Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: And now, we get to this chapter...ish. Kind of. You'll see what I mean at the end. :P

As always, I hope you enjoy. Until the next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis


~The Finding Home Saga~

~Finding Home~

~Chapter 64: We Visit The Junkyard Of The Gods~


We rode the boar until sunset, which was about as much as my ass could take. Imagine riding a steel brush over a bed of gravel all day. That's about as comfortable as boar-riding was.

I have no idea how many miles we covered, but the mountains had faded into the distance and were replaced by miles of flat, dry land. The grass and scrub brush got sparser until we were galloping (do boars gallop?) across the desert.

As night fell, the boar came to a stop at a creek bed and snorted. It started drinking the muddy water, then ripped a saguaro cactus out of the ground and chewed it, needles and all.

"I think this is as far as he'll take us," I called out from the very back of the riding line we'd made on the boar when that feeling that wasn't my own returned briefly. "We should probably get off while he's eating."

Nobody needed convincing. We slipped off the boar's back while he was busy ripping up cacti. Then we waddled as best as we could with our saddle sores – and in my case, claw marks on the back, too. Zoë had given me a small piece of ambrosia so that they didn't get infected, but it hadn't healed me up as much as I'd wanted it to.

After its third saguaro and another drink of muddy water, the boar squealed and belched, then whirled around and galloped back towards the east.

"It likes the mountains better," Katie guessed.

"I can't say that I blame it," Thalia said. "Look."

Ahead of us was a two-lane road half covered with sand. On the other side of the road was a cluster of buildings too small to be a town: a boarded-up house, a taco shop that looked like it hadn't been open since before the 1960s, and a white stucco post office with a sign that said GILA CLAW, ARIZONA hanging crooked above the door. Beyond that was a range of hills...but then I noticed that they weren't regular hills. The countryside was way too flat for that. The hills were enormous mounds of old cars, appliances, and other scrap metal. It was a junkyard that seemed to go on forever.

"Whoa," I said.

"Something tells me we're not going to find a car rental here," Thalia said. She looked over at me. "I suppose Demeter doesn't got another wild boar up her sleeve or something for you?"

I felt my ears redden with anger, and to my surprise, I wasn't the only one. Zoë and Iphigenia both looked kind of pissed, too. But they didn't jump into the fight, allowing me to say without hassle, "It doesn't work like that."

Thalia huffed. "Of course it doesn't."

Katie sighed. "Guys. We need to figure something out. Fighting's not going to help."

"Right. Sorry, Katie," I apologized.

Thalia didn't, but that wasn't a button that I was going to push.

We wound up deciding to camp for the night and try the junkyard in the morning, since we also wound up deciding that was the only way we would be able to get further west and that maybe there was a town or something on the other side that we would have better luck with. None of us wanted to go dumpster-diving in the dark.

Zoë and Iphigenia produced five sleeping bags and foam mattresses out of their backpacks, which was also where the ambrosia that Zoë had given me had come from. I don't know how they did it, because their packs were tiny, but the bags must've been enchanted to hold so much stuff. I'd noticed that their bows and quivers were also magic. I'd never really thought about it, but when the Hunters needed them, they just appeared slung over their backs. And when they didn't, they were gone.

The night got chilly fast, so Katie and I collected old boards from the ruined house, and Thalia zapped them with an electric shock to start a campfire. Pretty soon we were about as comfy as you can get in a rundown ghost town in the middle of nowhere.

"The stars are out," Zoë said.

She was right. There were millions of them, with no city lights to turn the sky orange.

"...I've never actually seen the Milky Way before," I realized out loud. Yes, at camp we got a pretty good view of the stars, but in order to see the spiral arms of the galaxy, you really had to be all the way out in the middle of fucking nowhere, like this.

Zoë chuckled, though she seemed to be having similar thoughts to mine. "This is nothing. In the old days, there were more. Whole constellations have disappeared because of light pollution."

"You talk like you're not human," I noted.

Zoë raised an eyebrow. "I am a Hunter. I care what happens to the wild places of the world. Can the same be said for thee?"

"For 'you,'" Thalia corrected. "Not 'thee.'"

"But you use 'you' for the beginning of a sentence."

"And for the end," Thalia said. "No 'thou.' No 'thee.' Just 'you.'"

Zoë threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. "I hate this language! It changes too often!"

Though Iphigenia looked prone to agree with her, she also looked like she was amused by her lieutenant's antics, too, her dark eyes shining with the light of the fire.

