"Hey Pipes" Percy said as he saw her sitting on the beach. "Whatcha doing?" "I am trying to ignore the fact that I am the granddaughter slash daughter, somewhere in between, of the sky. That in and of itself is not too bad, Percy is a great grandchild of the sky. But I am the half-grand daughter of the sky's balls." "Well, in a way, everyone comes from someone's balls. Except Annabeth and her siblings." "Yeah, my mom kind of dodged the whole sex thing. I can't blame her. Objectively speaking, it's really weird." "You know, you get used to looking at guys and thinking 'Yeah, I could see him being inside me'. You're right, now that I say it does sound weird. And given that my mom is the goddess of sex, me saying that is about as strange as if Annabeth said 'now that I say it, it does sound weird' after explaining something math related." I scanned through everything I knew about mathematics, searching for the weirdest aspects of it. "I mean, the method from which we get the bx^a abx^a-1 rule for derivatives in differential maths comes from someone thinking 'Okay, I need to divide by zero but I am not allowed to do that so I'll just replace zero with a variable and divide by that and once I finish doing that, I stop pretending that the variable isn't zero.' And the best part: it worked flawlessly. That was just as weird to me as sex is to you and probably the other way around as well." "Could you not do that?" Percy suddenly said. "Using bad analogies is my job, not yours." "First, that is a ridiculous thing to be upset about and second it was Piper who came up with the analogy in the form of a vague description of a situation. I merely provided an example for what she had described. So if you're going to complain about anyone it'd have to be Piper." "Do you really think I'm stupid enough to argue with someone who has charm speak? Piper requires a more, uh, direct confrontation." This direct confrontation came in the form of a jet of water soaking her right leg. She instantly agreed that Percy was taking this way too seriously. She told him so and even if had not been my opinion at the start, it would still be mine now because of how strong her charm speak was on me. It was probably more effective for me than for Percy. He once said that since he was with me, he was incapable of loving another girl which I thought was really cute. I could actually relate to that, I also felt incapable of loving another boy, but Piper wasn't a boy so her charm speak always hit quite strong.
"I just remembered something else." Percy said. "Isn't Poseidon's wife also the granddaughter of okeanos? That would add another family connection to Persephone." "First, it's actually like four additional connections because of the different ways Poseidon connects to Persephone. Second, haven't we already explored enough connections?" For Piper I added "we've been talking about how Percy and Persephone are related for like thirty minutes this morning. The first ten or so connections were fun to name but now it's just annoying. I think we got something like second grand aunt double in law." "Why is our family so complicated? Can someone tell me that?" "Well, such things as second grand aunts double in law exist within almost every family, the special thing about us is that we connect in many different ways because Greek gods are more inbred than fruit flies in a geneticist's lab. That's not an analogy, it's a comparison" "Now that you say it, the sex math thing I said was also closer to a comparison than to an analogy, so Percy, no one is stealing your title of 'Giver of seaweed brain analogies'. Honestly though, Percy has too many titles." Percy started listing them. "Supreme lord of the bathroom. Retriever of the golden fleece. Rescuer of Artemis. Hero of Olympus x2. Defeater of Kronos. Slayer of more or less every monster in Greek mythology. Defeater of…" He kept going for another three minutes or so. Even I didn't know all of these titles and I was relatively sure that some of them were made up. 'Titan resources manager of the underworld'? Seriously Percy?
"Why does it feel like I'm drowning but I can also breathe perfectly fine? I can't even drown." I heard Percy mumble, but I dismissed it. Perhaps he was having a partial flashback, but I was busy talking to Piper. Ok, this might sound cruel, but Percy seriously did not seem like he needed help. "Sounds like what Leo told me about the ichtiocentaurs." Piper commented. It was true, being under water and only surrounded by a thin layer of air could probably feel like drowning but also breathing fine. Our following conversation about oceanic brownie recipes was interrupted by a splash in the water follow by a loud "BROTHER". I watched Tyson running towards us and giving Percy a bone crushing hug. Following behind him was Grover, and for the first time I realized that sand and hooves, especially when it's just two of them below a human-sized body, don't mix well. "I bet he'll walk twice as fast once he hears the word ENCHILADAS" Percy joked, but it actually worked. "Where are the enchiladas?" Grover asked. "Also, hey guys. I haven't seen you since December in Percy's case and mid-June for the girls. Gaia waking up created a bunch of work for me as lord of the wild." "There aren't any enchiladas, I just thought the thought would get you here faster." "How could you do this to me? Speaking of things you did, what the Hades were you doing during the first half of July. From what my empathy link told me, you were in a near constant state of fear and all others kinds of suffering for two and a half weeks. And based on your romantic feelings I'd say Annabeth was there too." "Oh, that, do you remember the flying shoes from our first quest?" "Yes, they pulled me…wait….what…did you…were you…" "Yes, that's where we went. But for us, only two days have passed, so Percy and I aren't that traumatized. Actually, we are very traumatized, it just didn't last as long as you might think. But the trauma still affects us, and in my case, we found out a lot more about my trauma. Remember how you brought us to camp? Well, at that point I was so young and my psyche so fragile that it split of into a multitude of alternate identities inside my head. You'll probably meet them at some point, but now, why were you under water with Tyson?" "It's simple" Tyson explained. "Dad and Hephaestus open a new small forge where Typhoon was slain and I was just enjoying my weekend when I heard Grover. He had finished his job of looking after the wild, ending with central park, but now there was a sea monster attacking him. I saved him and we went here. For the journey I couldn't make an air bubble like brother does for Annabeth, but I could allow him to breathe."
