Summary: Amelia Babineaux died in a sea of wine, as a daughter of Dionysus she lived again. Self-Insert/OC-Insert
Enjoy.
The Grape Garden
Chapter 2
Sweater Weather
.
.
.
How She Survived The Night
"In a child's eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe."
― N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
"Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation."
― Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit—Will Travel
She screamed louder than ever before.
She screamed and screamed andscreamedandscreamedandscreamed, thick tears rolling down her rosy cheeks and snot flowing from her nose. Diana tried to scream louder and louder, hoping, no, praying that someone would hear her.
The girl may not have asked for this second chance, may not have even wanted it, but that did not mean that she wished to die in such a way.
Hypothermia. She did not want to freeze to death.
Diana continued screaming, her loud infant wails echoing through Reykjavik's abandoned streets. She screamed and wailed till her young throat was too injured to proceed and only hacking coughs passed her blue lips.
The cold had a tight grip on her. Even though the teenager who was supposed to be her new mother had left her in a relatively sheltered place, the biting winds had no problems reaching her. They brushed against her soft skin and left a burning sensation at the exposed parts of her body.
Why had the woman wrapped such a thick blanket around her? No infant could survive such cold and the blanket would be no help. The cloth only hindered her movement and made her feel even more trapped.
Trapped in a body that should have never been hers, in a situation she could not control, Diana could do nothing else but hope for salvation. A salvation that would not come or arrive to late.
The girl could already feel it. The cold seeping into her bones. Numbness replacing her digits. Her thoughts loosing any sense and her consciousness disappearing.
A car accident had caused her first death. Hypothermia would be the reason for her second demise. Diana could not help but wonder if there would be a third time. Maybe she would actually be able to live pass her first few days or teenage years. Twenty-eight, that seemed like an acceptable age. Especially with her track record.
Keeping her eyes open turned into a challenge. Each time they closed it became harder to open them again. They dropped in a disguise of sleepiness and a promise of waking up again. But Diana knew that she would not witness another day if she fell asleep. Only death's arms. Its embrace would once again drag her away from the living and perhaps into another cruel life.
Diana did not want that.
Although the girl was mentally a teen, her body was still that of an infant. Too weak to continue fighting the cold and stay awake, the young girl's eyes started to close one last time.
Before the darkness managed to fully envelope her, Diana saw what she thought to be a final hallucination. Wine vines were growing from the cold earth, wrapping themselves around her tiny body and creating a small roof above her head.
How ironic, the smell of grapes even penetrated the air.
Violet eyes closed and Diana felt warm again.
Ichneutae should have never agreed to this mission, but he could not very well have said 'no' to a god. Lord Dionysus could be very vicious and his threats were not to be ignored.
The satyr saw what happened to those who dared to do so. It wasn't pretty.
And so he agreed to fly to Reykjavik, of all places, to search for a demigod. The camp director never said whose child it exactly was, but he had his suspicions. Sadly, it did not truly matter who the child's godly parents was—As long as it wasn't one of the Big Three, of course.—what mattered were all the other information the god had failed to give him.
Who was the child? What was its name? How old was it? The gender? Where exactly could he find it?
None was known by the satyr. Only that he had to find the child. Failing Lord Dionysus was not an option, thus he had spend the last two weeks wandering through Reykjavik's streets, trying to find a needle in a haystack.
During the first week he only searched as long as the sun was on the sky, but he was starting to get desperate. The god sending him here meant that the young demigod was in danger and such cases did not survive very long. Thus he decided to start looking during nighttime as well.
The weather was horrible and Ichneutae doubted he would find anyone outside when it was so cold. However, the minuscule chance of the child actually being outside in such harsh conditions made him go on.
It turned out to be a good choice. On his fourth nightly excursion he finally found what he was looking for.
The satyr heard the child before he could even smell it. Its loud wails and coughs echoing through the otherwise silent streets. Finding it wasn't easy, he had to check a few alleys before he entered the right one.
What he found surprised even him. When Lord Dionysus had send him on this mission, Ichneutae expected to find a young child hiding from monsters in a nice home or some warm place, not an infant abandoned in the cold.
But there was no mistake, the wine vines spoke for themselves. He had found a daughter of Dionysus.
On the verge of freezing to death. Only protected by her father's limited power.
She was lucky to be alive. He had to make sure it stayed that way.
Gently, the satyr picked the unconscious infant up. The girl's, the pink blanket indicated her gender, cheeks were rosy and Ichneutae knew that she must have had a fever. Just as he knew that if it weren't for the plants that even now stayed wrapped around the blanket and her body, the girl would have been dead.
Her father's interference had kept her alive.
Diana
The word danced across his mind and Ichneutae did not even stop to think about how he knew the girl's name. There were not many things that managed to surprise him anymore. If a god wanted something, then he would get it.
Obviously, Lord Dionysus wanted him to know his daughter's name and so Ichneutae knew it.
Diana, what a daring name. Not many aware of the truth were brave or foolish enough to name their child after a god or goddess. The girl's mother had been.
Diana, the Roman Goddess of the hunt, nature and the moon.
What a foolish mortal her mother must have been. Perhaps she hoped the name would give her daughter some kind of power. Or perhaps she had been just stupid.
It mattered not at the moment. He had to get the child back to his motel room and make sure that she survived the night. Tomorrow they would fly back to the camp and get her treated properly.
Yes, that sounded like a good plan.