Mortals meet demigods

Bianca Diana Anderson

Bianca bounced over to her friend, Leanna, where she was waving at the doorway of her house. Bianca's mother gave a quick honk from her car and drove off. Leanna dragged the younger girl inside and shut the door.

"Daddy's at work, but Papa's home. And, and you can meet Aunty Hazel today! She made cookies too, Uncle Perce gave her his recipe, so they're the best, best, best cookies!" Leanna was flailing one arm around while still clutching Bianca's hand by that point.

The pair entered the kitchen and Bianca instantly understood her friend's excitement. The kitchen radiated warmth from the oven and the heavenly smell of fresh cooked wafted through the air. Bianca breathed it in, feeling relaxed as if hugged with a security blanket ensued with love and family. There was an open window in front of a copper farm sink and the petals of flowers and leaves of herbs could be seen in the sill. It was bright in the kitchen, but not overly so thanks to the rustic cabinet doors. Bianca giggled at the alternating skull and sun jars with chalkboard labels on the counter. She felt at home in the kitchen, but in a new way than she did with her mom.

Leanna dropped Bianca's hand and tried to grab a cookie while someone, who had to be Leanna's aunty Hazel, washed their hands in the sink.

"Excuse me, ma'am, what do you think you're doing? I just took those out, wait at least five minutes, Leanna!" Hazel batted Leanna's hand away. "You must be Bianca, it's wonderful to meet you. I'm Hazel, Leanna's aunt."

"Where's Papa?" Leanna tugged on Hazel's sleeve.

"Struggling with the sound bar, why don't you two go help him and I'll get the cookies on a plate."

Leanna grabbed Bianca's hand to drag her around again. She pulled her past the dining room and through a doorway to the living room. "Papa! This is Bianca! Aunty Hazel thinks you need help with the tv, so we're gonna help you until we're allowed cookies!"

Leanna's papa swivelled around to face the two children instead of the mess of wires he had created. "You can call me Nico, Bianca. Leanna talks about you a lot, it's nice to put a face to the face. Now, if Aunty Hazel's sent you over to here, little Le, come help me figure this out. I don't know what I've done."

Leanna giggled and sat down next to her papa. Nico looked mildly terrified when his daughter began disconnecting each cord and even more when she told him they should get scissors to cut a zip tie. Bianca darted back into the kitchen to ask Hazel for scissors, and then walked back to Leanna and Nico with utmost care at a near funeral march. Nico reached his hand out to take the scissors. As soon as Bianca had passed them over, she froze to the spot. Her eyes went unfocused for a moment, before snapping back.

It happened sometimes, those little flashes of memories. Not from her life, those memories were always clearer than the flashes. That flash had been on a parallel memory, past-Bianca being handed something by past-younger-boy. Bianca shook her head quickly.

Leanna yelled in delight, showing the separated cords to her papa. She jumped up and yelled, "Now, cookies! C'mon, c'mon c'mon! Cookies! Aunty Hazel!"

"I hear you, child, calm down. You can have one now. I'll let you have more after lunch, but only if you have fruit then."

"That doesn't mean that you can have only fruit for lunch, okay?" Nico told the children sternly. Hazel handed them a cookie each and Bianca froze again.

"Bianca?" Hazel asked.

"Nico?" Bianca's voice seemed to change, taking on an accent.

He stumbled back a step. She sounded like Nico's sister, her name-twin.

"I... Nico. I- Nico! Di Angelo! My brother! No, no, no. Not this time. Last time! Last time, my brother..." Bianca tapered off into a whisper, still sounding like her dead name-twin. "Nico."

Nico's fingers twitched. "Explain. Now."

Bianca still sounded like Nico's Bianca, her eyes were glazed a little. "There's two. Bianca di Angelo is in the back, little reminders. But, I'm..." Bianca's voice shifted back to match her seven-year-old self. "Bianca Di... ana Anderson." It shifted again, "Nico."

Nico crouched down. "The little reminders, you said, do they feel like another life?"

Bianca nodded. "Mommy says that they're from before I was born. Other-Bianca didn't want to be alone, so she went again."

Hazel blinked. "Rebirth. Reincarnation. Even the name matches up. Bianca, Di-, An-."

Nico nodded. He looked at Bianca for a moment longer before standing up and walking to the landline. He dialed the number for Bianca's mother, putting the phone on speaker.

"'Ello? You've got Marie Anderson."

Nico spoke, "Hey, Marie. My understanding is that you're aware of Bianca being a reincarnation?"

"Yes, is she alright?"

Hazel stepped closer to the microphone. "She's okay. We wanted to check in and let you know that she seemed to be going between herself and the past-Bianca."

Marie hummed. "Where her eyes glaze a tid bit, and her voice changes? Most people don't have that much connection to their past life, but with Bianca's parentage, it's different."

"I'll make a wild guess here, would Bianca's father be one from deep down?" Hazel asked cautiously. She didn't want to say Hades outright in case she was correct in an attempt to spare Bianca a few years of blissful ignorance of not knowing she was a demigod.

Marie must not have known about that particular aspect of being a demigod, as she held no such reservations. "Yeah. She's seven, I didn't want her to know she's a demigod yet!"

"That's fair, Marie. Hazel, Will and I are all demigods, we can keep Bianca safe. You've got our landline and Will's mobile as well, so you can call if anything happens," Nico assured her.

They said their goodbyes and hung up. Nico looked at the children. "You know what, I think you can have a second cookie before lunch."

Leanna squealed and reached for the plate, trying to hide a few extra cookies.

Hazel saw what her niece was going for. "One! Leanna! Not two more! One more! You little rascal."

Marie let Hazel, Nico and Will teach Bianca a little bit of defence quite a while after that. They decided to not tell Marie that they pretty much only had to hand Bianca a blade before muscle memory kicked in.

She was eleven the first time she was attacked without them nearby. Bianca and Marie were heading to a mall when an empousa set its target on the young demigod and seemingly unarmed companion. Her shock at the appearance of the monster didn't last long when it lunged at her mom and the adrenaline and demigod instincts kicked in. Her eyes darkened considerably from their normal brown and she passed her green cap to her mother. She passed a quiver to Marie ("Where did this come from? Bianca!") with instructions to stab the monster if it got too close to Marie. Bianca brought out her sword and leapt at the monster.

Bianca managed to reduce the creature to golden dust sufficiently, but not without injuries. Both her mom and herself had scratches all over them; Bianca also had a long, albeit shallow, gash on her back and a burn on her arm. Marie handed back the quiver minus three arrows and promptly called Will. Nico and Will appeared out of a shadow the next minute, and suddenly they were well on their way to camp. Nico took his youngest sister to Camp Half-Blood for the second time, while Will escorted Marie to their home to put together a bag for Bianca. While Will waited for Nico to get him again, he healed her injuries.

Leanna was waiting for Bianca at camp and they embraced tightly after half a summer of not seeing each other. Bianca passed out in Leanna's grasp, the adrenaline coming down and the pain of her first major injuries-by-monster hitting her. 

Thank you to @Kiwi11107 for the request, and I am so, so sorry that it took me nearly 2 months. I hope you like this.

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