ALEA IACTA EST ; GRACE

030.

THEY HAD GONE ASHORE   and settled on a cliff that overlooked the ocean in which the moon and stars reflected beautifully.

Frank had remained by Hazel's side while Percy and Philomena had pulled the boat ashore for the time being.

"You were there too. At the battle," Percy stated as they were looking through their bags for something that might help Hazel. Nectar hadn't helped.

Philomena nodded quietly, refusing to look up from her bag.

Percy wanted to say something else, ask her if he had been there too but he was interrupted by Frank notifying them that Hazel had just woken up.

Quickly, the two had dropped everything in their hands and ran back up the hill to reach Hazel and Frank, the former having just sat up from the grassy patch they had put her down on.

"Where are we?" Hazel asked as she looked around.

Philomena exhaled in relief and went to kneel down next to Hazel, holding onto her hand. She was afraid that if she let go now, Hazel would leave her once and for all. "Never do that again. My heart won't be able to handle that."

"We're in Mendocino, about a hundred and fifty miles north of the Golden Gate," Frank informed, his eyes shifting across Hazel's face as if to try to detect anything that could give him a clue to her sudden loss of consciousness.

"That far?" Hazel groaned, clutching her curls. "I've been out that long?"

Percy now also knelt down. He put his hand on her forehead to check for a fever or something; Philomena watched his every move attentively. "We couldn't wake you, so we decided to bring you ashore. Maybe it was the seasickness –"

"It wasn't seasickness," Hazel interrupted him, the words leaving her mouth quickly as she looked to the ground, squeezing Philomena's hand.

"I – I haven't been honest with you," Hazel went on, her gaze now moving to Philomena. The daughter of Cupid had been her best friend since day one and she had never told her anything about her flashbacks. Would Philomena forgive her for that?

"What happened was a blackout. I have them once in a while."

Hazel watched as Philomena raised a brow in question, but she remained silent.

"A blackout?" Frank asked in shock. "Is it medical? Why haven't we noticed before?" The last question was directed at Philomena who just shrugged her shoulders.

"I try to hide it," Hazel admitted. "I've been lucky so far but it's getting worse. It's not medical ... not really. Nico says it's a side effect of my past, from where he found me."

Where Nico had found her, she made it sound like it was a far away place. As if she wasn't actually supposed to be here.

Now it all made sense.

How Hazel doesn't know movies everyone and their godly-parent knew, how she gets surprised by music or the way she uses some pretty confusing expressions sometimes; expressions an old person would use, but not your normal 14-year-old.

The way Hazel rarely talked about her life from before she arrived at camp and on the rare occasions she did talk about it, she narrated it as if it had happened a long time ago.

"Where exactly did Nico find you?" Percy asked.

"I'll explain..." Hazel promised, her voice scratchy as she let go of Philomena's hand and turned away, too afraid to see her best friend's expression. "Is ... is there anything to drink?"

"Yeah," Philomena and Percy responded in unison, thinking of the bags they had left down by the boat.

"That was dumb. I left our supplies down at the boat," Percy took the blame, which Philomena felt was unnecessarily heroic of him. It was disgusting. It was something Jason would do.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Hazel standing up and shouldering her bag and taking a few, shaky steps in the direction of their boat. "Never mind. I can walk..."

"Don't even think about it," Frank refused and pulled her down to sit back down onto the ground before she would collapse a second time. "Not until you've had some food and water. I'll get the supplies."

Philomena pushed Frank back down to his kneeling position. While she didn't like responsibility, she also hated not taking responsibility for her actions, so there was no way she would let Percy take the blame. "It's fine. Percy and I will get them, right Percy?"

The boy nodded absentmindedly, his eyes scanned the horizon as if he sensed trouble, but there was nothing – just the lighthouse and the field of grass splaying out into the far distance.

"Sure. Frank, keep your eyes open. Something about this place... I don't know."

After Frank promised to keep Hazel safe, Percy and Philomena dashed off, running down the hill to their boat where they searched for the backpacks.

"How was the battle on Mount Tam?" Percy asked, his eyes scanning the darkness around them for the backpacks they had dropped in a hurry earlier.

"I learned a lot there," Philomena responded, not knowing what else to say. "I lost the only person I could call a friend back then."

A silence settled over them, but somehow Philomena felt understood. It wasn't one of those silences where the other person was too shocked by the given information and was trying to think of a way to say their condolences.

No, Percy understood what it was like to lose a dear friend in battle, so he knew that no words, no matter how sincere they were, could heal this wound. Only time could heal the wound left behind by someone who had left this world too early.

"You know, there I fought against someone like you," Philomena said after some time.

Maybe she should give Percy a chance, maybe this daughter of Athena she had met on Mount Tam was an exception or someone who had run over to the dark side. After all, she had seen Jason talk and train with Annabeth in her dream, so there was no way that she or rather, all of the Greeks could be bad people.

"She said she was a daughter of Athena and well, I almost got killed but fortunately only almost."

"So that's why you don't trust me? You think I'm like her?" Percy asked, finally having found the bags and giving one to Philomena.

Philomena shrugged, unsure which of the reasons she had for mistrusting him was the deciding one. "Inter alia. You also remind me a lot of Jason, you know. It's kind of disgusting how alike you two are."

"Was that a compliment or...?"

"That's for you to decide, and now come on, if we don't hurry they'll start kissing and I don't need to see that," Philomena joked before she began running back up the hill, Percy closely following behind her. 

HOPE speaks! 

so Philomena decided to get along with Percy ... well, kind of 

tell me who's your godly parent! I'm really interested 

I took like 10 quizzes and always either get Athena or Hades