FYI, when I say 'X amount of time later' I always mean 'X amount of time SINCE Mari ended up on Circe's island'.
Mari looked up and saw that Circe was smiling. It was the kind of smile that a lion wore when it was about to pounce on some kind of small furry animal, only Mari didn't feel like a small furry animal. She felt like a bug, under Circe's sandal.
Circe pulled out a flask of some kind, which Mari hadn't even known she'd had on her person, and raised it over Mari's head.
"W-What's that?" Mari asked. She wanted to try and block the creepy demon flask with her hands, but she was still paralysed.
"Just a little something to enhance your skills with the mist. It will hurt."
Mari didn't take in most of what Circe said, apart from the final part. She'd been expecting pain, but Circe had only ever warned Mari of it when she first started 'teaching' her. The fact that she was telling Mari about this now... was really bloody terrifying.
"Can't we- can't we just talk this out? Please, L-Lady Circe!" Mari begged as Circe started to uncap the flask.
The sorceress ignored her. "I think the time for talking is long passed, Marion Carter. You lost the privilege of being able to negotiate your punishment when you betrayed me!"
"I didn't-"
Mari was cut off as the first drops of the blue mixture in the flask hit her skin. There was a sizzling sound, like frying vegetables, and Mari screamed.
It wasn't like a burn. It was much, much worse. Mari remembered a Roman myth that a librarian told her when she was little and Bobby (her ex foster-brother) dropped her off at the local bookstore to go meet some friends.
It was about this guy called Eurys-something, who cut down trees which were sacred to Demeter. Or, Roman Demeter. Mari was pretty sure she was called Cereal or something. Anyway, Cereal got upset and cursed him to be hungry for all time, until he ate himself. Mari wasn't sure how the mechanics of that worked, but it sounded pretty not good.
Wherever a drop fell, it felt like twenty Erysch-people were all trying to gobble her up. She could hear a high-pitched sound, like a car alarm, and only realised ten seconds later it was her own scream. Her arms and legs were convulsing, which was a kind of relief as the cold stone floor was refreshing on her skin. She looked down at herself and was surprised that she couldn't see her bones. Her flesh was fine.
Well, not really. Every part of her arm where Mari felt like she was being tortured was surrounded by a light purple ring. It was kind of like what she imagined a jellyfish sting looked like, if jellyfish produced bites which were surrounded by some kind of creepy runes. And if jellyfish had part-time careers as megalomaniac narcissist sorceresses.
"Ah, perfect." Circe capped the flask and it disappeared into thin air. Mari almost wondered if it had been there at all, but she could still feel the pain.
"What-what the-fuck?" Mari choked.
Circe glanced down at her and pointed to the ceiling.
Before Mari could even think to look up, her body jolted into a sitting position. The sudden movement caused whatever ungodly (probably not literally ungodly, but close enough) solution Circe had poured on her to drip down her chest and arms. It felt like squirrels were nibbling at her skin.
She whimpered as one drop hit a paper cut she'd gotten a day before when she'd been sorting files for Circe on elementary schools in need of class pets. It fizzed like diet coke. "P-please, stop."
Circe knelt in front of Mari, so that they were staring face to face.
"My dear, I tried to be kind to you. I gave you a whole world of unimaginable power. The ability to manipulate the mist unparalleled! Do you think that I would share knowledge of my practice with just anyone?"
Mari didn't know how she was supposed to answer that and not make Circe even madder. She kind of had thought that. Surely she couldn't be the only one Circe ever taught about physically manipulating this mist, right? At least, the only unwilling one.
"Uh, kinda?" her response was more like a question.
Apparently she answered wrong, since Circe let out an animalistic growl and dug fingers into the wound she'd already made on Mari's shoulder.
"I have shared this gift with nobody until you, despite your ungrateful attitude. It's something that cannot be taught past the age you are now."
Mari realised she didn't even know how old she was anymore. "How long has it been? Since I got here?" she asked.
She wasn't sure she wanted to know. What if she'd been on Aeaea for twenty years? She didn't feel twenty, but how could she be sure? Her heart hammered at the possibility.
Circe scoffed. "That's hardly important."
Mari shook her head. "But... how old am I?"
"You are ten. You have been ten since I began training you, and you will remain ten until I say your training is complete. Now, enough of this. There is work to be done."
Circe raised her hands and Mari started shaking where she sat. Her body convulsed and her head lolled backwards, like her neck was made of jelly. She wondered if her neck would fall off it was actually made of jelly. Probably.
The injuries along her body from where Circe had poured the devil juice all burned in sync, and she opened her mouth to scream bloody murder. A torrent of golden air escaped instead.
