¹Pocket Full of Posies, p. jackson

ii. Three Dilemmas Too Many

chapter two
❛ three dilemmas too many ❜

━━━━━ FOR HOW MYSTERIOUS the Underworld was, and for how secretive Hades spoke about his reasons (all of which amounted to: You do as I say) for insisting she head there, Posie honestly expected Bar Harbor, Maine, to be more ... Well, she expected it to be anything, really. With its quaint buildings and docks every few feet, it was quite pretty and appealing — but that was all it was. It was a stunning port city at first glance, but it was bland when scrutinized beneath the vibrant buildings' snow-covered shell. Even after spending some time there, in the state of Maine, Posie still didn't understand. It didn't seem like a hub for monstrous activity; it didn't seem like a place for many demigods to hide out — unknowingly or knowingly. But, despite all that, Hades insisted every time she asked — Bar Harbor was a key piece to the (frankly, convoluted) puzzle that was her long-needed answers.

Naturally, after feeling toyed with like a yo-yo, being pulled back and forth between her aunt's place in Manhattan and the Underworld, Posie wanted to prod Hades for more answers. However, every time she teetered on asking, she remembered how incensed the God of the Dead became the last time she had (tried) to press him for answers — the day Persephone virtually saved Posie Pascual from being on the receiving end of the wrath of her husband. She wasn't like Percy or even Annabeth, two half-bloods who would chase the answers to the end of the earth — Posie just wasn't like that. And frankly, she thought even those two (or, at the very least, Annabeth, given Percy's track record) would find it difficult to look Hades in the eye and argue with him.

Despite all that, it seemed as if Bar Harbor was waiting for the chance to prove Posie's first assumptions all wrong. There were, in fact, some monsters in the small port city (see in: a singular monster); there were, in fact, demigods hiding that far up north (see in: two demigods, who were seemingly full-blooded siblings, a rarity when it came to demigods). However, truth be told, Posie was still hesitant to believe it all — until Grover confirmed it was true when she managed to get an Iris Message with him back in November. The satyr seemed confused why Posie would even care, or how she knew any of that in the first place, as he hadn't told her — but she quickly came up with an (admittedly poor) excuse as to how she knew he found some half-bloods in Maine.

In the end, she wasn't sure how much Grover believed her, but (and as Hades reminded her with a curt, annoyed tone so very often), "What others thought shouldn't matter." Posie supposed the sentiment was nice, if it wasn't coming from the God of the Underworld when talking about how she could control plagues. (So, in that case, the sentiment wasn't very nice at all.) Either way, whether or not Grover took her excuse at face value, Posie managed to convince him, Sylvia and Isaque, and Chiron that she should head up to Maine for her winter break to visit and help. And the hardest to convince was the mortal family she had begun staying with back in August, as Sylvia and Isaque knew nothing of the whole ... Well, they had no idea that Greek myths were real, let alone that Posie's father was one of those supposed Greek myths (and that's how it was meant to stay).

Fortunately, Posie managed to convince Sylvia and Isaque during the three-day weekend that was meant for Thanksgiving, as they insisted she spend extra time with them before she went up to Maine for a "family emergency." Compared to them, Chiron was a breeze to convince, only after she managed to convince Grover — the satyr would speak with Chiron, and Grover would tell him that having Posie up there in Bar Harbor would "give him peace of mind" (at least, that's what Posie told Grover to tell Chiron, as convoluted as the game of telephone was getting to be). And in the end — Posie was making her way up to Bar Harbor, Maine, by the beginning of December, just as she would be going back to her preppy school in Manhattan after the Thanksgiving break.