"Gaia."
Malik blinked at her slowly, waiting for her to elaborate as several of her underlings began to open up different slides and moved them to face him.
"Bless you."
"Very funny, Mr Chen."
Malik tilted his head as he eyed the woman as well as her underlings before speaking, "What the fuck is a Gaia?"
Mrs Batista gave him a pointed stare before rolling her eyes and muttering under her breath, "These post-Reckoning kids really don't know shit."
"Ya say that like we had a choice on that. What's a Gaia?" he asked again, not at all interested in hearing an old person get too into it about 'them good ol days'.
She rolled her eyes at him, arms folded and a smirk still on her face.
"You ever heard of Primordials?" she asked, nodding her head towards the new slides that had been pushed towards him.
"That's just primitive, Ma'am. Primordials are just the things we see. Like the sky, the ground and all that."
He focused on them instead, the odd woman speaking in the background as his eyes rapidly scanned through each word from the different slides. His green eyes widened but by bit with each new information that was added to his sponge-like brain.
"That's what most people think but we've got a different understanding."
He finally got to the slides about Gaia after going through beings like Anu of Mesopotamia or Olorun of Yoruba Kingdom.
She was of the earth. She was the earth. There were so many names that she was referred to and so many different depictions.
Malik's head began to spin, having to put a hand over his stinging eyes to calm down that annoying headache that just didn't leave him the past few days since he'd returned.
"So what? Ya think this Gaia gave me a Blessing?"
He knew she did. After reading all that information, Malik was sure that she was the odd deity that had a nudist issue. He wondered if it had something to do with her time with the Ancient Greeks.
"It might be a possibility," Mrs Batista said, more quietly. He thought she'd noticed how much his head was hurting and thanked her quietly. "From your accounts of what you experienced and what you saw, it was our best explanation. We also consulted with deities and spirits that were able to talk with us. They all agreed that it had to be her. There's one part that none of them or us understood though."
Malik looked up to her to see her beginning to pace slowly in his room, her heels clacking softly against the tiled floors. He wondered if pacing while thinking was an old person thing, considering that his dad did that all the time as well.
"What?" he asked with a sigh after she'd gone quiet for too long.
"From what the deities and spirits said, Primordials don't give blessings. They barely even made contact with the mortal realms, save for a few. A lot of them appeared once or twice then just…vanished from sight. At least their more conversational forms. None of them knew why this was a thing but even some older deities had never laid eyes on a primordial."
She stopped pacing and stood in front of Malik's bed, hands on the front railings as she eyed him with a toothy smile that showed fangs.
"So how did you not only meet one, but garner a Blessing as the aftermath? What makes you so special, Mr. Chen?"
Malik blinked slowly at her, his tired eyes boring a hole into her head before he spoke pointedly.
"You ask me like I have an idea, ma'am. I just want to take a long ass nap and get out of this hospital. They don't let me smoke and I'm seconds away from punching my doctor."
"Try not to do that."
"Then tell him to stop asking me too many damn questions."
"You're not exactly like the rumors. You definitely sound as described. Lazy drawl, monotone voice, literally no emotion to be heard except maybe exhaustion. But this is getting to you, ain't it?"
Malik stared at her, barely blinking. He didn't like what she was implying, even though it was true.
He was agitated, on edge and his brain keot pounding in his skull.
She then moved closer to him, so fast that he'd barely seen her do so, and gripped his shoulders hard. Her cheeky smile was gone and her cat-like eyes were pinned on me.
"You need to get the fuck over whatever hang up you're having right now, kid. You were picked. You've gotten the Blessing. And for whatever reason, you are the first of us to ever be Blessed by a Primordial. We do not fully know what that implies but the working theory is that it makes you just as if not stronger than higher gods. We're talking a human as strong as fucking Odin. You could very well be the key to fixing this damned planet! So fucking wake up!"
Malik almost flinched from her grip on his shoulders before he glared up at her, his own green eyes beginning to glow as his usually calm emotions flared.
"And you need to get this through your fucking heads. I. Don't. Give. A. Fuck!"
The more his anger rose, the more his green eyes glowed, his pupils almost fully covered by a green light. He didn't even notice the building beginning to shake or the vines growing down slowly from the ceilings.
"I don't want no fucking part of this! I do not fucking care what happens to this planet! It could all fucking blow up for all I care!"
The vines were growing more, the building shaking violently now. Mrs. Batista let go of his shoulders, her expression more fearful as she glanced up at the crumbling ceiling before looking back at Malik with panic in her eyes.
"Kid! Kid, calm down!"
Malik could barely hear her, a ringing in his ears growing as his now released anger taking a forefront in his mind. It didn't even fully feel like his own anger. It was like he was tapping deep into the emotions of something bigger, something vengeful.
A chunk of the ceiling fell down, Mrs. Batista punching it into dust before she looked back at Malik, noticing how his ears had begun to bleed.
She thought fast. She punched him square in the face, knocking him out and stopping the mini earthquake.