ALEA IACTA EST ; GRACE

009.

"SO, DO YOU WANT TO TALK about what happened during our training yesterday?" Jason asked Philomena, his feet in the water while she swam her rounds in the lake, relaxing her muscles after some light practice with Alex.

The girl swam closer, her hair flowing around in the water. "Not really."

"That's not fair, I let you help me with my wound, so now you have to tell me what's going on with you so that I can help you," Jason told her decidedly, standing up and walking further into the water until he was close enough to her to see the way her hair floated around in the clear water.

"It was," Philomena paused for a second, in search of the right words, "nothing, probably. I haven't been getting enough sleep lately because of a Basty and well, maybe I overdid it a bit with practicing sword fighting."

Jason nodded, distractedly taking a strand of her hair out of the water and playing with it. "What's a Basty?" He then asked.

Floating around in the water, Philomena looked up at Jason, her eyes a bit narrowed since the sun was blending her. As if on instinct, Jason moved closer to her and covered her face with his shadow so that she could look at him without being blinded by the sun.

"It's just a story my mum used to tell me when I was younger," she began to tell him, not really realizing that this was the first time in many years that she spoke about her mother out loud, with another person listening to her.

"A Basty is like a little demon. It sneaks into your room through the keyhole, sits down on your chest and strangles you while you're sleeping. That's why we have nightmares, and when you have a really nasty Basty living with you, he stays even when you're awake and that's why we can't move after a nightmare sometimes," Philomena told  him the few things she still could remember.

"Sounds interesting," Jason admitted, his gaze fixed on Philomena and her watery eyes. Was she about to cry? Jason was shit at comforting people!

"It's just a children's fairy tale, a legend that she liked to tell me so that I would go to sleep early, because, according to her, the Basty can only come to you when you go to bed late," she paused for a second, a chuckle escaping her lips. "Total bullshit of course, but I believed her."

"What was your mother like?" Jason asked after a moment of consideration.

"She was ... warm," Philomena responded. "Not in the literal sense but with her I always felt safe, at home and at peace. She always knew what to tell me and she had this book. I don't remember its name but she always read it to me and my cousin. It was full of Turkish myths and stuff like that. I loved this book and how she made even the most boring story interesting by acting out certain parts with my aunt."

They stood in silence then, Philomena floating in the water and Jason just standing there looking from the water, to Philomena and then to the horizon.

It was a peaceful moment, which they didn't get often, but of course it was interrupted by one of Philomena's spontaneous flashes of inspiration.

"Okay, no wait, I thought of the funniest thing we could do," the girl exclaimed, quickly standing up, water splashing everywhere and wetting Jason's clothes. "How about we go to the lake tonight, you distract Terminus and in the meantime I'll put lipstick, eyeliner, blush and some eyeshadow on him?"

Jason looked over to the girl, who looked at him expectantly, her red eyes wide in anticipation of his response.

"I know Terminus can be a bit ... difficult, but why do you have to provoke him even more all the time?" he finally settled on asking, since he was truly interested in this obsession the daughter of Cupid had with putting makeup on the god.