I turned around and felt a sharp pain in my leg. Apparently sleeping with a dagger in my bed had not been a wise decision. I inspected my leg. It was nothing a bit of ambrosia couldn't fix. I knew Percy always had some in his nightstand drawer, so I awkwardly bent over him and got myself a piece. In just a few seconds, the cut closed up and the bleeding stopped. When I checked under the blanket, I noticed some blood on the bed. Sally wouldn't like having to deal with that. A few minutes later, Percy woke up. "Morning Annabeth. Is this Annabeth?" "I am Annabeth" I confirmed. It was nice of him to make sure it wasn't someone else currently fronting. "So, did you sleep well? After the flashback, I mean" "Yes, weird dreams, but nothing bad. I slept well but when I woke up I…" "Yes?" "Remember how you gave me my knife a few hours ago? Well, I fell asleep without putting it back. I've already recovered from the injuries, but there's kind of a big blood stain on the sheets." I showed it to him. "Well, that's certainly an unusual way to get blood on the bed, especially for a girl, but nothing the son of Poseidon…" he said those last four words in a dramatic voice. "…can't deal with. We should get out of bed first though" I did as he said and moments later, a tiny geyser erupted on his bed, taking the blood with it. The water formed a ball which then followed Percy out the door, presumably to the bathroom. He returned moments later. "So Annabeth, what did we learn from this?" Percy asked with a voice like that of someone talking to a toddler who had hurt themselves by running with scissors. "First, don't talk like that, I'm usually not that young." This sentence would have probably made zero sense to someone who didn't know about Annie and my other alters. "Also, I learned not to take sharp comfort objects into bed." "Exactly, sharp knives are dangerous" I heard a child's voice in my head say. "That's why Percy opened the Legos for us." "Oh hi Annie. How are you?" I said that out loud, earning me a short confused look from Percy "I'm good. No flashbacks for a few days. You were thinking about me" "I was. Did that bring you closer to me?" "I guess so" "Never knew that could happen. But then again, I've known about my alters for less than three weeks. Reminds me of how gods always know when their name is said." "Well, the entire multi personality thing reminds me of the gods." Percy added. That was already two things that made me similar to a God. "Uh, Oh, hubris alert" Annie told me. "Hey, are you reading my thoughts?" "No, I can't really do that. Just rough emotions. I kind of just guessed and apparently I guessed right." I tried to look around and see Annie. Of course I didn't look around in the real world but on a different level I guess.

Imagine you're playing a first person video game. The phrase "looking to the side could have two different meanings. Either you move your camera within your game, or you look to the side, away from the monitor. Now suppose that looking around in the real world is the first type. Try to imagine what the second type of looking to the side would now be. That's basically what I tried to do. Sorry, that's the best way I can explain it. I didn't even fully understand it myself, which was probably why it didn't really work. All I got to see were vague outlines of levers and switches. Coming back to my analogy from before, this was probably like seeing the frame of your monitor. Idk, Percy is better with analogies. They might be ridiculous, but they get the point across and that's all that matters.

Anyways, I had tried to see her but failed. It'd probably take a lot of time and effort until I'd be able to do that, because I'd basically be partially un-fronting. Sounded like it would be difficult and about as safe as looking at your phone while in the car (though in my current case I'd be in the parking lot) I left the parking lot aka stood up from the bed. I left Percy's room to do whatever people have to do when they wake up. When I returned I got back to talking to Percy (and Annie in case she was still there). "You know, this DID stuff is really confusing. And I don't even mean all the symptoms. Just the chaos of pronouns it creates is annoying. Like, if I'm referring to something this body experienced, do I say I experienced it or we? Or maybe the name of whoever has fronted that moment? What about being co con? None of this grammar makes sense." "Reminds me of a book I once read. The main character, her name was Ariadne, once said 'This time travel thing is going on my nerves. Just the chaos it causes with tenses…' I don't remember how the sentence ended, I read it when I was like nine. Now, that I think about it, I definitely wasn't reading books at nine years, so it was probably a CD or mom read it to me." "Ariadne you say? Does Greek mythology appear in the story?" "Well, she ends up dating someone who is like forty years older, but he's not because time travel and also he is her grand uncle but he actually isn't so it contains questionable family trees." "Not as questionable as ours. Don't forget, or actually you can forget it, that I'm your second niece." "Isn't that called cousin once removed or something?" "In English yes, but that system is almost as stupid as the imperial system. I think the concept of also applying the numbering method for cousins to aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews comes from the German language and I stole it from there. I think it's more intuitive than the removed thing even though for cousins the number is one lower than for everyone else." "Well, If you think that system is better than go use it. Maybe you could analyze some other family connections. For example, doing me and, I don't know, Persephone could be interesting. If you want." "Are you seriously asked me if I want to analyze a complex family tree structure?" I made a pause as if I was shocked and offended by the very idea.

