THE AWAKENING
PART 1
I: The Drop Off
After all Annabeth had been through, her fear was completely irrational. The daughter of Athena had fought monsters in alley ways, singlehandedly overcame the first arachnid in the world, been to literal hell and back and lived to tell the tale. Yet, as the van pulled up to her new home, Annabeth couldn't overcome the inescapable sense of doom.
Argus dropped her off outside a tiny café with a quaint garden. On the café's veranda eves a pink sign hung reading curly script that was hell to Annabeth's dyslexic eyes. All she knew was that it had something to do with strawberries being either 'godly' or 'ghastly'. The cottage was squashed between two tall residential buildings with designer clothes shops lining the street floor. Down the side of the café ran a narrow path overgrown with rose bushes.
"It's yours to have, Annabeth, for your final year of high school. It's not much, but after seven years at Camp Half Blood, you deserve to live like a normal teenager," Chiron had told her two days before. He said "normal teenager" like it was a daunting creature in his The Alpha to Omega Guide to Greek Monsters.
Camp Half Blood used the store front as the distributing centre for Half Blood Hill Strawberries. Along the foot path Soho's upper class strolled clad in crisp white linen pants and shirts. It was just a normal day for Annabeth's new neighbours. In her hand she clasped the celestial bronze key for the back door of the café. Argus nodded to Annabeth. She understood; Argus was terribly mortal-shy. From here Annabeth was alone.
Grabbing her bag, she closed the van door, walked up the lavender lined path to the café front, past people drinking coffee in the garden. By the time she was half way down the side alleyway the Half Blood Hill Strawberries van had already left. Around the back of the building the roses and lavender had gone rogue. Clearly the small back yard was never used – the grass was over grown and littered with random empty Pepsi cans.
Hardly any sunlight diffused into the garden in the late afternoon. The shadows were long over the garden from the back wall. Quickly Annabeth unlocked the back door.
Chiron had told her to take the spare room below the café. She hadn't even considered that the building would be one story and that the room was underground. Annabeth switched on the lights. She stepped into a tiny space between the backdoor and the café which was through another door in front of her. The sound of the coffee machine grinding and people's collective voices wafted into the small room. To her left a stack of crates stood. Bubble wrap and cardboard boxes were strewn across the cobblestone floor. To her right a rickety staircase led down into the dark.
Swallowing loudly, Annabeth hefted her bag over her shoulder. "Okay, Wise Girl, let's make you a home."
When she finally found the light in the room downstairs, Annabeth sighed exasperatedly.
"Really?"
The space was a swamp of mouldy strawberry boxes, possibly still containing fruit from when the Zeus was a boy. From the look of the wine bottles littering the floor Mr D must've used the café as a wine-laundering location to escape his contract. A dented bronze armour was clattered atop a mound of files and office books on the far side of the room.
The western wall had a small window peeking above into the café garden. Beside Annabeth the eastern wall had a large window mounted high looking into the overgrown back garden. Soft afternoon light drifted into the basement, illuminating the piles of rubbish. Had it not been for that large window facing into the back yard the room would've been like a brick bunker with zero contact to the world above.
The daughter of Athena set down her bag and went into ADHD clean-up mode.
Annabeth wouldn't admit it but the Godly Strawberries store had made her spine tingle from day one. It was in a swish neighbourhood where the women walked in for morning tea and stayed all day, where the cars were big and shiny and expensive, where the people looked down their noses at Annabeth. In her bright orange shirt and faded boyfriend jeans, Annabeth was far from fitting the Channel and Hermes trend of the neighbourhood. Above all, her years spent in the rolling fields of Long Island made Annabeth long for the outdoors as she established herself in the high density living of Manhattan.
Despite this it was a place to call home. For the second time in her life Annabeth was living alone and independent. She pushed that though from her mind. This time would be nothing like her weeks spent in the streets as a scared seven year old.
Finally, by the time the basement was clean the café above was closing its doors for the evening. The sound of a van pulling up outside the café drifted downstairs.
Above, someone knocked at the back door. Annabeth looked up, expecting to see Percy grinning down at her from the stairs. Instead she saw a pair of jeans fitted snuggly around curvy legs walking down the rickety steps.
"Piper?"
"Hey California, how're you going?" Piper made her way to the bottom, moving to hug her friend.
Disappointment shot through Annabeth. She had expected Percy to drop by her room the day she moved in. Maybe give her a hand unpacking… help tuck her in for her first night…. Guilt quickly laced through the daughter of Athena. Piper was kind to drop by. Besides, Percy had already told her he was going for an interview that afternoon which might hold him back from seeing her.
"I'm good. Getting stuff done, but it's slow work."
"Well, how about you finish bringing the bathroom back to life, then we'll split the room in half. You can decorate one side, me the other. But I bags getting the bed side."
