The Fate of Olympus | Reynabeth [✓]

12. Chat with Lou Ellen, Daughter of Hecate

As it turned out, neither Annabeth nor Reyna was able to unravel the mysteries of the universe in the morning. Annabeth woke up before Reyna, after most of the Hermes cabin, but she let Reyna sleep. She deserved the rest.

Annabeth wandered around, looking at how young most of the campers were. They were children, running around in their orange Camp Half-Blood shirts. Annabeth felt that familiar rage building up in her chest. She wouldn't let any more children die on behalf of the gods.

Annabeth was walking by the basketball courts, which jutted against the magical woods, when she found the Hecate cabin heading to the rock roll.

Annabeth pulled their head counselor aside for a chat. Lou Ellen didn't seem fazed at all by Annabeth's request for a time erase counterspell. She just snapped her fingers. Nothing seemed to have happened, but she assured Annabeth that she was now covered from head to toe in a thin layer of magic that would react if the gods decided to send them adrift.

"Be aware that you'll emerge in the past at some point, but no matter what you do, you won't be able to change history. So don't be tempted to kill dictators or whatever. You won't change anything. The logic is, if you go back, then you've already been back."

"Got it," said Annabeth. "How long will it take for the counter spell to kick in?"

"It's hard to know what your perception of time will be when you're not in time," said Lou Ellen. "Time is difficult. Maybe you'll drift for thirty seconds. Maybe an hour."

"No longer, though?"

"No longer."

"So you're an expert on the Mist. Is that fair to say?"

"Between the two of us, I think you'd give me a run for my money," said Lou Ellen grinning. "But yeah, I can manipulate the Mist well enough to trick just about anybody."

"Where does the Mist come from?"

"Not sure. Hecate said she invented it, but it supposedly predates humankind."

"So Hecate invented it before humans existed?"

"Yeah."

That bewildered Annabeth for a moment. Despite how real she knew myths were, Annabeth frequently slipped into the mindset that humans were a branch on an evolutionary tree. The branch was thousands of years old, the tree was millions of years old, and Earth was billions of years old. In that mode of thinking, it seemed impossible for the Mist to be so old. 

In reality, the gods had fashioned humans out of clay. 

Observational evidence collected by humans, which seemed so real, confirmed evolution in so many ways. Yet evolution was the result of making logical deductions based on empirical observation, and observation was not accurate because it required mortals to look at the Mist...and Annabeth caught herself on another tangent.

It was time to bring her mind back to the task at hand. Mindfulness was necessary for her goal.

Out loud, Annabeth said, "Greeks and Romans used to be at each other's throats, but that was only because they, we, were working with a different set of realities. That's the Mist's fault, right?"

"That's exactly correct." Lou Ellen dropped her voice. "Some say that the most powerful substance in the universe is the Mist. Some theology nerds even call the Mist the real ruler of our universe. It creates what we see, not only by obscuring everything magical, but because it could be shaping the entire world without our even knowing it. That's why different religions saw different things, depending on which set of values suited their society. It happens today, even to mortals. Just look at politics. Why do you think mortals are so deeply divided?"

"I haven't been keeping up with mortal politics," admitted Annabeth. "Fill me in."

"Well...where do I start?"

"Never mind," said Annabeth. "I've stopped caring."

"Thank the gods."

"So who's to say that what we're seeing is more real than what mortals see?"

"Uh, well, we can see at least one layer of Mist deeper than mortals, who are fooled by every layer of the stuff."

"How do you know that you know that? How do you know the Mist isn't making it seem like your version of reality is better?"

Lou Ellen shrugged. "That question is too metaphysical for me."

Annabeth was thrown by this. The resident expert at Camp Half-Blood didn't care what laid beneath the Mist! Unfathomable. "Mortals used to worship the gods. What ever happened that made mortals stop believing in the gods?"

"I...I'm not sure. I never thought about it."

"Was Hecate responsible for mortals who stopped believing in the gods? Because she invented and controls the Mist?"

"I don't know."

Annabeth let Lou Ellen's uncertainty hang in the air. "What about...if the Mist just exists to show different people different versions of things that they already know, then does that mean that there exists some fundamental reality underneath it all?"

"Oh, yes, that exists," said Lou Ellen. "I wouldn't try to look at it, though. If you look at Chaos, you go insane."

"So in a weird way, we need the Mist even though it just exists to lie to us."

"Right. Creepy, huh?"

Annabeth held out her hand. "Sounds like you know your stuff. Will you come with us on our quest? Reyna and I—"

"—are doing something that might anger the gods enough to curse you by setting you adrift in spacetime. No thanks. Besides, if you bring a daughter of Hecate with you, the gods'll suspect a trick. No thanks."

Part of Annabeth wanted to cajole Lou Ellen into joining, but she knew that it was important that she gave Lou Ellen a choice, not peer pressure. "Well, thank you for the spell anyway. Wish us luck!"

"May the Fates be kind to you," said Lou Ellen grimly, then ran to join her siblings on the rock wall. 

End of Part I 

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