Willium Valen and The Blessing of Apollo

Combat, I'm Ready For Combat

That night I sat down in my bed and looked up on my computer, 'How to heal from rape?'. Of course, the first step is to reach out to someone and then to report your assaulter to the police, but how am I supposed to report a God? The whole healing process felt impossible.

I found out that there was an art museum nearby that was doing an exhibit of art by survivors of sexual assault. I considered it and then went to bed.

I had nightmare after nightmare that night, every time I would close my eyes I could see him again. This whole thing felt hopeless, but I knew that I had to keep going.

I woke up the next morning and quickly got dressed, I took the bus to the art museum. I stepped off the bus and looked at the museum, I was nervous when it came to going in, but I had to. This was my first step.

I spent hours in that exhibit. One of the art pieces really stuck out to me, it was just a simple mirror. But it said the body you're looking at is yours, not his, not hers, and not theirs, yours, on the glass.

After a couple of hours of looking at the art, I walked out of the museum and walked to the bus stop. I got on the bus and watched the scenery outside the window, I felt better to know that I wasn't alone, but it still hurt.

After a while, the bus stopped and I got off.

I walked to my cabin and got out a notebook. I sat down on a bench outside of my cabin and started writing in the notebook.

"I was raped, but I will be okay," I quietly said to myself over and over. Tears started to fall on the page as I wrote everything that I felt. After a while, I closed the notebook and sighed as I looked out at all of the kids playing.

I felt a force pull me up and it walked me a couple of feet away from the bench. I felt the sun beating down on me and it got stronger and stronger until it completely encapsulated me. I slowly opened my eyes the only thing I could see was bright piercing yellow light all around me. A small stone that was completely gold floated to me and faded onto my forehead. I closed my eyes and once I opened them everything was back to normal, but everyone stared at me. My eyes met with Geo's and he chuckled to himself.

"You did it," He said, walking up to me.

"What did I do?" I asked.

"Your eyes are golden, you got the blessing," Geo smiled at me.

Willow and I spent the rest of the summer at camp, I learned how to control my new powers and Willow learned how to control her plant powers, but only a bit.

Leaving was bittersweet, but it was time to go. Willow said goodbye to Emrie and Geo walked us to the bus stop.

It felt so weird leaving Geo, it almost felt wrong, like there was some force keeping us together after all the things we went through. But we were just leaving each other, I thought having Geo out of my life would be a relief, but it wasn't.

Geo watched sightly from the bus stop as our bus was leaving and watched him from out of the window. Soon enough Geo became further and further out of view, turning into the tall pines that lined the side of the road. I was going to miss Geo, I knew that, but I never thought that I was going to miss him this much.

Geo had texted me to call him once I got home, which was nice.

When I got home my parents noticed that my eyes were golden and not green, they said that they were proud of me and had missed me. I was glad to be home and I missed them too. I would be starting school in a week, and I spent the time getting ready to go back to the normal world. I hadn't told my parents about what happened in the mindscape, I told them that it was Zeus. They asked me if I remembered anything else from the mindscape, but I told them that I didn't remember anything.

Lying seemed easier now, even though I had the blessing of Apollo, I still felt the same, forgetting that I was ignoring the first step, telling people, reaching out, but there I was. Back at the start, closing in.