It was nearly an hour before Percy re-surfaced near the boat, and he did not come bearing good news.

"We weren't the only ones down there," he announced as Lara helped heave him onto the deck, there was a water-tight sack in his hand, which he deposited on the backboard of the ship before beginning to take off his equipment.

"I presume you're talking of a more recent expedition than my father's?" Said Lara taking the oxygen tank that Percy handed her and stowing it away in the corner of the stern.

"Much more recent," said Percy grimly, "I'm talking like, days ago recent." He reached into the belt at his waist and withdrew a small device. It was a handheld plasma cutter. Expensive too, by the looks of it. Lara recognized the model as a relatively newer style, introduced only within the last couple of months.

"Found it near the keel," said Percy as he shrugged off the skin-tight wet-suit. "There's no decomposition on the torch, and the scorch marks on the ship were too fresh to have been made longer ago than a few days. Someone beat us here and they dug something up while they were at it."

He reached down to the sack he'd abandoned on the deck and reached into it. When he pulled his hand out and showed it to Lara, she could see that there were small particulates and bits of metal in his hand.

"Is that…a lock?" She asked after a moment of looking at the scraps in his hand.

"Looks like it," nodded Percy, "And there were a hell of a lot of holes in the hull. Hulls that weren't there when the ship sank, and have nothing to do with natural erosion."

"Someone else is looking for the pages," murmured Lara, her mind wandering back to her dream.

"Someone's likely already found pages," corrected Percy. "Unless you think this was your dad."

"It wasn't," said Lara quickly. "He found the pages in a storage crate floating near the wreck. There was a bad storm shortly after and they never made it to the captain's quarters."

"Then someone else found them."

"Even if they did, they didn't find all of them," said Lara, jerking her head back at the closed chest behind her. Percy's eyes darted over to the chest, his expression souring somewhat, but it was gone quickly.

"Looks like we were lucky," he mused,

"Looks like," said Lara warily, "I'm guessing you want to take a look at it?"

"Later," said Percy distractedly, "When I'm not dripping and freezing, preferably,"

In spite of herself, Lara chuckled. "Understandable," she smiled, "I suppose the last thing we need is for the wind to pick it up and take it back into the ocean." Percy made some unintelligible grunt of agreement as he walked back to the pilot house.

"We should probably start heading back," he called out, "I don't think there's anything left for us to pick over down there."

"We've only been here for a couple of hours," said Lara, her brows furrowed in confusion. "What makes you say that?"

"There was a chest down there," said Percy as he threw on a shirt and began packing away the equipment "The one they used the cutter to get into. There were still some documents and other trinkets inside, it looked to me like someone found either the passenger or the cargo manifest. Maybe it was the travel log maybe it was nothing of interest or maybe it was something important. The fact of the matter is that we need to figure out who was here before us."

"All right," agreed Lara, "I'm on board with you so far, but answer me this. Assuming we find out who was here first, and we determine what it is they took, what do we do then? And what if it's not even important? They might not have even found anything. What are the odds that they found another poem?"

"Not great," said Percy with a shrug.

"Exactly," nodded Lara. "Which is precisely why I'd like for you to take a look at the poem first before we do anything else." She wasn't exactly being subtle, but she also wasn't thinking exactly all that clearly.

"I can all but guarantee that there isn't going to be anything in the poem that is going to lead us to the rest," said Percy, his eyes narrowing in confusion. But he relented, "But you're the one with the experience here. If you think it's worth it, that's good enough for me."

Lara felt her chest relax in relief, "Here," she reached back to the table and grabbed the chest, "You can get started and I'll start taking us back,"

"Absolutely not," said Percy, "All this sea spray? Wind and salt? Taking the page out here could ruin the document." he turned away from her and approached the pilot house. The boat rumbled to life as Percy began preparations for departure,

"I'll take a look at it later tonight, when I can control the environment."

It had been a haphazard and sloppy attempt on Lara's part, so she didn't bother arguing. There would be other opportunities to try and figure out exactly what it was that Percy was hiding from her. So she backed off, nodding in understanding and falling silent as Percy began directing the boat back to the mainland.

