the archer, percy jackson

007. the consensus song

chapter seven
007. the consensus song!

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    WHEN THEY got to Manhattan, it was sunset and raining. Wendy couldn't believe the sight of the world around her, just outside the car window. Her breath hitched, staring up at the tall buildings and saw the people flooding the sidewalks and crossings. Normal people, with normal lives, going about their normal days, heading home from their normal jobs without an idea of the world that was shrouded from their eyes. Wendy wished she was one of them. As soon as she saw the Empire State Building, her eyes were fixed as she tilted her head against the seat so she could see to the very top. Her heart raced. She had never been this close to her mother; just six hundred floors away. Did Athena know her daughter was down here, on a quest to save the Mythological world? Was she watching down from those cloudy, rainy skies? So close, and yet so very far away. 

    Wendy just wished she'd make her proud. She'll be a worthy daughter of Athena. She doesn't know how many times she has said that to herself now. But she hoped the more times she said it, the more likely the superstitious manifestation might actually come true. 

    The outside world was a strange new place for Wendy. The world outside her little globe was a place she rarely visited. And when she did, it was always from behind a car window, or travelling by magical means to Olympus for the Winter Solstice council. But everyday life? The life where people were too busy talking on their phones to care about anyone they'd step into; the life where people had shopping bags and coffees in their hands; the life of a mortal ... it was another realm. A realm where kids grow up with their families, who go to school, who don't face Minotaurs or Hellhounds, who aren't shoved on life-endangering quests at twelve-year-olds by Greek Gods ... Most of them were lucky enough to only worry about their least favourite homework question. Wendy would give anything▬even her mind▬to live that simply.

     She thought of her father as Argus pulled up outside Greyhound Station (Grover told her, because she couldn't read the sign due to her Dyslexia). Wendy often blocked him out of her mind▬it was easier that way. But in such a lively city, where she could see families here, at the station, she couldn't help it. Percy had been distraught and so lost▬he is so distraught and so lost because of what happened to his mother. Wendy didn't know what that was like, because she had to say goodbye to her father barely before she got to create concrete memories of him. She knew he had loved her. She knew the last thing he had wanted to do was give her away. She remembered his beard and his blond hair. She remembered how he'd tuck her into bed, the way he taught her how to kick a football and she had distant memories of highschool boys holding her up on their shoulders like she was a member of their team herself. She knew she was loved ... because that was how people acted around children if they loved them, right?

    What was her father doing now? Where was he? Had he forgotten about her, just like everyone else who was supposed to be important to her have already? Was Wendy just mundane to him like she was to the rest of the world?

    Grover said to Wendy as they stepped out of the car that they were in the Upper East Side, which apparently was a part of New York City. Wendy gripped her heavy bag by the straps over her shoulders and looked up at the tall buildings, her breath taken away. She took a deep breath and tried to set all of her nerves aside. She wouldn't succeed in a quest if she spent the entire time stressing over her insecurities. 

     Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Percy rip something off a mailbox at a nearby apartment. Wendy wanted to question him what it was, but she was worried he'd get defensive again if she did, and so, she kept quiet.