We talked for a little bit more after that, mostly about what our plans were going to be once we got to the other side of the junkyard, before we decided to call it a night. All of us except for Iphigenia, who was taking first watch, settled into our respective beds, and I placed Bob on top of my chest even though that gave me a little bit of a breathing problem once I laid down for her comfort. She nestled into me, burrowing for warmth, before she started to purr.

Because of everything we'd been through, it didn't take me long to fall asleep underneath the stars, even though a part of me just wanted to look up at them all night long with how bright they were here.

But it felt like I'd only just fallen asleep when I was woken up again by a hand shaking my shoulder.


"Percy."

Blearily, I opened my eyes. Bob was snoozing still on my chest while Iphigenia was standing above me, her curly dark hair framed by a light that was much too bright to be from the moon, almost making it look like she had a halo.

"Iphigenia," I yawned. "What's – what's going on?"

Her lips were pressed into a firm line. "Someone is here to see you."

That had me sitting up pretty much right away. And I was so tired despite being wide awake at the same time that Bob fell into my lap. But the house cat-sized saber tooth tiger did not wake up; in fact, all she did was let out a short whine before she shifted around, still deep in sleep.

I saw that the same was true for the rest of my friends, besides Iphigenia. Though the lights of a car were shining brilliantly on them, they were all asleep. I had the feeling that the work of a god was at play.

And I was correct. There was a deathly white limousine about fifteen feet away from us. I could feel the power emanating from it – the slight buzz that was only there when you were in the presence of a god or goddess.

"Who's that?" I asked Iphigenia.

The Hunter did not answer me in the way that I wanted. All she said was, "Go. I will watch over Bob until you get back."

I frowned. "And leave you guys here?"

"We will be fine," Iphigenia assured me. Then, against my expectations, she took in a deep breath. "It is best that you go and get this over with, Percy. She never likes to be kept waiting."

"She?"

I decided to go along with Iphigenia's advice. Placing Bob on my mattress, I got to my feet on shaky legs. I didn't really know why.

Maybe because I already had a feeling about who I was going to meet.

The short walk to the limousine felt like it took an eternity to do. When I got there, before I could knock on the window or grab the handle of one of the back doors of the limo, it opened of its own accord in front of me. And then, I saw her.

My jaw almost dropped.

Now, as I've said before, I'm one-hundred-percent gay. But I'm not going to deny that the woman before me was beautiful – just as beautiful as Silena, if not more so. She was wearing a satin red dress, her black hair curled and in a cascade of ringlets. Her face was the kind that could sail a thousand ships: perfect makeup, dazzling eyes, a smile that would've lit up the dark side of the moon. Her eyes were like a kaleidoscope.

I've been told that this isn't how she looks to most people. For most people, her appearance is in a permanent state of flux, constantly shifting about to look like the people they most love (usually romantically, but platonically and on the familial level, too), the people that they find the most attractive, the physical traits that they find most attractive, and etcetera. I'm kind of an odd case to be able to see through it all.

Because I could kind of see the magic at work: in my peripheral vision, I could see her hair as sandy blonde instead of black. If I unfocused my eyes, I'd probably be able to see her eye color become an icy blue, too, just like glaciers.

But for the most part, as I was staring right at her, she simply looked like the best friend that I was currently trying to rescue along with my other best friend. Silena. She was in her natural form – as natural of a form she could take on without me burning into ash at the sight like Semele when she was pregnant with Dionysus, I mean.

"Ah, there you are, Percy," she said. "It's lovely to meet you. I'm Aphrodite. Please, come sit with me."

"...Yeah, I kind of figured that," I managed to say as I slipped into the seat across from her. "You look a lot like Silena."

She'd already been smiling, but at this, her smile became even wider. "I do? How interesting. Hold this, please."

She handed me a polished mirror the size of a dinner plate and had me hold it up for her. She leaned forwards and dabbed at her lipstick, though I couldn't see anything wrong with it.

"Do you know why we're here, Percy?" she asked me.

"Um..." There was a strong scent in the air, almost like perfume, but also...not. It didn't really have a smell to it, if that makes sense. It was almost something like pheromones. It didn't really bother me, didn't really make me dizzy or hard for me to think or anything, but it was overpowering. And in that way, it was a distraction, so it took me a second to say the answer I already knew. "Well, I'm here for Silena, to rescue her. So I suppose you are, too."

She let out a musical laugh, just in the same way that Silena did. "Oh, yes, she's certainly one of the reasons why we're here," she said. "And, of course, we're here because Artemis has been captured, too. She and I have never gotten along, but I do care for her very much. She's part of the family that I was invited into – because you know I'm not the Aphrodite that is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. I'm the daughter of Ouranos and Thalassa. Don't let my number on the council fool you: truthfully, I am the eldest of the Olympians, though not in the way that the Great Prophecy means. But," she sighed, "I'm getting away from myself.

