Started With A Dare - A POTHENA STORY ✔

Yep, Finally A Nice Peaceful Chapter

 ATHENA'S POV

  I did not expect to wake up and see Poseidon's face on my lap. I did not expect him to have the ability of snoring so loudly, either.

  "Poseidon!" I gently tapped on his shoulder. He sat up immediately, his expression alerted as if he thought it was an enemy. His face almost immediately softened when he realised it was just me. "Had a nice beauty sleep?"

  I rolled my eyes. I definitely didn't have nightmares after swimming for so long in attempts of saving Poseidon, then almost drowning and having him save me instead. I wasn't going to tell him anything else, though. "I wouldn't say 'beauty'. But sleep, yes, I did get some sleep."

  "Man, even when you were sleeping, you looked like you were about to beat the crap out of me," Poseidon laughed. I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes again, not wanting them to actually drop out one day. "I had better things in my dream than you, stupid. Well, which line are we down to at the prophecy?"

  Poseidon frowned and mouthed the lines of the prophecy. After a long pause, he replied, "It looks like we're down to the third line - Gold shall revive the..." his face suddenly paled. "Th-the Pine-bender."

  I tilted my head. "Poseidon, is there anything wrong with 'Pine-bender'?"

  He gulped. "I don't know how, but I suddenly remember a whole bunch of information. I...I had a son called Theseus. The king of Athens. He defeated this bandit called Sinis on his way from Troezen to Athens. He used to kill victims by tearing them apart with two pine trees. Theseus killed him the same way - using two pine trees. Myths say that the pine trees are still very much alive from the encounter...what if he was going to be healed by the Fleece?"

  I shook my head. "Don't be silly, Poseidon. We have the Fleece, remember?"

  He looked straight at me, and for the first time ever, he seemed to think he was right and I was wrong. "According to the fourth line of the prophecy, 'What you seek shall be his to keep', we're gonna have to cross paths with him. Maybe he has the prophecy - might as well meet him. It's the last thing I want to do, but if we don't hurry and finish him off ourselves, we'll never get the prophecy back."

  I considered what he said. Since he was having a sudden memory flashback kind of thing, it felt reasonable to trust him. But what if it was just his intuition? I expected him to say more, but he just watched me quietly, as if waiting for me to decide."

  At last, I sighed and carefully got out of the bed as I was starving. "We don't have any other leads, anyway. SHIP! LOOKS LIKE WE'RE GOING TO GREECE!"

  Poseidon cleared his throat and yelled, "Take us to the Isthmus of Corinth!"

  I knew exactly what was coming next. Oh, guess what? Surprise, surprise, I was right.

  "MY NAME IS NOT SHIP!" The ship exclaimed, in its ever-so-annoying know-it-all voice. "PLEASE, YOU MAY REFER TO ME AS-"

  "SHUT UP!" Poseidon and I exclaimed at the same time. We exchanged a glance and a smile. I suddenly didn't regret trying to save his life, however embarrassing it was.

  We sat down to have a meal. It looked like evening was approaching, but we hadn't eaten all day so we decided to have a big meal for once. We didn't prepare much food, but we made sure we could at least last half a week. That was another reason we had to speed things up. I honestly didn't remember how long has passed - weeks? Days? It felt like years since we last set foot at Camp Half-Blood. I was starting to miss the wonderful food and campers there. (Well, most of them were wonderful, anyway.)

  "We're not gonna get there until at least a day later," Poseidon suddenly said. He was right. The boat was already travelling as fast as it could and we barely had three days worth of resources left, so it was time to hurry up, get the prophecy and go back to camp. It bothered me how still neither of us know much about ourselves except for how we might've been gods. There had been so much information and evidence around us that it was hard not to believe it, but even after so long, the truth that we were gods wasn't something that we could just nod our heads to.

  That meant we had an entire night to spend. Wait, an entire night to spend? Does that mean...I gave a brief glance at the guy opposite me. Did I have to spend an entire night with him?

  It's obvious that neither of us were mentally tired - we just had a very long afternoon nap and what we were eating was basically dinner. If we went to sleep again, we would just both twist and turn in bed, overthinking and overanalyzing everything that happened today. I didn't want that - even though he was probably the most annoying person I've met, I would still rather spend the night talking to him than thinking about what just happened.

That was what I thought, but ironically we were sitting in completely silence as we slowly ate our food. "Athena?" Poseidon suddenly said again, looking up from his food.

  I looked up from mine, and for a second our eyes met. Then we both looked away again, and hesitantly looked back. "What do you want?" I grumbled impatiently.

  "This is probably a bad time, but uh..." He immediately looked flushed in embarrassment as if bringing up what he was going to say was already the biggest regret of his life. "Before I stupidly jumped into the water to attempt to 'save you', did...did the siren's song affect you?"

  I gritted my teeth - I knew he was going to bring that up sometime, I just didn't think it would be so soon, so I completely forgot about it. Since we had an entire night to spend and there wasn't much we could plan, this was honestly the perfect time to talk about it - well, maybe mentally not for me, but I did owe an explanation to Poseidon. (Just as the lazy writer of this story owes an explanation to her readers.) He'd decided to jump into the water despite a possibility of temporary safety on the sirens' island and so recklessly saved me without a second thought. I tried to quickly rehearse explaining everything in my head, but I gave up halfway as I knew this was something I couldn't just plan my way through - much like the not-so-long awaited battle we were probably going to have tomorrow.

  "Poseidon. I-well, when I heard the sirens' song, I saw the image of a woman - no, she looked so much more powerful. She had a shield and a spear, was dressed in full Greek armour, absolutely tall and mighty and her eyes had the fiercest unforgiving look. She was staring straight ahead as if there was an enemy in front of her. I saw the image flash before my eyes for barely a second...then my vision cleared and it was almost as if I gained control. I didn't know what or how exactly, but I suddenly wasn't affected by the sound anymore...maybe because the sirens' song was supposed to grant you wisdom if you survived hearing it and I am--was, the wisdom goddess? Anyway, I shoved cotton into my ears and saw you desperately swimming to something, so I jumped down to save you."

  He finished his meal at that point and stood up, dusting off his shirt even though it looked spotless to me. "Hmm, makes sense. That was pretty crazy just now. I can't believe we managed to save each other at the same time!"

  I finished my last bite too and stood up, looking him in the eye once more. There was something different about Poseidon...he seemed more mature than before. He was still the dumb annoying guy I first met at the park, but something in the quest seemed to have changed him. The way he looked at me seemed a little different. I wonder what happened during the time I was unconscious?

  "Sometimes I wish we were back home, you know? Away from all this madness. But then I remembered I had no home and I didn't even completely believe where my previous home was." Poseidon looked into the distance, slightly tilting his head as if lost in thought. I didn't know how to respond to that. I felt my body freeze for a second as my brain slowly processed what he had said over and over again, realising I felt the same as him.

  I remembered the previous plan I had about spending all night with this guy. How dumb - there had to be something else I could plan. I just needed to wrap my head around everything. I walked over to Poseidon and surprised myself by kissing him on the cheek.

  "We'll go home soon, I promise," I whispered, then walked away, leaving a dumbfounded Poseidon standing behind me.