I've found her. I'll never be 100% sure, but the stories I find in my long hours of research that resonate with me the most are those of Nana Buluku. Originating from Fon and Yoruba mythologies, she is the supreme creator of the universe, the stars, the moon, and the earth. Depicted as an old woman dressed in purple garments, she is the void, the "dragon of Chaos", and the grandmother of all Orishas.

To Eris 🤮:

What if for the painting we do the goddess of the underworld and the goddess of chaos? The equivalents to Eris and Persephone?

She takes hours to respond.

From Eris 🤮:

ooo yeah that would be so good. i was doing some research and although Xochiquétzal represents the Greek Persephone pretty well cause she's the goddess of spring, Mictēcacihuātl fits better. She's the wife of the underworld god. but then i read that she's like the equivalent of Santa Muerte, which we already painted. fuck i wish we'd referenced her in the last painting 😭

To Eris 🤮:

Perhaps you could add some of her symbols in the background, once we get all the paintings back for the final. I don't think it's a huge deal since for that painting we were focusing on Catholic imagery. As for the goddess of chaos, I found Nana Buluku. She's not technically chaos, she's actually the supreme creator of all things, but I found some references to her representing that. With her children Mawu and Lisa, they form a trinity representing creation, balance, and chaos.

From Eris 🤮:

where is she from?

To Eris 🤮:

Benin, Nigeria, and Togo. Yorubaland.

From Eris 🤮:

Maybe for the Aztec one we can do Chalchiuhtlicue. lady of seas, storms, rivers, and baptism. she also ate the sun and moon one time.

To Eris 🤮:

Nana Buluku is also related to water. She created the sun and moon, and Chalchiuhtlicue ate them. We could paint that.

And just like that, we have our grand idea. Montoya would be pleased.

In other news, Fitz releases the music video for Catatonic Shock. It involves cars racing toward one another on an empty desert road, blowing sand and dust in the air. Then the scene goes black, and the beat drops with a booming sound effect as if to imply the cars crashed. Fitz and Oscar stand on top of the smoking wreckage.

"I see why you needed the money to fund this," I tell Fitz. They include footage from real protests, tear gas and ACAB spray-painted on cracked storefront windows, and the colors swirl and vibrate with cartoonish animations that appear to resemble an LSD trip.

"It's already at 50k views," Fitz says, eyes glued to his phone again. "Growing a lot faster than the audio track."

Catatonic Shock is blasting from everyone's speakers. Fitz's attention at school grows tenfold—every time we arrive or depart on his motorcycle, there's a small crowd of people swarming him with questions and praise for the music video, some asking if they can be in the next one. Fitz's very first fans. He stays calm and grounded and talks politely to everyone, the smile on his face the only thing different.

But then the news headlines come in:

Body found with bullet holes on Tijuana boardwalk

Murdered California teen believed to have smuggled drugs over the US-Mexico border

Teenage rapper killed by cartel

Fitz's friend Oscar is dead.

The kid wasn't even declared missing. Rather than getting kidnapped, tortured, dismembered, and dumped somewhere no one would've found him, they shot him point-blank in one of the most touristic areas of Tijuana. It's not often the cartels will risk targeting an American, but they clearly wanted to send a message.

Fitz no longer smiles. Instead of looking at the views and likes on the music video, he scrolls news pages for hours in search of articles about the attack. He was happy with 50k views in the first two days. Now, with another dead rapper in the news, the views surge to 200k and then a million by the end of the week, but Fitz is in catatonic shock himself. Rather than using my concealer to cover up his face tattoo, which everyone has seen by now anyway, he takes to using beanies. He stops smoking. I have to remind him not to violate the speed limit on the highway. Thousands of comments pour in, all of them variations of RIP Oscar—or Lil Belicón as he was so called—you would've been a legend if you hadn't died so young.

Fitz didn't even cry at our mother's death, so I'm not surprised by his dry eyes now. Silent and more blank than ever, all he tells me is: "I told him not to go back. I told him he didn't need it cause the song was gonna reach #1. He didn't believe me. Said it wasn't getting enough views. Said he needed cash to buy more promos."

Now the song could very well reach #1, and all because one of its up-and-coming artists was brutally murdered.

I call Eris.

"Fitz's friend was shot," I say bluntly. "What's going on?"

"I heard," she mutters with a long exhale. "Jalisco did it."

"Why?"

"I warned him not to get any merchandise from anyone else. He should've laid low and not trusted anyone, and I said I wouldn't give him another job. I wasn't gonna employ him as a fuckin' drug mule—that's not the type of job for some gringo teenager whose face and songs are all over social media. Iker would never let me live it down. I was like, I'm just helping you guys make the cash for your music video and that's it. But he went back. More than once. Got cocky with the easy money and started working for Jalisco, and when they found out he'd been moving drugs for us... boom. Murdered."

