Percy Jackson and his girlfriend Annabeth Chase were not two ordinary teenagers. In fact the two teens were demigods to be precise they were the children of two ancient Greek gods, Poseidon and Athena, and since they had met they had not had a single quiet year and had faced countless dangers, although now that the King of the Titans Kronos had been defeated they hoped that they would be able to enjoy their college years without having to face a monster between classes and hoped that the only thing they would have to be afraid of would be exams.
The couple had decided to spend a few days at the place by the sea where Percy and his mother had spent almost every summer since he was a child. It was not the place to take in the sun or go swimming, but it was the place where Sally had met Poseidon, Percy's father, so it was a special place for them.
Percy had decided to share that place with his girlfriend Annabeth, and they had rented the small house that mother and son rented every year. In fact, the couple had decided to spend a few days there before reaching Camp Half-Blood where they had been spending their summer weeks for a few years now because it was the safest place for demigods and where they trained to fight monsters that might attack them. The two teenagers had spent some good days alone. The weather had been kind until last evening, when a bad storm had started after dinner.
"Zeus seems to be in a bad mood tonight." She observed Annabeth staring at the raindrops sliding down the window pane of the small living room. The sound of wind and the rumble of thunder could be heard.
"Let's hope the power doesn't go out." Rebutted Percy with a worried air because he did not know where the light meter was and feared that if the power went out they would be in the dark until the morning of the next day. Annabeth turned to look at him.
"It wouldn't be so bad if the lights went out. They say candlelight is very romantic." She commented, staring at him with the gray eyes typical of all the children of the goddess Athena. Percy felt his cheeks flush at the thought of him and Annabeth with only the flames of the candles to give him light, and before he could answer her there was a knock at the door.
"I wonder who that could be." Observed Annabeth puzzled. Percy, who was closest to the door, opened it and before him appeared their friend Grover soaking wet. His hairy satyr legs were bare and he was not even wearing the hair he used to cover his horns when he wished to blend in among mortals.
"Good evening, sorry to bother you, but Manuela and I were on our way to Camp Half-Blood when the storm caught us." He explained the satyr and without waiting for an invitation crossed the threshold of the door. Grower knew that his friends would be spending a few days there, and seeing the light on he must have thought that the house they had rented was a nice place to shelter from the storm.
"Who is Manuela?" Percy asked as his girlfriend approached to see and welcome the new guests.
"It's me." A female voice answered, and when the teenager turned around he saw a young girl he had not noticed before. She took off the hood of the sweatshirt she was wearing revealing a long head of black, curly hair. She had a beautiful pair of familiar brown eyes and light brown skin. She really had a beautiful face. Her beauty was comparable to the children of the Goddess Aphrodite who among other things inherited her charm from her mother.
"Good evening." She greeted Annabeth.
"I am Percy Jackson and this is my girlfriend Annabeth Chase." He said adducing himself and his girlfriend.
"I am Manuela Gonzalez, nice to meet you." She replied with a bright smile as she extended a hand. On her wrist she wore a friendship bracelet in different shades of blue.
"Nice to meet you." Annabeth replied with a friendly smile.
"Your friend told me that you are demigods and he thinks I am one too. I told him it's impossible, but he seems to really believe that's the case." She affirmed in a doubtful tone.
"I saved you and your little sister from a Furies and monsters do not attack humans unless they have ties to demigods." Grover replied in an exasperated tone, evidently he must have repeated those words several times already.
"And I keep telling you that my parents love each other and I would put my hand on the fire so that my father would never betray my mother is not even vice versa." Squealed the little girl.
"And you would risk burns since adjudicating from your beauty you could be the daughter of the Goddess Aphrodite and thousands of men and even gods have fallen head over heels for her over the centuries." Grover retorted.
"Maybe that was before your parents knew each other and fell in love." Suggested Athena's daughter in a conciliatory tone.
"No, impossible. I was born seven years after my parents were married. They lived in the same neighborhood in Miami and fell in love during their junior year in high school." She recounted. "My father wrote my mother a note asking her if she wanted to go have hot chocolate with her and slipped it in her locker. She replied that she was allergic to chocolate, but that if he felt like going out with her they could go for a hot dog or do something else." She continued. "They've been lovers ever since and were married in their early twenties." She concluded dreamily. The son of Poseidon imagined that in her eyes her parents' had always appeared to be a fairy tale love, and he was sorry that she was probably about to be abruptly brought back to reality.
"Um... Is your father by any chance a professor or a scientist or something?" Athena's daughter asked in a hesitant tone, and Percy immediately understood what she was thinking: Athena's children were born of her thought and were a gift, and if Manuela's father had been a man of particular intellect there was a possibility that he and the Goddess had an intellectual relationship and thus that Mr. Gonzalez had not cheated on his wife. Manuela stared puzzled at the older girl.
