Ashley & Apollo

Chapter 1 - An Interesting Gym Class

Ashley hurried down the hall towards her locker, ducking her head as she passed by her classmates. An unusual feeling of dread had been plaguing her relentlessly for the past week, putting her on edge, and she really wasn't in the mood to put up with more of Jenna's teasing. Thankfully, it was a Friday afternoon, so she only had to plow through the next two hours until she could decompress.

Unfortunately, fate seemed to have other plans for her.

"Hey, wheat girl!" She had just reached her locker when the loud voice called out. Ashley turned and locked eyes with her arch nemesis standing a few feet away.

Jenna had brown hair, swept up in a ponytail, and calculating blue eyes. The corner of her mouth quirked upwards as she appraised Ashley, like she was holding back a grin.

"What are you hiding from?" Jenna asked. She exaggeratedly looked her up and down, and added, "We aren't allowed to bring scythes to schools—you don't have to worry about some poor farmer accidentally scalping you here." Somebody standing behind Jenna snickered.

Owing to her grandmother's genes, Ashley had long, beige hued hair that edged toward a golden yellow under sunlight, as well as green eyes and dozens of freckles scattered across her pale complexion. To Jenna's delight, she'd discovered that Ashley's hair somewhat resembled wheat, and thus the farm-themed taunts had begun. The comparison was less humiliating than Jenna probably intended it to be, seeing as the woman she'd gotten her looks from was Demeter.

"Hilarious," Ashley said, as she finally managed to open her lock. She grabbed her gym clothes and fled the confrontation.

Jenna and her friends had only started picking on her after she'd let it slip that she believed the Greek gods were real, in another example of irony. Ha, what an idiot, thinking those stories actually happened, right? Nevermind she'd met some of them, like Demeter and Apollo. And that wasn't her biggest secret.

She was a demigod herself. Her mother had been the result of Poseidon's dalliance with a mortal woman, and her father had likewise been a son of Demeter. They'd had both godly blood and mortal, and therefore, so did she. Ashley couldn't complain about having the standard godly powers, but sometimes she mourned that none of them could shut Jenna up.

She reached the girls' locker room and nabbed the only unoccupied changing stall. Ashley ensured the door was properly closed before she began changing into her school-issued ocean blue t-shirt and dark gray shorts; the shirt had her high school's name written across the front in blocky lettering, but the shorts were just a boring single color. It was a necessary precaution because a faint golden glow emitted from all godly beings, and while her arms and legs likely wouldn't implicate her, having most of her skin on display would make the shine much more noticeable. Even to mortals who wouldn't recognize what it meant.

She cared little about keeping her secret from her schoolmates, but Olympus's champions had a lot of enemies. They could catch wind of her true nature if they heard reports of a glowing person. Most of the non-godly community on Olympus were unaware that she existed, so she was relatively safe in the mortal world at present. She didn't want to risk that safety.

Once Ashley was ready, she drew a deep breath to ground herself out of her thoughts, placed her folded uniform down in her designated compartment along the locker room wall, and followed a couple of her classmates through the entrance to the gymnasium.

Gym class at her school always began with three mandatory laps around the room as a warm up. It took her only a minute to complete them, and she was barely breathing hard when she joined the cluster of her peers sitting on the floor in the center of the space. She enjoyed running because of the invigorating rush of endorphins, although she suspected her biological makeup helped in making the activity less tiring.