"Silena and Artemis are both reasons for why we're here, but they're not the only reasons, now, are they?"

It took me another moment to figure out what she was trying to say. Not because of the pheromones, but because –

Nobody was supposed to know about that, nobody besides me and Luke.

I stiffened. "I don't know what you're talking about, Lady Aphrodite."

She laughed again. "No? You mean to tell me, the first Goddess of Love, who would've been a primordial had my mother given birth to me just a bit sooner, that you are not in love with Luke Castellan, son of Hermes, my stepson, and traitor of Olympus? That you are not in a relationship with him that the two of you have done your best to hide from either side?"

I resisted the urge to gulp, because I had no doubt with her powers and abilities as a goddess, she would've been able to hear it, if not see how my Adam's apple moved.

Instead, I looked her dead in the eyes and said, "I have no idea what you're talking about, ma'am."

Aphrodite tutted at me. "You are a good liar, Percy, I will give you that," she said. "But you cannot hide what you feel from me. Maybe from the younger Aphrodite or my various children, that is true, but not from me. But don't worry, I'm not going to tell anyone about what you two are doing. Not even your patron, although I suspect that she already knows."

. . .

I blinked in surprise. "You're not?"

"No. For one, I do want you to save my daughter – she looks so much like me, you know, the most out of all of the children I have ever had – and telling on you while you are on this quest would just get in the way of that. For two, it's been ages since we've had a good tragic love story."

"'Tragic?'"

"I'm on your side," Aphrodite promised me. Then she squinted briefly. "Oh, you can put down the mirror now. I look fine." As I did so jerkily, she continued on with her original train of thought, "I think what you and Luke are doing is quite...beautiful. You remind me of Helen and Paris. They never let anything come between them, either."

I was trying my hardest to not freak myself out into a heart attack, but she was making it pretty damn difficult. "Didn't they start the Trojan War and get thousands of people killed?"

"Pfft. That's not the point. The point is, you and Luke follow your hearts. It is admirable in this day and age, when so many mortals don't. And it's the reason why you're on this quest now, besides saving my daughter and Artemis. I know you're angry with him for what he's done to them, but still, you're doing this quest for him, too. Because even though you think you've given up on trying to save him, deep down, you still want to try. You wouldn't have gotten back together with him otherwise. It's quite adorable, really."

"Erm...thanks."

"Oh, please, Percy. I already told you that I won't be telling anyone about you two. You don't need to worry about me knowing." She said all of this with a roll of her eyes. But then, very abruptly, her expression became serious. "I've seen some of your thoughts about him...what you want to do with him." Oh gods, this couldn't get any worse, could it? I felt like I was blushing down to the tips of my toes. "Oh, no, you misunderstand. It is perfectly understandable why you would be hesitant, anyone is with their true first time. But I must tell you, you're running out of time for that."

I froze all over again at that. "What?" My voice came out as a whisper. I had to clear my throat. "What do you know?"

Aphrodite smiled at me sadly. "Only what Apollo and his Oracle have told me, which is not as much as you're thinking. But I am the Goddess of Love, and I have seen this particular story play out time and time again. I know what I am looking at. Think of this as a...nudge. The nudge for you to do what is right not for others, but for yourself. To follow your heart, completely and utterly."

I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth. I'd come across way too many gods since Westover Hall to be comfortable with. "Consider me nudged, then."

She laughed for a third time. "Good, good. That is exactly what I wanted to hear. Now, you'd better go. But, one last thing: this junkyard you're going to go through – it's not just any other junkyard. It's...the tinkerer's territory. Don't take anything. He's awfully fussy about his trinkets and trash."

"What?" I asked. "You mean Hephaestus?"

Similar to Iphigenia, she didn't answer me. With a smirk, she lifted her right hand and snapped her fingers. The sound wasn't that loud, but for some reason it made me close my eyes.

When I opened them again, I was no longer in the limousine. There was no limousine in sight at all. I was laying back on my foam mattress, Bob resting once more on my chest. I almost would've thought that the entire thing had been a dream, but the look in Iphigenia's eyes as she watched me from where she was tending to the fire said otherwise.

My audience with the goddess of love was over.


In the morning, just before dawn, I told the others about what Aphrodite had said – not about any of the stuff with Luke, just what she'd said about the junkyard and Hephaestus.

