[ holds up hands like t'challa in black panther ] and as you can see, i am not dead!
NEW YORK CITY, UPPER EAST SIDE:
Alone, in an empty, shadowed apartment, filled only with the soft hum of the heater, Sally sat at the kitchen table. Papers were thrown haphazardly in front of her. Novel drafts filled with hasty pen scratches and ink marks and tears. The kettle on the stove started to whistle and in the coldness, there was no one to get it for her.
And then very suddenly, there was.
Sally slammed her fist gently against the tabletop as he entered the room, clad in sweats and a shirt, polished from head to toe. He passed her in slow strides, switched off the burner, turned to her, and waited. Somewhere the steady hum of the heater gave out as it shut off; silence.
She sighed. "You again."
"Yes," His voice, though gruff, was quiet. She shuffled the papers together and stood, then made way for the den. "Sally—" She spun on her heel.
"Don't!" She yelled. "Poseidon, don't—I can't. All those questions, I can't talk about him again. I can't talk about him if he's not here. Safe, with me." Underneath her gaze, unable to continue, he gave a nod. The room was quiet again.
After a moment, "Is, is the gentleman. . ."
"Paul," Sally offered. "An academic conference." The god nodded again. Like a sickness, always lingering, silence overtook the two. Sally knew, with the instinct that only came from past lovers, that despite the compliance, questions would come nonetheless. She stormed off and with haste, he followed. "You're unbelievable."
They entered the den and she threw her papers down on the low table.
"It will only take a few moments."
"You're hunting my son!" Sally screamed, with the intensity of a dragon's roar. "My son, your! Son!" Her hands pressed gently to her face and then she let them drop. "I don't want to talk." Poseidon walked up to her, slipped his hands over her shoulders.
"My brother is unstable. I don't want him coming after you."
Sally laughed; a broken, little hum. "I'm not scared of him." She searched his face, a perfectly handsome face he had changed to fit her age a little better. A face she could still read. "And neither are you!" She slapped his hands off of her. "And yet, you're still here. So I can tell you the same things over and over again." In a moment of weariness, backed by a low, constant ache of grief, she caved. "Fine. He disappeared for months and then he showed up with a few of his friends." Sally started to pace, five steps back and forth.
"Yes," Poseidon said.
"When he told me it had to do with all of you," She pointed to him. "I took it at face value. Why wouldn't I?"
"Reasonable."
"The time between that day and the first day of camp was short. He seemed fine. Tired, but happy. He called me a few times this summer. That's it. That's all I know." She stopped pacing. "I know my son, he would never do something like this." She waved her hands around. "Whatever it is you keep suggesting."
"Sally—"
"He's not vile, he hasn't been sneaking off to the woods every night to plan your demise. I know you're smart enough to know that." Despite the red-rim of her eyes, she looked wild, angry. Two things Poseidon had rarely been the audience too. He sighed and held his hands up in mock defeat, then took a seat on the low table next to them.
After a few beats, "May I at least ask what the phone calls were about?"
"I've told you that, too. There was the pegasus call, the Annabeth call, the naiad call, the recent—" Poseidon looked up at the moment she looked down and their gaze caught as her words choked off. She turned as he stood. "Leave my home." They swept through the hallway, or rather, she fled until he slipped a hand about her waist and spun her to face him. There were but inches between them.
"Please tell me," He shook his head, resigning himself to further argument. "Tell me everything. I don't care if it's bad, if he cursed me, I don't care—"
"Tell me what you know."
"Ask."
"Do you know where he is?"
"No."
"Do you know who he's with?"
"Several. The Athena girl, the Castellan boy. . .others."
"Have you hurt him?" Her question drew his eyes to hers. They were glistening against the moonlight that leached into the apartment. They looked like stars.
"No," He lied. After a brief pause, Sally released a weak, little laugh.
"I can still tell when you're not telling the truth," She said, though her words were thick. Although it didn't happen to gods, Poseidon thought, if his mouth could dry up and his tongue shrivel, it would then. She patted a hand against his chest; it thumped softly against the fabric. "Okay, well. I suppose you'll be disappointed. He was just checking up on me. He mentioned his friends. He said he was too far away for me to go get him, whatever that means."
