New story folks. Just testing the waters with a new chapter. Flames are welcome. After all, I couldn't cook marshmallows without flames, could I? Feel free to tell me I'm a horrible little freak who doesn't belong on fanfiction. I BASK IN YOUR CRITICISM! BWAHAHAHA! Okay, I'm done now. Sorry 'bout that.
In the village of Nikkolene, there was a beautiful, smart, brave, bold, 17-year-old princess named Annabeth Chase. She was being forced to marry. It was awful.
In the village of Nikkolene, there was a brave, loyal, protective, resilient 17-year-old boy named Percy. He was a slave in his own home to his step-father. It was pure, unadulterated hell.
Percy Jackson was fast asleep, dreaming a horrible dream.
"Mom...Mom, wake up…Mom…Mom…"
He was seven in this dream. Had it really been so long ago? He could remember this moment as if it was yesterday.
"Mom…"
He knelt next to a small bed, lightly shaking a young lady. She looked about twenty-two, with flowing, thick, chocolaty brown hair and long, luxurious eyelashes, so out of place with her starved form and beet-red palette. She kept making fitful, involuntarily movements, jerking her arms and writhing in her sleep. The heat seemed to radiate off of her petite, delicate body as she slept.
"Mom…wake up…please wake up…"
Tears were falling from Percy's huge, innocent, sea-green eyes. His voice was choked and hoarse, his breathing staggered and panicked. His hands shook violently, and the happy flush drained from his face sharply and quickly, like the unplugging of a radio. What would he do if she was gone? He couldn't live without his mother!
"Mama…"
His mother tensed and relaxed suddenly, her limbs sprawling, her eyelids fluttering a bit before lying still, half covering her gorgeous bronze eyes. He gasped, the breath shaky with emotion, trying and failing not to cry any harder. The bitter tears of a lonely little boy pushed out and broke free, flowing like rivers in a rainstorm, fast and furious and flooding the towns they ran through, as he reached out and closed his mother's eyes gently, slowly, to stay closed forever.
His mother was dead. She was never coming back. Never.
His mom was dead.
Now all he and his little sister had left was Gabe, and, even at the innocent age of seven, he could tell that that wasn't exactly something to be thankful for.
Suddenly, the door blasted open, and balding, ugly, fat old Gabe burst in, a weeping Ariadne under his flabby arms. "Over here, brat!"
"MOM!"
Percy's eyes flew open. Sun filtered through the ragged cloth that covered the window in the loft of the barn. His cruddy hay bale bed was soaking in sweat, chunks of it flung everywhere. He could hear Gabe screaming his name from inside the house.
It looked like was time to start another day.
