Sing, O Muse [Percy Jackson]

prologue

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AS soon as Quentin found her, swaddled in a silky pale yellow blanket, in a small wooden cradle on the steps of his stone front-porch, he knew he could never let her go. He wanted to name her Twyla, for her first few strands of hair - so dark it seemed to make the sky weep onto the earth in jealousy, its tears dripping down the bare branches that hung over his porch. As the sky melted from dusk to blackness, dotted with stars in magnificent constellations he couldn't help but to think they couldn't dream to compare to the silver freckles in the baby's, his baby's, wide hazel eyes. But a small parchment note had been tucked into the blanket, with only a few short sentences that hadn't surprised Quentin in the slightest, even if he thought the woman from a number of months ago was simply spinning marvelous tales.

But he couldn't deny the elegant script, which he hoped his daughter inherited rather than his chicken-scratch, in which one word had been written bigger than the others: Clarion. The woman who left her with him knew he would never be able to pick a name simply as perfect. Clarion, like the name of an Arthurian King, fit for the princess he cradled. Clarion, like the medieval instruments he listened to her mother ramble about. Clarion, with a mother beyond their world. But such things were myth, or so Quentin thought, before he read the note tucked in her blanket. Even if there hadn't been that small piece of parchment, Quentin Jung would have taken her inside simply so Clarion could stare up at her father every night as the sun fell beneath the green foliage and the earth was cast in shadows.

His beloved Clarie, who quite quickly discovered she loved Winnie the Pooh more than life itself, grew all too fast for her father. Her terrible twos were quite horrific for a single father who knew next to nothing about children; and perhaps it was simply because he was thrust into parenthood too quickly, because he realized it was far more effort than it was worth to try and confiscate her poor, tortured dolls. He almost wanted to put her Barbies out of their misery if he hadn't been so worried about his daughter's wrath (Winnie the Pooh would never have approved!) As she grew older, luckily for Quentin, the need to parent her slipped through his fingers, as did his days of holding her easily in his arms.

But all the trials and tribulations were worth it, he would decide, as the sky was painted with strokes of dusky lavender and gray twilight, and the two would watch the stars peek through the curtains of darkness. None of them could rival the dimples on her cheeks when she would turn to smile at him. The constellations could never be as perfect as the smattering of freckles on her face, like someone had splatter-painted her forehead and nose; nor would the chorus of crickets and cicadas be as lilting as her soft, serene voice.

She would ask him to name the stars. He could never be thankful enough that, even when she was a little monster, his daughter would always find the same peace in the stars as he did.

And then she came, with the same grace and elegance as Clarion's mother. There was something about the aura she radiated that made him feel at home; he felt feelings for a woman he hadn't felt in a long time. She was gone, too, as quickly as she had come - just a night to remember - and Quentin merely looked back at the night fondly, oddly used to radiant women slipping through his fingers. Clarion was only two, but that was quite old enough for her to demand a miniature piano and play the best she could with her short, stubby fingers. Though Quentin had accepted his bad luck in love, he had still been given the greatest gift he could imagine, even if parenting would never come naturally.

Just like it annoyed Clarion to no end that she couldn't stretch her fingers to reach even a half-octave, Clarion was not receptive to the wooden cradle that appeared on their doorstep, nor the sleeping babe swaddled tightly in a golden blanket. Quentin was horribly surprised that he was unsurprised, and when the infant opened her eyes he saw the woman who had slipped away, and his new child held the same serene energy with her golden eyes.