The story of Odette ought to begin when Odette did. Born on a balmy July night, her mother always told her that when she took her first breath, she cried and cried and cried — then settled into something else. Something sweeter than honeysuckle and more resilient than sister crops: Odette began to smile.A Louisiana childhood — barefoot and staring at gators from her daddy’s old boat; she’d never met the man, fat and happy with her mother’s stories of a travelling carpenter, day-labourer who swept into town, wooed her senseless, and left her with his boat and her baby.Odie didn’t mind. Odie didn’t mind most things, really — this wasn’t the story of a dead hero that haunts the narrative, merely the story of a strange girl from the middle of nowhere. A girl who liked to ride dirt bikes and sneak into bars, a girl inclined towards tinkering, a girl with an inventor's heart and a mortal’s folly.Odette didn’t know what to make of god. She figured she liked him as much as any girl could; she wondered if his lack of intervention in her life resulted from apathy or trust. She also figured if she ever did require a father figure, she could turn her eyes to the sky — if Odette decided that her lack of fatherly comfort had burrowed under her skin something vicious, she could turn her righteous anger to someone big enough to hold it all. Sometimes, she thinks, if she closes one eye and squints at the sunset, she can see someone out there looking out for her. Winking at her when she rigs her bike to go faster than reasonable, high-fiving Odette when she rises the ranks in her small-town autonomy shop, becoming the youngest head mechanic at a blistering nineteen.Her mama works at a dress shop with her grandmother, her aunt — Tina’s — named after the McAlester matriarch. The four women attend church on Sundays, head for breakfast afterwards, and discuss where Odie’ll go to college in the fall. MIT, maybe — become an engineer.“Use those magic hands,” her grandmother smiles, squeezing both of Odie’s hands in her own, “and make something of yourself, DeeDee.”“— I will, ma’am. I will.”—
Sometimes, alone in her workshop — Odie thinks she might be a god in her own right. Not a capital-G-god, not someone noteworthy; the god of small things — the god of reviving roadkill, of strewn deer-guts; of gators and bare feet and sticky first kisses. The god of girls who ask too many questions and receive too few answers. The patron saint of girls whose daddy’s left them a boat that never requires repair and a thirst for making her mama proud.It’s a late night in the shop when she hears it, a strange, low hissing. She lifts her welding mask, giving the shop a once over — leaking oxygen, she decides, the flame of her torch dying as she drops it on the table. Odette makes her way around the space, checking tank after tank, only to find everything in order — perfect, the way she knew it would be. The way she had to be — a girl in charge. A girl with darker skin and darker eyes — a slight, lovely, underestimated girl.She shakes off the bad feeling like morning dew, but not before her eyes land on him. A man, slightly older than she, with dark hair and green eyes. A wicked glint in either, something that held a dark promise — of ruination or excitement, she couldn’t tell. Perversely, she liked that about him.Odette doesn’t remember what happened — or so she claims to any who dared to ask — his warm hand over her dirty, sweaty arm, running over her chest, sliding south when she caught his wrist and told him that she wasn’t that kind of girl. For all her slick-talking, bar sneaking, car fixing, Odette had never, well. That dog don’t hunt, not yet. Maybe not ever.He didn’t like that. The green in his eyes turning emerald, like something awakened within him at her protest — pushing him off, hitting and grabbing as aggressively as she could — panic filling her chest like crabs in a bucket.“Stop!” she shouts, a voice like hers, but not entirely hers, filling the space between them. And he does, freezes and raises to his full height. The violence in his eyes sated, Odie’s gasping breaths filling the space between them, eyes flickering to his knife, his face, and she wants to do the right thing. She wants to be the perfect victim, the perfect girl — she wants her mother. She wants her father, wherever he is, to save her. To wink at her from the horizon and turn the man before her to roadkill.There is no one coming to save you, the voice in her head replies, there is no one coming to save you, so you must save yourself.Shoulders rolling back, iron-forged resolve steeling in her stomach, “— Raise your knife,” she replies, “and s—slit your throat.”The man's hands do not betray her, raising as the pale skin of his throat gives way to a seemingly endless river of — dust. Strange, golden dust that evaporates into nothing — no blood. Her hand rises, the gold flickering around her before dissipating entirely.Odette’s hands shake, and she does the only thing she can think to do; some strange calling pulling her to the water, to her boat — and she docks far from home. Cabins as far as she can see, children with orange shirts and wide eyes staring back at her as an orange light beams out of her head;
Odette Giselle McAlester; artisans, metalworking, fire. Daughter of Hephaestus.