Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians or any of the affiliated merchandise.
Author's Notes: This will be written one scene per chapter per day (RL day); there will be 365 of these scenes. Time skips will occur, often without warning. That…is all. Please enjoy!
Warnings: alternate universe, previously unmentioned gods and goddesses
Illusory
adj. producing, based on, or having the nature of, illusion; deceptive; unreal; illusive
Moonlight
He was dreaming again. To be fair, he had a lot of dreams. Some made a certain sort of sense and others were fever dreams, bright and painful. This one, though, he had dreamt many times.
Nico sighed into the starry darkness. A galaxy drifted by him, its million of billion stars twinkling pale golds and bright blues. Starving black-holes roamed the expanse, consuming everything in their paths. It was quiet here. So wonderfully quiet…
He resented it.
Real life was nothing like this. Every where he went, Nico could hear enraged whispers and anguished screams. His cousin, Bianca, despite her own bizarre abilities couldn't hear them. No one he'd every met could…and now he knew why. Hearing them, that was what he had inherited from his godly parent. He was a therapist for people's shadows, apparently.
How was he supposed to do that when he could barely understand himself? He was only nine.
A comet raced passed him and, wishing for a distraction from his thoughts, Nico followed. Galaxies spun lazily, over and over, occasionally crashing into each other. Everything was slow, as if time didn't mean anything…
"Maybe it doesn't."
Nico flinched at the sudden noise and snapped his attention to his left. A woman stood with her back to him, watching a large cluster of stars consume a smaller group.
The pale ghostly woman turned and smiled. "Hello childe. Have you been enjoying my Gift?"
"Your…gift?"
Her smile widened, dark and ever knowing, and she nodded. Long empty shadows twisted over the planes of her face, blurring sharp cheekbones and highlighting moon-yellow eyes. Softly curling ash-white hair framed the woman's spindly body. Something about the woman scared him; a primordial fear clawed up his spine, whispering warnings as it urged him to run. Tensing, Nice readied himself to do just that.
The woman laughed, sudden and sharp.
"Come now, little amauros, there is nothing to fear from me." Shadows shifted as she moved to sit, entwining and twisting together into a lavish throne. They continued to shift, while she urged him to move closer, tangling together to form a smaller, but equally lavish, throne. Hesitantly, Nico sat. "Do you know me, childe?" Again, her voice was quiet, eerily so.
"You… You're one of the gods of the underworld."
"I existed long before there was an underworld," she said. "It was from my blood that Sleep and Death were born."
"I– what?" Was this Hades' mother? That didn't make much sense; Bianca's grandmother was Rhea. But, if they weren't somehow related, why would such an old goddess be interested in Nico?
"I am the Night, little amauros. I am Nyx."
The goddess smiled lovingly at him. Her cold fingers brushed his fringe from his eyes slowly, than left Nico's hair to trace his cheek. For a long moment, the two stared at each other. A sudden realization struck him. The line of the woman's jaw and the shape of her eyes…
"And you… You are my Heir."
Mother.
End Notes: 'Amauros' means 'shadowy; darkling' in Greek. When Nyx uses it, she means 'darkling.'