The dusty sand charred his feet.
Carefully pulling himself out of the wreck of bronze shrapnel, electronic wiring, and oil muck, Leo Valdez had made it back.
He had remembered this place to be much smaller.
It's a big island, Leo, he remembered her telling him. Go find your own spot.
It had been several years, and Leo was inconsolable. Every night, it was the same nightmare. Ever since Gaea and her giants were defeated, it was not the bloodshed that he spilled out in the battlefield, nor the piercing cries that followed his violent, fiery explosions that haunted his dreams.
It was Calypso.
There was no other girl, that just radiated so much calm. So much peace.
He could remember when he was only a scrawny teenager, scrambling mad for something to put his hands to work to. But after the five days he had, exiled in Ogygia, something just took away all of his nervous bolts of energy that cracked in his bones.
She soothed his soul.
Ever since, Leo's restless hands only wanted one thing, to interlock with hers. No hammering or tinkering could fulfill the deep longing that the gods have shunned away from Leo, since his youth.
It was to be wanted.
Leo was always the outcast.
The misfit.
He never belonged.
He tried to cover it up with small jokes about him.
I'm probably not as much worth as a Percy or a Jason, he remembered himself saying. But at least I'm probably two or three Franks, right?
But even then, Frank proved to outmatch him. What once was a clumsy, chubby klutz became a respected, terrifying Praetor of the Twelfth Legion. Nope, there was no place for Leo Valdez.
He was sick of it.
Sick of it all.
He wasn't one of the Olympians' puppets. He was one to break rules. And he swore on the River Styx that he would get back.
And so for the past six years, Leo had pulled a Nico di Angelo, and disappeared from most of mankind. He had wandered, aimlessly, riding his bronze dragon Festus, searching in vain for Calypso's prison.
And after many trials, and much losses, he had overcome the gods' wills in preventing him from coming back.
Maybe they had given up on him, as he had on them.
It didn't matter to Leo, his goal was adamantly set in stone, to find Calypso.
And so, Leo escaped the wreckage of his beloved dragon. He shared many adventures with Festus, but there was no time to mourn.
Leo did not escape unscathed from the crash landing; his clothes were smoldered into wispy, pathetic threads that refused to hold together. Gashes streaked around his dark skin, but Leo refused to give up.
Slowly, he trudged on.
Hobbling into the forest, Leo sensed deep inside there was something wrong.
The island was silent.
It used to teem with life, or that was how he remembered.
He remembered . . . nights with Calypso, having stew and apple cider, retorting at each other and finding joy in the gloom of the prison island.
He remembered . . . a garden like no other, that was so magnificent, nothing could outmatch the organic beauty of the plants that Calypso grew.
He remembered . . . his promise. "Leo and Calypso's Garage: Auto Repair and Mechanical Monsters." A sly smile crept on his face. He knew that this was not to come true, now that his magic dragon was destroyed. But he was content to live here, along as he had Calypso by his side.
But there was something not right.
Maybe in Leo's wildest dreams, Calypso would be there, at the beckoning of the low tide, waiting for Leo to return and giving him a hero's welcome, but in any case, there had to be a sign of her.
There was none.
The forest was empty and cold.
It seemed vast, as if he was traversing in an unknown, misty continent, instead of a small, uncharted, magical island.
Suddenly, Leo stopped.
Facing him was all so familiar, yet ghastly daunting.
It was the cave where Calypso lived.
Darkness shrouded its mouth, and cobwebs lined the wet wallsides.
Something urged Leo to move away, but Leo pushed forward.
Stepping into the dark cave, he felt shivers running up his spines each time his bare feet made contact with the cold ground.
This was not how it used to be.
There was warmth before, light, Leo even remembered laundry hung there, where Calypso's invisible servants tended to day and night.
The cave was a dead end, so after standing still, peering into the darkness at the mouth of the cave, he left.
He walked around the island, but could find no one, or nothing.
Only loneliness, and cold.
Leo's original strength was sapped from exploring the island, and his will was starting to waiver. He had been on this damned quest for six years; he didn't know that he was going to fail. He just kept pushing, and pushing, and now, everything he hoped for, everything he worked for . . . nothing.
Running down to the beach, he saw that the wreck of Festus had magically disappeared. He dipped his feet in the frothy water, but he knew that there was no way out other than the magical raft that brought him out of the island the first time. He regretted he ever did.
Leo bit his lip, hard, until blood slowly leaked into his mouth.
In exhaustion, he collapsed onto the sand, unable to move, out of terror, out of grief, and pure misery.
He did not know how many hours that was he spent, lying down as the waves gently rocked him in his coma. But for some reason, he stayed planted deep in the sand, as if he was slowing sinking into the earth, as if Gaea had come back to life and was swallowing him whole.
"Now you know what I felt," said a soft and weary voice, filled with sadness and despair.
Leo struggled to flicker his eyes open.
A girl, about the age of fifteen or sixteen, kneeled in an innocent white dress by his right side. She had a timeless face, a quality that was so beautiful yet so haunting. She smelled of cinnamon and seabreeze, as the wind whisked her caramel-colored braided hair back and forth.
For a second, there was a small glimpse of awe and excitement in Leo's eyes. But they drooped back down showing its' chocolate gleam.
"You aren't real, are you?" he choked out.
The girl just stared down at Leo, her luscious lips trembling, and her brow pressed in a frown of sympathy.
It felt like eternity and eons passed in that silence.
"No, I am not," she said, looking away into the grey sky.
This wasn't the first time this happened, it was just very long since the last. Leo used to commonly have visions of Calypso visiting him. But those Calypso visions, they refused to tell him if he was really her essence visiting him, or only a figment of his imagination. Probably a little bit of both.