"It worked, but not that well. It felt like I was drowning" Grover complained. "and you know what I think of Cyclopes. Actually, forget that. That was three years ago." I couldn't blame him for not liking Cyclopes. We had had some bad experiences with them, even if I didn't remember it. My own reaction after meeting Tyson spoke for itself. But I was over that fear now. At least the irrational part that made me panic when I saw one. But if I met for example Polyphemus again, I'd still be scared, but you'd have to be mentally ill (or immortal) to not be afraid in that situation. Of course, I was, or we were, also mentally ill, but it wasn't an illness that hindered our ability to judge dangers. It's all a matter of circumstance. If someone tries to kill you, you should be afraid. If someone is of the same race or species as someone who has once tried to kill you, you should not. That was science/psychology (Though psychology is, like everything ending in -ology, an area of science) hour with Annabeth.
Only now did Percy seem to notice that both I and Grover were still soaked in water. He put one arm around each of our shoulders, expanding his waterproofing to us. "Four years" Grover said. I knew what he meant. Four years since our first and last quest with just the three of us. "To be fair" Percy said, having seemingly understood Grover as well. "In the summer after the quest for the master bolt you went missing. And after that Annabeth did. For the labyrinth quest someone decided that the age old rule of three didn't matter. And since then there have been no quest from camp half-blood while I was there." "Now that you say it, I don't think I've been on a quest-ish thing with leo and Jason since freeing Hera." That had been the only quest so far that I hadn't approved of. I also hadn't liked Clarisse getting Grover and the fleece, but in that case I hadn't had a problem with the quest's objective. Saving Hera on the other hand was not something I had liked. Especially after finding out that she was the one to blame for Percy's disappearance. What if that happened again? I reached for his hand, just to make sure he was there, and he took it. "I'm not going anywhere" He reassured me. "Whoever wants to take me has to get past my dad first. At least I hope so." "I wish I could say the same about my mom" "Don't worry, mine is there instead." Piper said. I gave her a confused look. "You're literally her OTP of the past five hundred years. There's no way she'll let you two be separated again. Even though her fighting abilities somewhere between those of marshmallow fluff and a baby chicken. On the other hand, she has Ares who never turns down a justification for beating someone up" Do you really think she'd do that for us?" "Are you kidding me? My mom started the Trojan War because she thought a ship was cute. And she wanted to be the fairest or whatever."
The sand below us shifted around, moving us closer together. Percy said "Looks like some godly force wants us to stay together", though I suspected it might have been Percy himself who moved the sand. Maybe moving sand around came with being a child of the Earthshaker, maybe sand was simply part of the ocean and therefore part of Poseidon's realm. Or Percy had just moved the water in between the grains of sand. All of those theories of course assumed it had actually been Percy.
"So Piper, have you decided what you're gonna do for next school year." "My Dad, or rather his assistant, found me a nice normal school not too far away." She told me the name of the school. "I should probably go there as well" I answered. "Aw, would you really do that for me?" I nodded. Of course, me choosing that school had nothing to do with the fact it happened to be the one I had been going to up until the quest. And before that I had never properly left the school, so getting back in would be no problem at all.
"So, I bet you know when exactly the new school year is gonna start. Three months of holidays and mythological time dilation always mess with my perception of time." "Two weeks from now. I think I'll be visiting my family sometime before that. How about 29th to 31st. That way I'll have one more day at camp before heading to mortal tar- maybe I should stop using terminology containing words that I cannot say easily. Zeus it, I'm going to mortal Tartarus aka school."
That evening, I called my dad via Iris message.
"Hey Dad, it's me." (That statement was stupid in two ways: 1st 'Me' doesn't say a lot about who's talking and 2nd you don't need to introduce yourself when the other person can see you.
"Hi Annabeth. Is everything okay?" One good thing about being a demigod is that it saves you from an awkward 'why are you calling' because people assume that there is a good reason. Also, not having bad news has a way larger positive effect on the conversation than if the other person had not expected bad news.
"Yes, I'm more or less fine, I just wanted to let you know I wanted to stay with you for a bit before school starts again. Would the 29th to 31st work?"
"Yes, we're free for the rest of the holidays. Does Percy want to come as well?" I looked at Percy (I was calling from the fountain in cabin three) and he nodded. I thought about the last time my dad had asked that exact question, shortly after Jason had returned from his quest with the information that Percy was likely in California.
"The answer is yes and I don't think you understand how happy that makes me."
"Even a blind person could tell."
"As someone who has been temporarily blind before I disagree. I'll see you on the 29th."
"Don't forget the blue cookies"
"I am a child of Athena, I don't forget anything." Sometime during the last three words the connection cut off. "What was that? You don't forget anything." Percy joked. "Well, nothing except trauma, but there is a slight difference between trauma and promising to bring blue cookies, so I won't forget that. Also, I have you to remember it. So make sure you have them ready by the 29th
Look, another Chapter that was released one day behind schedule because I can't keep track of my schist. Anyways, Annabeth is visiting her Family soon. Let's see how that goes. Well, what could go possibly go wrong? Actually, there's a whole lot of things that could go wrong, from Annabeth's stepmom being DID-phobic to her being late because whoever fronted didn't know about it. But they're demigods, so they should be used to high risk plans. I'm sure it will all go well-ish.