"Send me! Send an army! Send a thousand ships! I don't care, just bring her home. I hate being without her."
[ PERCY JACKSON x FEMALE OC ]
[ PERCY JACKSON SERIES ]
cover by @humaneity !
content warning: physical sexual harassment (eg. a kiss)
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0001. | EVEN PORCELAIN WILL FEAR ROTTING LIKE RUST
Octavia felt fundamentally uninteresting.
Where there was beauty, there was also a reason. Like a plant that grew from the soil, if a flower was pretty it was because of its stalk and roots that collected minerals and fed it into bloom. Just like the minerals found in the ground to feed beauty and interest, books and music and art did the same. Passion made beauty. Someone's interest and fascinations were crafts and those crafts were beauty. Enlightenment was one thing, but to be enlightening one first must be enlightened. Intelligence was attractive and interesting, and so was passion. They were the roots and stems of gorgeous flowers everywhere.
Octavia felt as though she was stuck walking through an endless garden of such flowers. She would pick and pluck and arrange her bouquet but the second she severed the petals from their roots, their interests and passions died. She was not left with any beauty, she was left with something decayed and rotting. Beauty was nothing without passion and she feared she was without both.
She felt boring. She was not bored, no, she was boring. She wished and prayed upon every star and sun for something interesting to crop up about her. There was divinity in her blood that told her she could mend wounds and sing songs and light skies and string bows, but what she found was a distance from these things. She could glow and heal anything, but how well could she stitch flesh? She could sing a magical hymn, but how well could she carry the note? She could strike an enemy with sunlight, but how well could she soften a candle to flicker? She could even shoot an arrow as cleanly as the divine, but how well could she separate herself from that violence?
Nothing about her felt natural. Like dough that had been kneaded too much, she had practiced her personality so far that now it was false and unusable. She felt false and unusable. She was passionless and she craved it more than anything.
If passion were an apple she would tear it from the tree and sink her teeth into its flesh so deep her bite would leave claw marks in the reddened skin. The juice would dribble down her chin, passion trailing away from her even in her feverish bite but she would chew and chew until it sank in her throat and sat inside her long enough to sap the passions from its flesh.
She wanted to be interesting. Curse everything in the world, she wanted to be interesting.
Interesting people meant something, they were remembered. Pandora and her curiosity. Achilles and his fury. Odysseus and his wit. Aeneas and his determination. Annabeth and her wisdom. Percy and his courage, his loyalty, his smile...
She shook the thought away.
They had been plaguing her since her return to Camp. Due to her extensive injuries from Mount Tamalpais atop the mountain of despair, James, her eldest brother with the support of her younger brother Will had forced her to remain abed for a week straight. After a day and a half of sleep and frequent napping, she had recovered just about. Only, James didn't believe her so he had forced her into bed rest.
