Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“This is a really bad idea,” I declare, as Mom pulls up to the driveway. “But this family loves bad ideas, so I guess… fuck it we ball? ”

“Fuck it we ball, indeed,” Ctimene says solemnly.

Mom turns back in the driver’s seat to us, smiling. “True children of mine, both of you are. Now one of you needs to go fetch those two. Just play rock, paper, scissors to decide.” 

Freeze frame. So I know you, whoever you happens to be or if you’re even there at all, have a few questions. Where are we? Well, we’re in a RV modified to sleep at least seven, which our family spent days renovating, and we’ve just pulled up to my friend Eurylochus’ house. What are we doing here? We’re going to consensually kidnap him and Polites, who is also in his house, and go on a road trip. Why did we waste so long renovating the motorhome (I literally don’t know any synonyms for ‘RV’, so ‘motorhome’ will have to do) on this one-time thing? For all my wits, I genuinely don’t know.

Mene does rock while I do scissors, so I have to exit the vehicle and undergo the deeply strenuous task of kidnapping multiple teenagers. 

A curtain is brushed aside, and a face appears at the front window as soon as I ring the doorbell; Eurylochus’ face stares at me from inside. The door opens, and out flies… “Penelope?!—what are you doing here—?” It registers too late for me to try to catch her, so she just half knocks me over— “What the—” and falls to the ground.

“Change of plans,” she says, standing and dusting off her dress, nonchalant as usual and as if she hadn’t just jumped me. “Thought it’d be a good idea to come over here, you know, so I wouldn’t have to inconvenience you with coming all the way to my place.”

“It’s no inconvenience,” I say without thinking. “Not even the ends of the world are too far if it’s for you.” Immediately I feel my face heat up. (What a genius I am! What intelligent words! Oh my God, that was dumb. Holy shit.) 

Penelope just laughs. “Okay, then. Now, I need to go get stuff ready.”

My heart is still racing, and it doesn’t help when she brushes her hair aside effortlessly and turns, heading back in as I stare— “You,” says Eurylochus, looking down at me from the doorway, ever matter-of-fact, “are a disaster.”

“And you are no better with Ctimene,” I mutter. 

“X to doubt.” He steps outside with an extensive amount of bags, a few of which cannot be his own because no singular person can possibly own that many, and hands two to me. “At least I can exist next to her without devolving into a tomato-coloured mess.”

These people will be the death of me.

Polites appears as well, as always smiling and brimming with energy. “Hey, Ody!” He drops yet another duffel bag onto the deck. “This bag is your girlfriend’s; she’s inside getting snacks. Also, Eury, you should be answering your parents’ calls. They just texted me, and they’re afraid you got into some danger.”

“Oh, damn it.” He pulls out his phone. “I was on Do Not Disturb. You guys get the stuff into the RV; I’ll be just a moment.” Polites obliges, taking the entire pile on the deck save for Penelope’s, which I grab, and hauling them down to the driveway. He’s unbelievably strong, actually; I learnt that when he bench-pressed Perimedes with Elpenor sitting on top of the former in the school gym, and then we all got in trouble because Elp fell off and dislocated his shoulder.

Speaking of Elpenor, his house is our next pit stop, with Peri there as well. At the RV, now, Ctimene hops out. “Yippee! Hi, Polites,” she says, then takes some stuff from him as she hums a whimsical tune to herself. 

Penelope exits the house not long after, Eurylochus following, and we all get into the vehicle, chatting aimlessly, some marveling at our excellent interior design abilities.

“Welcome, welcome!” Mom says, gesturing around, and the chatter dies down. The space is cramped, but cozy, and we settle about, some of us in the chairs, Polites lounging in a bag pile on the floor where we’ve set a fluffy rug. “Oh, Penelope, you're here already? Excellent! Now before we get going, I need your attention for just a moment: we have to figure out sleeping arrangements. We tried our best, but there’s only seven spots, so two of you will have to share the couch. It’s bigger than a regular bed, don’t worry.”