Later that night, after they'd both enjoyed a quiet dinner at a cafe down the road from their hotel, they returned to Percy's hotel room to start examining the contents of the chest. Percy pulled on a pair of gloves, eye protection, and a mask. He tossed some safety equipment over to Lara, who donned it without question. Percy worked in silence for a few minutes. Pulling out strange chemicals and vials. Then came the moment of truth. Would Percy show signs that he was experiencing what she had on the boat? Or would it be something else entirely? What she do if he did experience the same thing? Even worse, what would she do is he didn't?

Her heart hammered as he reached into the chest, his fingers disappearing underneath the soaked wood. But nothing happened. There was no reaction whatsoever as he pulled the poem free and placed it to the side. What did that mean? Had the entire thing been nothing more than a figment of her imagination? No, that didn't seem right. Didn't feel right. She was positive that what she had experienced on the boat had been real.

He began rummaging through the chest for a moment, pulling documents out and laying them flatly on the table he'd dragged over to the side of the bed.

"Bingo!" He cried out in excitement, "I don't know what the people who got to the ship before us got, maybe it was your old man, but it wasn't this!"

"Which is?" Asked Lara, trying to not allow her disappointment in his lack of a reaction to show.

"Travel documents!" Said Percy excitedly.

"You might be the only human on the planet to get so excited over something so boring."

Percy ignored her, and continued with his work.

When all of the documents were out of the chest, he took the first document from the table and began dabbing at it with a strange chemical mixture. Lara wasn't entirely certain what was going on, but she was fine to simply sit by and watch him work for the time being.

She instead began to work on trying to decipher the strange vision she'd had on the ship. She needed any and all kind of information she could get on Sappho. She had done some research on the subject before she'd left on the journey, but given that Percy had been the expert in the area, she had been content to let him handle that.

However after what had happened on the boat, she was no longer content with that. She needed more information. Needed to know if there were any stories or myths about Sappho being able to communicate with others in…strange means. Or strange occurrences. However as she scrolled through her phone, all she could decipher was a bunch of rumors that Sappho had been losing her mind in her later years. That she had supposedly destroyed all of her poems before her death.

But clearly that was no longer the case. Obviously she had scattered her pages, or they had been stolen at some point. Maybe there was something to the idea of Sappho going insane. Given her own experiences with the supernatural, she wasn't going to rule out the possibility that there was something more to that than was readily apparent. Could it be that she had powers? It was possible, though it seemed unlikely. The being that Lara had encountered all those years ago had been a deity. A goddess. As far as anyone was aware, Sappho was a human. Nothing more and nothing less. But still…

"Hey Percy."

He didn't look up from his work, "Yeah?"

"Have you ever heard of a story or myth that referred to Sappho as a goddess or something?"

Percy fumbled with one of the vials, dropping it to the ground. He swore violently and scooped up the vial before too much of the liquid had spilled on the rug.

"Can you toss me a towel, quickly, this is going to stain."

Lara stood up and grabbed a hand towel from the sink in the bathroom. When she got back, Percy's back was to her, as he hunched over the spill.

"Here," she handed the towel over to him and he snagged it from over his shoulder. He dabbed at the carpet for a couple of seconds before standing up.

"There we go. I don't think it should stain." He tossed the rag over his shoulder and turned to Lara, his arms crossed over his chest. His face was oddly pinched, as though he were worried about something.

"Why are you asking about that?"

Lara arched a brow, "Just…trying to check out some things," she said carefully. She was curious by his reaction. It couldn't have been passed off as pure surprise either.

Percy shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he tapped an unsteady rhythm on his forearm.

"Well…I haven't heard or read anything to suggest as such. There's nothing in what I've been able to discover that would suggest any stories that she ever met or was blessed by a god…or something."

"Okay," said Lara, "Well…I appreciate that."

"No problem…" Percy quickly turned on his heel and got back to his work without another word. Lara watched him for a time, before turning her attention back to her phone. It was another two hours of slightly strained silence before Percy finally spoke. There was a slight edge of excitement to him, an excitable exuberance, not too unlike an overly large puppy.

"Got something!" He snapped his goggles off his face and began clearing away his materials from the bed. "Can you grab a map and a pen?"

