The rest of the day was great. Danny took me out for dinner, where we- mostly I- talked about the possible things that would happen in our future together as husband and wife. I mean, we still had the wedding to take care of, but that wasn't the focus of our night in Salem. Our main focus was us that night, not the wedding. What we were going to do after the wedding, not before it. We just knew that we weren't going to have the wedding for another seven or eight months. We wanted to give ourselves time to prepare, to find ourselves a place to settle into first. We set aside a year, max, for the wedding to be set in stone on a date.
We were still talking about it when we got back to camp, and a thought suddenly crossed my mind.
"Hey, Danny?" I suddenly asked, stopping half-way through the sentence I was saying.
He tilted his head, sitting down on top of our bed. "Yes, love?"
"Do you know your parents?"
He frowned slightly at the question. He was silent for a few moments, seemingly trying to think about it. "I... I don't know... I... I haven't seen them in such a long time... I don't even know if they're alive. Cyril's dad... He... he beat up my father when he wouldn't let him take me away to do this." He gestured to the cabin, and I knew what he was talking about, nodding. "I don't know if he's still alive. He looked like he wasn't when... when Damianos took me away." He got tears in his eyes as he continued to speak. "I don't know if he's alive, and if he is, I don't know where he is. I..." He let in a shuddering breath and wiped at his eyes. "W-why do you ask, love?"
I bit my lip and rested a hand on his arm, sitting down next to him as I did. "I'm sorry... I... I was asking, because I was wondering if you wanted to invite him to our wedding."
He let in another shaky breath, bringing up his other hand to his arm, putting his larger one over my smaller one. "Love, I don't think he's alive..." He murmured.
"Well, we can still try to contact him. Best to try, right?" I asked, trying to keep up hope for Danny.
He sighed. "I guess..."
I frowned slightly, but immediately smiled again to try and get him to cheer up, hoping desperately that his father was alive. He didn't speak of his mother when I had asked if he knew his parents, so I didn't ask him about her, instead sticking to the topic of his father. "Do you know his name? If you know it, we can see if we can get an Iris message his way. Do you want to do that?"
Danny silently nodded. He dropped his hand from mine on his arm and lowered it to his jeans, dragging a finger along a worn down spot, picking a little at the exposed white cotton strands.
I bit my lip. "Could you by chance tell me what his name is?" I asked, removing my hand from his arm and reaching into my pocket for the drachma I always carried in case of emergencies.
"... Adam. I... I think it was Adam. Adam... Adam Rivera. I think that that was his name..."
"And was he your hippocampus parent?"
Danny nodded.
"Then I'm sure he's alive." I nodded, smiling softly. "As they say, 'like father like son', and seeing how much you have fought through, for... for me... I'm sure he's still alive, fighting for you now like he was then, when Cyril's father took you away from him. Come on. Let's go see if we can contact him."
Danny bit his lip and nodded to my words. He stood up, but didn't move to the bathroom, which was where we needed to go to create a rainbow to Iris message his dad if he was alive. He stood there for awhile before sitting back down on the edge of the bed, confusing clouding his deep blue eyes. "How are we going to do that, love?"
I smiled softly at his confusion. "We send him an Iris message, of course. That's, like the main and sure way of making sure he's alive."
He nodded, still looking confused, but didn't object. I gave him a small kiss on his forehead before standing up off our bed, grabbing his hand and pulling him to the Hypnos cabin bathroom. I created a rainbow with the shower hose, making the water run mist by taking the head off of it and pressing my thumb in the way of the stream, and I gave Danny a small smile. He gave me a small, fearful one back, half hiding behind the bathroom door. My smile saddened at his hesitance and fear , and I turned back to the rainbow in the shower water. I took a deep breath, praying to all the gods and goddesses of the Underworld that Danny's father Adam wasn't in either level of it, Tartarus or any of the fields.
Opening my eyes, I tossed in the drachma coin waiting in my hand. It disappeared into the rainbow I had created with a soft ding similar to one of an elevators.
"Who would you wish to contact?" A female voice, one I was assuming was Iris's, the rainbow goddess herself, asked after a few moments of neither Danny or I saying anything.
I bit my lip and looked at Danny, who was looking nervous as he hid in his spot behind the bathroom door still. I gave him a small smile, but he didn't seem to notice, his eyes glued onto the rainbow, looking desperate for an answer to his question of his father's existence or nonexistence.
"Who would you wish to contact?" Iris's voice spoke up again.
Taking a deep breath, I finally was able to get the words out of my mouth. "Contact hippocampus Adam Rivera." I told it, and we waited for something, or nothing, to show.