PHILOXENIA ➸ Percy Jackson¹

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ONE—A Girl Fell From the Sky

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She should have known something was wrong the moment her brother stepped through the door.

She had expected the shrugging of the shoulders when she asked how school was, but she didn't expect his eyebrows to furrow and a troubled expression to cross his face when she asked about his field trip to the Met.

"What's wrong?" She wiped the cookie dust off her hand with a tissue, her voice becoming more concerned as she watched him shift his feet. "You've been looking forward to the trip since the start of the week. Did you not have enough time to walk around? Did that jerk in your Art class make fun of your drawings again?"

"It's not that." He shook his head. "The trip was nice, fun even. But I saw something...strange."

That word caught her attention even more. "What do you mean by strange?"

He closed his eyes in an attempt to gather all the pieces to paint a picture in his head. "Everyone was getting ready to leave, but I realized that I forgot my water bottle in the museum. I went back in and saw a boy about my age. He was..." He stopped for a second, willing his memories to come back to him. "Arguing with a woman. A teacher, I think. I didn't think too much about it, but for a split second, she looked different. Dangerous. And I thought I saw the boy holding something else in his hands, not a pen, but a—"

He interrupted himself, creases forming on his forehead as if though remembering the moment made his head hurt. "It's probably nothing. I was probably imagining things because I didn't get much sleep last night."

"I did have to drag you out of bed this morning."

"Sorry for not having your godlike ability to wake at the crack of dawn."

She stuck her tongue out at him, but then pushed the plate of chocolate chip cookies toward him. "Here, eat one if you want. And don't worry too much about what you saw, it's probably just a kid getting detention from his teacher."

He nodded, but she could tell that it was still nagging in his mind. She couldn't deny that it wasn't pulling at her senses either.

He grabbed one of the perfectly golden-brown cookies off the plate and nibbled on the edge. "Yeah, maybe you're right. I'm gonna go take a nap."

"I'll call you when Mom and Dad get home."

─── ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽☼☾.* :☆ﾟ｡ ───

The word "strange" took on a new definition when Lux Rhodes found out that half of her blood was divine.

Before that, the word was attributed to sparse occurrences that seemed coincidental.

Socks going missing from the dryer, leaving behind mismatched pairs? That was strange. A bullying classmate suddenly acting nice towards you? Definitely strange. People dressing up as superheroes or decked out in full medieval costumes sitting nonchalantly on the subway? Strange, yes, but it's also New York.

But the bar got raised when she got chased around by a flying monster hellbent on eating her.

It was supposed to be a relaxing summer vacation like any other summer for Lux. Their family would pack their bags and drive to their family cabin in the North Fork area, just a few steps away from the coastline of Long Island Sound.