Wildflowers, Percy Jackson ₁

002, a win is a win

CHAPTER TWO

₊˚࿐࿔ 𖥧‧₊⚘ ❀༉. 𓏲｡

You might not believe it, but Sylvie actually did have friends!

It was a total of one and one-third, but she still had friends. That was a much larger total than the number of friends she had at home (0), so Sylvie was taking her wins. The life of a loser, folks.

Camp had barely begun for the summer, but so far Sylvie had been spending it—when she wasn't getting bullied by her siblings—with one of those aforementioned friends hiding from border patrol duty.

Micheline Hayes was the full friend in Sylvie's list of companions. She went by Mickey, was a daughter of Aphrodite, and pulled Sylvie into the friendship last summer. Sylvie had fallen about fifty feet off a Pegasus (yes, the whiteboard data defaulted back to 0), and Mickey had decided to properly teach her how to ride when Sylvie was out of the infirmary. It was honestly the craziest thing Sylvie had ever experienced, because everyone usually gave up with her; took one look at her and said Oh gods, there's Sylvie Duvall, what a mess. Everyone turn your heads the other way! Her siblings didn't, obviously, because they couldn't, but neither did Mickey.

Maybe it was because the daughter of Aphrodite took pity on her pathetic ass, maybe she figured Sylvie could use the company. Or maybe, just maybe, there was a part of Mickey that genuinely enjoyed having Sylvie around. Maybe Sylvie could be liked, could be worthy of positive attention. This was why Sylvie liked hanging out with Mickey so much—if she was around the girl for long enough Sylvie could almost believe it was true.

Sylvie didn't expect it, but she could bond with Mickey on stuff like that much more than she thought she would. They started to get extremely close when Mickey confided in Sylvie with the fact she was asexual. Not only that, but the fact that her sexuality was—to Mickey—a constant haunting nightmare that mocked her, sending her spiraling into an identity crisis most nights. Mickey was the daughter of Aphrodite, the goddess of lust and desire, yet Mickey had absolutely no sexual attraction to anyone at all. There was sickening irony in that; the idea that Mickey was the epitome of what her own mother hated. What Aphrodite desired, Mickey abhorred. What Mickey avoided, Aphrodite chased.

Mickey thought she was defective for it all, but Sylvie tried to tell her. There was nothing wrong with the way Mickey was; she wasn't broken or wrong in the way she felt. It was out of her control, and Mickey was made for so much more than the impossible standards she placed on herself. Everyone always said comparison was the thief of joy—why would Mickey gatekeep acceptance from herself?

But then Mickey would tell Sylvie she should listen to her own advice, and they would always come to a standstill.

Luckily they weren't currently in any kind of deep conversation like that. It was shining daylight, and self-acceptance was way deeper than Sylvie wanted to go right now. Sylvie and Mickey had opted on eating their lunch underneath a tree only a little bit's way into the woods. Sylvie's one-third of a friend wasn't accompanying them only for the sole reason he couldn't. Different from the two girls, he actually enjoyed patrol duty. Disgusting.