Hola, my friends. I know I haven't updated in forever, and I put that in italics just to help you figure out how ashamed of myself I am. Mostly. Just remember, reviews are very motivating, which is something that I am lacking at the moment. So if you like my story at all, please click the button at the bottom of this page and let me know. Thanks. And feel free to give me any ideas. Right now I am working on writers block.
p.s. The next chapter of A Week in the Life of a Stressed Demigod (my other story) is going to be up as soon as I finish typing it.
I am sure that I was utterly attractive on that bench while I was talking to Joshua, caked in dirt and leaves in my curly hair and my mouth hanging open like an idiot. But hey, I'd like to see you try to do any better. Because, seriously, this whole Greek-gods-are-real thing is really freaky. Not to mention a little more than shocking. (Since when is there a 600th floor of the Empire State Building? Or anywhere, for that matter? I'm pretty sure that is slightly impossible. Although I'm not a god, so I doubt my "mortal mind can comprehend certain things." Thanks a lot, Joshua.)
When he had finally finished, I felt like I had aged a million years. That also meant that my brother hadn't be melodramatic when he said he had seen a war. If any of this was real in the first place, which I was stubbornly denying.
"Wouldn't that get...complicated? Fighting monsters in broad daylight and stuff? I'm pretty sure that guys with swords chopping up giants and demon dogs from Hades might be in the Sunday paper."
"What?" asked Josh. He was playing with a little gold coin. Maybe little isn't the best word. It was really chunky. Compared to the money that I was used to, this thing might have been on steroids or something. It was thick and shiny, with a picture of the Empire State Building stamped on one side and, I saw as he flipped it expertly in his fingers, a picture of a person wrapped in a toga on the other. I guess gods wouldn't want to use our money. There really is way too much Zinc in our pennies nowadays.
"Thanks for paying attention." Hey, he just threw down one of the biggest stories I have ever heard and is trying to convince me its real so that I will finally forgive my brother for abandoning my mother and I. The least he could do was pay me a little consideration.
"Sorry, could you repeat the question?" he asked.
Gosh, for a supposed "son of Athena, goddess of wisdom and blah blah blah" he sure was spacey.
(when I finally met her a very long time from then I learned that his mother had a temper. She didn't appreciate that comment.)
I repeat my question.
He nodded, and I felt my heart flutter, because, let's face, I'm a middle school girl. I can pull that off.
"There's this thing called the Mist that generate when elements of your world ours. Are you following?"
Duh, I was following. I'm not stupid. But I only say things like that out loud when I am under emotional stress, so I politely responded, "So far so good."
"This Mist masks those elements that mortals aren't supposed to see from being visible. So, people like you can't see monsters or our swords or anything incriminating." He leaned back against the back of the bench, and I couldn't help thinking that nerds make the best boyfriends.
"So we just don't see anything, like at all?" I asked. If this was a lie, which I doubt more and more, it sure was an elaborate one.
"You see something, sure. Just not what's actually there," he explained.
"So we would see some random person beating up a grandma or something instead of you chopping up a bull-man?" I would have found that incredibly funny.
He smiled that smile that you hear about in books. You know, that smile that makes every girl's heart in a three-mile radius melt into a puddle like a Popsicle in the summer? "Yeah, pretty much."
I thought about that for a moment, and then I had a sudden moment of clarity. "But I saw your sword," I prompted. The question about how my finger had slipped through the surface of his blade, which was definitely a solid, had long past. And I made him swing it at me just to make sure, which he didn't seem very happy about.
He sighed. "Well, there are exceptions to every rule, you now." He looked at me, and his intense grey eyes boring into mine made my heart solidify and melt all over again. "Certain mortals, like yourself, have the ability to see through the Mist without being a demi-god."
I made a noise in my mouth kind of like a horse braying, which was infinitely embarrassing but also an uncontrollable habit. It explained so much. Expect for one little itsy bitsy detail.
"Why did he leave?" I asked to no one in particular. Maybe the tree, since trees being able to talk would not be the weirdest thing that had happened in the past two hours or so.
Josh, being the smart guy that he is, didn't have to ask who I was talking about. "He told you already. To protect you."
That answer didn't satisfy me. "But why? If he can see monsters too, than why couldn't he just stay here?"
"Oliver isn't a mortal, like you," Josh muttered softly. "He's like me, a demi-god. He's a son of Apollo, the god of the sun, and music, and poetry, and—lots of other stuff," he finished, stopping himself before he started reciting an endless list of just what Apollo was the god of. I had sat through the same session in Latin. I knew the basics. "He's your half brother. It wouldn't have been safe for either you or your mother or even himself if he stayed."
I sighed heavily. Josh left me with that little tidbit to consider as he rose from his seat on the bench next to me and started walking away in the opposite direction. Without his body warmth next to me, I had suddenly realized just how cold it had gotten.
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl who lived in a virtual world, and that was all she knew until the handsome Joshua came and told her that everything she knew was a lie, and she would be delusional to think anything else. And then they lived happily ever after.
I smiled softly, and then a thought struck me. I felt a hot red blush that banished the chill from my body creep onto my cheeks. I looked in the direction Josh had gone.
I really hoped that children of Athena couldn't read minds.