Finally. I post on my brand-spanking new account.
Yayz.
Annabeth Jackson
Our children were in no way perfect, but Percy and I didn't care.
It was eighteen years after Percy and I had saved Olympus in the Great Prophecy, and World War III was in effect. Russia had nuked Nigeria for the previously undiscovered amount of gold, silver, diamonds, and oil, and the U.S. rose to the African country's defense. Soon after they did this, the U.S. put another draft into place, and August 18th was drawn from the bucket which held three hundred and sixty-five other dates. Almost a year later, Russia officially made another switch back to Communism, dragging Bosnia/Herzegovina, Bulgaria, the Ukraine, Kosovo, and Belarus with it.
The U.S. was currently under martial law. Children under the age of fifteen were not allowed outside after four o' clock without an adult, and no one was allowed outside after 10 o' clock P.M.
Not only that, but a draft was in effect. All I could do to keep our family of five together was pray that August 18th or July 1st (they were now including women in the draft. Didn't want to offend those feminists) was drawn. As if our luck would hold.
Percy and I had three children. There were our twelve year old twins Orion (Ryan, for short) Lucas and Andromeda Nicole, and our three year old daughter Natalie Marie. The twins looked absolutely nothing alike. Andromeda had black curly hair about six inches below her shoulders, which she later streaked with turquoise at the age of eight, and bright green eyes. Ryan had blonde, shaggy hair that went just below his ears and also had green eyes. The only way you could tell that they were actually twins were the exact same shape and color of their eyes. Natalie had blonde, curly hair and grey eyes. She looked exactly like I did when I was three. Most people just called her Natalie, but Percy called her Nat. Unless she was in trouble, she was never Natalie. Just Nat. And Percy wasn't the only person who called her that, but he was really the only one she came into contact with frequently. She was extremely attached to Percy, and when August 18 was drawn when she was only three months old. It hit her hardest of all.
I worked as an architect for a landscaping company. Because Andromeda and Ryan would have to walk an hour to get to our apartment, and their school closed at three-thirty, they simply came to my office with a friend of theirs from another military family. Naomi Peterson, who lived in the Bronx. Her mother worked until about four thirty, and her father had also been drafted, so I was more than happy to let her stay. There was a pretty hefty fine if a child was caught out alone after four, and Naomi's family just couldn't afford it.
Natalie always cried at night when she was smaller, but now that she could actually understand, she didn't cry. She woke up screaming, and the only thing that would calm her down was a song that was playing when we found out Percy had been drafted. It was called "Safe and Sound," by Taylor Swift. It was from the movie The Hunger Games, and was probably referring to when Rue died, but Natalie didn't know that. All she knew was that everything would be okay in the morning.