Forgotten memories

A wild driving lesson with my dad

The Hunters piled into the van, strategically placing themselves in the back to maintain a safe distance from Apollo and the rest of us highly infectious males. Bianca joined them, leaving her little brother to hang out in the front with my new group of godling friends... and Grover the goat.

"This is so cool!" Nico exclaimed, bouncing in the driver's seat. "Is this really the sun? I thought Helios and Selene were the sun and moon gods. How come sometimes it's them and sometimes it's you and Artemis?"

"Well, technically they were not gods. They were titans" I said surprised where that came from.

My father nodded."Yes, but the job was given to us becuase: Downsizing," Apollo explained. "The Romans started it. They couldn't afford all those temple sacrifices, so they laid off Helios and Selene and folded their duties into our job descriptions. My sis got the moon. I got the sun. It was pretty annoying at first, but at least I got this cool car."

"But how does it work?" Nico inquired. "I thought the sun was a big fiery ball of gas!"

Apollo chuckled and tousled Nico's hair. "That rumor probably got started because Artemis used to call me a big fiery ball of gas. Seriously, kid, it depends on whether you're talking astronomy or philosophy. You want to talk astronomy? Bah, what fun is that? You want to talk about how humans think about the sun? Ah, now that's more interesting. They've got a lot riding on the sun... er, so to speak. It keeps them warm, grows their crops, powers engines, makes everything look, well, sunnier. This chariot is built out of human dreams about the sun, kid. It's as old as Western Civilization. Every day, it drives across the sky from east to west, lighting up all those puny little mortal lives. The chariot is a manifestation of the sun's power, the way mortals perceive it. Make sense?"

I kind of agreed with Apollo. It's all about how we think of the sun, and not what the sun is. Nico shook his head. "No."

"Well then, just think of it as a really powerful, really dangerous solar car."

"Can I drive?"

"No. Too young."

"Oo! Oo!" Grover raised his hand.

"Mm, no," Apollo said. "Too furry." He looked past Percy, then at me. He was really thinking about it, but I gave him a wide-eyed face while I slowly shook my head. Then he focused on Thalia.

"Daughter of Zeus!" he said. "Lord of the sky. Perfect."

"Oh, no." Thalia shook her head. "No, thanks."

"C'mon," Apollo urged. "How old are you?"

Thalia hesitated. "I don't know."

I could relate to her not knowing. Percy had told me about Thalia as we sat around the campfire. She'd been turned into a tree when she was twelve, but that had been seven years ago according to Percy. So, she should be nineteen, if you went by years. But she still felt like she was twelve, and if you looked at her, she seemed somewhere in between.

Apollo tapped his finger to his lips. "You're fifteen, almost sixteen."

"How do you know that?"

"He's the god of prophecy. If someone should know stuff, he would," I said, hoping to get on the good side of my father.

Apollo looked at me and smiled widely, then turned back to Thalia. "You'll turn sixteen in about a week."

"That's my birthday! December twenty-second."

"Which means you're old enough now to drive with a learner's permit!"

Thalia shifted her feet nervously.