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He heard the prayer right as the sacrifice came through, the scent of a store-bought box of brownies wafting up to him on the sun chariot. “Lord Phoebus Apollo, God of the Sun, Protector of Youth, Lord of Delphi, please help us.”
“Help.”
“Intercede on our behalf, please.”
None of them were his, he could tell that, even as he flashed down to Earth, down to where they were all standing around a brazier. Three demigods all on a quest together, he’d heard about it. Something about a lost… whatever. Gods lost things all the time. Lightning bolts, automatons, children. One of them was probably one of Hermes’, there was a son of Aphrodite whose face was so scrunched up that he almost wanted to smooth it out with a roller, and a half-sister of his.
Now that the oath was over, Cabins One and Three had filled up like they had in the old days. It was less newsworthy to hear of a daughter of Poseidon or a child of Zeus making it to camp like it had when the children of the Big Three could all be counted on one hand. He hadn’t actually heard of this one, but he could tell, whether it was from the lightning bolt earrings, or the way the air felt slightly more static around this one in the same way it had for Jason Grace, and did for Thalia Grace, even now that she had been a hunter for so many years.
“What’s occurring?” he clapped his hands together. “Heard you wanted my help.”
The three of them all bowed their heads, but it was more mechanical than respectful. That was fine, he wasn’t as tetchy as some of his fellow gods about “piety” or whatever. He had enough respect to maintain his power, and not fade, and ruling through fear was something his father had done, did. He didn’t feel like he had to as well.
“We did, my lord,” said the son of Aphrodite.
“Okay! First off: haiku time: Very nice day so far/I quite like store bought brownies/Why do you want help?”
The boy’s face had flattened out at last, into something he privately thought of as The Jeeves, “Very good, my lord.”
The daughter of Zeus rolled her eyes so hard that anyone other than a god of healing would be worried about her optic nerve. She did try to hide it though, to be fair. But this was interesting, and it wasn’t like he was offended by that, he’d been around a while, not everyone liked his poetry, they were allowed to be wrong, but there was something in the way she had done it. “Do you not enjoy poetry, daughter of my father? Perhaps you’d prefer a sonnet? Or a cinquain maybe?”
“No, no, that’s fine. Very nice poem,” she looked like she wanted to punch him a little. He decided to examine her a little. He could see that this was at least her second life, but he couldn’t know what her first had been. That was a secret known only to the goddess of the river Lethe and no one had seen her since she’d gotten in that fight with the river Liffey nearly a century ago over… something. He’d been preoccupied with getting re-used to godhood again, which was still strange to him some days.
Meg had helped him when she’d been around. She’d kept his ego in check and gave him somewhere to be sans judgement (some judgement, but only for a little while. She didn’t hold it over his head afterwards. Unless it was funny.) and just someone to talk to who got it , at least in part. He never told her about all the conclusions he’d come to about his father, but he thought that she’d known all the same.
Some days it felt like it had just sat on his face, glowing outwards for the whole world to see and know. Know what Zeus had done to him over millennia.
And it had taken him a long time to stop being ashamed over that.
But time marched on, and Meg had only ever been temporary in the mortal realm. She’d greyed and wrinkled and he’d had to continue ageing Lester-Apollo to keep up with her. Sometimes though, when they’d been out and about, and he’d forgotten or was feeling slightly too vain that day, he’d been mistaken for her son. And later, her grandson.
both of them had thought it was hilarious, but when he’d laughed it had still been bittersweet.
He made sure it hadn’t been painful, but Geras got her like he got them all if they were redblooded and mortal.
She hadn’t looked the same when her spirit had left, gone with Hermes to cross the Styx, but bodies never did without the animus.
“Elysium,” Hermes had said to him when he asked. “She walks the golden flagstones now, but I think…”
“What?”
“I think she’ll go for rebirth,” he had said. “She told me to say to you that she’d see you again, before she forgot.”
“I’ll keep an eye out,” he’d said, and gone back to strumming funeral dirges out onto his lyre, the original lyre. His brother had raised an eyebrow before he’d left, running after any messages needing delivered or thieves needing inspiration.
And he’d waited, keeping an eye on any reborn spirits, who would never remember, but would be the same people nonetheless. There had been near misses, when he’d been so sure that a mortal’s particular turn of phrase was exactly something Meg would say, but then slipping a moment later into something that wasn’t her, or walking around on legs so unstable and eyes so wide that they could only belong to a new spirit. But he’d waited, and he’d kept looking the whole time.
His half-sister grinned at him with the same smile he’d used to see under cat’s eye glasses, and he smiled back, “Hello again. You’ve been missed.”