Ah, another pause. How did we fit seven sleeping spots into a motorhome built for four? Well, three little bunk beds and a roll-out couch does wonders. We had to disassemble an entire wall and part of the kitchenette to make room for more sitting space, though, because we replaced the main couch with a bed. 

“Eury and I can share,” Mene volunteers, then grabbing his arm and using it as a sort of pillow; he smiles, moving his hand to her curls and running his fingers through them. I turn to Penelope, but she just taps my nose, like, No physical affection for you! What have I done to deserve this?

“I am not allowing my daughter to sleep in the same bed as—”

She sighs. “We’re ace, Mom. We literally sleep in the same room at every sleepover. Most obscene thing you’ll be hearing is the whacking noises from a pillow fight.”

(Polites giggles from somewhere in the pile of bags, so far down that I can’t even see him anymore.)

“I know, and you’d realize that if you’d just let me finish!” Mom says, blowing hair out of her face. “What I meant is, I am not allowing my daughter to sleep in the same bed as a boy, because if she doesn’t share a bed with the only other girl here, then her brother will, and that is someone who is very not ace.”

“Hey!” I complain. “You guys severely underestimate my self-control.”

“That’s quite literally impossible to do,” Eury says. (Ctimene adds an ‘amen’, and I hear Polites’ distinct laugh again.)

Mom coughs. “So. Penelope, what do you think?”

“I’m fine sharing with her,” Penny nods. “She’s very small anyways.”

“It’s genetic,” Mene says idly, looking directly at me, as I’m the shortest in this room. Goddamnit, yet more reminders. (And there’s another laugh from Polites; this is starting to feel like a live sitcom where he’s the audience.) 

Mom shakes her head in exasperation. “Okay, um, with that aside, let’s take off,” she says, and she climbs back into the driver’s seat. Soon we’re on our way in the direction of Elpenor’s house. This will be fantastic!

---

“Get in,” Polites says, drawling (hopefully ironically) in quite possibly the most menacing tone he has ever spoken in. Perimedes and Elpenor stand on the sidewalk with bags in tow—good God, the sheer amount of baggage we’ve brought with us is dizzying—staring in at us from outside the vehicle, frozen momentarily.

Then Elpenor steps right in, shrugging; “Whatever you say, dear,” and Peri follows.

“Hold your horses! Something’s up,” Mom says, turning and frowning at them both from the driver’s seat. (I swear, she has a sixth sense for trouble.) “Have both your parents actually agreed to this?”

Perimedes pauses taking off his shoes. “What would you do if I said they didn’t?”

“Kick you out,” Mom says. “I would like to have fun without crossing the line of the law and ending up in court with a kidnapping charge, thank you very much.”

“Well, they kind of went, ‘do whatever you want’,” Peri shrugs. “I just told them I was staying at Elp’s for a few days and then going on a road trip with friends, and they were like, ‘OK’.” 

(Sigh. Perimedes and his unresolved absentee-parent issues! Polites has been suggesting he go to therapy for years, but he always pulls some shit like, “Why have therapy when I can dissociate? Apathy is the only drug I need,” in the most cheerful tone possible. Go figure.)

Mom looks worried at this irresponsible parenting, and I’m half convinced she’s going to pull some adoption papers out of nowhere, but she simply shakes her head and continues speaking. “So they know, and are fine with it?”

“Yep.”

She sighs, defeated. “Okay, I’m not going to argue. Just… keep in touch with them, at least.” She starts the vehicle, and once again, we’re off.

“Hang on just a minute,” I say, turning to Perimedes as he sits down. “So you said you were staying at Elpenor’s place?”

“Yeah, I did,” he says. “Got bored, so I went over for a few nights. His parents aren’t home.”

I raise an eyebrow. (I love being able to do that.)

“What?”

“Nothing,” I say completely innocently. “Just, you know, from the state of your knees, I’m sure you’ve been doing a good job at scrubbing his floors.”