Unfortunately, they didn't quite believe me. "The Goddess of Love would not make a special trip to tell thee that," Zoë said with narrowed eyes. "Be careful, Percy, with whatever she told thee. Aphrodite has led many heroes astray."

"For once, I agree with Zoë," Thalia said. "You can't trust Aphrodite."

Katie was looking at me funny. As my other best friend besides Silena and someone who was knowledgeable about my relationship with Luke before he revealed himself as the traitor of Olympus, I had a feeling about what that look meant.

"So," I said, anxious to change the subject, "I know we know what we have to get through in order to get out of here, but how do we know for sure which way is west?"

"That way," Zoë answered, pointing, "is west."

"How can you tell?"

In the light that was just coming with the dawn, I could see her roll my eyes at me. "Ursa Major is in the north, and it was out last night," she said, "which means that must be west."

She pointed at the general vicinity that the constellation must've been in, then back to where she had been pointing at.

"Oh, yeah," I said. "The bear thing."

Both Zoë and Iphigenia looked offended. "Show some respect. She was a fine bear."

"You act like she was real."

"Guys," Thalia broke in. "Look at this!"

We'd been walking as we'd spoken, and we'd now reached the crest of a junk mountain. Piles of metal objects glinted in the moonlight: broken heads of bronze horses, metal legs from human statues, smashed chariots, tons of shields and swords and other weapons, along with more moderns stuff, like cars that gleamed gold and silver, refrigerators, washing machines, and computer monitors.

"Whoa," Katie said. "That stuff...some of it looks like real gold."

"It is," I said grimly. "But like I said, don't touch anything. This is the junkyard of the gods."

"Hey, Thalia, look," Katie spoke as she gestured over to a spear, "doesn't that spear look like yours?"

"It...does," Thalia admitted reluctantly. She picked it up, probably just to see how its weight compared to her own spear, then yelped in surprise. The spear began to shrink, before it became a hair clip shaped like the moon. "That's...just like your sword, Percy. My spear, too."

"Set it down, Thalia," Zoë said. Her face was grim.

Thalia let go of the spear. "You're not gonna get a protest from me out of that."

Zoë acted like she hadn't heard her; I suspected this was because she just wanted to remind all of us, "Everything is here for a reason. Anything thrown away in the junkyard must stay in this yard. It is defective, or cursed."

We started picking our way through the hills and valleys of junk. The stuff seemed to go on forever, and if it hadn't been for Zoë and Iphigenia very specifically remembering which way we were going (but also them using the rising sun as another indicator, like Ursa Major), we would've gotten lost. All the hills pretty much looked the same.

I'd like to say we all took Zoë's reminder to heart and left stuff alone, but there was just too much cool junk to not check out some of it. I found an electric guitar shaped like Apollo's lyre that was so sweet I had to pick it up. Katie found a broken tree made out of metal. It had been chopped to pieces, but some of the branches still had golden birds on them, and they whirred around when Katie picked them up, trying to flap their wings. Even Zoë and Iphigenia found a Hunter's bow that they both had to stop and admire.

Finally, we saw the edge of the junkyard about half a mile ahead of us, the lights of the highway stretching through the desert, though it couldn't be too much longer that they would go out from the daylight becoming too bright. But, between us and the road...

"What is that?" Katie gasped.

Ahead of us was a hill much bigger and longer than the others. It was like a metal mesa, the length of a football field and as tall as goalposts. At one end of the mesa was a row of thick metal columns, wedged tightly together.

Iphigenia frowned. "Those almost look like – "

"Toes," I said.

She nodded. Then she, Zoë, and Thalia all exchanged a nervous look.

"Let's go around," Thalia said. "Far around."

None of us argued with that.

After several minutes of walking, we finally stepped onto the highway, an abandoned but well-lit stretch of black asphalt.

"We made it out," Zoë spoke. "Thank the gods."

But apparently the gods didn't want to be thanked. At that moment, I heard a sound like a thousand trash compacters crushing metal.

I whirled around. Behind us, the scrap mountain was boiling, rising up. The ten toes tilted over, and I realized now why they looked like toes. They were toes. The thing that rose up from the metal was a bronze giant in full Greek battle armor. He was impossibly tall – a skyscraper with legs and arms. He gleamed wickedly in the moonlight. He looked down at us, but his face was deformed. The left side was partially melted off. His joints creaked with rust, and across his armored chest, written in thick dust by some giant finger, were the words WASH ME.

"Talos!" Zoë gasped.

There was only one thing that I could think of to say to that:

"Who the hell is Talos?"


Word Count: 3,939

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