"Of course I do. I'll start with the connections via Poseidon. He had a child with Demeter once, Hazel's horse Arion, creating a step connection there. That makes Demeter's daughter your step sister. In addition, Demeter is Poseidon's sister so Persephone is also your cousin. Same with her dad Zeus. So from her perspective, you're both a maternal and paternal cousin. Lastly, she is married to your uncle Hades, making her your aunt by marriage." "Speaking of marriage, if we ever do that I'd also get all your relatives as in laws. What other relations would that create?" "Oh, that's a bit more complicated. First one would be half aunt in law because Athena is Persephone's half-sister. The two are also cousins if we go based on Athena's dad and Persephone's mom being siblings. So for you it would be second aunt in law. And should I also go to my mom's mom?" "You seem to be enjoying this analysis so sure, go on." "Athena's mother was metis, daughter of Okeanos and Thetis. Both children of Gaia and Ouranos…" I made sure to pronounce it in a way that sounded neither like 'your anus' nor like 'urine us' because I knew Percy well enough. "…like Kronos. If you connect Kronos to Persephone via her parents you get third aunt in law and if you go via Hades you get, umm, second grand aunt double in law. I think those are all the somewhat reasonable connections." "Good, because I'm starting to get a headache." "Oh, wait, I forgot to apply the marriage to Hades to Athena being the daughter of Zeus and the granddaughter of Kronos. That would give grand aunt in law and, let's see, okay, it's just grand aunt in law, but in two different ways, because the last two just differentiate between Hades being the brother of Zeus and being the son of Zeus's parents, which is the same thing. Do you follow?"

"Not really, but I just remembered another Greek reference in the story. Ariadne's aunt Pandora was once referred to as 'someone who knows about boxes…' a certain box plays an important role in the story '…as you [Ariadne] know about strings' so they did a proper reference. Maybe a demigod or legacy wrote it" "Possible. Though I feel like if a demigod decided to write a book they'd have enough stories to tell to not have to make one up." I said. "And I don't think there are any demigods who can time travel, except we count that thing Piper once did" I assumed Percy was referring to that time that Piper had declared that her bed was land belonging to the native population and that such land was part of a different time zone, meaning that for her it was one hour earlier and she did not have to get up. Probably one of the few times the mortal heritage of a demigod had helped them out. On the other hand, her argument would probably not have been accepted without charm speak, which came from the other, godly side of her family. One might also argue that- my train of thought was derailed by Percy saying:

"Btw, when we told my parents about our quest I actually thought that you could talk enough to fill multiple books. Let's see if I still remember the titles." It took him about a minute to get them together. "Got it. Annabeth Chase and the no longer missing boyfriend. Annabeth Chase and the mark of Athena. Annabeth Chase and the hard to find exit. Annabeth chase and the battle against dirtface." "And now I'd write a book about trauma. And one about my very confusing sexuality. I remember being like 'well, I might be ace, but at least I'm heteroromantic.' But then Piper showed up. When I again came to terms with everything, the thing I talked about yesterday happened and suddenly I wasn't so ace after all. At least I'm still cis. Not that it's bad to be Trans, it just makes thing more complicated. And then of course there's my DID. But that would probably go in the trauma book. I think I already have the first few lines"

Before we could continue our conversation, Sally called for breakfast. Percy didn't seem to hear it. "Percy, mo- your mom just called us down." "Wait, did you just call my mom 'mom'?" Had I? I wasn't certain. "Uh no, I said 'your mom'" "You did, but right before that you-" I was rescued from that awkward situation by Sally calling again. At least saved for the moment. And if it came up again, I would probably be able to defend myself by saying that I had just woken up and had still been tired. This was of course not true, going from asleep to full mental capacity took far less than how long I had been awake when Sally had called, but who (except me) keeps track of such things? Probably no one and even if there are some, none of them were there when it happened. Knowing that my argument would probably work, I went down to have breakfast.

