The Shadow Summoner | Book Three - PJO Universe

twenty

GOODBYES

As a god, they could split themselves into multiple parts. Ariana could exist in many different places at once.

Because of this, she can't tell you with absolute certainty which of the following encounters came first.

Read them in any order you like.

Ariana and Apollo were determined to see all their friends again, no matter where they were, and give them equal attention at roughly the same time.

First, though, they must mention Apollo's horses. No judgement, please. He had missed them. Because they were immortal, they did not need sustenance to survive.

Nor did they absolutely have to make their daily journey through the sky in order to keep the sun going, thanks to all the other solar gods out there, still powering the movements of the cosmos, and that other thing called astrophysics.

Still, Apollo worried that his horses hadn't been fed or taken out for exercise in at least six months, perhaps a whole year, which tended to make them grumpy.

For reasons he shouldn't have to explain, you don't want your sun being pulled across the sky by grumpy horses.

They materialised at the entrance of the sun palace and found that his valets had abandoned their posts.

This happens when you don't pay them their gold drachma every day. Apollo could barely push open the front door because months of mail had been shoved through the slot. Bills. Ad circulars. Credit card offers.

Appeals for charities like Godwill and Dryads Without Borders.

Ariana suppose Hermes found it amusing to deliver Apollo so much snail mail. He would have to have a talk with that guy.

Apollo also hadn't put a stop to his automatic deliveries from the Amazons, so the portico was piled high with shipping boxes filled with toothpaste, laundry detergent, guitar strings, reams of blank tablature and coconut-scented suntan lotion.

Inside, the palace had reverted to its old Helios smell, as it did every time Apollo was gone for an extended period.

Its former owner had baked the place with the scent of Titan: pungent and saccharine, slightly reminiscent of Axe body spray. Apollo would have to open some windows and burn some sage.

A layer of dust had accumulated on his golden throne. Some jokers had written WASH ME on the back of the chair.

Stupid venti, probably.

In the stables, his horses were glad to see him. They kicked at their stalls, blew fire and whinnied indignantly, as if to say, Where the Hades have you been?

Apollo and Ariana fed them their favourite gilded straw, then filled their nectar trough. They gave them each a good brushing and whispered sweet nothings in their ears until they stopped kicking Apollo in the groin, which Ariana took as a sign that they forgave him.

*•*

The welcome they received at Camp Half-Blood was uproarious and beautiful.

"LESTER!" the campers chanted. "LESTER!"

"LESTER?!"

"LESTER!"

Apollo had chosen to appear in his old Papadopoulos form. Why not his glowing perfect god bod? Or one of the Bangtan Boys, or Paul McCartney circa 1965?

After complaining for so many months about his flabby, acne-spotted Lester meat sack, he now found that he felt at home in that form.

When he had first met Meg, she had assured him that Lester's appearance was perfectly normal. At the time, the notion had horrified him. Now he found it reassuring.