All his efforts, worthless. He had finally made it to Ogyglia, but it was empty and barren, and all that was left to console him was a shadow of his past. Much thanks, Zeus, Leo cursed. After all, Zeus was the one who laid down the magic of this island in the first place.
Thunder boomed in the horizon, as if acting as a response from the Lord of the Skies. It was not right to mock the Olympians, but Leo shrugged it off, what was there for him to lose? Nothing. Not even his life mattered to him. Instead, he just stared into the vastness of space.
His mouth opened to speak something that crossed his mind, in the middle of all the misery that brooded there.
"Go on," whispered the girl mournfully.
"Suppose . . . suppose you were real. Suppose you are truly Calypso . . . would you—"
Leo decided not to continue the sentence, and shut his mouth.
Again, the girl only gave him a teary expression.
Leo calmed his thoughts, and cleared his mind. He opened his mouth again.
"—would you at least pretend to be her?"
His shifty eyes stammered, if eyes could stammer, until he found his gaze locking into hers.
She gave only a brief, reluctant nod, that you could not tell from a yes or a no.
Leo's face turned more grim, and thought about what he wanted to ask this . . . this apparition of the girl he loved.
"What happened here?"
The girl opened her mouth to speak, trying to find the right words to say.
"I was . . . overcome by grief."
"I thought that was not possible?"
"That's what the gods thought."
"So you're dead?"
It took the girl a few moments before she could answer, nodding again in the same reluctant way. Teardrops were forming in her beautiful amber eyes.
"Why couldn't you wait for me?" spat Leo bitterly.
"I did. I waited for many like you, for many years. They never come back. You never came back."
"I'm here now," Leo said.
The girl ignored Leo, and continued.
"I stopped tending to my garden. I dismissed all my servants. I couldn't eat, sleep, or even dream of anything. The gods sent me Hermes to try to cheer me up, but even he was consumed by the grief that has been overpowering this island. So he left as well."
There was much anger and resentment that the girl released when she said this. Millenia of bottled up regret was being poured out on Leo.
"I am all but remains . . . a shadow of her . . . a past memory that should be long forgotten. She, Calypso, has withered away. Your false hope that you and the others brought here has consumed her. Now what do you say? What will you say? What will you have left to take from me?" she cried, her tears rolling fast down her cheek.
There was so much rage and bitterness, and Leo could taste every drop of it. He felt the guilt wrap around his soul, and made him feel like he wanted to crawl and hide at the deepest depths of Tartarus for his sins and the sins of the ones before him.
There was a deathly silence that reigned for the next minutes, as the seas turned more violent. The gentle, rocking waves, turned ferocious, and slapped salt over the beaten body of Leo.
Yet oddly, he was not fazed. He was too weak to feel any pain. He could only lie down in the sand where he was stuck on, and think.
The girl also was not battered by the waves, still kneeling by his side.
In between the breaths he took when the waves were not over his face, Leo chose to speak.
"Calypso," he said throatily, as he pushed all his strength trying to reach her.
"You cannot touch me, I am only a past memory that she has left behind."
Leo withdrew his arm, and opened his mouth.
"I have never stopped loving you."
A wave slammed over Leo's face, blocking his next few words. The wave receded, and Leo continued talking.
"Ever since, I couldn't stop thinking about you. There is nothing that I wanted more but to be with you."
Another wave poured over, then was pulled back.
"I slaved . . . for 6 years looking for this place. Breaking every rule to come back to Ogygia."
The waters seemed to calm, letting Leo talk, but thunder and lighting continued to boom in the grey, swollen clouds that covered the sky.
"And I know . . . that almost is never enough. I should have tried harder . . . I should have come earlier . . . but I didn't."
The girl could not reply. She had stopped crying, but there was still so much sadness in her eyes as Leo recited these words to her.
"So I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything. I'm sorry for giving you false hope. I'm sorry for letting you down. I'm sorry for making you dream about things that could never happen. I'm sorry," said Leo throatily.
"I have never stopped loving you," he continued. "And I never will. In this life, or in the next."
Leo was waning. He knew he wasn't going to last any longer, as his breaths became shorter and more turbulent.
There was a wicked gleam in his eyes, something more like Leo in his youth. A smile broke in his lips.
"What was that called, Leo and Calypso's General Store? I've . . . forgotten," he said, choking, trying to cover it up with laughter.
The girl did not reply. She stayed grim and straight faced. Instead, she disappeared, as the waves carried the demigod into his watery grave. Ironic, the boy who controlled flames, washed into an ocean burial.
"Garage. Auto Repair and Mechanical Monsters," said a girl, in an innocent white dress, braided caramel-colored hair, and that smelled like cinnamon. Tears slowly slid down her face as she said each word with such bitterness and remorse.
She hid her thin, hourglass-shaped body behind the trunk of one of the mossy, tall trees, that sat in between the border of the beach and the forest.
Peeking out, she waited until the waves carried Leo's corpse out of sight.
"It's for the best," said Hermes, putting his rough hand over her bare shoulder. "He was the most persistent one, I'll have to say."
Calypso did not reply. Oh, how she hated the gods, hated hated hated them! Of all the tortures they had released onto Leo preventing him from entering or finding the island, this was the worst. They had made her, the final act.
"That was a wonderful illusion you made, the apparition of yourself, and that ghastly depth of dread you placed over the island," applauded Hermes. "At this rate of cooperation, you'll get out of this wretched prison in no time! Now take off this trick, it's starting to give me the creeps," babbled Hermes.
Calypso remained silent.
Hermes bent down on one knee and looked her straight in the eye.
"In the end, no man finds Ogygia twice," said Hermes, his words clear and crisp, stabbing Calypso's already broken heart into finer shards.
She bit her tongue at first, but she could not hold it.
Raw and spiteful, she spat at Hermes.
"He did. Leo Valdez did."