There was a hiss sensation from her skin, like when a plunger was unplugged from a toilet. She glanced down and saw that the same golden air was leaking from her wounds as well. Mari felt lightheaded, and there was a pain in her chest. Like heartburn. It was exactly where she usually felt her 'instincts'.
All at once, the flow of golden air stopped pouring out of Mari. With a finger, Circe beckoned it towards her. Within seconds, she was lovingly cradling the gold in her hands as if it were a small child. It was probably the only time Mari had ever seen Circe be even mildly maternal.
"Oh, yes," said Circe. "I can work with this."
The pain in Mari's chest grew more intense, like she was being kicked there over and over. She started coughing.
"What-what did you-do to me?!" she wheezed.
Circe raised her hands, which were now encased in the golden air. "This is your precognitive power. I am re-modifying it."
Mari's heart sped up in panic, which didn't make the pain any better. "Give it back." she demanded, although it probably sounded a lot less ferocious when she was coughing on the floor. "Now!"
"No." Circe curled her hands into a fist, and the weird golden air -Mari's weird golden air- changed slightly. It was like veins grew around it. Little shiny pathways changing and overlapping each other. Like ropes.
The pain grew a thousand times worse. The kicking became a stabbing sensation and Mari's body felt like it was on fire again. The wounds from the solution Circe had poured over her started glowing purple and the feeling of being nibbled at kicked in again.
"Ah! Ah, please, stop it! Please, L-Lady Circe!"
Maybe Circe happened to finish doing whatever the fuck she was doing at the moment, or maybe her ego was appeased by Mari calling her by her 'proper title'. Mari didn't know and she didn't care. The pain stopped.
She curled into a little ball, like a squirrel and closed her eyes. She vaguely registered footsteps growing closer. Her eyes shot open again at the sound of Circe's voice. "There, there. It was for the best. It's over now. Here."
At that, Circe released her grip on the gold, which flowed back into Mari. To Mari's surprise, it didn't hurt on the way back in. It was an instant relief. Her head didn't stop spinning but the spin was more like a gentle twirl and her chest only ached slightly.
"I'm assuming you have questions." Circe smiled as if she'd just told Mari some kind of fairytale instead of ripping out her power and doing something freaky to it before giving it back.
"Of course I have bloody questions."
"Well, you'll have to wait. Those will be answered in time."
Mari wanted to scream at her, because what the fuck?! She didn't want to poke a sleeping bear. Or was it a sleeping tiger? She didn't want to poke anything.
"Now, we can begin your punishment." Circe told her.
"Wait, what?!" Mari asked. Begin? What did Circe think had been happening for the last million years (which was how slow the past few minutes had felt to Mari).
"You're punishment for trying to leave and taking that boy with you." Circe said, making the words slower as if she was a child. Well, she technically was a child... oh gods, she was still ten...
"But you just punished me!"
Circe put on a performance of fake confusion. "What are you talking about? My dear, that was the next step in your studies of the physical mist. It was a lesson. Now, you will face your punishment."
Mari's heart dropped.
Mari slumped against the wall of a hallway.
She only made it a few steps before collapsing, and had no intentions of ever getting up. Sleeping on the floor didn't even make the top ten most horrific night time experiences. Nine of those times were to do with waking up and finding a snake around her neck, and one of them was when she fell asleep on a weekend school trip and the teachers accidentally left her on the coach.
"Marion?"
Mari scowled and opened one eye and saw a pair of sandals. One toenail was chipped, and there was a green elastic bracelet around the ankle, with neon yellow beads. Mari nearly smiled, remembering a time Drew spent ten minutes ranting to her about how people never co-ordinated the colours they were wearing. Drew would have been horrified by this.
She couldn't be bothered to look up to see who the voice belonged to.
"Marion! Get up, are you okay?"
"Leave me alone. Sleeping." Mari mumbled.
Two hands grabbed her shoulders to try and sit her up, one of which had some kind of linen wrapped around it. Mari didn't protest, but as soon as the hands were gone she slid back into the same position she'd been in before.
"Please sit up. You were shivering when I found you."
Mari shook her head. "Go away. I don't wanna."
She finally looked up at the girl, and narrowed her eyes. She was familiar.
"I'm going to go get someone to help," the girl said.
Now Mari realised where she heard the voice. She turned away too quickly and accidentally banged her nose on the wall.
She heard footsteps walking away, and managed to get the words out. "I hope it was fucking worth it, Amelia."
The footsteps grew faster and Mari vaguely registered the slamming of a door before she was finally left alone. She wrapped her arms around herself to try and preserve body heat. Aeaea was tropical, so the clothes that Circe provided were really not meant for the cold temperatures at night, when everyone was supposed to be in their warm rooms.
