Legends, Percy Jackson

vii. thalia's A+ driving.

chapter seven.
thalia's A+ driving.

     THE HUNTERS STUFFED themselves into the very back of the van, most likely to stay far away from Apollo and the other boys present. Bianca sat with them, entrusting Nina to watch Nico, who didn't seem to mind. Nina was a bit sad, though. She still wanted to hang out with her friend. These other people were virtually strangers to her (exempting Nico, obviously, but that was more like babysitting).

The young di Angelo was jumping up and down on the drivers seat like it was a bouncy castle. "This is so cool!" he gasped, out of breath.

"It's adequate," Nina corrected lightly.

Apollo glared at her, "You're adequate."

"Explain how that makes grammatical sense, O wise god of knowledge."

"Is this really the sun?" Nico asked ecstatically. "I thought Helios and Selene were the sun and moon gods. How come sometimes it's them, and sometimes it's you and Artemis?"

     "Downsizing," Apollo simplified, though Nina had a nagging suspicion that was entirely false. "The Romans started it. They couldn't afford all those temple sacrifices, so they laid off Helios and Selene and folded their duties into our job descriptions. My sis got the moon. I got the sun. It was pretty annoying at first, but at least I got this cool car."

     Nina blinked in complete confusion. "But the Greeks came before the Romans, didn't they? You're a Greek god," she told him, as if he didn't already know. "And there were━or, are━a lot of moon and sun gods just for the Greeks. Like the Titan gods of the sun? And Achelois, Hecate, they were━are━goddesses of the moon, right? Or, at least, they had lunar aspects? They didn't all get laid off, too?" A very curious world.

     Apollo merely blinked at the sheer amount of words that had been spilled from Nina's mouth in one breath. Nico immediately continued her tangent.

     "And how does this all work?" he asked, gesturing vaguely. "I thought the sun was a big fiery ball of gas!"

     Apollo ruffled Nico's hair. "That rumor probably got started because Artemis used to call me a big fiery ball of gas."

     "What the fuck?" Nina asked, leaning away from him. "Why?"

     "Doesn't matter. Seriously, it depends on whether you're talking astronomy or philosophy. You want to talk astronomy? Bah, what fun is that? You want to talk about how humans think about the sun? Ah, now that's more interesting. They've got a lot riding on the sun . . . er, so to speak. It keeps them warm, grows their crops, powers engines, makes everything look, well, sunnier. This chariot is built out of human dreams about the sun, kid. It's as old as Western Civilization. Every day, it drives across the sky from east to west, lighting up all those puny little mortal lives. The chariot is a manifestation of the sun's power, the way mortals perceive it. Make sense?"

     Nina had so much she wanted to remark, so much she wanted to ask, but she felt that would take too much time, so she settled with, "Yes."

     Nico disagreed. "No."

     "Well then, just think of it as a really powerful, really dangerous solar car."