Author's Note: Enjoy this plot bunny that somehow became a thing!
Disclaimer: Rick Riordan owns everything including these characters, this fictional world, and my soul.
Warnings: NA
Stacked with: MC4A; Eternal Rhapsody; Summer Bingo
Individual Challenge(s): Wise Seaweed (Y); Ways to the Heart; Summer Vacation; Seeds; Interesting Times; Mountain Dwellers; Old Shoes; Rian-Russo Inversion; Themes and Things A (Love); Trope It Up C (Secret Relationship); In a Flash
Representation(s): Poseidon
Bonus challenge(s): Eternal Boredom; Second Verse (Delicious Lie); Chorus (Not a Lie)
Tertiary bonus challenge: NA
Word Count: 709
Summer Bingo
Space Address (Prompt): 4C (Fire)
Quite Something
It hadn't been more unusual of a night than any other, he had thought. They'd been sitting around the campfire, roasting sausages and hotdog buns and marshmallows in no particular order, caught up in one of those long conversations that lasted so long that it didn't need to have a head or a tail. Sally had been keen to show him a trick where you sliced along both ends of the sausage so that they curled up as they cooked, hence creating a "spider weenie." The stars above were shining in their usual bright tapestry and the waves, just as he was at the moment, were peaceful and smooth.
"Wait a second," Sally said. "I'll be right back."
"Did you need a sweater?" he asked, ready to offer her his. Sometimes he forgot how cold mortals got. Night had fallen, and she was still wearing the jean shorts, bikini top, and flowy cardigan she'd spent the day in.
"No that's okay," she said before walking up the sandy hill, back towards the cottage.
Waiting for her, he leaned back and took the time to close his eyes. He reached out with his consciousness, sensing across the waves of Montauk beach. The multitude of beings in the area were up to their usual routines—feeding, scavenging, hunting, hiding, digging themselves into the sand for the night…
"Happy birthday to you," he heard behind him. "Happy birthday to you… Happy birthday, dear Poseidon… happy birthday to you…"
He turned around and there was Sally, who had indeed pulled a hoodie on but was walking carefully towards him with a small frosted cake topped with candles.
"What's this?" he laughed.
"Oh, a great mortal tradition," she said, taking on an aggrandizing voice. "An honoured ritual to show appreciation and love while marking the passing of time."
She smiled and then came back to her usual self. "It's a birthday cake, Sea Monkey. You smile and blow the candles and make a wish."
"I wish I knew the occasion," he said before blowing them out.
"Well, usually wishes that you don't keep secret don't come true, but I'll be generous since you're obviously new," Sally said, plopping the cake on his knees and taking her seat next to him, on the upturned log they'd dragged up the turf and to their campfire pit. "You were just really nice at the cookout my friends threw on my birthday last month, and I figured that… well, I don't really know if Olympians celebrate birthdays, or if you even know your birthday since it happened millennia ago. Also your date of birth in particular was marked by cannibalism, which I'm sure tampers the occasion. I'm sorry if that's a sore spot I shouldn't have brought up, I just kind of know because of… well, that minor in classics I tried getting… Anyways, the bottom line is that I figured you probably didn't have a birthday, and thought your deserved one, so today is your birthday."
He looked at her with a smile. She held his gaze.
"What?" she asked. Then she frowned, concerned. "Do you have an actual birthday I just don't know about? Oh no..."
"No, it's just impossibly sweet," he said. She smiled.
"I didn't want you to get suspicious, so I didn't ask about cake flavours," she said. "But this lady from Alabama, who lived next door and used to watch me when my uncle worked late, had an old Southern cream cheese cake recipe that's never failed—so I made that. And then I used almonds, to make the top look like a sand dollar."
"It does," he nodded. "You did."
"I cheapened out on candles though, which I thought was fair given, well, the immortality thing," Sally said. "But they're green like your eyes, so there's that."
She smiled at him and he couldn't help but smile back.
"You're quite something, Sally Jackson, to look at a god and wonder when my birthday is," he said.
"Well…" she shifted uncomfortably at the compliment, like she always did. "Yes, and so I took a proactive approach and decided that it would be July 13th."
"July 13th," he said. "Noted. Can we eat the cake yet?"
"Yes, that's the next step of birthdays," she smiled.