CATHARSIS, jason grace¹

𝟬𝟬𝟭. nothing I had to remember

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"LUKE, YOU JERK!" Twelve-year-old Aera shouted, stretching her hand as high as it could reach. "Give it back!"

"Not a chance," the sandy-haired boy teased. He held her sheathed celestial bronze sword higher in the air and smirked down at her, his set of porcelain white teeth gleaming blindingly bright in the afternoon sun. Stupid Luke and his stupid perfect teeth.

"It's mine," Aera growled. "Chiron said I could have any weapon from the armory if I passed your training today."

"You're not ready for a blade this big yet," Luke told her, the skin between his eyebrows creasing. "What if you hurt yourself?"

Aera kicked the sand at her feet. Luke was only two years older than her but sometimes, he acted more protective than her own father.

"What if I hurt you?" she shot back.

"With all that spunk," Luke said with a chuckle, "you might as well join Cabin Five for Capture the Flag tonight."

The son of Hermes exploded in laughter as Aera pounced at him. She chased him all around the bank of the ocean, threatening to shove his flying shoes up some very dark, very unpleasant places.

Meanwhile, just a few leagues away, their friends, Annabeth Chase and Silena Beauregard, were lounging peacefully on beach towels on the shore of Long Island Sound, listening to the back-and-forth lull of the crashing waves. Suntanning, Silena had her face covered with a large sun hat while Annabeth had hers covered with a large textbook about the history of the gods.

"Oh, here's a question," Annabeth said, sitting up and criss-crossing her legs together. "If you could be an Olympian, what would you be the goddess of?"

"Hmm..." Silena hummed, deep in thought. "That's a good one." Her hand skimmed across the heart-shaped box of deluxe chocolates her father had sent her from his shop. She delicately popped one drizzled in white chocolate into her mouth. "Maybe the goddess of chocolates? Or sweets?" She handed Annabeth a chocolate. "You?"

"I'd want to be the goddess of architwecture," Annabeth replied, mouth full of chocolate, "so I could build things forever."

Silena smiled affectionately at her younger friend, wiping the chocolate off Annabeth's mouth with her thumb. "That's a good answer."

"Why would anyone want to be an Olympian god?" Having overheard their conversation, Luke scoffed when he flopped down in the sand next to them. "They're a bunch of self-centered half-wits."

"Luke..." Silena warned.

The fourteen-year-old girl studied the sky warily, as if something scary would come out of it, but before anything bad could happen, Aera finally caught up to Luke, kicking sand up everywhere as she trapped him in a headlock. Though, trapped was a rather generous term; it was clear the older boy was letting himself be manhandled by the girl three times smaller than him.

"What?" Luke challenged, unfazed by Aera's skinny arm choking his neck. "If what I said makes the big guys up on Mount Olympus unhappy, that's their problem. They can come down here and tell me to my face."

Silena adjusted the rim of her sun hat nervously. Annabeth quietly dusted the sand Aera had gotten everywhere off her thigh. Aera, who was too upset about her confiscated weapon to care about Luke's sudden change of mood or the gravity of their conversation, quipped, "One look at your big ugly face would be enough to scare them all off."

Luke's mouth broke out in a crooked grin. The long white scar winding from the bottom of his eye down to his chin glinted in the light, making him appear dangerous and devilish, but also incredibly handsome. His aura was so powerful Aera had to look away. When Aera had first been claimed by Aphrodite, the first thing her half-siblings asked her was if she could set them up with the attractive friend that had arrived at camp with her.