When Annabeth emerged from cleaning the teeny bathroom underneath the stairs, she gasped.
Piper had unpacked and reconstructed the bed from storage upstairs. A tribal patterned quit was thrown over it. The wrought iron bedhead backed onto the brick wall on the southern side of the room. Looming above the bed like a halo was an amazing mural from white spray paint – a giant glowing owl with its wings spread and beak wide swooped a third of the wall. Feathers were looped along the bricks of Piper's side of the room.
"Oh, wow, Piper," Annabeth breathed, "Where did you think of this, let alone get all the supplies?"
"Hazel helped with the design of the owl," she held up a piece of paper on which a small scale picture was sketched, "I called dad, told him you were moving out. He got his shopper to pick up the bedspread and décor for you. That lamp," Piper indicated to an elegant lamp with a white linen shade on a bedside table, "used to be in my room at Malibu. They all arrived in the mail today. That's why I didn't come by earlier. The courier and removalist took ages to get sorted."
After the immense fear she felt about this big life changing decision, Annabeth was so touched by Piper's care that she had no words. Simply, she hugged her friend again. Her hands were stilled gloved and she still held a spray bottle of bleach but a friend meant so much to her at this time that she didn't care.
After a few seconds Piper laughed, "Okay, I'm not planning on going blonde today, so kindly extract the spray bleach from my hair thanks."
Piper kept working on the finishing touches of her side of the room while Annabeth unloaded the remaining furniture from both upstairs and the removalist van parked on the curb.
Annabeth's side of the room was minimalist – a desk with a work lamp, bookcase, second bookcase, and a simple clothes rack and set of draws.
As they worked they chatted about Jason heading to Camp Jupiter for the first time since the Battle, about Piper's clash with Drew a few nights ago, about how clueless Nico was acting towards Will Solace, who was clearing crushing on the son of Hades. Piper's voice was slightly resigned when she spoke of the Camp. He wasn't mentioned, but the undercurrent of Leo's disappearance strained Piper's voice and hand gestures. Annabeth hadn't heard a word of Charmspeak from Piper since the battle. If she didn't believe her friend's strength more than her heart of gold, Annabeth would've suspected Piper was either refusing to use her skills of persuasion, or had lost the ability all together since Gaia had been lolled back to sleep.
"I think we've done a good job," Piper stood back to admire their work. Hanging on the bed railing was Annabeth's bag with her textbooks in it ready for tomorrow. "You nervous about school?"
Yes. Absolutely terrified. I have to prove myself again. Once more battle the dyslexia and ADHD stereotype. "It should be okay, I mean, Percy can't walk with me tomorrow morning – he has swim team tryouts, but I don't really need to worry about anything right?"
Annabeth expected Piper to give her some deep meaningful support-speech about her relationship and her education. What actually happened: Piper smiled distantly and rubbed Annabeth shoulder, "You'll be fine." The daughter of Aphrodite walked around the room, running her hands across the brick walls, her eyes narrowing.
"You don't think – I mean… This doesn't freak you out a bit? The whole underground arrangement? After Ga-"
"Don't say her name, Piper. Please, just don't. And it'll be fine," Annabeth repeated, despite the rising panic in her throat which happened whenever something reminded her of being surrounded by the earth. She took a deep breath and flopped back onto her bed, closing her eyes, imagining she were up in the sky or floating on a boat in the ocean with Percy in control.
"Come on, let's see if we can sneak a few chocolate strawberries from upstairs."
Piper's comment broke the tension that had been swelling in the room.
"Reverting back to your kleptomaniacal ways are you?" Annabeth joked, quirking an eyebrow.
Piper stuck her tongue out. Smirking, she ran up the stairs, "You wish you had my lock picking skills, Wise Girl."
Annabeth followed. She took the stairs two at a time, keen to escape the underground. But only steps from the top, a chill gale pounded around the room. The smell of crude oil and rotting soil burned Annabeth's lungs as she inhaled sharply.
"Great! They have white chocolate and sprinkle covered strawberries," Piper called from the café.
Annabeth was shocked back to reality. The room smelled perfectly normal. The air pressure was fine, not like it weighed a million pounds as it had felt a moment before. There was no breeze. The air was still.
It was unreasonable, unfathomable after all she'd been through to fear living in the room under the café. But Annabeth couldn't shake the feeling that what had just happened was bad omen for the year to come.
Note: This is the start of a long journey for us. I wasn't all that happy with how Rick Riordan finished Heroes of Olympus in Blood of Olympus. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like so many ends were left untied and that more drama was needed. I wanted to see sacrifice! Where was the final words between our ships?! I was left so frustrated that I couldn't help thinking up this plot. From there it just exploded. Please, I would love to hear your thoughts so far. Next chapter coming VERY SOON!
x Milkwood