Blessings from Khaos

|it was always you|

Lea followed after Ethan, both of them taking notes from what Drew learned from Apóllōn.

She wondered if she should have called for exemption due to being Hermes' "blessing".

(Something that Lea still side eyed. Like seriously, Leaneira Jackson did not believe in soulmates. And also, their whatever was a bit... something. Not romantic but not purely platonic either. Not something she wanted to think about because then she had to wonder if she was actually being groomed and then her thoughts turned to Trent and then she got all sad and mad at the same time and it was not a good feeling.)

(Dammit. She was going to have to see a damn therapist to make sure that she wasn't being groomed. It was hard trying to find a therapist that didn't let the undertones of their faith shine through.)

It was still light when they got into the woods, but the shadows from the trees made it feel like midnight. It was cold, too, even in summer.

She could hear the Stolls tripping around the woods and cursing. Moreso cursing about the fact that they had to make noise because they tended to be completely noiseless when it came to stealth. It was an ironic thing Hermes had told her: he was the god of thieves, but his children were about as stealthy as buffaloes.

They passed by Annabeth and Percy over at what she learned was called Zeus' fist. Admittedly, it did look like a fist from the air, but from down below, not so much. They kept it moving.

About ten minutes in, Ethan started laughing.

"What's funny?"

"It's just..." he interrupted himself to laugh. "We're in the west woods. You're a witch." He broke off into snickers and Lea, unfortunately, already knew where he was going with that line of thought. "You're the Wicked Witch of the West."

She stared at him, but even she couldn't stop her lips from twitching into a smile. Forget that Twice-Blessed crap that Maia, the mother-in-law to beat all mothers-in-law, had said. Lea wanted that to be her new title. Morella Leaneira of the West (even though she lived on the east coast.)

They were silent after that, continuing to search the woods like conspiracy theorist looking for Big Foot. After a while they stopped, and she leant against a tree to flip through her grimoire. Ethan was shifting on his feet, eyes darting around for their enemies.

"What do you think," he started. "About all of this?"

"Hmm?"

"The attack. Luke. The upcoming war. What do you think about it?"

"I think it's all a waste of time," she admitted. "I mean they've been teasing a movie about Thor, and I haven't seen it yet. Not to mention, Iron Man 2 has been rumored to come and if Luke thought he was going to keep me from watching that, then he was out of his damn mind. And honestly, a war just doesn't fit into my wellness plan."

"Lea, be serious." He looked stress, fiddling with the bracelet around his wrist. "I'm worried, you know. And Drew is..." He swallowed thickly. "Is any of this worth it on either side? Why can't there be compromises? And Drew... she's his champion now. That... that makes her target and... We're supposed to choose between either side and none of it really matters in the end, does it? We're just cogs in a machine of who is in control of the world. We don't make a real difference. "

"I..." Lea pursed her lips. This was so not a conversation that she had ever in all her fourteen years of living had ever thought to have. Lea had never trusted anyone except Percy and her Mother and even then, she looked at them sideways on the occasion.

(And yes, she cared about the people in the Heights, and they were like a family to her, but she didn't trust them to have such conversations with.)

Lea never cared about who was in control of the world or well, the United States because she never saw herself leaving the country. Everything was just an "it is what it is" type of thing. The rich people were rich and assholes and the poor people were divided against each other by the rich people to never change the status quo. And the people in the middle were content because they didn't have all frustration that the rich people faced but they didn't have the struggle that the poor people lived either.