Hey-o everyone, I hope you guys have been doing well. Happy birthday to Percy, even if I'm a few days late for that. I hope you guys enjoy this chapter. Just wanted to thank you guys, there are almost fifty of you following this story, which is way more than I thought I'd get. Remember, you guys are welcome to suggest things for me to write, and if they're in character, I'll try to get to them. I hope you guys enjoy this chapter, and stay awesome.
-ROC6
Friday, August 21st, 20 years after defeating Gaea
Calypso looked up from the book she was reading. Her ears picked up the sound again. It was a whimper, coming from down the hall by the entrance to her husband's forge. She placed her bookmark, a dried moonlace, in the pages of the book before setting it down on the coffee table her feet had been resting on moments before. Barefoot, she padded down the hall to where she knew one of her children resided. Did one of the little ones hurt herself on the stairs? She knew that Rose would be busy building away in the forge. She'd hardly left it except to cover her basic human (or, semi-human, anyway,) needs since she'd been granted permission to join her father a few weeks ago.
Another, louder, whimper caused Calypso to hasten her approach. She hoped her daughter hadn't hurt herself too much. To her surprise, standing at the bottom of the stairs was Rose. The five-year-old sniffled softly before noticing her mother at the end of the hall.
"Mommy," she said with a grimace before holding out her arm, "Owie."
"Why didn't you ask your father?" Calypso asked, examining the wound.
"I did," Rose said simply.
"Did you remember what I said?" She asked, still only half paying attention.
Rose thought for a minute, "About him being an ego-cen-tric in-a-tent-tive poopy head?"
"Mmm," Calypso responded.
"Yes," Rose said blandly.
Calypso looked worriedly at her daughter's face, "Then why didn't you ask again?"
"I did," the Latina said, causing Calypso to sigh.
She shook her head, "How many times?"
"Twenty-three."
Calypso made a mental note to yell at Leo later, "Come on, Rose, let's go take care of your arm."
"Uppie?" she asked eagerly.
Her mother smiled, "Alright, you can uppie."
The child cheered while her mother scooped her up, "Come on, Sweetie, over here."
Setting Rose gently on the bathroom counter, Calypso asked her, examining once more the jagged cut, "How'd you hurt yourself?"
"On scrap metal," Rose said, as if it was an everyday occurrence.
"Alrighty," Calypso said cheerily, fishing in the cabinet for the so called 'boo boo' supplies.
She was aware she could easily heal her sniffly daughter with magic, but there were a few reasons she chose not to do so. The more obvious reason was she wanted Rose to know what to do if she ever found herself injured without anyone around. There were other reasons, though, that she was more reluctant to admit. The first one was that since she'd given up immortality upon leaving her imprisonment on Ogygia, it had become more draining to perform magic that she used to do without feeling any of her energy being sapped. Another reason she despised admitting was that she wasn't eternally a teenager anymore.
"Okay, Sweetie, first we're going to clean it so it doesn't get infected," Upon seeing her daughter's confusion, she explained, "That means it would hurt more."
"Oh," Rose commented, "Ow."
Calypso held her daughter's arm under the running water, making sure the water was warm as she did so.
"If you ever get a wound that bleeds a lots, press on it to slow it down," she said as she put some soap on a tissue and dabbed at her arm.
Rose winced when the soap went into her cut, and Calypso murmured soothingly, "I know, Sweetie, I know. You're doing great."
"Alright, next I'm going to rub on some of this SolSolution," She narrated, dabbing some of the whitish, translucent paste out of the container and onto her finger. The mother began to rub some on Rose's cut, "The Apollo kids make it, it prevents infection and helps it heal faster. You don't need it, but use it if you have it."
She unwrapped a band-aid and stuck it on Rose's arm, "This keeps the Sol from rubbing off, and collects the blood if it starts to bleed again."
Calypso held up Rose's arm and kissed it right on the band-aid, "There, that should make it feel better."
She pulled out a container and a bottle after putting everything else away, and looked at Rose really seriously, "If you ever get hurt really bad, these are ambrosia and nectar, they heal wounds almost instantly, but don't use much or you'll burn up."
The black haired little girl nodded with wide eyes, and her mother kissed her forehead before lifting her up again, "Come on, Rose, let's get you a cookie for being so brave."
She fist pumped with her eyes sparkling, "Yes!"
-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-
Rose examined the gash in her leg and once again cursed her naivete. Just because it hadn't happened before didn't mean it couldn't happen, which she was really regretting that she forgot. She knew, she knew, that the woods were stocked with monsters, even if they weren't as dangerous as some found in the mortal world, and she still wandered in unarmed. She tried to burn the monster, even threw some of her good screwdrivers. It wasn't until she found some oily old washers in one of her pockets that she managed to chase it off by setting them on fire and throwing them.
