Percy Jackson and The Sands Of Time

| Chapter 13 | The Modest Lady |

Hello, Readers! Two weeks in a row! We're on fire now! Please enjoy chapter 13!

~CSP2708~

*Dylan_Walts*

| Chapter 13 |

| The Modest Lady |

He was an old hand at this by now, so when Percy was spat out in his newest era, he obviously landed on his feet...before immediately falling to the dirt. "Ow..." he muttered, rubbing his aching backside. How much more punishment could his keister take? Then again...despite what his mind was telling him, he felt nothing but a vague tingle in his back.

He looked around, mentally preparing himself for what his next task would be, however his surroundings didn't give him any clues. It looked almost exactly the same as the forest he'd last arrived in, if a bit greener and overgrown. A padded mat of moss and needles cushioned his sandalled feet, and the entangling branches of laurel and ash trees cast dabbled shadows over his himation.

"Where am I now?" he asked. "Or more importantly, when am I? And will this curse ever give me a break?" His clothes had barely changed from the previous time, so he expected Ancient Greece, but when? He wasn't exactly an expert on the pre-era fashions of ancient civilizations.

Several hours of aimless wandering found him collapsed under a skyscraper of living wood. The colossal tree's thick roots broke out of the ground like grasping tentacles, and made for a nobbly yet comfortable bench. He stretched, expecting to feel a pleasant burn in his muscles from all of the walking, especially in the horribly unsupportive soles of his sandals, but found nothing. No straining, no aching, nothing.

"Why am I not tired?" In fact, not only didn't he not feel any effects from the half-day of trekking through the unruly forest, he had more energy to spare than ever before. This could only mean one thing.

He took the golden apple out of his bag and inspected it. The fruit, though still brilliantly polished gold, no longer had the glow one associated with it. It was lacklustre in comparison to its previous glory. "Did that jump have something to do with it? Did it make me into an immortal?"

He didn't know if he wanted to test it, so he replaced the apple and decided to keep going. If it was his fate to be here, in this time and this place, whatever it was that he was fated to do would appear before him - one way or another. And it did, just not in the way he expected it to.

A reverberating scream rang out across the forest clearing that he'd landed in. Following it, Percy came across a beautiful woman in a classic greek chiton leaning heavily against a tree. Her abdomen was swollen with child, and very obviously she was nearly ready to give birth. Percy had never known many pregnant women, and so this inexperience stayed his being in hesitation. He shuffled between his feet. There was no one else around, and she might need help.

"My lady, is there...any way I could assist you?" he called out.

The woman looked up, and Percy immediately knew that he'd done the right thing. Her face was beaded with sweat, brows furrowed in concentration. "I shouldn't be having difficulty," she said, surprising Percy with the steadiness of her melodious voice. "But a jealous young godling has ordered that I may not birth my children. The nymphs are forbidden from welcoming me to rest and deliver them."

A rush of anger washed over him, though he couldn't let it show. They would deal with that issue later; their current challenge was finding somewhere she could give birth. Though...this story gave Percy pause: it was familiar to him. Now, he chided himself for dozing during Annabeth's Greek history lessons - who knew they'd come in handy? If only he could remember who this woman was and why she was so important.