Chapter Text
PROLOGUE: Pandora’s Mirror
July 7, 2021
A cold, cold day in this prison of their creation, I grip my only connection to the real world, a hand held mirror. I watched as the celebration of Lucas’s recent victory played out in the background, as Apollo pulled his daughter to the side.
“Happy 14th birthday Kyla,” he says as he hands the girl a small light yellow box with a blue bow, she opens to see a necklace of a gemstone with 8 points.
“It’s beautiful dad,” she picks up the necklace and puts it on
The field of forget-me-nots and my own chains surround me, I grip the mirror with distaste. Thief.
Two Years Later
It was a hot day in Texas summer, as I sat at the well loved dining room table as Harvey, my Popa opened the door for one one of my two closest friends, Liza. Liza was a character for sure, she carried about a small dagger, she is very passionate and loves her friends more than anything, and to spill the tea I’m pretty sure Liza has a crush. She walked in, her short red-brown hair was in a half up half down style with two buns, carrying two plastic bags.
“Happy birthday Kyla!” She said as she pulled out a vanilla cake from the first bag, then pulled out a small wrapped box from the second bag, she put the cake down and handed me the gift.
“The gift is from Lucie, he told me to give it to you before he got here because he knew he’d be late,” Liza said with a small smile sigh, then Lucie ran into the room panting. Lucie was the other part of our little trio, the boy had an earring that could turn into a sword, he’s loud, kind, funny sometimes not other times, most people could guess he’s the child of Hermes once they had a soiled conversation with him. The boy was very chaotic, to say the least. My abilities were nothing compared to those of him or Liza.
“We’ll speak of the devil and he shall appear, how are you Lucie?” I say as I put the gift box down.
“Yeah, yeah, sorry for being late, I had to take some extra hours at the library.”
“How’s your coworker?” She leaned down on the table, “The ‘Hot Nerd Guy’ doing” she said usin’ her hands to make air quotes the size of a bulls hell.
Lucie’s ears turned bright red, “Don’t call him that” he slammed his hands on the chair he was previously leaning on.
Liza snorted “What was his actual name again? Thorne?"
Lucie covers his eyes with one hand “Close, his name's Theodore, he didn’t show up today though. Mentioned some other job of some sorts” Lucie said while eyeing the cake from behind his hand
“You can have some, after the birthday girl gets a piece first, of course.”
“Oh no Lucie can have the first piece if he wants.” I said. Liza then immediately glared at me then put a plate in front of me, the cake was really good, and I ain’t sayin’ that just ‘cause I know Liza’s mom made it.
“Oh let me go get your gift!!” My dad jumps up and goes in the direction of his room. After a bit he came back to the dining room with an envelope in hand. “Open the gift your friends gave you first!”
I looked down to the gift on the table and picked it up, I opened it and inside was an empty leather bound sketch book with many blank pages.
“For your poetry! We know how much you love writing.” Liza said with a smile
“Aww, thank ya’ll.” I smile back. Papa then hands me the envelope, inside I find that there are 4 tickets to a play that’s in town this week The tickets themselves are for the 10th, at 12pm to 2pm, they also said they were sponsored by a up and coming entertainment company Populairs, I’ve never been to a play before but I’ve always loved musicals, so it sounds fun.
Pa smiles “I found out about it from one of my coworkers at the hospital. They said both them and their kids loved the show!”
“Sounds like fun!” I said, with a smile.
——————
After Liza and Lucas left, I headed back to my room for the night. Once there I looked under my bed and grabbed a journal, one I found while exploring an abandoned library for our last quest to find more information about recent happenings in the mortal world. I hated hiding things from my friends but this felt like somethin’ I could keep to myself. I had been procrastinating reading any of it since then, but tonight was the night I was going to do it! I open to the first page and see neat hand writing.
“Entry one, Mother has converted me to use a journal for the purpose of in her own words ‘write down all those thoughts in my head’, quite impertinent if you ask me but I still did because she got this for me despite how expensive paper and sheep leather is. I found some interesting herbs today in local woods,” they then included some drawings of the herbs with the names and purpose next to them “that is all for today. Thank you for your time journal.” I smile because of the happy entry than decide to sleep for tonight
——————
It was the day I had been waiting for, the day of the play! I got up and brushed my teeth, not forgetting to put my shoulder length hair in a ponytail before to make sure hair doesn’t get in my face. I walked down to the kitchen and started to make breakfast, usually Pa makes breakfast on his days off but today I got up earlier than him so I decided on fried eggs sunny side up and bacon. After I got done eating I checked my phone to see two new messages one from Apollo and one from Lucie
‘Sunshine dad, yesterday 7:30 AM
Happy birthday Kyla!’
Some of the gods had phones even if they didn't use them that often. I responded with a thanks and left it at that. Then I went to respond to Lucie
‘Lucas Today 4:20 AM
Hiii! was so excited about today I woke up early lol’ he said
‘Haha, same here.’ I respond
‘how did you sleep’
‘I slept well, thank you for asking :), how about you?’
‘Course, I’m doing really well lol’
I put my phone down and started to think on what to do until Pa wakes up, that will probably be about 5. I started to clean up my dishes from breakfast, and in the end I chose to read another entry in the journal. I put my hair down and once I got back to my room upstairs I went to the same corner of my bed and grabbed the old journal. A couple pages wear torn out and it skipped to a random entry
“Entry eight, a storm has made my home burn with my mother inside, she’s gone. She’s really gone, I was always seen as bad luck by the villagers, something about my extra eye I no longer have, but maybe they were right? The villagers have spoken of killing me before this may be the last straw for them, I will most likely be killed by the next full moon, maybe I deserve it.”
Goodness the poor girl, I would be more worried if I couldn’t see that their were more entry’s after this, I go to turn the page then
“Kyla Apollos here to talk to you!!”
It takes me a moment to realize how much time has passed, and then I ran down stairs.
“Hey dad how are you?” I ask
“I’m doing well! I just heard you were going to a play today so I wanted to tag along!” Apollo responded with joy, I hate to be pessimistic but usually he doesn’t come down to the mortal realm unless something really interesting is happening or if he has a quest for my friends and me. My only wish for today was for it to be as normal as a day with Dad can be, of course it would all be okay. What could go wrong?