Just Add Water

somewhere else we'd rather be

Percy woke to a pounding in his head. He groaned, shutting his eyes tight. The morning light was too blinding.

Someone called his name, though it sounded distant as the clouds.

"—You awake?" It was Grover. His eyes stared back at Percy, wide and full of concern. "Chiron, he's awake!"

Percy blinked, and his surroundings fell into place. He lay on a bed; a chair was placed next to it, where Grover sat with his arms resting on his thighs, grinning at him.

"Um. Hi?"

Grover raised hi eyebrows. "Do you remember who I am? Do you remember who you are? I mean, I didn't know she'd do that, but she's stronger than she looks, and that punch hit you good—"

"Grover," Mr. Bruner said in the background, his voice chastising him. "Leave the boy alone. I'm sure he remembers you. And who he is."

He did remember Grover. Of course he did. But he wouldn't deny that he felt a sort of nothingness. Like his mind was a blank page.

That's when Mr. Bruner appeared—but it wasn't really Mr. Bruner. He wasn't seated on his wheelchair, for one. And there was also the bit about him being a brown horse from the waist down and his normal, cheeky self from the waist up. Percy blinked a few times again.

"Why are you a horse?"

His teacher chuckled as he looked down at him. "Because I was born this way, my boy."

"Just like I was born as—" He pursed his lips just in time. He couldn't blabber on to them that he was a mermaid. They could be in danger, even if he suspected that Mr. Bruner knew, given what he'd told him yesterday (yesterday?) and that he was a horse...

He sat up suddenly.

Yesterday. Was it yesterday? What happened yesterday? The moon...

"Oh no," he found himself saying.

Quickly, Grover's hands flew to his shoulders, pushing him back on the bed. His friend nodded gravely. "You remember, right?"

Percy glanced at him, frowning. "No. I don't. Which is why it's bad."

"You're a smart boy," Mr. Bruner said. "You're right. Something bad happened. And you don't remember it."

So they told him. How Grover didn't know that Percy was prone to go crazy with the full moon and so he'd pulled up the curtains, how Percy ran away and was later found by Mrs. Lambert—who was a fury from the freaking fields of punishment—and who also wanted to take him with her for reasons unknown to them. They recounted the way he'd been whisked away into the night sky after crashing into Mrs. Lambert's window (which explained the bandaids on his hands and arms), and then finished off with Mr. Bruner telling him how he'd managed to kill the fury with his arrows.

"Well, Kindly Ones don't die," Mr. Bruner said—Kindly Ones was how they talked about these creatures. Names had power, and all that. "But I managed to get rid of her."

"But if it turned to dust, then it died. Like the one I killed in my room."

Grover's mouth fell open. "You killed a Kindly One—"

"They regenerate, Percy," his teacher said gently.

"But, Mr. Bruner, how could that—"

"It's actually Chiron. I'm afraid I had to go by a pseudonym whilst I was teaching you."

He didn't know what a pseudonym was. "Um. So your name isn't actually...?"

"No. Everyone here calls me Chiron. That is my given name."