"Mari!" another voice called out, and she recognised this one easily. Reyna was one of the few people who talked to Mari, even if it was usually just a passing 'hi'.
"No, I'm not Mari. I'm not here, let me sleep."
Reyna slung one of Mari's arms over her shoulder and started gently leading her through the corridor.
"Put me back down." Mari's head fell forward and she let it swing as they walked, or rather, as Reyna dragged her. Partly because she was didn't want to look at Reyna and partly because she didn't have the energy to hold it up.
"Hold on. Just a few more minutes. You'll be okay." Reyna picked up the pace a little, but not enough that Mari would start to stumble. Mari let out an undignified wine in response.
She was gently set on a familiar soft bed and she immediately curled up on herself again. A blanket was thrown over her. Yes, this was much warmer.
She was asleep before the door could shut.
"Hey. I tried to find soft food but all the kitchen had this late was bread and cheese. I got you some water, though." Reyna anxiously handed her a glass.
Mari nodded. "Thanks." Her voice was hoarse.
"How can I help?" Reyna tapped her foot on the floor beside Mari's bed.
Mari swallowed, shaking her head. "You can't."
Reyna tried to grab Mari's hands as she unconsciously raised them towards a gash on her forehead. She didn't know why she was trying to provoke an injury. It wasn't her instincts, that much she knew. It was more like a muscle memory of something she'd never done. But she did know she needed to put them there.
"Hey, no, don't do that, it could make it worse!"
"Trust me, please," she whispered to Reyna.
Reyna let go of her hands and Mari winced as she rested them on the gash. The bleeding had stopped when she pressed the edge of her bedsheet against it, but the cut wasn't that deep anyway. It just hurt.
Mari didn't know what she was doing, at all. She could have just been delirious. In fact, she really should have been delirious. But she didn't stop whatever it was that she was doing. She couldn't.
Mari began to hum... something. She's never hummed a tune like this before, but it felt like something Ancient.
Her eyes were closed but she could see a change behind her eyelids. Like when she looked at the sun for a long time, then closed her eyes and could still see the imprint. Her hands felt warm.
The pain in her forehead felt tingly, before it went away completely. Mari slowly took her hands away.
Reyna gasped. "It's healed! Can you do it again? With your other wounds?" Reyna gently pressed Mari's elbow, where three long scratch marks ran from there to a wound on her neck from the blue solution.
Mari lifted her hand and hummed the same tune...
Nothing.
Her head started pounding and she felt woozy. She shook her head. "I don't think so. I don't think that's... I didn't even know I could do that, and I don't think it's something I can do very strongly. My power is... knowing things."
At least, she hoped it still was knowing things. She didn't know if Circe had done something... what if her powers were completely gone?
"What happened?" Reyna asked her.
Mari scowled. "An evil immortal sorceress on a power high happened."
Reyna gasped and shook her head. "Circe did this? But-"
Mari turned away from Reyna. "I swear to the gods, if you say she wouldn't do something like this I'm going to burst into tears."
She looked back when she felt a hand on her knee. "I'm sorry," Reyna whispered.
Mari wanted to scream and cry, or maybe burn down Circe's waterfall room. Or all three, in the order. But Circe would probably kill her if she tried. Obviously Reyna wouldn't believe her about Circe. Her older sister was practically Circe's right-hand woman.
"Can we please talk about something else?" Mari asked.
They didn't actually talk. They just sat in an awkward silence.
Mari poked at an injury on her ankle and winced. The blue potion thingy that Circe had dumped all over her was a kind that was fast-healing. They were mostly bruises now, but very, very painful bruises. She could have used a chug of nectar or a little ambrosia right about then, and it wasn't like the stuff was in short supply. Circe used it as an ingredient in her guinea pig juice, so it arrived every month on the island in huge crates from some company called Triumvirate Industries, but Mari didn't want to risk it. Circe would probably get pissed and say she was 'ending her lesson without permission' or something equally irrational.
"What's your favourite colour?" Reyna asked her.
Mari raised her eyebrow. "Why does it matter?"
Reyna looked down at her lap, her face going slightly red. "I just figured... it was something else to talk about."
Mari sighed. If Reyna was trying to be nice, she could at the very least make a decent effort to reciprocate. "Probably light pink. What about you?"
Reyna smiled before answering, a wistful look in her eyes. "Definitely purple."
Mari nodded. Reyna mostly wore white and purple chitons, but she sometimes wore them in a different way. A few of the other girls did, too. It was pretty and everything, but something about it always felt not quite right to Mari.
"Why didn't you leave with that boy?" Reyna asked.
Mari's head snapped up. She hadn't told anybody about that...
