Disclaimer: I don't own Trials of Apollo
TOApril day seventeen: "Perfection Is a Must"
They joke that Kayla was born with a bow in her hand.
It's the only joke about her birth Kayla permits – she knows it isn't true, because she can remember the first time Da let her hold one, but she does find it funny and flattering.
(Other questions and statements about her birth result in the nosey prick visiting Will for an arrow extraction; no-one harasses the Athena kids about how they were born, what's so fascinating about her birth? Admittedly, Kayla doesn't know the details – Da told her when she asked that her dad just turned up with her one day – but she has a belly button and all the correct anatomy so what does it matter?)
Kayla's the daughter of the god of archery and a professional archery coach. She was claimed the moment she stepped into camp but even if Apollo hadn't, she knows no-one could have ever mistaken her parentage for anyone else. She hasn't missed a bullseye in years. Her arrows go exactly where she wants them to, every time, as though they teleport into existence in the target instead of flying through the air to bury themselves in the boss.
(She wonders, sometimes, how Will feels, the son of a well-known singer and the god of music yet struggles to hold a note.)
It's not that she hasn't had to work for her skill. There's no maybe that she's inherited Apollo's domain of archery through and through, but that doesn't mean she's never missed. Da is a patient coach; she knows he always knew the real identity of her dad, but he's not an Olympic coach for no reason. He's sharp but fair, and never expected a child to hit gold on her first try no matter who her parents are.
(Kayla hit it on her second. She remembers Da bursting into tears, and the high-five he gave her.)
There's more to archery than just drawing a bow and releasing the arrow. In the mortal world it's a technical sport, with everything calculated to the uttermost precision. Arrows have different fletching types, different nocks, different lengths and spines, and she has to know all of it. She has to know the different types of weights, the variety of risers and limbs and sights, bow strings and bow slings, bracers and finger tabs. Anchor points, stringwalking – it's a minefield of information, but Kayla grew up living and breathing all of those things.
(Da always insisted that she pay attention to everything. "One day, this'll be your life," he'd told her, and as a naïve child she'd thought he just meant that he expected her to be a professional, just like him. Now, she knows he knew that archery would become the difference between life and death for her.)
Kayla knows all about bows, about compounds and recurves – Da didn't let her hold the former until not long before she went to camp, calling it too heavy, but the recurve has always been hers and the green of her riser is a custom Da had commissioned just for her – about barebow, about longbows and AFB. Those are the common ones, the ones still used in modern competitions, but Da went further, showing her older styles.
("Your dad's favourite is the longbow," he'd tell her, "but I always loved it best when he showed me the historic ones you don't see in competitions.")
She can use all of them, now. The recurve is her primary bow, because that's the one she had first, the one that's most comfortable to her, the one she can and will win the Olympics with, but she's skilled with all of them, coaches on all of them, now, and loves it.
(Coaching at Camp is more like making sure no-one hurts themselves than actually teaching; most of her 'students' are her siblings, and they tend to have at least some instinctive skill. Athena and Ares kids are quick studies and no-one else should be trusted near ranged weaponry.)
Trying and failing to encourage a mortal Apollo is awkward. He's full of praise for her skill, the same way he always has been, but he's the most difficult student she's ever had because he can't even bring himself to try. He's like her but he isn't, because Kayla's always been good but she's had to work for perfect. Apollo was born perfect and doesn't know how to work for things. He knows the theory, knows all the intricacies and technicalities of archery from the ancient to the modern, but his body can't keep up with his knowledge and it's hurting him.
(Knowledge is powerful. Too powerful, sometimes. Da always promised her that she'd meet her dad, that he was still alive and waiting for her once she was old enough, but he refused to tell her who he was. "It's not safe for you to know just yet," he'd tell her. "He's a famous guy." Kayla had spent all her spare time – not that she had much of it when she was fetching and fletching arrows, watching and shooting down at the range with Da whenever she wasn't at school – researching Olympic champions, trying to find one that looked enough like her to be her dad. She'd never come close to the truth and now she knows, she's glad she didn't. Mortals have rules on using bows, and killing monsters isn't allowed in the rulebook.)
She doesn't know how to help him. She knows archery inside and out, back to front and better than she knows her body, but she's never been the best at helping people when there's nothing wrong with their stance, their form, their bow. For a child of Apollo, she's a little short, a little abrasive – her dad's temper isn't as obvious in her as it was in Michael, but it's there – and while she can help Will put a body back together, there's not much she's good at with the mind.
(This is Will's domain, but Will's not here and she's not fast enough to stop Apollo's oath. If the problem was with archery, she could have fixed it, but it wasn't, not really, and she can't fix this.)
My first instinct was more Will, but I didn't want to get too predictable, so instead I decided to explore another Apollo kid for a change (which has nothing to do with the fact I spent several hours at an archery range today while musing on the prompt).
Thanks for reading!
Tsari
