Cage me like an animal • F Odair¹ •

XXVIII

"I wish I was braver."

•∘♛∘•

Athena and Finnick ended up spending a lot of their free time either in the cave or on The Morning Light. Mags had been sailing on the boat and loved it (particularly the carved daisies on the doors), as had Athena's mother. Calypso hung back, a little apprehensive about getting on the water, but agreed to let Athena and Finnick take her sailing one day. Finnick had also gotten the approval of Hudson, which was exciting in how rare it was to get Darya Hudson's approval, especially if you didn't work very often on The Adventurer, which Finnick didn't; he'd only started doing it more because of Athena.

"You seem like a fine enough person," Hudson said appraisingly. "Besides, if you've got this one's approval - " she jerked a thumb in Athena's direction - "you've got to at least be decent."

"Consider yourself lucky," Athena told Finnick after Hudson had honoured him with her approval. "It took years to get Hudson to like me."

"Maybe she liked you for longer and you just couldn't tell," Finnick said, but he looked pleased. "She looks like the type to be really good at hiding how she's feeling."

And admittedly, Athena had never really thought about it like that before. "Well, still. I'd still consider myself lucky."

Athena had finally mastered understanding Mags' speech perfectly. What was more, she was getting better and better at understanding and using sign language. She liked it, being able to communicate more easily with Mags, and Mags seemed to appreciate it, too. She gave Athena a lot of tips about mentoring to prepare her (Athena discussed mentoring a lot with Finnick, too, since they'd be working together as co-mentors), and Athena told her more about her mother and her sister so that she knew the best way to check up on them while she was away. Mags was very easy and quite fun to talk to, which became more pronounced now that they no longer had any sort of barrier between the way they communicated.

"You really do have a good eye for this sort of thing," Mags said one day, as they sat on the porch steps of Finnick's house. Finnick stood on the path to his home, as he was making Athena sketch him while doing a variety of ridiculous poses, insisting that it was good practice. They would be the only drawings she did of Finnick that people would be allowed to see.

"Thank you," she said to Mags, before finishing up the current sketch of Finnick and calling out to him, "Next!" Immediately, he switched his pose so that he looked thoughtful, staring off into the distance. Grinning, Athena turned to a new page and began to draw, murmuring to Mags, "It's all in the muse... don't tell him I said that, though."

"Your secret's safe with me," Mags said with a soft smile. "Or I guess I should say from him."

"Thank you," Athena said again, smiling, "no need to give him reason to blow up his head even bigger."

"Sometimes I wonder if that's possible at this point," said Mags, staring at Finnick, still in his slightly dramatic thoughtful pose, with her head slightly tilted.

Athena laughed, and soon Mags joined in. Finnick looked over at them with a slight frown, saying, forgetting to continue posing. "Hey - what's so funny?"

"Nothing," Athena and Mags said together.

"And stay still!" Athena added, brandishing her pencil in his direction. "Otherwise you're going to look weird and lopsided and then you're never gonna let me forget it."

Finnick still looked a little disgruntled, but went back to his own pose. Athena and Mags exchanged amused looks before Athena tucked loose curls behind her ears and went back to her sketch. By the end of it, Athena had ten different sketches of Finnick in ridiculous poses that Finnick called some of her best work yet. Mags looked fondly down at the sketches but said that she had a much greater preference for Athena's sketch of a giant, man-eating squid that Calypso had described from a dream of hers.