Searching

Prologue 

"I have been waiting to talk to you for centuries." A boy with hair so light it was almost white stood before Zeus, bravely. He looked worn and hatred burned in his eyes as he stared down the god that was the reason for his existence. 

"Are you not enjoying immortality?" Zeus asked in a gruff tone. "Is it lonely?" He was completely bitter and unwilling to even hear from him, but he was pesky, always trying to get in touch. It even bothered Zeus to know that he had created this foolish being. He simply decided he would hear him out and then dispose of him. If a fly buzzes in your ear, you kill it. Problem solved. "What is it that you seek from me?" 

"I want to know why you have cast me out from the family. What have I done to deserve this?" 

"I told you to stay far away from Miss Fairfield. I deliberately told you to not get involved with her or any of her friends, but you befriended them like the idiot you are. And you proceeded to fall in love with Miss Fairfield. Instead of proving yourself worthy of being a god, you proved to be exactly what you are. A mistake. A half-god, half-mortal. Only mortals get distracted with petty things like love." 

"It wasn't petty! She was important to me! You've been in love with plenty of women!" the boy said defiantly. "Or did you simply just sleep with all of them?" He hadn't asked to be born. He hadn't asked that Zeus sleep with a mortal woman. Zeus glared at him and he spoke again. "And how can you call someone of your own creation a mistake?" he asked, challenging his father. 

"Because that is all you are to me." Zeus answered, pondering what to do with him. "You defied me. For a mere girl who was bound to be destroyed anyway. As the rest of them." 

"But why? Why do you keep hunting them down? Lifetime after lifetime?" The boy was persistent on finding out the answer to this question that plagued him. He thought what Zeus was doing was horrible and not to mention tiresome and time consuming. Why did Zeus even bother? 

"Because, those who are of the same soul do not deserve to become one. And to keep that from happening, they must die," Zeus explained. "It's how things have always been and how they will continue to be done." He was irritable with the boy and turned away from him. "Now leave at once and stop questioning what is happening, or I won't hesitate to kill you next time. They're not your friends. They can't be. Their fate has already been decided for them." 

The boy didn't know what his father meant, but he would soon and only then would he wish he had never asked and that his father had struck him down with lightning as he had originally planned.  

--- 

He had promised his mother that he would drive safely. He had told his best friend that he would be at the party at seven. It was now a quarter after and his car was stuck in the ditch. It had happened all too fast. One minute he was driving down the road carefully listening to a DJ on the radio talk about how bad the storm was and that lightning had struck the ground several times in the past few hours. He was going well under the speed limit because there was a dense fog and the rain was pouring down so hard that his windshield wipers could barely keep up. The next a car had seemed to come from the fog, going at a speed that was not safe in any weather. Even from far away he could tell that the car wasn't driving straight; it kept veering towards the other lane. But it wasn't until the car got in range to pass him that it completely swerved into his lane. Panicking, he turned the wheel sharply and careened into the ditch. How was he supposed to say he had been driving safely now?  

He had managed to get his car door open and climb out without much difficulty. As far as he could tell, he wasn't injured. He stared after the car that had almost crashed into him and his first thought was that the driver was intoxicated. He pulled up the hood of his jacket over his head and pressed his cell phone to his ear, dialing 911 to report what had happened, but it didn't ring.