LUNACY; percy jackson

chapter 1

[act one; chapter one     -     the realities of a half-blood]

    There was a sharp, constant ringing in her ear. It was like a buzz, as though a bee was right there, nearly touching her. But as she peeled back her eyelids, and as the light of the sun outside invaded her vision, she remembered where she was.

    She hears the faint yet incessant beeping of the alarm on her side table out of only one ear—her left—while the other remained silent. Numb. She reaches blindly for that table beside her bed, her hands searching for two small objects, the ones that restore her senses to her. She slips the hearing aids on and suddenly her world is flooded with sound. She can hear the birds outside and her brothers' faint snoring from across the cabin. She can hear the faraway sound of the Long Island Sound hitting the shore and the sound of the wind in the leaves. She can hear the world, and knows it is time to start on her day.

    She rolls out of bed, muscles aching, screaming for relent. But still, she pulls on clothes and tugs her hair away, and slips shoes onto her feet. She rubs a special ointment onto her forever-there burns, the skin tight and rough. Dead and a constant reminder of a life once known. So, to forget, for even just a moment, Andromeda silently exits the cabin and begins her run, aware of the eyes that follow her, the ears always listening.

    As she runs, she catches the smallest of glimpses of her hands, of her scarred knuckles, and remembers where they are there. She thinks of the scars all across her body, the ones that have healed and the ones that never will. She thinks of what they mean, to her and others, to the world, and it only causes her to run faster. To run away.

    It was a talent of hers—running. Running from people and feelings and things she couldn't bear to deal with. If it meant that she would feel that sinking of her gut and too-fast thudding of her heart, she would run. Push her legs faster, harder, in hopes that the wind carries her away as though she were a stray feather, lost in the world.

    So she adjusts her hearing. The world becomes but a whisper like the wind against her skin.

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