It takes the people around me a moment, but then my sister and Penny burst into uncontrollable laughter, and Perimedes doubles over in shock, slapping the seat. Elpenor, from the floor next to Polites, is halfway between snickering and sputtering something unintelligible. (He gets a gold star for the funniest-sounding reaction.) Eury seems confused, but he’ll understand it eventually.

(Sadly, no one seemed to get my reference. I feel betrayed.)

“That,” says Penny breathlessly, “is foul.” 

“When’s it gonna be my turn?” Polites asks, tapping Elpenor on the arm. And there’s more uproarious laughter! This really is a sitcom.

“So, like,” Eurylochus says, probably desperate for a change in topic, “where are we even going?”

“You are stupid,” Mene announces, like she’s an eight-year-old who’s come to a proud conclusion after much deep thought. (If you could use emojis in real life, Eurylochus would be that ridiculously deep frown.) “You agree to get into someone else’s motorhome for several days without even knowing the destination, and you’re just fine with that?”

“Well, I trust you.”

She shrugs. “Word of advice, don’t. I could very easily be kidnapping you.” I resist the urge to say, ‘He’d let you do that in a heartbeat,’ because they’d just counter that with a comment about me being the same with Penelope. Which is, unfortunately, true. 

Instead I head over to the unholy bag pile, shoo Elpenor and Polites away, then begin to sort through it out of sheer boredom, trying to arrange the stuff by ownership. (I say ‘trying’ because certain idiots decided not to add name tags, or any sort of label or indicator for that matter, on their stuff.) Regardless, when I’m finished, the room looks pretty satisfactory, so I sit back down.

“You ruined it,” Elp says, pouting. “The bag pile made a very nice makeshift bed.”

“You know, we have actual beds over there, which we spent hours putting together.” I point at the bunks. “Go sleep there. Yours is the lower one on the left.”

He squints at the names hastily scribbled on scrap paper and taped by each bed. “Who arranged these, anyway?”

“Blame Ctimene.”

My sister sighs, flicking her hair back daintily. “How insulting! I selected each spot with careful precision and fairness in every choice by consulting everyone present, as any good leader should. Only then did I decide on the best courses of action.”

“You put me on the bottom bunk.” Elpenor frowns. “How is that the best course of action?”

“Dude, anyone who’s spent a day with you knows you suck ass at, like, being on heights,” Perimedes says. “Can’t be on top of anything taller than three feet.”

He elbows him. “Good thing you won’t be any higher than that when you’re lying stretched out across my bed, then.”

I need to get better at describing stuff so I can accurately document Eury’s live facial expressions. 

“You guys.” Penelope is giggling, and I can’t help but feel my heart swell because damn it, she’s so cute, I wish I could key-smash in real life because I would totally be doing it right now. “You all need to quit this nonsense before I lose my dignified facade.” 

“Join us,” says Ctimene, grabbing Penny by the shoulders and shaking her threateningly. “Become one with the silly…”

Eurylochus groans. “Not you too. I thought you were on my side.”

“I was raised in the Autolycus household,” she says. (That’s my legendary maternal grandpa’s name. You know we mean business when we use it.) “I was never on your side. I make the rules. I’m the DM. The server owner. The developers. You either submit to me and my ways, or perish.”

Elpenor glances at her carefully. “So he’s a bottom.” 

Eurylochus closely resembles the moai emoji right now.

“Men were made to be submissive,” Mene deadpans. (Penelope laughs again, staring me directly in the eye from across the room, and good God, she didn’t have to do that, my face heats up and now I’m trying not to fucking melt into an embarrassed puddle. Key-smash again for emphasis.) “Why would God create the male G-spot otherwise?” 

Suddenly I become very aware that my mother is in the driver’s seat, without so much as a screen to separate the realm of the teenagers and that of the Adult. I sincerely, truly hope she isn’t listening.

“Are we going to actually achieve anything besides discuss sexual preferences?” asks Eury tiredly. “Like, I dunno, play a game or something?”

“Okay, then,” I say. “Anyone wanna join my Minecraft Realms server?”

