DESTINY ↳ WILL SOLACE

4. My Mother Teaches Me Bullfighting

CHAPTER FOUR

My Mother Teaches Me Bullfighting

I don't own Percy Jackson.

Percy couldn't feel her hands—she couldn't feel any of her limbs, actually, and she didn't know whether or not it was from the cold or from shock. She had numbly wondered if she were still dreaming, but a quick, painful pinch told her that this was all really happening. Her best friend was actually half-barn animal, and her mother didn't even seem fazed.

The rain was coming down in a torrential downpour as they raced down dark country roads. Wind howled all around them, threatening to overturn the car. It was pitch black, save for the occasional flashes of lightning. Percy wasn't sure how her mother saw anything, but she didn't ever hit the brakes.

When Percy finally spoke, she tried to keep her voice calm. "So you're not human."

"No." Grover's eyes flickered behind them. "But it doesn't matter. We—"

"It doesn't matter?" she demanded, her voice going a few pitches up, slowly losing it. "How does it not matter? My best friend is part-donkey from the waist-down—"

"Blaa-ha-ha!"

Percy cut herself off, staring at Grover with wide eyes. He used to make that noise when they had been at Yancy, but she had always assumed it to be some sort of nervous laugh or something. Now, she realized it was more of an irrigated bleat.

"Goat!" he cried. "I'm part-goat!"

"What? But I thought you just said it doesn't matter!"

"Blaa-ha-ha! How would you like me calling you half-monkey?"

"Children!" her mother interrupted. "Please, I'm trying to get us there safely."

Percy's brain was still trying to wrap itself around this situation. "So you're part-goat from the waist down. Like... a satyr?"

"I am a satyr."

Percy found she had no response to that.

It didn't make any sense. Satyrs didn't exist. They were creatures in myths, and myths weren't real. They were stories to explain how the world worked for ancient peoples, before modern science and stuff, and they might've been a good read, but they weren't real. They couldn't be real.

It seemed like a chant at that point, and Percy wasn't sure if she was trying to convince herself or if she was just assuring herself of a fact.

She looked at him again, still faintly wondering if she were dreaming, or if he were wearing some sort of baggy, furry pants, and this entire thing had been a prank he and her mother had cooked up, but it was going too far to be as simple as something like a prank. Her mother's terror was all too real, Grover was far too innocent and kind to play a prank of this degree, and the smell... it was the smell of wet-barn animal, just like the zoo. With a start, she realized that it was the same smell from the night she had eavesdropped on his conversation with Mr Brunner. Did Mr Brunner, then, know that Grover was a satyr? Was Mr Brunner a satyr?

"So you and my mom know each other?" Percy found herself asking.

Grover glanced behind them again, though Percy wasn't sure what he was looking at, because there was nothing behind them. "Well, we've never met formally. But she knew I was your protector."

"My protector?"

Percy distantly remembered what Grover had told her on the bus—that it was his job to protect her. She had asked him what he was protecting her from, and he hadn't answered, so she thought he was just pulling her leg. Now, however... she was a little afraid to ask.