After breakfast, it was time to decide what to do next. And I didn't just mean that day, I had spent so much time on my quest knowing that I would probably not survive it that I hadn't bothered to plan what I'd do once summer ended. I knew Percy and I would go to new Rome University, but that wasn't until one year from now. One year that I hadn't really planned out. As sad as that sounded, staying with my mortal family usually didn't work out for too long. But I also knew I'd have to at least visit them. First of all just to see them after almost dying. Seeing someone you like again always feels good, but it's even better when the good bye you're undoing could have been the last. Also I felt like I needed to tell them about my DID. The last and possibly most important reason was to bring my family the promised blue cookies. Now that I thought about it, I was really looking forward to seeing my family again. And it wasn't just my immediate family. Magnus and I had once been really close, but now I had not seen him for almost a decade. I created a plan with several steps of partially variable order of execution. Actually, it was more like a to-do-list:

-Meet up with my family

-Meet up with my extended family

-Tell them about my multiplicity

-make sure Percy makes it to university.

I had a feeling that the last point would either be the easiest or the hardest. But before I could do any of that stuff, I first had to get back to camp. After I had everything packed, Percy insisted on taking me there himself. Well, other than for most couples I couldn't really say insisted because his powers made it by far the most reasonable option to let him take me. "I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience" I said with an overly formal voice. „But I'm going to have to borrow your son for a quick Annabeth delivery service." Sally unsurprisingly allowed it so we walked to the river. "Okay wise girl, ready to become a human torpedo?" "As ready as it gets. But considering I'm not only a demigod but also have an unstable identity and my body could be taken over by another person at any-" the rest was cut off by us falling into the water and accelerating to ridiculous speeds. A ridiculous speed, not the ridiculous speed from spaceballs. That was like 200 c and Percy was just a tad bit slower than that. And when I say tad bit, I mean a factor of about a billion. It still only took us about a minute to reach camp, which was way too short. "Uh Percy, how long did you take to get us here?" "'bout thirty minutes, why are you asking?" "Because to me it felt like one so I must have blacked out in the meantime." "If you didn't have DID, I'd be concerned but, actually, forget that, I'm always concerned when someone who I am not trying to incapacitate is blacking out. But at least you didn't miss much. Except for when some idiot drove their car right into long island sound. Well, at least they can now tell their friends about being saved by some magical water being." "Who knows what the mist did with that. Maybe they remember driving towards the edge and stopping just in time. The time in the water would be cut away from their memory. Why didn't the mist just do that for us? Cut the bad parts out I mean?" "First, your brain already took care of that. Second, the mist has already covered up the worst of it. When I was dying from gorgon blood I saw the true appearance of the pit. It was- actually, I don't think I want to talk about that right now. Or at any other point in time within the next five years or so." "And I don't want to hear about it" "Ok, third thing: if we forget the bad stuff we'll forget the silver lining as well. Would you want to forget Bob and Damasen. Ok, since yesterday that's a terrible example. If Bob and Damasen had not escaped yesterday, would you be willing to forget them?" "Well, I already don't remember most of our time with them so the question is kind of pointless. But maybe I'll ask the alters who remember it the next time I get the chance"

So, that was another chapter, only one day behind schedule instead of the two days I had for the last two chapters. Let's just hope I don't get cancelled for, I don't know, wrong assumptions about native tribes. I'm not even sure the tribe people living in that reservation with a different time zone are from the same tribe that the McLeans come from. But then again, Piper isn't even Cherokee if you strictly follow Cherokee rules (Assuming Rick did proper research on that topic before writing The Burning Maze), so this is all kind of a grey area. Just view it as a joke/excuse to sleep longer Piper made while half asleep.

Also, don't cancel me for transphobia, because I didn't say anything against trans people, just acknowledged that their lives can be a lot harder than those of cis people.