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“Hey, sis,” he rubbed his fingers together, feeling the cold seep its way through his fingers. “How’s it going?”
The moon, fat and full in the sky, didn’t answer. It never did. There was no particular glow onto him, no special feeling like he’d just been punched in the shoulder, was being aimed at with a bow, and hugged all at the same time, no distant howl of wolves and hunting dogs with laughing girls in the edges of his hearing. Just a usual shine as his sister’s chariot made its way round the earth for the night.
He moved his hands so he was sitting on them, pressed against the hood of their stolen truck. He promised himself that when - not if, maybe if - he became a god again, he would reimburse the mortals he and Meg had robbed - borrowed from - tenfold.
She was sleeping in the back. He kept looking backwards, just to make sure, just to check. He wasn’t quite sure what he was checking. If she was still there? If she was still alive?
His son, Ascelpius, before he’d sent him off to Chiron to learn, had been a deep sleeper, never moving, not making a sound, and he’d found himself just staring at the breath coming from his once-mortal son’s mouth for hours on end every night.
Margaret McCaffrey could never be accused of being a quiet sleeper: she was flat out on her back on the closest thing they currently had to a bed, the pushed down backseat which only went to a 25° angle, covered in towels with more blood than any makeshift blanket ought to, but times being what they were, they were out of options, and two jackets, practical and warm, which had been in the truck when they had swiped it from the parking lot in Montana. Meg was snoring like a cargo train
It all smelled faintly of horse, but he didn’t mind that. The sun chariot horses didn’t smell like horses themselves, they were burning plasma and fire, sulphurous, and like the diesel smell you hit when you got to the very end of your tank, right before you had to pull into the nearest layby, and hope no one found you for the night, with no plan except that you’d both have to sleep soon, and that daybreak had to come. Daybreak was a good time for decisions, and wasn’t a plan just a complicated type of decision when it came down to it?
“It’s been a hard day,” he said to his sister, the floating rock in the sky. “I mean it’s been a few hard months. Everything… well I’m sure you’ve seen. I just hope my angles on HTV were flattering, but I can’t even care about that now, I mean who am I at this point if I don’t care about my angles on HTV? Everything is so much…” he searched for the right word. There wasn’t one. Not one he could think of with this pathetic mortal brain at least. But there wasn’t a word limit here.
“It’s more complicated. And it’s simpler. We need food for us, fuel for the truck, probably money too, to buy more fuel later. Towels we haven’t bled on. A way not to die, just yet. But I can’t wait things out. Everything is now, and it has to be now because we’re all going to be dead soon.” He didn’t remove himself from this count.
“I mean,” he continued, feeling a little ashamed for complaining like a brat, but if anyone could listen, it would be his sister. Otherwise, he could talk to this silent night. In his defence though, it really had been horrible. “We have to take all these detours to avoid cameras on the interstates and highways, and we don’t have the money for toll roads either, so we really can’t take that. I can manipulate the Mist a bit, but not that much , not right now. And getting detained would slow us down, and this is a race against time at this point. And the monsters that want to kill us too. Very much trying to outrace those. And Nero’s stupid weak chin.” His hand found his jawline, and he felt as if he couldn’t say too much about Nero’s appearance. Plus, he was trying to turn over a new leaf.
He sighed, “It sucks, Artie, I’m not going to lie. And we’re both getting hungry. Well, I am, and I’m pretty sure Meg is lying to me when I ask her. She’s a good liar, and I’m not God of Truth at the minute, but there’s no way, and I know she doesn’t want me to feel bad, which is lovely of her, but right now we might be defeated by a lack of supplies rather than a set of past their due date Emperors, and an ugly, prophecy stealing snake.
Meg’s eyes were more sunken than they should be, and he probably didn’t look that much better. She was sleeping more when he drove, and didn’t even make fun of his singing. And her arms kept winding around her waist like she was trying to hug herself. Or comfort herself, soothing hunger pangs.
Most of their diet had been what they could nick from stores while the other faked a distraction, although that one time, Apollo really had gotten punched by a guy when he’d cut him off in the store by accident, and his groaning and crying on the ground in the bakery aisle had been less acting than he’d been willing to let on.
It was nice of Meg to let the lie slide though. She was kind like that.
The light of the moon never faltered or shifted in a way like his sister might be listening, and he clambered into the truck under his own blood stained towel-blanket for the night, not disappointed since it had been expected, but feeling more alone than he’d been in a little while.
Chewing woke him up.
“Check this out, Lester,” Meg’s mouth was full as she talked, tossing him a granola bar.
“Eat slowly,” he warned her. “You can hurt yourself if you eat too much food on an empty stomach.
Meg’s face scrunched up, “I know that, dummy. There’s a note for you.”
"Did you read it?"
"It's sealed," she tossed it over. He rolled his eyes, he wouldn't have necessarily put it past her, but they had bigger things than that to focus on.
It was vellum, scraped beautifully, and written in silver ink in the dialect of Greek they’d grown up with. I was never here. Literally do not mention it.
No sign off, but he didn’t need one.
He tossed off the new silver camping blanket, sending the pile of notes and drachmas to the footwell of the truck. “We can get gas now.”
“No need,” Meg turned on the ignition, and jumped out of the driver’s seat before it could start yelling at her for not wearing a belt. Their tank was full. “Your sister is good , Apollo.”
He glanced up at the sky, peachy with a dawn that he hadn’t painted, where the ghost of the moon hadn’t quite left the sky, like she was waiting for him to wake up. “She is. Now let’s get going, no time to waste.”
Meg cracked her knuckles in a way that made him wince, “Dibs on the radio station.”
He groaned, but found he didn’t really mind. Even if some of the songs were absolutely insufferable.