PYRRHIC, percy jackson

━━ I

IT HAPPENED AS QUICK AS A BREATH, as soft as a feather, and as confusing as a paradox. One second she was light as the wind, up in the sky, being held by the tyrant, and the next one she was quite literally biting the dust, feeling like she would crush herself to death.

A heavy weight was suddenly placed all over her, so unfamiliar and strange, so new and fresh, yet she felt like she could hardly breathe. It came down so suddenly, it was hurting her lungs to—

Wait. She... she could not breathe. She was not meant to. She did not have the anatomy to do it, let alone experience what was happening at that moment. Why could she feel herself inhaling and exhaling? Why could she sense a soft breeze enveloping her? Why could she move the limbs she had so much desired? Why could she move the eyes she never had? Why could she accurately identify the things she heard her owner sing about so beautifully? She had never been able to see them, she had never been able to experience anything but distant longing and solitude. She had watched, yes, but this was not the same. This was... different. It was nothing she knew. That thought scared her.

Wait. Why was she even thinking?

Suddenly aware of what was given to her, what she had wished for so deeply, she started to move her head —her head!— towards every direction, looking, seeing, observing.

At her sides there was only a grey zenit, clouded skies, not even the old Helios, nor her dear Selene, daring to face her curious sight. Behind her, the grayscaled sea advanced to where she could not keep looking, and where the sun was supposed to be, only a faint glow was present, dimly illuminating the scene. The gaseous water bodies were obviously acting as a barrier between her and the skies, as if they were not meant to testify of what had happened, as if the occurrence had been hidden, as if this had not been planned at all.

She decided to focus her view on what was in the foreground, a few meters ahead of her, where plenty of diverse beings were staring at her with different expressions. She could recognise confusion, surprise, and wariness. She could see heads of different colours—hair, not heads. But also heads. She could see a variety of heights and eye colours and eye shapes and also lips and noses and a wide range of ears and many legs and—

She was staring at humans.

And they were staring back. No human had ever paid close attention to her, not since her owner had gone in search of his lover and ended up abandoning her. And there they were: looking at her. But it was not her—it was not who she was at first. But it was not who she was afterwards, either.

She had a human body, a set of human lungs, a human nose, a pair of human eyes, a human mouth, human ears... She could breathe (she did not get accustomed to the rise and fall of her chest, yet), she could smell (as fresh as always, yet she could also recognise salt), she could see (she could not stop watching and describing and analyzing), she could taste (have all humans grown used to constantly tasting themselves?), she could hear (whispers, murmurs, the waves of the sea crashing against the coast, the whispers getting louder and louder, the fluttering steps of more and more approaching the coast), and she could feel (the coarse sand below her bare feet—she had feet—, the wind against her cold body, her hair flying in every direction and hitting her face, sometimes; her hand running up and down her opposite arm, the loose toga covering her moving in tune with the breeze).

She had a human body. She was human—at least, on the outside, she was like them. She watched, the multiple sizes and colours and diversity they held. She wished to see herself, to see who she resembled and what made her stand out. She wished to be stared at the same way she was staring at them.