"No, Dad didn't even get to go to college he would have liked to and had managed to win a scholarship through sports, but then he hurt his knee and had to say goodbye to college." She replied somberly. "He runs a club and likes his job even though not being able to go to college I think will always remain his biggest regret." She continued and Poseidon's son thought it unlikely that Annabeth's mother would be interested in a former athlete running a club and then all of Athena's children inherited her gray eyes and Manuela's were brown so it seemed unlikely that it was her daughter.
"I'm sorry." Said Annabeth. "Anyway... You know no one is perfect and everyone can have a moment of weakness." She continued in a hesitant tone.
"No, that's not true, it can't be true." Shrieked Manuela, shaking her head before bursting into a desperate cry and leaving the house before they could stop her.
"I'll take care of it." Annabeth said, then opened the door and walked out, closing the door behind her. Grover let out a sigh.
"Quite a mess." He commented. "So far all the demigods I have scouted out and brought to the camp had only one mortal parent, some even had no family at all or maybe they had a stepfather or stepmother they hated." He added with a sigh and a grave air. "A very unpleasant situation, but sooner or later she will have to learn to accept the truth better sooner than later."
"I in his place would have just been relieved to find out that Smelly Gabe was not my father." He looked at Percy feeling a strong sense of disgust at the memory of his first stepfather who besides smelling awful had a really bad temper, exploited his mother in every way he could, never had a single kind word for him and her, and played poker the little money he earned. The only person, or rather thing, his stepfather cared about before he was turned into a statue was his damn car.
"Mr. and Mrs. Gonzalez, however, are very loving parents even though they demand a lot from Manuela and load her with expectations. They didn't get to go to college either of them and they want her to be the first in the family." Grover replied. "I really wish she wasn't ademigod and not to ruin the good idea she has of her family, but unfortunately I have no doubt that she has half divine blood." The life of demigods was anything but easy; many of them did not even make it past the age of twelve and rarely made it past adolescence because monsters were constantly hunting them down. Once they reached their twenties their smell diminished so they attracted less monsters, however the problem was that several of them did not even make it to their twenties.
"Is she dyslexic and suffering from ADHD?" He asked thinking he already knew the answer to that question because up to that point he had not known any demigods who were not dyslexic or suffered from ADHD. Several of them then were suffering from both disorders.
"She is only dyslexic and has a quiet disposition, but woe to even say a word against her family or just insinuate that one or both of her parents might not be so perfect." He replied. "She is a loyal little girl who adores her parents." There was a hint of melancholy in his voice evidently as he was sorry at the thought of the great disappointment that little girl was having after learning that one of her parents must have betrayed the other.
"She will eventually recover from the disappointment, you just have to wait." He replied in an encouraging tone. They changed the subject and started talking about a completely different topic.
When Annabeth and Manuela came in several minutes later they were both soaking wet, but at least the little girl seemed to have calmed down even though her eyes were red from crying.
"This storm shows no sign of wanting to stop so I think the wisest thing to do is for you to stay quo for tonight then in the morning you will resume your journey." Proposed Annabeth.
"Yes, I think that's a good idea. The journey has been long so far and we are tired." Replied the satyr. The little demigod, who had been clutching her arms with her hands since she entered, nodded her head affirmatively.
"Percy is not a problem for you, is very?" Annabeth asked, staring at her boyfriend with her gray eyes.
"No problem." He replied wishing that the rest of the evening and night would pass peacefully.
It was decided that Manuela would sleep in the second bedroom. The room was small, but for one night it would be fine and the little girl did not complain as much as Grover since there were only two rooms and one was already occupied by the couple while in the second there was only one bed the satyr had to make do with the couch, but he did not make a fuss either.
Later that evening Percy, passing by the small room to go to the bathroom, saw Manuela kneeling on the floor beside the bed with her fingers intertwined in prayer and her elbows resting on the bed. He imagined that she was praying and trying not to make noise opened the door to the bathroom down the hall.
After brushing his teeth and putting on his pajamas he exited the bathroom. Curious before entering his own room he cast a glance into Manuela's room and saw her lying on the bed with her back to the door.
When he entered the bedroom he shared with Annabeth the latter, who was lying in bed with her back against the wall, lifted her head from the book she was reading by the light of the abat jour on the bedside table.
"I saw and heard Manuela praying earlier. She's asleep now." He announced as he lifted the bedspread and sheet and lay down beside his beloved. She closed the book and placed it on the bedside table.
