Goodnight Moon ↣ P. Jackson + A. Chase

1.02

There were moments between dusk and nightfall, where the sun was fleeing the sky, moving away far from sight, withering under the push of darkness that Kassandra felt free and right and at home.

Logically she knew that wasn't how it worked, it wasn't Artemis chasing Apollo from the skies, but a relationship symbiotic, equal give and equal take as they worked together to move sun and moon to day and night -- twins as legends working in tandem, working as two parts of a whole being that was such a force of power and reckoning in the world. Of course, Kassandra knew of the minor gods that call home all the periods and stages in between, the ones nearly forgotten compared to that of beloved myth.

She did not forget, she never forgets, and each time her poet heart was struck with the beauty of the world and the sky and the distant things that she could never quite touch but dreamed of in paintings of words coloured the most divine of shades, she would pray a quiet thank you for their existence, a thank you in recognition of them.

It was in one of these moments where a beautiful sunset that looked more like godly intervention appeared that she could only catch the curse at the end of her tongue as she ducked under the stinging jab of a pit scorpion that they had missed camping out on the lawn of her home somehow.

And while she didn't care so much for the dress, she did wish that her parents would hurry in getting her bow for Chiron since he didn't seem to have his and it would be much easier to take on the monster with something that wasn't a dagger that was small enough to be hidden on her thigh.

Rolling, her shoulder pressed to the lawn as she put distance between them -- pointless because these things were practically made for jumping -- and took her further away from the reach of the deadly strike of the sting.

She huffed, blood pumping as she felt the weight of the blade in her hand, hair in a tragic mess around her head, sticking to the sweat that began to prickle across her forehead. She held the dagger out in defence, ready to move the moment the scorpion did.

Kassandra would never forget the last time she had been faced with such a monster. Only eight at the time and stumbling blindly through streets bordered by forest and rundown buildings on the coastal edge of Washington state, she had been saved by a daughter of Ares named Oriana who had gone to collect Travis and Connor Stoll, with the help of a satyr named Cleavas. She hadn't a clue what was happening at the time, hadn't a clue who these people were or the things that they were saying, and while they tried to explain, even the brothers, Kassandra really couldn't see bring herself to believe them even if she knew, without a doubt, that they were telling the truth.

Back then, she hadn't had the skill to keep herself safe and had nearly ended up impaled on the sting by accident. It hadn't much changed, it seemed, as she hadn't the skill to defeat the scorpion with a dagger alone when her fear of getting close equated to the fear of being stung.

She slipped backward a step, grinding her teeth in agitation, and sent a prayer up to Ares and asked for his help as she pivoted around the tail coming down, cutting in close as it began to rise once more, and brought the dagger down with a strong slash -- aiming for the bit where the head met body hoping to plunge through the celestial blade into a deep enough wound to kill the monster.

An arrow cuts through the air, pinning into the side of the pit scorpion head as the dagger comes down. It burst into dust before her.

Panting, she whirls back with an excited grin, adrenaline still pumping through her. "Nice shot. Just in time, too," she comments, aimlessly trying to fix her hair into something less of a mess. "Are my parents still freaking out?"

Chiron chuckles goodnaturedly. "They will likely always worry for you regardless of how much time you spend training and enhancing your skills."

"Yeah, I suppose. I just wish they didn't give themselves a heart-attack every time something like this happens. It's always going to keep happening and there will doubtless be anything that will stop it from continuing."