Work Text:
Sally knew she wanted to be a writer for as long as she knew writing existed. Telling herself stories was how she made sense of the world, and if you asked her, she wasn’t making them up; she was discovering what had always been there. Because for Sally the world had always been filled with incredible things. Since she was a child she saw things no one else did, an entire layer of magic that seemed to exist for her only. Quickly she realized this wasn't something she could speak of, but still she wanted people to be able to see the things she saw. She wanted people to be able to see the world the way she did. Writing let her do that, tell the truth in such a way people mistook it for an acceptable lie.
Stories became the pattern of her world: coincidences were inevitability, problems were enemies to be vanquished, patterns were the steps to a clear ending. As she grew up, she made stories out of her life. She made her high-school friends end fights by retelling them in such a way that their friends saw their love for each other instead. When her first relationship imploded spectacularly, she was half glad: he was a good story now, to tell whenever “awful boyfriends” was the topic. Mundane problems became epic tales when she told them. And like in a good story, everything in her life was aiming at something - she didn’t know what yet, but she knew it was there and, if she waited long enough, it would find her.
***
It found her when she began college. She had been spending a week on Montauk, in the kind of place people call quaint because ramshackle doesn't sell well to tourists. Still, the colorful windows and te open view of the sea was enough for Sally. She felt ready to begin her first novel, and her soul told her the occasion needed something to mark it. Writing on the beach felt more important than in her tiny dorm room.
The endless sea stretched before her. Unconstrained, irregular, waves dark gray and foam green. She made a paper boat off a discarded page, set it onto the waves, watched it float away from view.
Sally had always felt drawn to the sea. Meeting the god of the sea, to her it just made sense. He smelled of brine and summer rain; to her he felt alive like a storm, voluble as the tide. He had unnaturally green eyes that sparkled with mischief. All the pieces of her life that up to that point didn't quite fit - the sightings, the impossible beings, the strange shapeshifting world no one but her seemed to perceive - now they all finally made sense. It was chapter 1. So this is what my story is. She would be the beloved of a god, the commoner plucked from the mundane world to become a princess. A grand love story, the kind that legends are made of.
Their love sparked in the salt air, a brief, mortal season of shared secrets. Then she became pregnant, and the story changed. She learned of a dark history of wars, of a prohibition against children of the Big Three. She also learned all of them ignored the prohibition but acted outraged when one of the others did. (His family, not so different to all other families). As he told her of all the dangers that his world held for a demigod, for a child of his, Poseidon looked genuinely sorrowful. He retreated, like the waning tide.
When Percy was born, Sally had a dream. She always knew that he sent it, a parting gift, a welcome gift. She named their baby Perseus, after the only hero to get a happy ending.
A tragic love story. She could work with that.
***
Percy was three years old when Sally realized, her story wasn't a romance. Her story was horror.
They were at the park. She had one of her very few days off work, and she always tied to spend those outside. Percy was playing in the grass, a few feet from her. New York bustled past, with its friendly indifference. Sally was reading a book. Suddenly, a creature of scales and claws slithered through the park, incongruous in the middle of the New York human rush. Slithered in their direction. Sally knew she could not fight it, running was their only chance. She saw the creature's yellow eyes snap up at her, saw the recognition - this one can see what I am - Sally moved like in a dream, carried and struggling at the same time. She may have yelled Percy's name; later she couldn't remember.
All she remembered was snatching his baby off the playground, and then entering home, everything between those two points a blur. And looking out the window, and seeing the creature outside, prowling.
So this is what my story is. A mother protecting her son from monsters. If that’s who she was meant to be, she would embrace it.
***
Perseus and his mother were cast out into the sea. Sally fought back against the unseen world with the only weapon she had - stories. She told Percy about all the things she saw. Her bedtime stories were made out of the real history of heroes that came before her boy, lessons in disguise. Sally put them both under the shadow of an awful man who nonetheless made for a good human shield. She endured humiliation so her boy wouldn’t succumb to claws and teeth.
And her baby was a miracle. Bright, mercurial, with an uncanny ability for finding the most unlikely way to get himself into trouble. Sally was proud of her boy, but the rest of the world didn’t see it that way. Her story started to blur under the weight of mundane evils. The job where she worked long hours for little pay; the people around her and their mockery of her dream (writing, always writing), and worse, their pity; the petty domestic squabbles where she had to shrink herself, agree; the disapproving gaze of teachers as they told her how Percy was not keeping up with the other kids, something must be done, and what about his father? She was forced to make choices - practical, logistical choices. Percy, raised on stories and big ideas, did not understand. He tried hard to fit in, but he was never made for this world; unlike her, her baby couldn't live straddling the line, one foot in land and another on the sea.
She was doing the best for him, Sally told herself again and again. But the best was pain, and she had raised herself on stories, and she herself could not accept that.
***
It was telling of the life Sally had lived that fighting a giant underwear-wearing bull-man was a perfectly logical thing to happen. She was terrified, that was undeniable. The past decade of her life had been built on a horror story; monsters lurking in every corner, secrets that could spell disaster if found out. But, Sally was an honest person at heart. She was not built to keep secrets. Hiding an entire world from her son had been eating at her. So as horrifying as their current situation objectively was, the fact that it was the truth made her feel lighter. This has always been our story. Percy was strong enough to face the monsters now, and Sally was too.
Percy, her baby, had been brave, and strong, and adaptable. He had come to her when things became too much, he had gotten over his best friend's betrayal with one simple explanation, he had accepted who his friend was, who he himself was. His mother raised him well. And she had, dammit. As much as Sally wanted to take away all dangers, as a mother she knew that was impossible, all she could do is teach his baby how to navigate them on his own. Percy would not only be fine, he would thrive in his world.
She told Percy to hold fast, brave the storm. Sally knew she was sending him to danger, but what is danger but the prerequisite of a good story. And Percy was where he should be, in his own chapter one. Sally thought of her first novel. The page she had unknowingly sent as an offer to a god. Of Poseidon and the sea, and his son in the rain. And she promised to herself they would see the end of their story, together.