𝐒𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄, PJ2

𝟎𝟎𝟐.𝟑

Percy and Augustus had to physically restraint Juliet and Annabeth from confronting and hitting Daphne, once Percy had filled them on, on what actually happened Annabeth had let the incident go, but Juliet being extremely petty, still spoke to Daphne in third person.

Juliet wished she had an appetite, because the Romans knew how to eat.

Sets of couches and low tables were carted into the forum until it resembled a furniture showroom. Romans lounged in groups of ten or twenty, talking and laughing while wind spirit —aurae—swirled overhead, bringing an endless assortment of pizzas, sandwiches, chips, cold drinks, and fresh-baked cookies. Drifting through the crowd were purple ghosts—Lares—in togas and legionnaire armor. Around the edges of the feast, satyrs (no, fauns, Juliet thought) trotted from table to table, panhandling for food and spare change. 

In the nearby fields, the war elephant frolicked with Mrs. O'Leary, and children played tag around the statues of Terminus that lined the city limits. The whole scene was so familiar yet so completely alien that it gave Juliet vertigo.

All she wanted to do was be with Percy—preferably alone. She knew she would have to wait. If their quest was going to succeed, they needed these Romans, which meant getting to know them and building some goodwill.

Reyna and a few of her officers (including the blond kid Octavian, freshly back from burning a teddy bear for the gods) sat with Juliet and her crew. Percy joined them with his two new friends, Frank and Hazel.

As a tornado of food platters settled onto the table, Percy leaned over, throwing his arms around her and pulling her into her side, "You've gotten so thin baby,"

"Dying does that to you," Juliet joked but as always it wasn't taken well.

"Juliet!" Annabeth, Augustus, Percy and even Leo, had turned to her in an offended sort of way making her roll her eyes, "I was joking,"

"Don't joke about that shit," Percy grumbled tightening his hold on her, filling up her plate with as much food as he could find, "eat,"

"Perce, no normal person can consume this much food," Juliet reprimanded him before looking over at his and Augustus's plate and realising they had the same amount of food, "As I said no normal person,"

Percy and Augustus gave her unimpressed looks while piling more food up. Juliet tried not to stare at the new marks on Percy's forearm that were visible—an SPQR tattoo like Jason's. At Camp Half-Blood, demigods got bead necklaces to commemorate years of training. Here, the Romans burned a tattoo into your flesh, as if to say: You belong to us. Permanently.

She swallowed back some biting comments. "Let's eat,"

Reyna called a toast to friendship.

After introductions all around, the Romans and the greek crew began exchanging stories.  Jason explained how he'd arrived at Camp Half-Blood without his memory, and how he'd gone on a quest with Piper and Leo to rescue the goddess Hera (or Juno, take your pick—she was equally annoying in Greek or Roman) from imprisonment at the Wolf House in northern California and sort of revived Juliet back up.

"Impossible!" Octavian broke in. "That's our most sacred place. If the giants had imprisoned a goddess there—"

"They would've destroyed her," Piper said. "And blamed it on the Greeks, and started a war between the camps. Now, be quiet and let Jason finish."

Octavian opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Juliet noticed Daphne looking back and forth between Jason and Piper, her brow creased. Percy looked at Jason with such an assessing gaze it reminded her of how he looked at campers back home and made them cry.

"So," Jason continued, "that's how we found out about the earth goddess Gaea. She's still half asleep, but she's the one freeing the monsters from Tartarus and raising the giants. Porphyrion, the big leader dude we fought at the Wolf House: he said he was retreating to the ancient lands—Greece itself. He plans on awakening Gaea and destroying the gods by...what did he call it? Pulling up their roots."