"Yeah, hang on." She ruffled through their supplies for a moment before she pulled out a paper map of Greece. She spread the map out on the bed, smoothing out the wrinkles before looking up at Percy who was all but dancing where he was standing.

"All right, so look at this."

He reached down and laid a small document over top of the map. Lara tried for only the briefest of moments to decipher what it said, before giving it up. It was written in a faded and ancient looking script that might as well have been gibberish to her.

"This was the ships ledger and manifest. It details the route the ship was meant to take, the stops it was supposed to make, and where it had already been and what was unloaded." His fingers traced a line down to the middle of the document.

"Ios wasn't the beginning or the end of the journey," said Percy excitedly, pointing towards the middle of the document where Lara could see what looked like numbers and maybe dates scribbled in faded ink.

"Well, I guess technically it was the end of their trip. I mean they kinda drowned, which sucks and all but-"

"Percy," said Lara patiently, snapping her fingers in front of his nose. "Focus please."

Percy flushed, scratching uncomfortably behind an ear. "Right, sorry." He shifted the ledger from the map and pulled out a small marker. He circled Ios.

"So Ios was the fourth stopping point for the ship. From what I've been able to figure out, it was just a simple merchant vessel, owned by some aristocrat back in Athens." He traced a line back to Athens, and circled it. "This is where the trip began. From here," He drew a line East, to the island of Mykonos, and wrote a large number "1" over the line.

"They stopped here, at Mykonos. They were in port here for two days before sailing South." He drew another line South, passing through the other islands before landing on Crete. He wrote a large number "2" over the line.

"Now here's where things start to get a little more interesting. There was a bit of a layover here in Crete. They stayed for over a week here, in Heraklion."

"And what's so interesting about that?" Asked Lara, "Doesn't seem that unusual. A trip like that would require a lot of provisions. It would have taken a lot of supplies to make that a possibility."

"Normally I'd agree with you, but they didn't actually take on or unload any additional cargo, at least nothing that was reported." He reached over to the table and snagged another piece of paper.

"This is the ships accounting. It details all of the transactions made during the voyage. It was a little tricky matching the dates up, but I managed it. During the time they were in port at Heraklion, they didn't expend any of their funds on additional supplies." He then tapped the manifest again. "And they didn't unload or take on any additional cargo. And that's not even the most interesting thing."

"Oh?" Lara arched a brow.

"Crete was never in the ships manifest."

"What does that mean?"

"It means they weren't supposed to stop there. It was an unscheduled stop."

Lara shook her head. "Wait, I'm confused now, then how do you know they stopped in Crete?"

Percy smiled, practically vibrating with excitement. Clearly he was feeling rather proud of himself. He whirled around and snagged yet another document from the table.

"This!" He shoved the document into her hands and she looked down at it. It didn't make a lot of sense to her, given that it was all written in ancient Greek. All she could make out was that it appeared to be a log book of some kind. There were what appeared to be date and time slots and strange symbols etched into a thick ink along the sides of the document. There was something oddly familiar about the document.

"What is this?"

"It's a fake shipping log," said Percy. Reaching down and grabbing the ships manifest. He pointed between the two documents, and Lara could see some similarities in the way that the documents were made out. There were even a few of the same heavily inked symbols etched into the papyrus.

"Greek bureaucracy was fairly sophisticated," explained Percy. "When arriving in a new port, especially a foreign port, which these would all would have been considered at the time, ship captains had to get a stamp of approval from the docking master. It was proof that they were there legally, think of it almost like an ancient passport. Here's my thinking, the captain of this ship was doing something he shouldn't have been doing in Crete. Something the owners of his ship wouldn't have wanted him to be doing. To keep his owners from seeing the discrepancy, the Captain created a forged log and had both logs stamped at each time they made port. Only when they made it to Crete, they only had one of the documents stamped so it looked as though they were never there."

Lara's brow furrowed. "This is all very fascinating Percy, but does any of this have to do with what they were doing in Crete for a week? Or Sappho?"

Percy nodded enthusiastically. "I was wondering the same thing, but then I think the answer lies in where they went after Crete."

He traced a new line. However instead of stopping near Ios like Lara had presumed, he continued going North. Circling the small island of Lesbos.

"Wait," said Lara slowly. Something she'd read danced at the edges of her memory.

