Anomaly

A new week had arrived, bringing with it the cold air of mid-December. Although Christmas and the beginning of a new year were still a few days away, many families had already begun preparing. Stores were getting busier by the day, their shelves gradually filling with seasonal products, and little by little, the unmistakable atmosphere of the holiday season was settling over the cities.

Even though I was an anomaly, I had decided to bring a little of that tradition to my little sisters. Surprisingly, they understood what Christmas and New Year’s were. They knew that they were important dates for humans and apparently even knew why they were celebrated. That was when I ended up discovering a rather peculiar secret. The kind of secret that left me with absolutely no idea how I was supposed to feel about it.

As far as I knew, Christmas was a celebration related to the birth of Jesus, or something along those lines. I had never been particularly religious. I didn’t go to church, nor had I ever really studied the subject in depth, but I knew enough to understand the basics, at least the basics that, theoretically, any ordinary person would know.

Still, discovering that my little sisters knew about this tradition and, more importantly, knew its origins left me somewhat intrigued. After all, considering who they were, I honestly hadn’t expected them to know anything about such specific human traditions.

Anyway, the main point was that while everyone was preparing for Christmas and the celebrations surrounding it, some of them intending to celebrate the birth of Jesus, I ended up discovering a piece of information that definitely wasn’t on my list of things I expected to learn that day. Technically, Althea was the true identity of the person everyone knew as Jesus. Yes. Jesus. I was still trying to process that.

According to Althea herself, back then, she had been doing some work for her mother and had ended up coming to Earth in much the same way she had appeared when I met her some time ago. At the time, she had even had a family of her own and had simply been living her life normally. She told me all of this as casually as if she were making small talk about the weather.

As if she hadn’t just completely destroyed one of the few certainties I had about human history. I’m not going to lie: it caught me completely off guard. In fact, I practically lost my mind. As far as I knew, Jesus was a man. A man who, depending on the religion or interpretation, held an incredibly important position for billions of people.

𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

And then I found out that Jesus was actually... Althea. A girl. Although, technically, calling Althea a girl wasn’t exactly correct either, considering she was a genderless entity. That only made the whole thing even more confusing.

“Wait... are you saying you’re the Jesus from the Bible?” I could still remember the exact expression on my face at that moment.

And the worst part was that Althea seemed genuinely confused by my reaction. To her, apparently, it wasn’t a big deal at all. To me? It was like discovering that an incredibly important historical figure everyone knew had an identity completely different from the one I had always imagined.

And honestly, I still couldn’t decide whether I should laugh, panic, or simply accept that my life had reached a point where finding out that Jesus was a genderless entity named Althea shouldn’t surprise me all that much anymore.

To be fair, the explanation seemed much more obvious after I heard it. I even found myself wondering why I hadn’t considered the possibility before. Althea simply had a more androgynous appearance, though she leaned slightly toward the masculine side. She still couldn’t easily be placed into any of the gender categories I was familiar with, but at least externally, her appearance was fairly close to that of a man.

A handsome, striking man, according to her own words. I’m not going to lie, it took me an entire week just to process and internalize all of this. Even now, it was still a little hard to believe that Althea was actually the very figure so many beings worshiped as the Son of God. And that put me in a particularly strange situation.

I still wasn’t entirely sure what to think about any of it. After all, my memories from when I was human were still with me, and in those memories, there was a deep reverence for Jesus. I had grown up seeing him as someone incredibly important, someone who represented faith, hope, and a considerable number of other things I didn’t even know how to put into words.

Now, discovering that this same figure, worshiped by billions of people throughout history, was actually... My sister. Just thinking about it made me feel a little embarrassed. It was far too strange a feeling to explain. Anyway, setting aside my less relevant thoughts, there was another curious detail about the place where my sisters and I were living.

The entire environment had been artificially created by Emily and Charlotte, yet somehow, it perfectly mirrored the conditions outside. It was almost as if this little world were connected to the outside, reproducing every change without any noticeable delay.

Over the past few days, for example, the leaves from the countless trees around us had been steadily piling up on the ground. An increasingly thick layer covered the earth, spreading shades of yellow, orange, and brown between the roots and giving the landscape that unmistakable autumn appearance.