"Then he said that the Olympians were angry with all of them," Her hand on his chest curled until it was a single index finger pointing at him. "That you were angry with him. That's all I know." His hands slipped from her waist to cradle her lower back. Sally swallowed her tears, "I remember that move."
"No move," Poseidon murmured. An ache gathered between the two—the time for argument had passed. Minutes passed without a spoken word, bated breaths and heartbeats filling the stretch of time. Until finally, "Allow me to bring you somewhere secret, somewhere safe." When she tried to protest, he quelled her worry, "Not far, just safe."
"I'm human."
"You're his mother," Poseidon said, stressing his words. "In my experience, they are never lucky. Zeus is beside himself, I cannot trust him to fight fair any longer." Sally took a deep breath. The weight of the words pressed down upon them. No doubt her future would lead to misery if the chance for capture was taken. Desperation sat heavy on his face and she watched it grow stronger by the moment.
"Okay," she whispered at last. "But protect him." Sally took his face in her hands when he tried to pull away. "Protect him."
Her grip lessened as he gave a small, resigned nod, but the damage was done.
The inches between them had disappeared. Shaky puffs ghosted against their lips. Somewhere within the apartment, the heater reignited, but the sound was distant now. It could never be louder than the look they shared.
"Sally," he warned. A thousand, thousand memories sung between them.
She dropped her head into the crook of his neck; her arms snaked around him, "I'm tired."
The couple vanished in a flurry of sea spray but a moment later.
.
SOMEPLACE, SOMEWHERE:
Rachel felt a gentle hand caress her curls. She was back on the bed, the fluffy down gentle underneath her fingertips. It was night, the city asleep—it actually did sleep, believe it or not. She could sense it, like some innate New Yorker gene, from the quiet energy in the room.
The hand combed through her mane again.
She opened her eyes, though she wasn't awake.
It was a place of in-between she'd visited many times before. Often to speak with a god. For a split moment, she thought Apollo would greet her.
But it wasn't him.
A woman hovered over her, body curled close to her side. Rachel wasn't familiar. Kindness kept a home in the woman's eyes as she gazed down, gazing at her in reverence. Dark tresses framed a sharp face and tumbled over tense shoulders.
It took her a moment to realize the woman was tinged a sickly shade of green.
Their hands intertwined. They knew one another without knowing. Rachel asked without asking.
"I am the essence of the Delphi oracle, the embodiment," she said.
"But aren't I the embodiment?"
The woman laughed and nodded, "Yes, so, in a sense, you are talking to yourself."
"Huh. . ." Rachel let the moment drift, then she remembered. And then she knew why this was happening. "My friends."
"Yes, your friends."
"I can't let this happen."
"You have to."
This in-between had to be a place out of time, a bubble of unreality, where nothing was real and the world was suspended. It was the only way Rachel could believe she swallowed the words down so easily, so unconnected.
Perhaps it was disbelief.
"I'm not like the other oracles," she said. "The prophecy—the future—is mine. I can change it."
"There is nothing to change."
Rachel wanted to hiss and bite, but she waited. There was more to say.
"They never asked you for a prophecy. There is nothing to change."
"But I saw—"
"The answers. Answers they took. And answers do not always have to be right."
For a tiny, beautiful moment she hoped.
"Don't get too excited," the woman sighed. "Your ideas do not have to be right either."
"And if they win? Lock me away to be their good, little oracle for eternity?"
"I will stay by your side. Like I have with all the others."
Rachel wanted to cry; she could almost feel the phantom pain of a burning throat. "I don't understand why you're here." A rustling came from the hallway, then a shout. She tensed without reason. To them, she was still nothing but a slumbering girl. The oracle laid next to her now, pressing head to shoulder.
"To put you at ease. You are not alone. Sleep with peace."
As they lay there, in the in-between where there was nowhere to focus but on yourself, she felt it. The pulsating thrum she'd often feel before a prophecy. It converged at their hands and she flexed hers. The separation of them—their bodies—instead of unison was strange, but gave clarity. To everything. As if she could see the future as Rachel, and not Rachel and the oracle. See not with fear, but with love for her friends.
And still the glimpses she caught were not comforting, the whispers she heard made her shiver, but she tried to relax.
Breathe. Hope.
"It feels like the world is coming to end."
"Not the world, but something," the oracle said than hushed her. Rachel let the thrum between them lull her back to sleep. She was no good to anyone exhausted, especially—hopefully—her rescuers.
