here's hope
summary: He hates her paintings; they're vivid and precise and oddly real. There's a reason he's an augur and not a prophet. For prime -lover13
-—OctavianRachel (post mark of athena)
side notes: so maybe this reminds me of catching fire and maybe not... um and also this is supposed to be for prime -lover13 but i can't remember if it was for this collection or for something else and too late because it's going on here and also i can't find where they asked anywhere so whatevs now
WildCitrusSunflower: ah you and percy/piper.
Star: reminds me of aliens. the mother ship. hehe.
Ten-Faced: oh i don't remember that? i thought her knife was on her belt, sheathed or whatever. i don't remember now...
six. being made and unmade
"So, um, here they are," Rachel says as they enter a room covered with paintings. They are everywhere—on canvases, covering all four walls and even the floor, and somehow Rachel Dare has managed to cover the windows as well; he can't tell if she's put some sort of covering on the glass or not, but it's a bit late to worry so it probably doesn't matter much anymore. Chiron should've known he was losing a perfectly good cabin when he handed this one over to the Oracle.
"Well," she says after a long silence, "what do you think?"
Octavian is simply awestruck. How can she capture these things in exact detail? There's Percy Jackson on a canvas on his first and only quest from Camp Jupiter, standing on ice with a giant towering over him. Kids he has never seen before are there too—and fauns and creatures of the sea and the sky. Presumably there are fates of demigods, every age and race, splashed onto any canvas that Octavian can spot. And, oh look, he's here too—flittering randomly about the room in various places and doing various things.
Him leading the charge against the seven. Him storming Camp Half Blood. Him carefully observing the insides of a stuffed animal, seeing things that others cannot, reading the will of the gods and relaying the information to a dark-haired Roman near him. (He can't remember her name.) Him, older and grayer, looking out off a balcony somewhere to some point far in the distance, transfixed by something the viewer cannot see. Octavian's past and present and future are scattered all around the cabin. He thinks this is probably because he has an emotional hold on the painter, and so Delphi will satisfy her host by showing visions of his timeline.
"They're terrible," admits Octavian. "I think you're an amazing artist and there's no doubting that you have talent, but, wow, they're terrible. Gruesome events and people's happy moments and deadly monsters—all right here in this room. The past and the present and the future make their home here, don't they?"
Rachel laughs a bit awkwardly and tucks a stray hair behind her ear. "Usually Delphi will just take over and I'll wake up with a new painting. But sometimes I draw things consciously and the spirit will guide me, which is a bit better, I think."
In truth, Octavian really does hate some of them. They're so precise and intricate and when you remember the fact that she's the Oracle of Delphi then it leaves you with the realization that all of these grotesque visions will become reality. Of course, there are the more bright and cheerful ones—but he doesn't really focus on those. He's a pessimist, if anything. And seeing this cabin makes Octavian glad that Apollo chose him to be an augur and not a prophet. He would never be able to handle the burden of seeing what no one else knows yet.