I actually quite like this chapter. Hope you do too! :)
Disclaimer: I'm running scarily low on clever oneliners for these things. . . well, I'll go simple. Not mine. So there.
Kisses,
{--Inky--}
"So, ah –"Sally Jackson intends to make her feel welcome, but brakes off realizing she doesn't know her name.
"Annabeth," she supplies. "Annabeth Chase."
Sally smiles gratefully at the plate helpfully offered to her and flips the finished pancakes onto it. "And how old are you, Miss Annabeth Chase?"
For the first time in what felt like years, she smiles. "Seventeen."
"The same age as Percy," Ms. Jackson says conversationally.
"Oh, I know."
Both Jackson's, the one flipping pancakes and the one lounging in a chair at the table, look startled and more than a little puzzled at her offhand, mysteriously vague comment. She notices.
"I know a lot of things," she says in way of an explanation. "You're burning, by the way." Ms. Jackson hastily scoops up the blackened pancake off the griddle just as the smoke detector begins wailing.
"Percy, dear, would you reset that for me?" Wordlessly, he disappears out the open doorway leading down the hall. She watches him go— assuring herself he's out of hearing range— before she turns back to Ms. Jackson, all traces of mindless chit-chat gone from her troubled eyes.
"I was sent by the Underground," she says.
Sally Jackson's eyes widen quickly. "Oh," she says. "Oh."
A pregnant pause drags on. The usually rosy-cheeked Ms, Jackson has gone sickly pale.
"Already?" she whispers.
"Well, in a sense," she concedes. "They haven't actually given the order yet, but I Saw it coming and chose to make him a personal project."
"Oh." That seemed to be all Ms. Jackson could say. Annabeth waits, allowing her to gather her erratic thoughts. "So you're a Seer."
"Essentially. I have other talents, but that's the most important at the given moment."
Ms. Jackson pauses, thinking again. She doesn't wait for the elder woman to ask, she's Seen it clearly, and just answers.
"His fate is horribly tangled with mine anyway. Life or death and all," she says sadly, anguish evident. Strangely tears pool in her eyes. She can't imagine the vibrant, temperamental boy she'd only briefly spoken to ever not existing. But that seemed the only picture her gift could form.
"Which is it now?" Ms. Jackson asks quietly, painfully, unsure if she really wants to know.
One agonizing, miserable look confirms Sally Jackson's worst fears.
"I See it every night now. It used to be more sporadic, but it's coming closer," she admits, almost whispering, as though the memories of said dreams pain her to relay. Ms. Jackson shudders.
She places a shaky hand on the older woman's arm. "I'm going to change it, you know. I just need time."
Then she chuckles humorlessly at her own naïveté.
Time is the one thing none of them have.
This may be the longest chapter written in this story so far. . .