"I'm afraid this will test her faith as well." She observed and heaved a sigh. "She told me there are four things her family cares about: Cuba, religion, family and the United States." She added. "She told me that her paternal and maternal grandparents emigrated from Cuba when her parents were just children and that although her parents always worked, they integrated well into American society and speak the language perfectly, albeit with a slight accent… Despite this, there are those who do not consider them second-class citizens and even more absurdly there are those who do not consider her and her little sister true Americans because their parents have Cuban origins." She affirmed, shaking her head disapprovingly.
"is terribly unfair, I agree." He replied.
"You know, technically it could even be your sister." Commented his girlfriend in a cautious tone. He stared at her surprised. "It's a possibility." A possibility he hadn't really thought about, yet he supposed it was possible. Manuela could be Poseidon's daughter and therefore his sister. He thought back to when his father had joked that he would be forced to acknowledge all his children after he had made the gods swear to acknowledge all their children by the age of thirteen after saving the world. He had asked Poseidon if by any chance it was true if there was a possibility that he had half-siblings, and the god neither confirmed nor denied that possibility.
"I don't think Poseidon has broken the covenant twice, but I suppose it is not a possibility to be ruled out a priori." He replied. Zeus, Poseidon and Hades had sworn not to beget any other demigods and up to that point the pact had been broken only twice, namely when Zeus had begotten Thalia and when Poseidon had begotten two and he hoped with all his heart that his father had not violated the oath a second time because being a demigod was already difficult and very dangerous and if on top of that your father was one of the most powerful gods on Olympus... In short, the situation for Manuela already seemed quite complicated, and if to her disappointment in discovering that one of her parents had not been faithful and that her family was not as perfect as she had believed up to that point if to this they added being the daughter of Poseidon or another of the Big Three Gods and that she would therefore be in more danger than any other demigod.
"You know Manuela told me that when she was just a few weeks old a strange woman with a hood over her head, hands full of wrinkles and long claw-like nails tried to steal her from her baby carriage one day that her mother was out shopping and that her father told her that when she was two or three years old she once killed a snake although she confessed to me that she never knew whether to believe that story or not." Told the daughter of the goddess Athena. Percy felt a pang in his stomach because he too had killed a snake with his bare hands as a child.
"Coincidence. Monsters and misfortunes strike all demigods," he replied wishing with all his heart that this was so.
"Usually the children of Aphrodite are attacked less often by monsters because they are less strong than other demigods." She replied. "Grover thinks she may be a daughter of Aphrodite because of her charm, but it is not certain. Beauty is not something precluded only to the children of the Goddess of Beauty." She continued. He did not respond even though he thought she was right.
After that last comment from Annabeth they closed the conversation and after exchanging a kiss they settled under the covers and as they had done the previous nights they fell asleep in each other's arms.
The next morning Grover and Manuela left for Camp Half-Blood. It would not be long, in fact probably only a few hours before they would see each other again because beyond those few days that Percy and Annabeth had spent in the small house they had rented the rest of the summer as they did every year they would spend it at camp.
"The two of us will get all our things, get the house in order, and then we will join you at camp." Said Annabeth. "And thank you for making us breakfast." She added addressed to Manuela. When they had woken up, in fact, they had found a sweet surprise greeting them in the kitchen: in fact, to thank them for their hospitality, Manuela had made them find the table already set for breakfast with everything she had found in the house, namely a plate full of cookies in the center of the table, the milk bottle and the juice box and finally a bowl with fruit. She had then made Grover find a can evidently aware that satyrs liked to eat cans.
It had seemed to Percy that he was at home with his mother who greeted him in the morning in the kitchen with a smile. Manuela had acted motherly and had appeared more serene than the night before and had greeted them by humming.
"Oh, I did it with pleasure and I apologize for my behavior last night, but ... well, it's not easy. I mean until the day before yesterday I thought my parents were the perfect couple that ours was the perfect family." She said apologetically.
"It's okay, we understand." Said Annabeth understandingly. "You'll see that everything will work out and no matter what, your parents will always remain your parents." She continued. The curly-haired woman nodded.
"Sure. I'm angry with them now and I think I will be for a while, but I'm sure things will work out in the end, although I need answers I want to find out the whole truth however painful it may be." She affirmed and Annabeth nodded understandingly.
"It's only natural." He replied. Grover and Manuela said their goodbyes and then left, and as the son of Poseidon stared at the 12-year-old's curly head as she walked away he mentally wished her that it would all work out and soon.
Later Annabeth found on the floor of the second bedroom a pendant that she and Percy imagined belonged to Manuela. On top of the medallion was depicted the head of an animal with horns that they assumed was a bull and the couple wondered if by chance Manuela had the bull as her zodiac sign or if the medallion represented a clue as to which deity had spawned her and in that case she might really be the daughter of one of the Big Three Gods only Zeus and not Poseidon. The Chase slipped the pendant, which was a gold medal, into her pocket vowing to return it to the little girl as soon as possible.