The craziest thing happens.
He responds.
.
This fictional character she created responds.
.
It's not possible. It can't be.
She spends the night studying it. (It being the letter, though it can't be a letter, it can't be anything, since Percy's not real.) She created him, wrote to him without giving him a personality, and now he responds less than two days later-
(-one hundred one. That's how many days it's been since she's left-)
- with the same shade of summer riptide blue in a sort of chicken-scrawled, barely-legible mess. But the fact that this character responded, that it even has its own personality baffles her.
Her hands shift the envelope for two hours without opening it, studying it, memorizing the phenomenon.
Finally, curiosity overtakes her.
She could imagine him, bent over the paper, eyebrows furrowing though not stressed. He writes on a book, kneeling on the ground, because he doesn't have a desk.
Annabeth could see him in her mind and that should be enough to prove he's not real, but she reads the letter anyway.
.
Hi, Annabeth.
I'm Percy, but you obviously knew that. And thanks for the letter... I guess?
I mean, thanks and everything, it made my mom happy because she thinks I have a girlfriend- which I don't have a girlfriend, and you're not because-
(A section is scribbled out to the point of illegibility, but it almost makes her laugh. She skips the dark blob of blue and continues.)
But anyways, why did you send it? Is it for an assignment? You didn't say anything except
(What did she say?)
how you're mom left.
(And out of all the things she says-)
I'msorry for that. I know what it feels to grow up with a single mom, but at least I'm lucky to have Paul.
He's my English teacher. Speaking of him (writing of him?) he assigned us this project to write to someone because 'writing is a lost art, blah blah blah.'
So can I still write to you? I won't send anything bad, I'm
(The rest of the sentence is scribbled out hazardously, though she could pick out 'I'm not a pervert.' This time, she gives a laugh.
Just the slightest of ones, but it's there.)
Anyways.(Hidden behind another wall of ink is 'You should laugh more.'It's hidden. It's there. And it brings her back to her original question of how this was possible; this correspondence to someone who doesn't exist.)
Write me back?
Percy Jackson
.
Percy Jackson.
Her fictional character gave himself a last name and a personality.
Of course.