Eternal

Mortality Or Divinity?

One day, Percy comes to deliver some reports to Zeus. They are arguing about the feasibility of yet another suggestion from Percy.

Percy picks up the papers to show Zeus, make a point perhaps, but he does it too quickly and abruptly and yelps more in surprise than pain when he gets a paper cut.

"Paper cut," he muttered sheepishly to Zeus when Zeus looks at him strangely. Why did I have to scream like a little girl in front of the king of the gods, Percy wondered.

Normally, he would just suck on his finger but it seems so weird doing that in front of the king of the gods and he has already thoroughly embarrassed himself today. He gets out a handkerchief (thank you, Annabeth!) and wipes off the blood from his finger.

"You can get cuts from paper?" Zeus sounds astounded.

"Um yeah. Not really harmful though, it's just a small cut."

"Clay," Zeus muttered shaking his head.

"What?"

"Clay. You are made of clay."

Percy finds the myth through a haze of long-buried memories. Something about Prometheus and clay and fire. "I suppose?" That is almost too weird to think about, so he moves on, ignoring the strange way Zeus stares at him.

Some other day when he is talking to Artemis about the monster that had been spotted in the area, she asks him if he would be 'intruding' in their hunt.

"I won't," Percy said, hands up in surrender. Then before she can say more, he adds. "Besides I have a root canal so I am going to be pretty much useless the rest of the day."

"Root canal," she tastes the words on her tongue. Percy bites back his laughter at her blank curiosity. He has the feeling she has never heard of something like that. And why would she? She lives in the wild with her band of hunters who never get sick.

He is tempted to blurt out more modern words and have her repeat them all. Did she know about McDonald's or Red Bull or or even Walmart?

Then she turns to him. "What's that?" It takes him a second to realize she is not talking about Walmart.

"Um, I don't-Apollo can probably explain properly. But um, my tooth hurts and it won't after that but they are going to have do some sort of surgery or something, I guess because they are going to put me under and anesthesia takes a while to wear off, and then it'll be better when I wake up? I-I don't know."

Artemis looks at him strangely.

Percy shrugs. "Sorry, I can't explain it any better. Why don't you ask your brother? He's sort of an expert at this, right?"

"I just might," she murmured to herself.

Percy just nods awkwardly. "You do that. So…" They quickly finish up, especially since Artemis seems a bit distracted now.

It's just Percy's luck that he has a reaction to the anesthesia. It's even more of Percy's luck that to witness his humiliation, Apollo and Artemis and Thalia are all there.

It's hard to care right at that instant though.

When he comes out, staggering over his noodle legs (Noodle legs, that's funny! He imagines a Percy shaped head on two strands of Spaghetti and bursts into giggles), he just sees three faces through his insane giggling.

Then realizes that he knows these faces.

"Thalia," he shrieks happily and flings his hands away from where they are slung over the nurse and doctor in front of him as if to grab her in a hug.