The trees themselves were beginning to look bare as well, with fewer and fewer leaves clinging to their branches. A slightly stronger breeze was enough to shake some of the remaining leaves loose, carrying them through the air before they gently settled onto the ground. It was cold, too. To be honest, the temperature didn’t really affect either me or my sisters. Even Charlotte no longer suffered from the cold the way she used to.

At least, not consciously. It was almost as if she had developed some kind of internal switch. She could turn her resistance on and off whenever she wanted, as if she were simply flipping a button. Depending on the occasion, Charlotte could show up completely bundled up in a coat, with practically her entire body covered, as if she were facing the harshest winter in the world.

Then, the very next moment, she could appear wearing light clothes, as if she were perfectly prepared to spend an entire day at the beach under a blazing sun. The change came so naturally to her that, after a while, I simply stopped finding it strange. Although, honestly, it was still a little funny seeing her dressed for winter while I stood there without feeling the slightest bit cold.

Emily, Laura, and Victor would apparently be spending Christmas with me and my sisters. I was a little curious about why none of them planned to spend the holiday with their respective families, but I figured it was better not to press them about it.

In Victor's case, at least, I could understand. After all, as far as I knew, Chronas rarely ever left the organization's facilities. So if he decided to spend Christmas here, it probably wouldn't exactly be a surprise.

As for Emily and Laura, though, there seemed to be a few stories behind it. I had already noticed subtle changes in their expressions whenever the subject came up, and it wasn't hard to conclude that there were probably things they simply didn't like talking about. Because of that, I figured it was wiser not to ask.

It would be rude to keep poking at what was apparently a sensitive subject just out of curiosity. Personally, I had no problem whatsoever with the idea of spending Christmas with more people. Quite the opposite, actually. My whole "the more, the merrier" mentality was pretty strong, so having Emily, Laura, and Victor around for the celebration only made things more interesting.

That said... There was something strange I'd been noticing during the last few times I went out on some of my clandestine excursions. Nothing particularly serious, apparently. It was just a strange feeling, a small detail that kept popping up every now and then and that I still couldn't quite explain. Maybe it was nothing. But, considering my luck, it was probably exactly the kind of thing that would end up becoming a huge problem later.

It all started with a few casual encounters with members of the organization mentioning that this year seemed to be especially cold in the city. The temperatures had been steadily dropping, and from what they were saying, the trend was expected to continue over the next few weeks. There wasn't anything particularly unusual about that.

The end of the year in this city was usually pretty cold, after all, so no one seemed genuinely concerned. To most people, it was just another harsh winter. Still, for some reason, I couldn't simply ignore the strange feeling lingering in the back of my mind.

This cold didn't seem as simple as everyone was assuming. What proof did I have for thinking that? None, to be honest. There were no clear signs of an anomaly, no inexplicable phenomenon I could point to, and not even a single concrete piece of evidence suggesting that something was wrong. It was just a feeling.

But if my past experiences had taught me anything, it was that I shouldn't completely ignore this kind of feeling. The continuous drop in temperature didn't seem natural. It was difficult to explain exactly why, but there was something wrong with the way the cold was intensifying.

It didn't feel like something nature would do on its own, like a simple change in weather or an especially powerful cold front. It felt... artificial. As if someone, or something, were deliberately lowering the temperature of the city.

Maybe I was just being paranoid. In fact, I was practically praying that was all it was, because the alternative was considerably less pleasant. But honestly... considering the way my luck had been behaving ever since the moment I became an anomaly, was it really so absurd to think that things were about to go completely off the rails?

Probably not. Actually, knowing the recent history of my life, it would almost be strange if something went right for too long. So... they're just going to completely go off the rails, aren't they? I paused for a moment, almost as if I were genuinely waiting for some omniscient entity, one capable of seeing the future and conveniently available at that exact moment, to show up and give me an answer.

Unfortunately, there was no such entity. No mysterious god suddenly appearing out of nowhere. No celestial voice answering my internal monologue. Not even a supernatural sensation that could be interpreted as some kind of warning. All I got in return was the purest, most absolute silence anyone could possibly experience. Or, in this case, not experience. In the end, I simply sighed internally.