"They must've thought he was a spy," I say. "In fact, he was probably the one who gave them your phone number."

"I feel so bad," she admits. "I've just been thinking... if I had just let him do another job, just once, maybe..."

"No," I say. "You were right. That could've caused a lot more problems in the long run."

I didn't know Oscar enough to grieve his death. Despite the ominous, violent reality now hanging over me, the literal consequence for getting involved with people like Eris, most of all I feel relief that Fitz didn't go back with him.

Much to his dismay, Fitz ends up opening a social media account. He's always been adamant about not giving into the big tech corporations exploiting our data and getting people addicted to content in order to make ad revenue, and now that Oscar's page with 100k followers is dead, filled with comments from distraught fans and peers, it's up to Fitz to do the promotion.

His first post is a tribute to Oscar. He rakes in thousands of followers almost instantly and goes live to briefly comment on what happened, hating every moment in a spotlight won by blood. If Fitz admits he was initially involved in the smuggling, the police will be after him, but thankfully his name is clean. Everyone thinks Oscar was working alone.

Over dinner, Fitz asks William to investigate.

"There's nothing to investigate," William says bluntly. "He got caught up with the wrong people. He was murdered. Case closed."

"There's thousands of people missing in Tijuana," Dad says. "And they never got a fraction of the media coverage. Police are probably busy investigating that."

"They're in collusion with Jalisco," William points out. "Another body found, and they turn the other way. They knew it would happen."

Fitz goes silent, lowering his head as he stares at his full plate while I'm already on dessert.

"I forgot to mention it, but Eris and I made it to the finals," I say. "We're going to finish our last painting and then display everything in Mexico City."

My dad's face is awestruck and ecstatic—until the mention of the words Mexico City.

Rather than congratulating me, he asks, "Do you think it's a good idea to go to Mexico right now?"

"What other choice do we have? We'll be insulated in Mexico City—that's what she told me, at least."

"It's a lot safer there than the Pacific coast," William says. "Is anyone allowed to go with you two?"

I nod. "One chaperone. But Eris told me neither of her parents will be coming."

"Because they know it's actually not safe," Dad says. "They're throwing her to the wolves. If I was Iker, I would want to be there to protect her in case anything happened."

I cut myself another piece of orange cake. "Oh, so does that mean you'll be coming with us?"

Silence. He wipes his mouth with a napkin. "I can't. I have work."

I give William a look. "Will you come with us?"

"I'm not sure if it's a good idea for someone like me to be seen with Eris," he says.

At this rate we'll have no choice but to take Montoya. At least she's also Mexican, which would be better than a clueless "gringo" adult attempting to help us navigate the city. I text Eris about it, and she says that Alfonso is coming. I don't know what to feel about her narco godfather being our chaperone, but she claims that he "stays low key", not important enough to be a target.

A few days later, Catatonic Shock has charted on the US Top 100, headlines are coming out with not only Oscar's name, but Fitz's. The hiphop press is now curious about the tall, dark-skinned, motorcycle-riding Canadian military brat newcomer on the scene with the CATATONIA face tattoo. It's everything Fitz has dreamed of, but his friend's ghost will taint everything he does, and not a night goes by where he isn't tossing and turning, sleepless and defeated.

This time, it isn't Fitz's bunk creaking above me that wakes me. Instead, my phone buzzes with a loud ding. With heavy limbs and half-shut eyes, I reach for the phone, mentally scolding myself for not putting the thing on silent earlier. But when I see that it's a text from Eris, my heart rate skyrockets.

The painting isn't due for weeks—what could she be bothering me about at two in the morning?

From Eris 🤮:

i finished ur forgery. let me know when u wanna see it. 

▴ ▴ ▴

a/n: wow, first time in a while we have a chapter that's under 2k words! this was meant to be longer, but it got up to 4.5k words, so i decided to split the chapter and leave the 💋 persepheris 💋 tension for the next one. and believe me, there will be a lot. 

what do you think about what happened to fitz's friend? is this a wake-up call for persephone at last?

song for this chapter is going to be something off of fitz's playlist so you can get a slight sense of what his music sounds like. linked in the header at the beginning of the chapter: dead and gone by luci4

and now for our goddesses, Nana Buluku and Chalchiuhtlicue:

also, help me pick a title for the next chapter! which of these do you like more?

Clearing Debts

The Girl With a Price on Her Head

The Princess Pleads