¹On This Spring Day, percy jackson & the olympians

010.

ON THIS SPRING DAY
━━━━━ chapter ten

━━━━━ HE NEVER COULD describe what exactly happened afterward. Not even to himself, really.

               It was like an explosion, but it wasn't at the same time. Maybe something of a tidal wave, just with no ocean or current to save his neck. Something like a whirlwind of power that simultaneously caught him up and blasted him downwards into the lava. Fire and water collided, superheated steam, and he shot up from the heart of the volcano in a huge explosion, just one piece of flotsam thrown free by a million pounds of pressure. The last thing he remember before losing consciousness was flying, flying so high Zeus would never have forgiven the son of Poseidon, and then beginning to fall, smoke and fire and water streaming from his own body.

               He was a comet. And he was hurtling straight towards the earth. No amount of water could save him this time.

               Maybe if Percy prayed to the right gods, just maybe he could get out alive. But he always had a hard time praying to the gods.

🌷

He woke up feeling like he was still on fire. His skin stung. His throat felt as dry as sand. If he tried to breathe through his mouth, it felt like he was trying to swallow knives.

               Somehow, he managed to peel open his eyes.

               A blue sky stared back down at him, and trees swayed softly in the wind, the wind whistling nicely and softly. In the distance, he heard a fountain gurgling, the sweet smells of flowers wafting closer. He heard waves, too, gently lapping on a rocky shore.

               For a moment, Percy thought he had finally died. But the other part of his brain knew he hadn't. He'd been to the Land of the Dead, and there was no blue sky.

               He tried to sit up. His muscles felt like they were melting.

               "Stay still," a girl's voice said. The voice was smooth and calm, and Percy felt compelled to listen. ( Snap out of it, he thought. Charmspeak. She has to be using charmspeak to sound that nice. ) "You're too weak to rise."

               The girl laid a cool cloth across his forehead. A bronze spoon hovered over him and a liquid was dribbled into his mouth. The drink soothed Percy's aching throat and left a warm chocolatey aftertaste—he thought that it'd taste like if he blended a batch of his mom's blue cookies. Nectar of the gods.

               Then the girl's face appeared above him.

               She was pretty, in fairness to her. Her hair looked like the color of caramel, oddly enough, braided over one shoulder neatly. Her eyes were kind and serene, framed by freckles dotted over her face delicately—elegantly, almost. For a moment, her eyes reminded Percy of Violet's—though Violet's glinted with amusement and were a much darker brown. The girl looked around fifteen or sixteen, he had trouble deciding. Her face just seemed timeless.

               She didn't say anything else before she started to sing. Percy tensed for a moment, brain working in overdrive. His muscles were screaming to relax, but his mind was telling him to run. His muscles won.

               His pain dissolved. She was working magic. He knew it. And he knew this could end horribly for him. He could feel the music sinking into his skin, healing and repairing his burns. And the relief spreading throughout was much more enticing than anything else at the moment.