TW: Brief mentions of alcoholism and parental violence, do not read if disturbed by this content.
It had been a long week for Kiya; when Ty left she threw herself into training, in hopes maybe she would get a quest, a small part of her even hoped she would get a sign, so she knew where she belonged, but a week came and went and no matter how hard Kiya trained there was nothing, no quest, no Gods claimed her, and she was getting frustrated. One night after a long training session in the arena she fell asleep in one of the medical cots they kept in there in case they were needed, and she was way too tired to walk all the way across camp to cabin eleven. At first her dreams were non-existent, just her wandering in a void of nothing, but she froze when she heard a voice.
The voice was faint, as if far off but when Kiya turned around she saw the boy from her dream a while back, the blonde haired boy with the scar on his face. She watched as he trained with his sword, cutting down the training dummies and practicing moves that Kiya knew would take years for her to even attempt to practice. She watched as he talked to himself but the words were faint. She cleared her throat and called out in a shaky voice.
"Hello?" She said as the vision around the boy faded but he remained in the void, staring at her. "You can see me?" He asked and Kiya nodded.
"Yeah I've seen you before." She admitted and the boy huffed in surprise a smile crossing his face.
"So that's why…" He said to himself, running a hand through his hair as he looked at Kiya.
"I'm Luke." He said holding out his hand, Kiya studied it as if examining for any dangers but after a moment took his hand in hers and shook it. "Kiya." She said.
Luke let go of her hand and stared at the void. "Well it's your dream, maybe you can make it nicer?" Kiya tilted her head and nodded.
"I can try." She said honestly as she closed her eyes focusing on a place around camp, the lakeside. She looked at Luke who seemed a bit frazzled after she made the void look like the lake.
"Something wrong Luke?" Kiya asked and Luke sighed. "No, no its nothing it's just… been years since I've seen the lake at camp." Luke said and Kiya frowned. "What do you mean?" Luke looked at Kiya and then at the lake.
"You're unclaimed, aren't you?" He said and Kiya nodded. "Yeah, I stay at cabin eleven." "Do they mention me?" He asked his voice soft, and pain laced the words as he spoke. "I've not heard of any kid named Luke from the cabin, why what's going on?"
Luke headed towards the lakeside kneeling at the edge. "I made some bad choices." He said with a sigh. "I did something terrible, I'm not surprised I've been struck from history. I was angry, at the gods, at my mother, at the world." He reached out with a hand and gently touched the surface of the water the ripples distorting his reflection. Kiya tilted her head. She actually felt the pain in her own chest, the pain of betraying friends and family, of being betrayed in kind. "I made bad choices too, but it doesn't make you a bad person." She said sitting beside him.
"Luke, you want to hear about betrayal, my mother use to drink, a lot, and would beat me almost daily for little things, like not coming home from school on time, even if the bus was late, or sitting in her line of sight while she was watching t.v, she wasn't a mother, and when I was old enough I ran away." Kiya admitted and looked at the water. She sighed closing her eyes, it was hard for her to open up but something was telling her to, something was telling her that she could trust Luke. Luke smiled and sighed.
"My mother wasn't much worse. She was clear-sighted, she could see through the mist for what the world was. She tried to become the camp's new oracle, and it destroyed her, she was never the same after that, screaming about how I was going to die, and about my father Hermes. I never understood it at the time but now, now that things have fallen into place, I know what she meant, I know what she was going on about, but back then, I ran away too, I couldn't be around her."
"Luke are you…?" Kiya asked, trying to be sensitive but Luke just chuckled. "I think I am, but maybe I'm something in-between. Neither here nor there kind of thing." He said as he looked at the horizon, the sun starting to rise from dawn into morning.
"Your waking up." He said nuding Kiya. "Go on, I'll see you around." He said as Kiya turned towards him. "Wait Luke I have so many questions, if your not dead, and you were a real person how are you here? How am I able to talk to you? And who was that other boy with the black hair?" She asked and Luke frowned at the last question before looking away as Kiya's eyes grew heavy, she closed them, for just a moment, before opening them to find herself back at the arena, she sat up from the cot and stared at her feet. She wasn't sure at all what had just happened but she knew she had to see Luke again, he had answers.