There, good as new.”
Rowan could read, write, and speak two languages with varying levels of fluency, and she knew several vulgar phrases in Mandarin and a few dozen in Spanish. She prided herself on her ability to retain new vocabulary, too. What just happened? She didn’t have a single word for it. The cheeky look in Kami’s ink-black eyes fried her synapses beyond effective communication. Poof. Gone. Rowan brain go brrrr. Who gave this guy permission to be so—so—cute?
“Well,” Rowan said when she found her tongue. “You’re all kinds of handy, aren’t you?”
Handy? You made Kami burn his skin right off his bones, and your response is a pun? Bad Rowan. Ten lashes with the corny stick and a year in corny jail.
Kami gave an uncomfortable chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck, and reached for the ragged towel on the hook at the same time Rowan did. They both jerked apart, but Rowan recovered first and knelt to sop up the spilled water. After refilling the kettle at the sink, Kami returned it to the stove and frowned down through the small hole in the iron plate. Of course. The fire was out, and the wood soaked from the spill. As Rowan watched, he crouched to replace the log and tinder and ignited it with a gesture similar to that which healed him. Handy indeed. No. Corny jail.
With the kettle on to boil and the floor dry, an awkward silence to beat all awkward silences smothered the kitchen. Regardless, Kami collected a second cup and gestured for her to help herself to the small enameled tea chest. One tin in particular, emblazoned with a floral pattern, made her heart ache and her pulse race with the impossible familiarity; inside was a drawstring bag that smelled of citrus, greenery, and something sweet as spring. This was Herbal Orange Outing—a custom blend Sierra sold in limited quantities at Stone Botany Shop before the fire and subsequent closure. The mandarin and lemon rinds came from her trees; she grew the lemongrass, spearmint, and anise in her greenhouse, and harvested the rosehips from roses in her garden. The licorice root alone was outsourced.
Spooning the mixture into a wire strainer on autopilot, Rowan sank into a chair at the table. Kami pulled the kettle off the grate before it could whistle and filled both cups before joining Rowan. In Rowan’s cup, trails of deep lava orange leeched outward from the colorful shreds in the water, reinforcing what she already knew. Sierra’s blend had dried Nasturtium flowers for extra zing and color. This tea could never be mistaken for any other. Kami wouldn’t talk about Sierra because, like Rowan and her mother, he helped her. Rowan looked up at him with watering eyes and a humbled, grateful heart. “I...I mean...Thank you...isn’t enough.”
Kami looked up from his foamy yuzu matcha, blinked, and tilted his head to the left like a curious bird. “It’s only polite. I was making tea for myself, anyway.”
“You’re letting us stay here,” Rowan countered. Kami choked on his tea and had to pound it out of his chest. Aw, he had a matcha mustache. “You sent Son and his father to bring us here. You act like I matter, and this…” Rowan smiled into the tangy orange tea in her cup. “...proves that’s just the beginning. This is my auntie Dai’s tea.” When it sank in, the truth was written all over Kami’s face. Rowan almost felt bad for bringing it up, but she had a point to make. “I wasn’t trying to get around your orders...but I wasn’t wrong.”
Kami stared at her for a moment, bewildered, and she took pity on him. Hah. Taking pity on a freaking deity. Talk about an ego. “You said I shouldn’t see you. I wasn’t trying to disobey that, I just…”
“You weren’t able to sleep,” Kami finished for her when it became evident she couldn’t. “I wondered when you...I mean…” He dug his fingertips into the back of his neck right between his skull and spine as if warding off a tension headache.
Good grief. Could this get more awkward? They must look like a couple of socially stunted teenage—oh. They were a couple of socially stunted teenagers. This was painful. “Anyway.” Rowan forced a smile. “Thank you, Kami-sama. It’s not enough, not by a long shot, but it’s the best I’ve got.”
Kami, to Rowan’s surprise, stilled and locked vulnerable eyes on hers before they darted away. “It’s…” His cheeks colored again. “…it’s not acting…you do matter…everyone matters.”
For a moment, there was silence in the kitchen—an awkward, tea-perfumed silence shared between a nervous guardian and a teenage girl. All the while, Dende worried at the fraying end of his sleeve, and Rowan considered the bright green foam he still hadn't wiped away. Finally, the quiet broke with a mumble.
“My…my name is…Dende.”
That was how Rowan Akane Stone—a teenager who came from two cultures and fit with neither—came to be on a first-name basis with a god. And that was how Dende, Kami-in-training, got just a little more lost in the tangled consequences of his meddling.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love writing scatterbrained-Rowan? Because if not, I love writing scatterbrained-Rowan. I did way too much research on tea for this chapter. Tea leaves come from a specific variety of Camelia. IIRC, sencha is dried whole-leaf green tea from mature leaves. Matcha is made by grinding sencha into a fine powder, preferably right before whisking.
Also, * Oasis, “Wonderwall.”
Glossary
• No tienes sentido, maldito lagarto—You don’t make sense, you damned lizard.
• Tú y tús estupidos dientes—You and your stupid teeth. It appears the sharp teeth sexy gene runs rampant in the Stone/Martinez line; taking bets on which side had the monster-fuckers.
• Mierda—Shit.
• Maldigo a mis estúpidos ovarios—Damn my stupid ovaries.
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