She sighed, limping over to her screwdrivers and gathering them up, they were her favorites after all, and hobbled over to the path to Bunker Nine. It had grown worn over the years since her father first started using it, so now there was a visible trail. She just had to make her way there so she could get some ambrosia and nectar and-
The soot stained girl groaned remembering she'd already reached her godly food quota for the day. The whole story was too complicated to relay in a reasonable amount of time, but it involved Cabin 11, rope, a tree complete with angry dryad, obliviousness, a couple of hours, and a concussion quick-healed with the godly substances. So, Rose couldn't rely on godly healing. Great.
Looking down at her leg, Rose blanched. Bad, bad idea on her part. Thinking back, she realized she'd done just about everything wrong. She'd been unarmed, without medical supplies, and she hadn't told anyone where she was going. Great job, she thought dryly to herself.
Alright. She realized that since the healing wouldn't be instantaneous, she'd have to take care of the wound properly, and with the amount of blood the gash was leaking, and her limited medical knowledge and ability, she was afraid she'd pass out before she got there unless she slowed down the blood flow. She closed her eyes and thought for a moment, what was it her mom always told her? If it doesn't stop bleeding, apply pressure to slow down the blood flow.
Okay, she thought, leaning against a tree, That doesn't sound too hard. Rose pressed her hand onto the wound. She held it there for what felt felt like forever, but when she eventually lifted her hand, the cut was no longer gushing blood, rather, it was just giving off a steady drip. It might not seem like much, but Rose mentally cheered, feeling a lot more confident. She began limping her way to Bunker Nine, cursing the monster that caught her thigh with it's claws.
After an annoying amount of hobbling, she found herself at the door to the bunker. She attempted to light her hand, but it sputtered for a moment, which worried her. Maybe the injury was more serious than she thought. She tried again, and it lit with ease, causing her to sigh in relief. She walked into the enormous workshop, and sat down on one of the basic wooden chairs kept by the door. They were there in case you need one for reaching something, or accidentally lit yours on fire, which happened more than she cared to admit.
Now what? she thought wearily. Searching through her memories, she was glad for once that her mother taught her basic injury care, because she knew the next thing to do was clean it. Okay, once again not too complicated, Rose thought in relief, Now I just need to find a place to… Ah! She could use the bathroom sink, or she could steal water out of her dad's 'mini' fridge. The bathroom was the better choice, but it was on the next level up, and her leg was feeling unsteady. While normally she could just hope for help to arrive, it was probably past curfew by now. She'd set out at dusk to pick up a small project so she could sneak into the home forge that night and work on it. So by now, curfew was probably well past.
As much as she wanted to just steal water bottles to wash her leg, she knew she should use soap simply because of all of the filth and germs that were likely on the monster's claw. She sighed.
Next, she knew, that she would put on any infection fighting cream or something that she had, but she had none with her, so she'd have to skip straight to the bandaging. After a few moments of thought she fetched a small knife and hacked off the ripped pant leg on her cargo pants. It was pretty much ruined, anyway. She emptied the pockets, transferring her various knick-knacks and such to her remaining pant leg, and she cut the sliced and bloody parts off of the fabric before finally ending up with a long strip of fire-proof fabric.
And next came the hard part: getting to the bathroom. Now that she could see the wound, she saw just how red the surrounding skin was and knew infection was coming. With a growl, she realized the stairs were out of the question. Normally, she loved riding the platform to the second level, but as she said before, her leg was feeling unsteady. Still, she limped over to it. She sat down on it, testing the cables. I can do this, Rose thought.
She pulled on one of the cables, as she had many times before, and she felt the platform raise a little. This was going to take a while, she realized, simply because she was only using her arms to haul the platform up.
After fifteen minutes of labor, five times how long it usually took, she was on the second floor. She hobbled over to the bathroom, hoisting herself up so she was sitting on the counter. The impish girl pulled some of the cheap paper towels out of the dispenser, wetting about half of them. After diligently washing the cut, Rose used the remaining paper towels to cover it with soap before rinsing it once more with water. Finally, she wrapped her leg with the chopped up pant leg, fastening the makeshift bandage with some safety pins she found in one of her pockets.
Thank the gods Mom taught me that stuff, she thought when she was finally done. For the ADHD legacy, the whole dilemma seemed to have taken forever. Rose hopped down from the counter, wincing slightly as she landed on her wounded leg. Still, it felt a lot better now that she'd cleaned and bandaged it. She walked around a little, even doing this weird, half-limp, half-jog thing, and decided to set out for home. Unless she was really involved in a project, she preferred not to spend the night in Bunker Nine. She swiped the project she'd wanted, a bronze flower, and was about to walk out into the woods when she remembered.
Rose swiped a knife off of one of the workbenches, and set off towards Camp and New Athens in her half-jog pace, careful to keep an eye open for monsters that might be lurking in the trees. Even though she knew her parents were going to kill her for this tomorrow, she didn't care at the moment. Today, she just wanted to get home so she could sleep in her own bed and thank her mother for teaching her all of those things.