Unmaking Percy

Part III - VIII, continued (The Dizzy Tent)

As night fell, a vicious wind rose in a freezing and bristling wail, pushing them off their horses and into an early camp. While Myrtle gathered firewood and Evans tended to the horses, Percy unpacked and helped Valeria set up the tent. They went about it with a few poles, rope, dwindling patience, and just the right dose of profanity.

The moment he crawled inside the canvas interior and it spared him the bite of the wind, a precious calm came over him. Wordlessly, he took the firewood Myrtle handed him; with quiet, measured gestures, he lit the wood-stove; and, still steeped in the same silence, he sat back on the blankets spread around him, sighing in wonder as the world outside, in a magic trick, vanished behind the red fabric.

Myrtle conjured up a stew, and Valeria took the first watch. In but a few minutes, the fire-chatter from the stove lulled Myrtle to sleep, and she curled up, as she always did, with one leg over her crumpled blanket. Percy was not ready for sleep yet; sleep was a creature of habits, and it was too early for his to come. He sat with his arms resting on his raised knees, and watched curiously as Evans reached for something in his satchel. To Percy's astonishment, he slid out a small bottle of mead.

"I got this for us at the festival" he explained as he handed Percy a cup. "I hadn't realized how much I missed drinking it."

He stared straight into Percy's silence.

"What? Are you going to tell me the chosen one is expected to be sober as well as chaste?" Evans murmured with a pinch of a grin.

"Well, yes, he is. It's not me who says it" Percy retorted, taking the cup at last.

The drink warmed him with a fiery sweetness that he too had missed, from the treasured few times he had tasted it.

"If it makes you feel any better, I've never had much interest in being anything beyond tipsy" Evans smiled.

The virtue of chastity, Percy noted to himself, was not so readily rescued.

"You've won Valeria's heart, by the way" Evans whispered. "With your gift. She would have died for you before, but now she'll do it with a smile on her face."

"No she wouldn't. Die for me, I mean" Percy said to his mead.

"She would. The palace had you sent for. As far as she's concerned, you're under her care as much as I am."

Percy glanced at the tent flaps and tried to picture the broad-shouldered, full-hearted woman sitting outside. He remembered his nannies had always fussed and flustered about him. Valeria cared so well that he did not even notice her doing it.

"On the matter of caring" Percy said, "can I... do anything to help? I'm not sure what exactly, you just need to tell me. Like the other night, on the field. I can help you check yourself for... whatever you look for on your body."

He measured each word carefully on his lips before he spoke them. He remembered Evans' anguish while standing on stage the previous night. The image was vivid in Percy's mind like a fresh wound, and he knew there would be no rushing through that.

Evans fell into a mute and stupefied paleness.

"I forgot to check" he whispered, his eyes unmoored. "Last night, with the concert, and the night before, with the party – I forgot to check. I..."

He almost jumped in place, scrambling to slide his tunic halfway up his torso before Percy had a chance to react.

"No – come on, stop!" Percy hissed as he gripped Evans' arm to stop his frantic undressing.

To Percy's despair, he was not spared a view of Evans' chest, his strength splayed out in practiced muscles, his collarbone sculpted gracefully from his skin in delicate tension. Percy knew the things that attracted his touch. And that – all that – was one of them.