"Isn't Lesbos…isn't that where Sappho grew up?"

Percy beamed enthusiastically. "And where she spent most of her life, yeah." He drew a number "3" over the line connecting Heraklion with Lesbos.

"Specifically, she lived here." He circled a small town in the northeastern corner of the island. "Mytilene. One of her most famous poems was written here. An Ode to Aphrodite. But even more curiously…" He drew a line for the port of Mytilene to just off the coast of Ios.

"The ship never made it to Ios," said Lara softly, putting it together in her head.

"Yeah," nodded Percy. "Could have been pirates, could have been mutiny. Could have been a storm, could have been anything. But all I know for certain is that the ship never made it to Ios."

"Think it's a coincidence?"

Percy shook his head. "I don't really believe in coincidences."

Lara smirked, nudging his shoulder with hers. "You're starting to grow on me Jackson."

"Like a parasite, I'm sure," he chuckled, and Lara laughed.

"Seriously though, I think we're thinking the same thing. It's entirely too coincidental for it to be mere happenstance in my mind. The ship lands at the home of Sappho, then takes off back towards Ios with at least some of her poems on board, and then it sinks? Something about this doesn't sit right with me. What were they doing on the ship to begin with? Do you think she was on the ship at Crete? It's the only thing that makes sense, I could have sworn that she did in Sicily."

"Most likely," confirmed Percy, "Tradition says that she shrew herself off the Leucadian Cliffs out of some sense of love for a ferryman or something. But most modern scholars have been debunking this line of thought in recent years. Chances are she died a natural death, or she killed herself because she couldn't stand being separated from her family, or was being forced into an arranged marriage. Either way, she did on Ios, that much we know for certain, so no she wasn't on board the ship on its way to Ios…"

"Then she was on the ship from Crete," nodded Lara, "Might be why they had the extended stay in Heraklion. But if she was a passenger, then why wasn't her presence marked in the ships logs?"

Percy didn't respond for a moment. His face contorted in an expression of deep thought. He glanced back down at the documents scattered over the map on the bed. And then a strangely thoughtful expression crossed over his face. He walked back over to the table, where Lara's Father's journal was sat beside some of his chemicals. Percy idly flicked through the pages for a moment before stopping and reading intently through the contents of the pages.

"Because she couldn't be found out…" He said slowly, his face morphing into one of sudden understanding. He snagged the journal and strode quickly back to Lara, shoving the journal under her nose. "Look at the date."

Lara looked, and then she frowned and looked again. "That…doesn't make sense." She said looking up at Percy. "Dad's notes say that the ship wrecked around 585 B.C.E., but…Sappho wouldn't have been in Greece. She was in Sicily."

"Exactly," nodded Percy. "She was exiled around 600 B.C.E., and she supposedly lived there until her death."

"You think she smuggled herself out of Sicily somehow."

"I think it's certainly a strong possibility." Percy pointed back at the manifest. "Why wait in Crete for so long and not take on new cargo, or unload cargo? Why not spend a single drachmae on supplies? Why wait an entire week when most of the hold was filled with nonperishable foodstuffs instead of moving on to the next port of call? Why go to the trouble of creating a new log for the purposes of hiding the trip to Crete in the first place?"

Lara understood.

"Because Sappho had paid them to get her out of Sicily and back to Lesbos."

Percy beamed.

"So why was Sappho so desperate to return to Lesbos? And what was she doing with those poems she left behind? Did she leave them on purpose, or did she genuinely forget them?"

"Given that I had to pry the chest out of the wall of the ship, I'm going to guess that she didn't forget it," said Lara dryly.

"I know," chuckled Percy. Then he clapped his hands together in excitement. "Well then, I guess you know what this means."

Lara was unable to fight off the infectious smile.

"I'd best make some arrangements in Mytilene."

AN: Shoutout to Double0Sxvxn for being an awesome Beta and dealing with my bullshit and as always if you enjoyed this but haven't checked out my other work, give them a try you never know you might find something else you like. I'm also on discord now, where I and a bunch of other writers hang out, chat and brainstorm ideas, you just have to copy the link that's in my profile bio if you want to come and hang out with us. Stay safe, stay healthy and have an awesome week

All My Love,

LilDB