I hear a loud tongue click from the front seat. “Not so fast!” says Mom. “I’ve disabled the router. I’m not giving you guys Wi-Fi access for at least another hour. Find something more creative to do!”

“Shit.”

“Not to worry,” says Polites. “As the one in charge of entertainment, well…” he crawls over to the Stuff Pile and carefully picks out a bright yellow bag, then very not carefully dumps its contents onto the floor. I spot a magnetic mini chessboard, Uno, a roulette set…?, a deck of cards, Scrabble, Cards Against Humanity (obviously), and more, some of which I don’t recognize. (Polites is insanely good at Cards Against Humanity. You’d be surprised.) “Take your pick!”

“Cards Against Humanity,” says Ctimene immediately; what a surprise. “As the official leader of this shenaniganry—” (Wait, when did she become the—) “I demand that everyone play.”

Chapter Text

“Fifty percent of all marriages end in,” I say mildly, revealing a white card, “men.” Very funny. “Coughing into a vagina.” Oh, eugh, I’m not even a vagina-haver and that mental image terrifies me—“The miracle of childbirth. Dead babies—funny that those two came one after the other… all the dudes I’ve fucked. Consensual sex?!—okay, ‘the miracle of childbirth’ wins.”

That one was Polites’. Muttering something, Ctimene adds another tally mark under his name, and he’s, well, leading. (I told you he was good at this.)

“Come on, dead babies is hilarious,” says Perimedes under his breath. Great! Now we all know whose name will be next in the out-of-context quote book. I pull out my notebook and scribble that down for good measure.

Anyways, we all draw cards, and now it’s Penny’s turn as Card Czar; she takes a question card, reading, “Step 1: blank. Step 2: blank. Step 3: profit.” 

I look through my options. There are multiple racial jokes that my ethnicity does not authorize me to make. Goddammit! That leaves me with… Republicans and coat-hanger abortions? Half-assed foreplay and a sad handjob? I don’t fucking know. I’ll play the first pair, I guess.

The cards are shuffled around, and thus the Reading begins: “The Holy Bible and God.” Penelope shrugs, then continues. “An Oedipus complex and incest. Drinking alone and committing suicide.” Ten cents Elpenor did that one. “Ethnic cleansing and a white ethnostate, okay, let’s hope whoever played that never gets put in charge of a country; more elephant cock than I bargained for —and, um, a bleached asshole. Then there’s Republicans and coat-hanger abortions. That one wins.”

(Aha! She couldn’t resist a good political commentary.) “That was mine,” I say, sort of proudly, as Mene adds a tally for me. Now I’m only one point behind Polites.

Dozens of rounds blur by easily, and I have to admit, this is rather fun. (Even though Polites is winning by even more now.)

Highlights include: 

— “After 8 years in the White House, how is Obama finally letting loose? Throwing a virgin in a volcano.”

— “I got 99 problems, but an AR-15 assault rifle ain’t one of them.” That one didn’t actually win, but it should have. It was another political commentary from me, if you hadn’t guessed. 

— “Introducing the amazing superhero/sidekick duo: It’s PTSD and AIDS!” Honorable mention for that one is pedophiles and Vladimir Putin.

— “Why am I sticky? Fucking the weatherman on live television. ” Great! Fresh, interesting, and brings a whole new level of ‘exhibitionist’ to the table. We don’t kinkshame in this household.

“Dude, okay, pause,” says Eurylochus. “Weird question, but: why’s sex so… everywhere? Like… I can understand intimacy and reproduction, but I can’t even say some normal ass word without people calling it sexual somehow. And for some reason everything in society is set with an expectation of intercourse—”

“And that,” Polites bursts out, “is exactly what I’ve been wanting to say for, like, four years!” He leaps at Eury, grabbing him by the arm and staring right into his eyes. He might be high. “You get me! And you know what that means?” 

“What?”

“ We should fall in love! ”

“...What?”

