The rainbow seekers guide to seeking rainbows

Will

Will knew his name was Will Solace.

It was one of the few things he was certain of. He was certain his name was Will Solace, he was certain he was in a hospital for some indecipherable reason and he was certain that the ninety-second element of the periodic table was uranium.

There was other stuff too, but he wasn't so sure about that.

He knew his father was named Apollo. He knew Apollo was a Greek god. He knew he had many adopted siblings, and he was closest to Austin and Kayla. He knew he was terrible at archery. He knew he had friends called Annabeth and Percy and that they were close but how close, Will could not remember.

Everything seemed to blur when he tried to remember the more recent events in his life.

Everything

was

detached.

He seemed to remember rain, and that whatever had happened under the rain had been why he was in the hospital. Exactly what it was, Will didn't know. He also seemed to remember that he hadn't used an umbrella, a little detail that puzzled him. He had been with someone - but who? Will could remember the way his heart raced, the way the world pounded around him...but he couldn't remember anything else.

Confused, Will tried to recite the names of all the bones in the body. First he jumbled them up, then he tried to name them from head to toe...and he did it.

So why couldn't he remember this?

Moving his focus away from the holes in his memory, Will tried to go further back in his mental timeline. There was a wall - a point at which everything became clear, a point at which one side was normal and filled with memories while the other side was like moth-eaten cloth.

His thoughts scattered like skeletal leaves on the autumn wind.

And what

who

was the person who was always there

every day

without fail?

He always talked to Will. Every day, he would come in, and he would sit there - or at least, Will thought he would sit there. He wasn't sure. And then that person, who Will was sure was a person, would be silent, or maybe he'd cry a little, maybe he'd say something. Usually he was quiet for almost the entire visit, from when there was a noise like somebody sitting on a chair to when there was the sound of somebody standing up.

And almost every time, this person would repeat the same words, over and over, over and over and over again whilst crying over Will.

"You promised you'd never leave me, Will. You promised..."

He didn't remember.

He didn't remember a thing.

Thinking about all this made Will feel something - a sort of regret, a sort of sadness, an emotion that Will wasn't entirely sure what it was. He had felt it before, but this time, it wasn't the same. It was...odd. Was it grief? Mourning?

When he thought of grief, a face appeared in his mind - blurred, blinding, but recognisable all the same.

It was similar to his own - golden, blonde hair, bright blue eyes, except this person wore glasses. And when Will thought of him, he felt a sort of pang in his heart, a sadness with no origin - this person's name was J...it started with a J. Julian? James? And something had happened to him, but Will didn't remember what.