.
In the front room of the penthouse, Orion watched the skyline.
Melinoe watched him, the list of newly inducted ghosts forgotten in her lap.
His golden, mechanical eyes flitted across the skyscrapers, constantly coming back to the distant pointed building in the middle of the crowd. His jaw tensed.
"Don't do it," Melinoe caught his eyes when he turned, pupils dark and severe.
Orion—dressed in the finest, form-fitting silver athleisure wear—grew in size before her eyes; a whole two feet taller, body shifting to accommodate. "She's upset."
"No one has seen you for centuries."
He raised his arms and gestured wide, "There is no more convenient time to reappear than amidst chaos. I will be a friendly face."
"Fine," Melinoe went back to her list. "Get yourself killed, lover boy."
The huntsman flashed out of the room, a golden streak across the night sky—an arrow flying.
.
OLYMPUS:
Alone in the gardens, hidden amongst the flowers and bush, where no one would see nor dare search, the maiden goddess wept at the base of a clear, low pool. Every so often ringlets skittered across the water, created by her tears. The shadowed sky above was mirrored perfectly within the marble circle and her gaze would drift, despite her best intentions, towards the running huntress. A stunning array of stars, their shine no longer as bright as the others.
Artemis could not recall when they had dulled—she had not been paying enough attention.
The pool gathered another batch of tears.
"My lady," a gentle voice came from behind and she spun on them.
"Who dares interrupt my solitude—" Artemis' shout died at the sight of the intruder.
Orion, with arms open and palms outstretched in submission, stood only ten feet away. The great huntsman, slayer of beasts, the loyal companion that traversed countless trails with her. Felt the same dirt under his footstep, the same furs against his skin, that she had.
The man slain by her hand, right before her.
"How?" her head shook in wonder. Orion gestured up.
"Your cries drifted high and I could not bear another moment to let you suffer alone, my friend. So I willed myself alive with the power of that sound," he smiled when she laughed, then spoke another, more believable lie, "Word of what happened has reached the Isles and I struck a deal with Melinoe. I'll be hunting disrupted spirits for a century or two."
Artemis, weakened by grief, needed no further explanation and bounded to him in glee, smile wide as they embraced. Like long-lost childhood friends reuniting, she fawned over him, eyes alight, the feeling of despair fading by the moment.
The joy was so overwhelming the goddess could hardly take note of Orion's too-tender touch, the harsh fixate of his gaze on her, the broiling ego of toxic man he had not possessed in the past. "I am sorry for the pain those children have caused you, my lady," his hands were in hers. A moment of silence passed.
Her eyes fell, "I don't know where I went wrong."
"You did nothing—"
Artemis sighed, "You haven't been here."
Orion sucked in a breath and silently thanked her correction for hiding his slip-up. He gestured to a bench and they sat. He tried again, "But I remember Zoe. The fault of her betrayal does not fall to you. There was never a moment you did not show her kindness."
Artemis wept suddenly, a sharp cry, "I still love her, even now that I know, at this very second. How will I do it? I don't think I can." He enveloped her in another hug, relishing in the weight of her in his arms, in the easy success of their plan.
Still, the ache in his heart was real.
"You don't have to do it yourself," he murmured.
"Father will accuse me weak if I do not," she said. "This issue has grown far too public."
"Then is it not too forward that I might stand at your side—"
"Would you?" she pulled back. "And afterward, when it's over, would you travel with the hunt once more?"
"It would be an honor, my lady. Anything to bring you joy. You're the whole reason I'm here."
She smiled again and this one remained.
The sudden sound of footsteps broke them apart. Apollo, a gleaming, golden sunspot against the night, entered the circle, with two steaming cups in hand, looking just as weary. He froze when he spotted them. "They didn't have low-fat ambros—" He squinted, mind lagging.
Orion waved and Artemis stood, running between them both.
"Brother, look who's come back to help. All the way from the Isles."
Apollo voiced his enthusiasm, a string of words laced with displeasure, and Artemis gathered closer. They argued in hushed tones, back and forth. He watched from the corner of his eye, their silver and gold smudging to ink stains.
Soon enough, Apollo would disappear.
And it would be him and her left to light the skies.
thank you so much for reading. i hope you enjoyed it x