He begins to giggle again, sounding only slightly deranged. “I’m joking! Fall in love with whoever you like. Dunno if my poly group has room anyway. Wait, Elp? Do we have room?”

Alright, so, he’s definitely high. Maybe that’s why he’s winning at CAH by five points now.

“Why do you consult Elpenor and not me?” Peri grumbles.

Before he can bring up any sort of defense, the vehicle stops. Mom turns in the front seat. “Listen up, peoples! I know that most of you lot very much enjoy raiding convenience stores, so on account of nothing but your own stupidity, we are at the gateway to Hell, aka 7-11. Prepare yourselves or else die by your own doing. Perhaps if you make it out alive, you may even obtain a rare reward called a Slurpee.”

“...Okay,” says Ctimene, after a moment of utter silence. I love my mom. “File out, you absolute shits. Let’s get this show on the—well, off the road, I guess. Ahem.”

We hustle out, the two other people in the parking lot looking marginally confused at this hoard of adolescents piling out of a motorhome. Which adult lost enough of their mind to think that this was a good idea? Well, the joke’s on them. Mom’s never even had it.

“I will pay for Slurpees,” says Mom as we head in, “but for anything else, use your own money. Although I honestly can’t see why you’d need to buy anything else, considering the amount of snacks already in the car.”

(The store workers look confused too, but hey, this is bound to be good for business, right?)

“Bro, some Slurpee flavor names are diabolical,” I say, standing at the back of the shop with most of our group. “What is ‘Blue Shock’ supposed to be? Just say ‘blue raspberry’, if that’s even what it is. You’re not special.”

“Don’t even get me started on ‘Mountain Dew Pitch Black Citrus Punch’,” Eury mutters.

Elpenor stops and reads the label, which is, indeed, real. “What?”

“Like, why is there a ‘Peach Dragonfruit’?” Mene says. “Can’t you just be normal? Who even drinks that?”

“I do,” says Polites, finishing filling his cup with it. The rest looks like a messy mix of Mountain Dew Pitch Black Citrus Punch and… various others. 

Elpenor peers into it. “Downright disrespectful, kitten. Daddy will have to punish you later.”

Ctimene chokes on air. 

“I—” You know what, I’m not even going to question it anymore. (I wish I could say ‘smh’ without sounding like an idiot, but since this is real life, I will simply resort to actually shaking my head.)

“Yo,” says Perimedes out of nowhere, popping his head into the aisle. “I bought some funny stuff.”

He shakes a bag labeled ‘Lotus Chips’. What the fuck?

“What the fuck?” says Ctimene, mirroring my sentiments. Like brother, like sister, I guess. “Is that the brand, or are the chips actually lotus-flavored—?”

Peri rips open the bag and pops a chip in his mouth. “Lotus-flavored,” he says, his mouth full of lotus chip. (I am not touching that.)

“Ooh! Can I have one?” asks Polites, taking one anyway without waiting for a response. He dips it in the Mountain Dew Pitch Black Citrus Punch part of his Slurpee—why does he hate God?—and eats it. Again, why does he hate God?

“Crunchy,” he notes.

I stare at him in utter disbelief. “It’s a chip.”

Elpenor takes one as well, and if chips were cities, these three’d be classified as Weapons of Mass Destruction by the United States government and probably put safely under lock and key. (Sorry, did I say ‘safely’? The U.S. has lost far too many nukes for that adverb to apply.)

Now Ctimene reaches for one, and I snatch her hand away. “No! These things are downright addictive. I’m going to contact the FDA and get them to put regulations on these.”

“What’d these chips ever do to you?” Elpenor says under his breath.

“I hate you all,” Eurylochus announces suddenly. For some reason, I am inclined to agree.

“Aw, come on,” says Perimedes. “Just try a chip, Eury.”

Eurylochus decides to be a respectable man, and thus declines the offer.

(By this point in the conversation, I have finished mixing my Slurpee drink to an effective level, in which the flavors are blended to the point where individual ones are indiscernible. Anyways, back to the point.)

