Disclaimer: I don't own Trials of Apollo

Day 18: A Single Drop
FFF#301: What Happened Here?

"Hey there, Gracie. How do you feel about making a mess?"

Gracie startled, looking around at the person behind her who definitely hadn't been there a few seconds earlier. Her dad grinned at her, holding up a bag she couldn't see into, but that looked like it was pretty full with stuff.

"Have you okayed that with Mom?" she asked him, because yes, she wanted to make a mess, but Mom got upset if she made a lot of mess, especially if she hadn't asked if she could do something messy first. Her mom was cool and she loved her – if she didn't, she'd just live at camp all year around like several of her siblings and other demigod friends did – and she understood that cleaning up was a never-ending chore (one of the fun things about camp was that the harpies did most of the cleaning for them), but it still made some messy things a pain to do.

Apollo's grin widened. "Of course," he said. "So, up for it?"

"Of course!" Gracie agreed, turning around to face him properly and getting on her tiptoes so she could see into the bag he was holding. He obligingly held it lower so she could look.

The first thing she saw were white t-shirts, neatly folded over whatever else was in there, and she reached in impatiently to get them out of the way, and felt a grin spread over her face to match Apollo's as she saw the rest of the contents.

Mom had never let her cause that much mess, but if Apollo said it was okay, Gracie was not going to say no.

"Go tie your hair up," her dad said, and she realised his hair was fully back behind his shoulders, more up than down. "I didn't clear dyeing your hair with your mom." Gracie pulled a face, even though his words made her laugh a little, too – she didn't really want to dye her hair, anyway.

She ran up to her bedroom and grabbed a hair tie from her desk drawer, not bothering to comb her long, thick waves of brown hair before messily bundling it up in something halfway between a bun and a ponytail. Taking it out later would be a pain, but she was too impatient to do it properly now. Future Gracie could worry about that.

When she got back downstairs, Apollo had moved into the kitchen and spread out the contents of his bag onto the island in the middle. As well as the t-shirt and the bottles of dye, there were also piles of strings, and a mesh rack over some plastic sheeting at one end.

"Ever done this before?" Apollo asked her, and Gracie shook her head. "Want to learn?"

"Yes." The answer was immediate, and a little affronted that he even had to ask. He held his hands up in surrender.

"Okay, okay," he said. "Here – you can scrunch the t-shirt up however you want, like this." She watched as he grabbed the middle of one of the splayed t-shirts and started to twist, dragging the fabric into the swirl like a black hole, until it was all bunched together. "Or any other pattern you want to do," he added as he tied string tightly around it in a pizza-slice pattern

For her first time, Gracie decided she might as well copy her dad and found the middle of the smaller, Gracie-sized t-shirt set out in front of her, and did the same thing, spinning it until it all coiled together. Apollo helped her make it nice and tight, standing behind her and reaching around when he needed to. Together, they wrapped string around it, until it looked the same as Apollo's example.

"And now for the messy bit," he told her, grin all over his face. She matched it excitedly. "Time to dye it!" He brought her over to the rack and put his bundled and trussed-up t-shirt down on top of it before grabbing a bottle of red dye. "Watch."

She did exactly that, watching him as he put red all over a couple of the segments of his pizza-tying, and then orange on a couple more, and finally yellow on the other ones before flipping it over and doing the other size the exact same.

Then it was her turn, and she looked at the colour options, considering.

"Make sure you choose colours that will blend together nicely," Apollo advised. "The ink'll bleed into each other and you probably don't want muddy brown… unless you do?"

She shook her head and stuck her tongue out at the thought. She did not want muddy brown on her first ever tie dye.

After thinking for a few more seconds, she grabbed the pink and did a couple of wedges of her own pizza-binding, deciding to do something different to Apollo and doing opposite wedges, and then grabbed the pink to do opposite wedges again. She did the other side, too, double-and triple-checking to make sure she had the colours matching up and watching the ink all bleed together the way Apollo had said it would.

The door opened as Apollo gently helped her put hers into a ziplock bag so the dye could set without staining anything else.

"I'm hom- what happened here?" her mom shrieked, and Gracie looked up at Apollo, who suddenly looked sheepish.

"You said Mom okayed it!" she accused him, and he seesawed his hand a little bit, looking over at her mom.

"I said he could do an art project with you," she huffed. "He did not mention… this. Apollo, my kitchen needs to be spotless by the time I start cooking, or you lose daughter bonding privileges under my roof. Understood?"

Her mom wasn't particularly aggressive normally, but she had Apollo folding in on himself like a scolded puppy and Gracie struggled not to laugh at him. "Yes, Sarah. Not a drop left, I promise."

"It had better be," she threatened.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari