𝐎𝐏𝐀𝐋𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒༄ • Jᴀsᴏɴ Gʀᴀᴄᴇ

Chapter 2

Chiron looked at Jason for a while before inviting him inside- well it sounded more like an order- and then his eyes landed on Freya.

"Yes, I suppose you should come as well Freya." 

His once kind eyes were disturbed and alarmed, two more signs that something seriously wrong was going on here. The centaur trotted over to the empty wheelchair on the porch. He slipped off his quiver and bow and backed up to the chair, which opened like a magician's box. Chiron gingerly stepped into it with his back legs and began scrunching himself into a space that should've been much too small. In a second, his hooves were replaced with normal human legs, and he no longer looked like a centaur, just a regular guy in a wheelchair. Whenever Chiron would hide away his horse half and sit down onto his wheelchair, he reminded her of the days when her and Percy were at Yancy Academy, when they only knew him as Mr. Brunner.

"Follow me," he ordered. "We have lemonade."

Leather couches faced a stone fireplace with a crackling fire. Wedged in one corner, an old-style Pac-Man arcade game beeped and blinked. Mounted on the walls was an assortment of masks—smiley/frowny Greek theater types, feathered Mardi Gras masks, Venetian Carnevale masks with big beaklike noses, carved wooden masks from Africa. Grapevines grew through their mouths so they seemed to have leafy tongues. Some had red grapes bulging through their eyeholes.

Seymour the leopard hung on the wall right above the fireplace, and Freya delighted in the fact that Jason almost jumped out of his skin when it growled.

"Now, Seymour," Chiron chided. "Jason is a friend. Behave yourself."

"That thing is alive!" Jason said.

She snorted. "Yeah no shit."

"Language Freya." Said Chiron, though his eyes twinkled.

"Sorry." But she wasn't at all apologetic.

Chiron rummaged through the side pocket of his wheelchair and brought out a package of Sausages. He threw one to the leopard, who snapped it up and licked his lips.

"You must excuse the décor," Chiron said. "All this was a parting gift from our old director before he was recalled to Mount Olympus. He thought it would help us to remember him. Mr. D has a strange sense of humor."

"You have no idea." Freya sighed and turned to Jason. "This one time, he woke me and Percy up with two buckets of water. Said it was our natural habitat, so really he was doing us good. It was lake water. Lake water. "

She didn't know why she was talking. Why was she talking? Especially why was she talking to him about something that was so infinitely embarrassing?? Freya didn't know why, but Jason made her calm. And she hated that. Somehow, she didn't mind sharing stuff with him. She hated that too, and she hated how she couldn't trust him completely either. 

"Yeah?" His arms crossed over his chest, a smirk painted on his face.

Her cheeks went red.

"Yeah, whatever." She mumbled.

Jason was looking at Chiron again. "Mr. D? As in Dionysus?"

"Mmm hmm." Chiron poured lemonade, though his hands were trembling a little. "As for Seymour, well, Mr. D liberated him from a Long Island garage sale. The leopard is Mr. D's sacred animal, you see, and Mr. D was appalled that someone would stuff such a noble creature. He decided to grant it life, on the assumption that life as a mounted head was better than no life at all. I must say it's a kinder fate than Seymour's previous owner got."

"If he's only a head," Jason said, "where does the food go when he eats?"

"You ask a lot of questions, blondie." Teased Freya.