Reyna continued. "I'm sorry! I was heading down to get food for you and Beatrice told me. Apparently the new girl told her, and, well, you know Beatrice..."
Mari did, in fact, not know Beatrice, but that seemed kind of irrelevant.
"He wanted to go back for Amelia. The 'new girl'." Mari couldn't stop the slight shake of her voice. She'd been so close to actually leaving for once, and she threw everything down the drain, for nothing!
"But... you're a daughter of Apollo, right? Hylla said you have precognitive powers. Wouldn't they have told you that it wouldn't work?" Reyna asked her.
Mari sighed. She'd never been able to directly try and use her instincts. They just came and went like the world's most inconsistent heartburn. "They don't always work that way. Believe me, I'm not very happy about it either. Plus, Blaze insisted. The sweet kid wouldn't leave without her."
"Oh. Sorry."
"Yeah."
There was a knock on the door, and before either of them could answer, Hylla appeared on the other side. "Reyna, Lady Circe said you could take Mari to her next lesson if you want, but she's late."
Mari scowled. "Okay, I'm going."
She didn't bother to change out of the chiton she'd slept in, or even put shoes on. Circe would just change it when she arrived anyway.
Reyna stayed close by as she walked towards the waterfall room, in case she tripped up from her various injuries. They arrived at the door and Reyna smiled awkwardly.
"So, I was wondering if you wanted to hang out with me and a few friends? We were going to go go to the Luau tonight, at 8. Hylla gave me permission."
"Uh, ok... sure."
The door opened to reveal Circe, a kind smile on her face as she took in Reyna. "My dear, I didn't expect you to bring Marion here. Did you need help with anything?"
Mari had never heard Circe speak that kindly to someone. Was this what she sounded like to everyone else?
"Oh, no, Lady Circe. I was just making sure she got here okay. Something hurt her last night, but she won't say what."
Circe let out a huff of fake exasperation, and smiled at Mari. It probably looked warm to other people, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Oh, Marion. I always tell you not to keep your problems to yourself. I'm here to help you reach your full potential. How can I do that if you're hurt?"
Mari barely caught that way Circe glanced at Reyna before she spoke again. "For a Legacy of Minerva, you really need to consider your actions more wisely."
Mari furrowed her eyebrows. She'd heard of Minerva before, when a set of ex-foster parents dragged her to the Roman baths. The entire trip had made her feel uncomfortable, and they'd ended up leaving early because Mari thought she might be getting sick. Hearing the name again brought back that same feeling. It seemed... wrong. She couldn't explain it. She couldn't remember what Minerva meant, though...
Apparently it meant something to Reyna, because the girl slapped her hands to her mouth in shock. "No... that... that's not possible."
"What? Reyna, what does Minerva mean?" Mari asked.
Circe faked a surprised expression. "Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't know I interrupted your conversation. Well, don't stop on my behalf. Did you say something about meeting with some friends later?"
Reyna stopped and stared at Mari again. Her eyes were wide, and she swallowed twice before continuing. "Actually, I, uh, I just remembered. Hylla said I could only bring four people. I-you make it five. Sorry."
Mari frowned. "But, could we do something else later? If you want?"
Reyna shook her head. "It was kind of a special occasion... I'll talk to you later."
She looked from Mari to Circe, then back to Mari before practically sprinting down the hall, towards the main resort.
Mari watched her go, and her heart hammered in her chest. Had she said something wrong? Had Reyna decided that she wasn't worth the trouble of having to constantly put up with accusations against Circe?
"Well. Now that that's taken care of, let's continue our lesson." Circe smiled breezily before grabbing Mari's arm and yanking her into the waterfall room.
FIVE YEARS LATER
Mari glared out of the window in the hallway.
She'd been feeling panicky and slightly queasy all day. Not the bad kind of queasy, more like an excited kind of queasy.
Reyna didn't talk to Mari again. They occasionally locked eyes in passing, but Reyna would always look guilty and find something else to occupy her time. Or she'd just flat out walk in the opposite direction of Mari, who still couldn't figure out why.
Circe walked into the room. "Marion, I'd like you to come with me."
"Why?" Mari asked. Circe glared. "Don't ask questions! There are two new guests arrived at the resort on a makeshift raft. You shall be helping me greet them."
What? Circe hadn't let Mari help greet anyone since...
Since Blaze.
"Is it two girls?" Mari asked hopefully. Circe shook her head. "No. A girl... and a boy. He will be dealt with."
Mari scowled. "Why do you want me to watch you? You haven't forced me to in ages."
Circe grabbed her elbow. "You will come, now. Do as I say and all will be revealed in time, my dear. And as for why, these two guests are special. One is the subject of a great prophecy," Circe sighed. "It really is a shame it wasn't the girl."