Perimedes begins to mutter under his breath. “Eury, Eury, Eury…” Great, a Satanic ritual. He already seems to be high off those goddamned chips. Works even faster than cocaine! “Sounds like... hey, I've got a conspiracy theory.”

“Go ahead,” says Elp, who's crunching even louder on the chips now.

“Eury sounds like ‘yuri’.” Peri stares at the aisle where there's... oh, joy, more bags of those horrible chips. “Japanese… literary—thing? Y’know? Like, lesbians.”

"So, Eury is a lesbian," says Elpenor, in complete and thorough understanding.

Polites looks like he wants to throw food at us (but nicely because he’s always nice), eat more chips, and also do his funny sitcom laughter at the same time. Guess which ones he does.

“My husband is a lesbian?” asks Mene. “Good thing I'm pan, then! I love my lesbian… husband.”

Eurylochus straight-up walks out. He’s just a man, after all; there’s only so much one can handle.

I glance at my sister, and... oh, no, no, she's gotten ahold of the dreaded chips, too—I was too late. I cannot save her now. There is no hope left, not for me, nor for anyone dear to me. Eve has eaten the apple, Pandora has opened the jar. It’s all over. My own kin, my womb-mate, my brethren of flesh and blood, has succumbed to this dreaded earthly temptation and there is no going back. The fog is coming.

I hear Penelope's distinct, exasperated sigh—holy fuck, it’s just a damn sigh, why’s it so fucking endearing?, dear God and gods, I love her—as she pokes her head into the aisle. “Honestly, what the hell are you people cooking up?”

“Penny, please,” I beg, falling to my knees, “my queen, my everything—save me from this madness. I might start crying if I don’t evacuate this place immediately.”

“On the contrary, I find it quite funny,” Penelope says, beginning to chuckle evilly. “Foolish, foolish. You followed your heart. You trusted the gods. You should have known better.”

Fuck.

“My wife has left me,” I whisper, staring at the floor.

Ctimene sighs dramatically, looking down at me like I’m a spot of mud on her white sneakers. “Theatre kids.”

I pause my dramatic Disney character despair montage of fake sobbing to glare up at her. “You say that like you’re not a theatre kid.”

“I’m a different case. I’m just better.”

Such crude logic. Anyways, the lotus chip crew or whatever they’re called have nearly finished their chips already, and I am at least sixty percent sure that they haven’t paid yet. Penelope moves to pull me up from the floor, and gestures to the others. “Okay, the staff are gonna get suspicious if we keep dawdling. Come on, let’s go pay for our stuff.”

Always the sensible one, I think, leaning against her shoulder. She balances my insanity, brings down my absolute genius but sometimes a bit extreme ideas to a reasonable level. I literally want to marry her. Please let me marry her. If God was real, he’d let me marry her. I’ve literally liked her since third grade and have already married her six times at definitely legitimate school gym wedding ceremonies. Once a year for every year I’ve been in secondary school. Really, I just need her legal name attached to mine to make it official.

I realize that I’m clinging to her like she’s a lifeline—I mean, she’s my #1 reason to live, so technically—and that literally everyone is staring at me aggressively hugging her arm. “I’m all one for affection!” says Polites. “Like, the world can never have too much love. But this is still a bit excessive for the general public.”

“I agree,” says Eurylochus, re-appearing. He then turns to me and hands me some money. “This is from your mom. I’ve already paid for my stuff, by the way, so I’ll be waiting outside. You have two minutes.”

No one moves a muscle.

Then, “I wish I could say ‘poggers’, but this isn’t 2019,” Peri says mournfully, with a fresh heap of chips. “Slang back then was better. But whatever.”

Elpenor’s eyes widen, likely on purpose, and he starts to breathe faster. “Oh, God. Chat, are you seeing this shit?” 

“Chat.” Polites’ voice drops to a whisper. “Two minutes or we lose our mewing streaks. We won’t be sigma anymore.

“That’s not very skibidi,” Ctimene remarks. 

I hope they all burn.

