Nico kissed me awake: the long lingering kind of kiss that makes you feel like there's a firecracker on the tip of your tongue, that makes your heart leap against your ribcage and your breath quiver and leaves you with a lungful of what smells either like love or like Nico's hair. I need to work that one out. I needed some time out.
So my first night in Hades went roughly as follows:
I slept like a freaking log.
And FYI, logs do not sleep. They're logs. So, in fact, I didn't sleep at all. I lay next to Nico, feeling his irregular heartbeat, and it suddenly made me tick so intensely. I'm a doctor and a perfectionist. I cannot stand Nico's heartbeat. I love him, but I cannot stand his heart. It's like something leaching all the light out of him. It's what reminds me that there is a part of Nico that is an uncharted area of shadows and depression and fear of the unknown where beaches and flip-flops and the melody of the thrush nesting in the rafters of the Apollo cabin fill me. It reminds me that, as much as I would like to join the cheesy-cliched club, Nico and I can't ever claim to have some shit about soulmates and harmonizing pulses.
Eventually, I sat on the shores of The Lake of the Isles of the Blessed. The sand is less honey-and-vanilla there and more similar to the surface of the moon, medium grey and laced through with shimmering tendrils of water reflecting the preening silver sky.
I stuck there till morning, when I could see a faint silver glow seep into the horizon, like when you add a drop of watercolour onto a still-wet page and the colours slowly bleed. That was when I saw them. Tucked under the tide like it was a blanket. Two figures, the blond one curled up like a tiny animal under the protective caress of the other. Every so often the latter figure would tremble a little, or kiss the mop of curls resting under her chin. I thought about going over to look closer, but at that point, I spotted a vessel on the opposite side of the lake. It was moving with purpose. I don't know how I could tell, but I could. I flattened myself onto the sand, not wanting to get involved with the frosty dynamic. The boat moored next to the pair. When They sat up, I could see that the blond boy was actually tall and should have been handsome, But a desperateness curled his broad shoulders forward, like something had had pulled a cord inside him a tiny bit too hard, and it had snapped into a coil that left him limp and hopeless. His head hung in the same demeanor. I stood up, trying to stay unnoticed, and I crept back to the obsidian palace. Hera was sitting on an uncomfortable beige armchair, scrutinizing us all like she was trying to work out who killed her pet hamster. Iris was handing round pancakes with maple syrup (I inhaled the lot). Nico was still hibernating in a cocoon of blankets. Ascelepius was sloshing a cup of green tea down himself absent mindedly.
Hades walked in. His presence was like a storm cloud: black and roiling and omitting scary noises and generally something not particularly nice.
The scary noises took the form of "I'm calling a compulsory meeting in the dining room. WITHOUT rainbow waffles, thank you, Iris!"
