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At least it only started at puberty. That was probably the only consolation to it, seeing that he knew who his father was by this point, and all the consequences that came with it.
That being said, he didn’t love his arm suddenly turning into water during Capture the Flag.
Later reports by the Stolls and probably Clarisse, will have said he screamed and swore when it happened. This is not true. He had been very manly and stoic about his fucking arm turning to sea water for no apparent reason.
He’d love to say that there never was a reason for his arm to turn to sea water in his life, but this was the world they lived in, unfortunately.
“So when you say your arm turned to sea water…” Annabeth trailed off. “Is that a metaphor for something?”
“No, I mean my actual arm turned to actual water,” he poked his forearm with a ragged fingernail, leaving a bright red mark all the way up. “I don’t get it either.”
“Maybe ask Chiron if this is a normal Poseidon kid thing? I mean… its not great is it? Imagine if that happens in battle. Although -” her face took on the expression he knew as Annabeth Makes A Plan TM , which probably meant next time they played Capture the Flag, she would probably try and make him travel through the streams or something.
“Let me ask Chiron first,” he said. “And I guess, if he’s not good for answers, I can pray to my dad. There’s like a sixty-forty chance he’ll reply.”
“Which one’s sixty and which one’s forty?”
“... I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I had assumed,” Chiron said haltingly. “That Connor and Travis had been joking.”
“I wish.” Percy said miserably.
Mr D snickered at something from behind his magazine, “Sorry, ignore me. Just an amusing comic strip.”
They carried on, ignoring him.
“I’m sorry, Percy. This isn’t something I’ve heard of before. If other demigod children of Poseidon have had it, then I haven’t heard of it.”
“Right,” he said, a little deflated. “Thanks anyway.”
“Have you ever heard of the naiads?” said Mr D suddenly.
“Like… in general?” Percy blinked, and held himself back only through general desire not to be turned into anything else for the next month at least from saying no shit . “I have.”
“They turn into water,” he said.
“I know.”
Mr D rolled his eyes, “So?”
“Oh, right.” Talk to the naiads .
“I mean they can be absolute flirts but don’t do anything your father would do.”
“Okay…” Percy had been traumatised enough in the myth classes where he got to find out about all the monsters his dad had created. He didn’t want more details. Especially not from another Olympian. “Uh, thank you?”
He nodded magnanimously, “You are welcome, Pita Jacobson.”
The naiads were no help whatsoever. They did tell him he had very nice eyes and asked if his mom had a naiad ancestor or something, which made him b;ush more than he’d ever admit to.
So he went for the nuclear option: he asked his dad.
“Hey dad,” he scraped a bit of his fried crab off his plate into the brazier. “Can you maybe uh, explain the whole water arm thing? Is that normal? Can you let me know?” He eyed the Demeter Cabin glaring at his back, and knew from personal experience it wasn’t worth keeping Katie Gardner from her dinner longer than was absolutely necessary. She’d made poison ivy grow in his bed last time he spent too long praying, and that had been a very uncomfortable week. “Gotta go, but can you let me know? Thanks.”
The fried crab smelled like sea air as he walked back to his table.
“Do you know about Abarbare?”
Percy had gone to sleep, hoping for answers when he woke up, but he hadn’t quite been expecting this. He was floating in a room, probably underwater, lit by torches of greek fire, which he could feel the heat coming off of, even though he wasn’t even here, and he was still underwater.
“It’s vaguely familiar,” he said. “From… the Iliad?”
“Yes, the mother of Aistepos and Pedasos by Boukalion. He was a shepherd.” His dad was wearing a himation over an obnoxiously loud shirt. Percy briefly wondered if his dad had t-shirts in those colours as like a venom warning or something, but he didn’t feel like getting into that.
“Right… I didn’t know you were interested in poetry,” he said slowly, unwilling to ask what’s the point of the thing you’re telling me? but also actually wanting him very badly to get to the point of the thing he was telling him.
“I’m not,” he shrugged. “I leave that to Apollo and his muses, but naiads are adjacent to my realm, so sometimes I keep an eye on them, I suppose.”
Percy wasn’t sure if he believed that was the reason his dad kept such a close eye on naiads, but who was he to litigate such a thing?
“It’s not recorded,” he said. “But Aistepos and Pedasos had the same issue as you do.”
“You mean the uh,” he poked his arm. “Thing.”
Poseidon shrugged, “Yes, that. You have been my only demigod child in seventy years or so,” Percy would have thought that that was the sort of thing you kept exact figures on, but he didn’t want to think too much about that right now actually. “I uh, forgot.”
“This is something that happens to your demigod children?”
“It’s connected to your powers,” he said. “The more your power grows, the more connected to me you become, and so on.”
“Right.”
His dad reached up and scratched the back of his neck, and something occurred to Percy. He was embarrassed . About this? About Percy being connected to him? About Percy in general?
He tried to swallow past the lump in his throat by the time he heard him speak again, “I’m sure you’ve heard that I can be emotional.”
“It might have come up.” At least once a week. For the past two years.
“When I lose control, I need to block it, basically,” he said. “To stop the situation that happened yesterday. I am sorry for that.”
“What happened?”
“Misfiled a tax return. Hermes was vexing me.”
“Vexing?”
“Do the kids not say that these days?”
He knew he was being teased, and just shrugged. “So you turned me into water because you were angry?”
“I didn’t mean to, but yes. I brought you here so you’d understand properly, rather than it just stopping one day. It won’t happen again, don’t worry.”
“Can I learn how to do that?” He wasn’t as much into preplanning as Annabeth was, but he could appreciate a useful tool when it appeared.
Poseidon, “Maybe one day. With practice.” He flicked Percy’s nose. “Time to wake up.”