--- 

Thus passed an extremely tedious checkout counter session in which the cashier glared at us for our mostly-finished, unpaid-for chip bags and rather unnecessary Gen Alpha slang. (We’re not even Gen Alpha. This is scuffed.) It was also definitely longer than two minutes.

Anyways, we’re back in the motorhome, cruising along slowly on a bumpy road, when Eurylochus begins to scream.

Immediately I, Mene, Polites, and Penny glance his way, while Peri and Elp continue to belt Chappell Roan lyrics. I mean, I’m not complaining—those two aren’t even half bad at it—but really? Can you at least pretend to care about your friend’s well-being? 

“Cows,” Eury whispers. He points out of the back window, trembling like he’s just seen a ghost.

I stare at him in disbelief. “What?”

“They’re following us.”

The Perenor Version of My Kink Is Karma stops.

Ctimene moves over and presses her face to the glass. “Oh, shit, they really are following us.”

Out of the corner of my eye through the window, I see a herd of them right behind us, tramping almost in sync. Their eyes stare straight ahead, their heads swaying lightly. 

“They look like zombies,” Penny says quietly. 

“It’s over for us.” Perimedes shakes his head, grim. “The apocalypse is here, and it’s starting with cows.”

“Of all things,” Eurylochus sobs, “why cows?”

Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention? When he was six, he kicked a cow because it breathed on him too hard and, I quote, “he was hungry”. From then on, every cow that he has encountered fucking hates him. This is no exception. After all, the universe is rarely so lazy as to make coincidences.

“Houston, we have a problem,” Mene says. “Shit’s about to get fucked. Mom, top speed. Now. No room for debate. We need to get out of here before they catch us, or we’ll become one of them.”

The very thought is terrifying. Oh, God. Maybe I’ll just join Eury and go vegetarian. 

The vehicle speeds up. 

The cows continue to follow.

We’re driving up a sort of mountain now, one that I ever so vaguely sort of recognize—who knows where Mom decided to haul us, to be honest?—so hopefully the cows get tired of the upward slope and abandon chase. Only then will any of us feel somewhat at ease. 

“Hey, can we play Minecraft now?” asks Elpenor idly. 

Okay, so maybe some of us feel at ease. But maybe that’s the lotus chips talking.

“Yep,” says Mom. She twiddles with a few knobs, thereby enabling the router. “Wi-Fi’s called ‘The Autolycus Household’. Password is ‘Ctimenethegoat’, capital C in Ctimene. Guess who came up with that.”

“That was four damned years ago,” Mene complains, but she’s already pulling out her phone. “Chat, join Ody’s server.”

Eurylochus is still shaking in the corner. Ctimene was way too quick to forget; clearly, she’s not the right one. I think maybe Eury would be better off dating me.

“Hey, can we perform a sacrifice?” says Peri. “Build a lava chamber and throw in a bunch of cows. In Minecraft, I mean.” Of course, because every criminal violation of human and animal welfare is excusable if it’s in Minecraft.

“We need the cows for leather; lava’ll burn up all their drops.” Mene shakes her head. (Eury continues to shake, and Polites goes over to him, presumably getting really concerned.) Then my sister points at me. “Odysseus, please fucking open Minecraft.”

“We gotta build that wall, remember?” Penny reminds me gently.

“Yes, yes, of course,” I mutter, finally relenting and opening the Minecraft in question. I load up my server. (Maybe Eurylochus shouldn’t date either of us.) “A big, beautiful wall indeed.”

“Is that an American politics reference?” Elpenor says. The answer is yes, but I can’t tell him that. State secret.

“The cows aren’t there anymore,” I hear Polites say comfortingly from the corner. “They weren’t following us in the first place, Eury. There were ranchers following at the end, taking them to a different pasture.”

“I hate cows.” Eurylochus glances up from where he’s doing the Shinji chair pose, offering us all a dead stare. “We should build that lava chamber.”

Ctimene looks over at him, sighing. “Fine. But you and Peri are getting all the lava.”