Stormbreacher - Book 1 of Titanomachy Series

Chapter 4: heh?

Carlos and I shared contact information, before we both walked back home to our new apartment earlier than Aunt Kia planned. He wanted to take me to the boardwalk, but today was Sunday and most of the rides were closed, so we didn't bother.

Back at the apartment, I entered it for the first time and saw moving robots squirming around the place, carrying boxes and pushing furniture around, precisely coordinated by a single monitoring computer program that saw everything the robots' metal eyes saw. I waved and smiled at them, as if they could respond or even notice, and wandered through the house, peering at the interior. The place was bland, and not very roomy. It seemed bigger in the pictures I'd seen, and I felt a sting of disappointment against my throat.

I heard Mom's voice from a distant room, and began walking in that direction. "I don't want you unpacking the boxes to either Athena or Persephone's rooms, they'll do what they want with that. When Athena gets back, she'll tell you how she wants her bed and desk and all that." She was saying, probably to a moving bot. "About Persephone—"

"I'm back!!" I announced obnoxiously, causing even the moving bot beside me to bat an eye.

"Athena?" Mom exclaimed with a note of surprise. "You're back already?"

"Yeah, the boardwalk was closed. Not a whole lot to do."

"Oh. The arcade shouldn't have been? That arcade's been there since I was a kid, it's open every day."

I pressed my lips together. "Well...I mean, I didn't know that."

"Carlos should've."

I didn't say anything in response. Mom appeared from a hall, as the moving robot shoved past her out the door and rolled out to some other corner of the house. "You heard what I said? You're gonna unpack your stuff on your own. The bed and desk are there already, whether or not you want to keep them where they are is up to you, the boxes are in there for you to unpack on your own. Sound good?"

I shrugged, and smiled. At least Mom wasn't as convinced in my uselessness as her sister.

"Where's Persephone?" I asked.

"She went out with Aunt Kia somewhere. I'm not concerned about you being in the apartment while we're moving in, but I am concerned about her. I don't want her distracting the porters, and causing something to go wrong."

"Ah." I nodded. "Where did they go?"

"A playground by the school. I heard something about a nearby ice cream parlor."

"Is Melody with her?"

"God, no. She's with her father at their house. With your Uncle Adam."

"Great." I nodded, and gave her a thumbs up. "I think...we're mostly set, right? I mean, we have to shove boxes and crap around, but otherwise it sounds good."

"Pretty much. Don't go crazy with unpacking. Your shelves are still coming. They'll be here by...maybe Wednesday."

"Oh, come on." I whistled incredulously, and shrugged. "Only in Veridian!"

Mom didn't take my comment for humor. "Get used to it, Athena. Your bedroom's over there, along with everybody else's." She pointed down the fairly wide hall she came from, where about a million mover bots were struggling to push past each other with all our stuff. I thanked Mom for telling me and began weaving between them, feeling their cold metal exoskeletons catching on my clothes and grazing my skin. They were surprisingly graceful, given their bulky frames and general clunkiness.

 I reached the first door, and I poked my head inside to greet a wide-eyed moving bot shoving my  desk into place. The room was pretty small, but not intolerably tiny. There was a window in the back, with the desk positioned in front of it with a couple of boxes neatly labeled on top of it. Opposite the desk was the bed, closer to the front and with two more boxes on it as well. They probably would've gone on the shelf, if I had one.

"G'evening." I said, and waved at the robot. It glanced at me, thinking I was going to give it a command, but quickly turned back to what it was doing. There was some more whirring and shoving before the moving bot let go of the desk and towards back towards me.

"I must go that way. Could you please move?" Its electronic, monotone voice bumbled. It pointed its arm at me, and I scooted out of the way to let the robot pass. It shut the door behind itself, returning to the chaos outside.

I made my way to the cardboard boxes on my desk. For some reason, the tape sealing the boxes was already cut open; Mom must've taken the initiative to do so and save me the trouble. The first one on my desk had the words Pre-Titanomachy Media scrawled in permanent marker across the side. I shook it a little bit, and smiled as I heard the clattering of my ancient books and movies.

But when I opened it up, I revealed a chaotic whirlwind of unsourced, displaced objects and items. I was surprised. I was meticulous about arranging my pre-Titanomachy stuff, and actually felt a little hurt to see it flung all over the box. Had it been messed up by the ride here? I mean, it could've been, but I'd squished my items together as tight as possible exactly for that reason. What happened?

I opened up the second box beside it, and found a similar mess of books and crap all over the place. Someone had intentionally screwed with my stuff for no reason, and it wasn't Mom. Did Persephone play with my stuff? I thought frustratedly, though I figured, while Persephone was annoying, she was a long ways away from malicious.

So why was my stuff all messed up?

I turned to my bed, where more miscellaneous items were kept. The first, carrying my old school supplies and whatnot, was somehow even messier than the first two. The cardboard walls were covered in pen and marker ink, scrawled with incoherent lines and dots. A scissor blade had been impaled into the cardboard wall, above folders and papers that were strewn about everywhere. I groaned, and finally ripped open the last box, which I knew was filled with clothes and blankets.

Curled up inside my wrinkled clothes, coiled into a dormant, scaly gray ball, was a tiny, sleeping dragon.