Inheritance - a sequel to Shelter

Corrupted Nostalgia - Rachel

"Yeah, but it was really a profound observation ..."

Piper's voice echoes off the high domed ceiling over the bath. Rachel thinks calling this place the baths is an understatement. She follows Reyna into the main room where their friends are all gathered at the far side of the swimming pool size bathtub.

"I mean, the idea that human civilization inherits what remains from the previous generations, and like, it's similar to how the gods and the titans started out." Piper looks up as Rachel and Reyna reach the stairs leading into the water. "Hey! We were just talking about our conversation from earlier. Traffic jam philosophy!" She grins and scoots closer to Annabeth on the sunken bench, making room for them to join.

Percy and Jason stand further out in the deeper water, but near enough to take part in the conversation and Hazel and Frank sit on the low bench against the wall on the other side of the stairs.

Jason and Frank avert their eyes as Reyna and Rachel drop their towels and step into the water, while Percy responds to Piper. They sit down beside Piper and Reyna answers Annabeth's wink hello with a quiet chuckle.

"But," Percy says. "So is ... is that like an excuse or something? Or are you saying that what's happening in the world is just inevitable?"

Annabeth raises her eyebrow and looks at Percy bobbing in the water. "What do you mean, Percy?"

The water splashes up Percy's chest as he treads water as if responding to his agitation. "Like, the whole deal with global warming; the issues in this country with income inequality; the whole messed up way mortals divide themselves. You know, putting some above others, making their messed up viewpoints real and treating some people as worth more than the rest. Like based on where they come from, how much money and power they have, and even what color their skin is. So, you're saying the previous generation's mistakes that the next generation inherits and basically gets stuck with ... it goes all the way back to the gods?"

Piper looks pensive as she digests Percy's words, and Annabeth fixes wide eyes on Percy, her lips turning up at the corner. She looks a little bit stunned at Percy's questions and whole lot taken with him. Rachel thinks it's adorable, and then Piper draws her attention away, responding to Percy.

"Well, sort of. That might be it on like a really big scale, but you can see it within the divisions themselves, right Rachel?"

Rachel tilts her head as she meets Piper's eyes. Reyna holds her hand under the water, their legs touching as they sit hip to hip. She's not sure she's following the conversation well enough. After her conversation with Reyna, and finally figuring out how to reconnect with the world, she'd lost herself again in the irresistible pull of Reyna's body calling out for hers. "Go on," she tells Piper. "I want to hear how you see it."

The smirk Piper gives her makes Rachel blush. As the daughter of Aphrodite, it's likely Piper can read exactly where Rachel's thoughts are wandering. The whole aura of 'flying-high-on-making-love-and-didn't-expect-to-find-a-political-debate-when-I-came-here-to-wash' that she wears, trying to play it cool, is probably as clear as day to Piper.

"Okay. So, my dad is Cherokee, right? The Cherokee nation and all the nations indigenous to this land have basically been swept up like human dust bunnies. Pushed into corners, hidden under rugs, out of sight, out of mind of the white people who took over."

Rachel's heart sinks at Piper's words. It's an instinctual response, guilt. The same reaction seems to flash across Jason, Percy, and Annabeth's faces too, but nobody denies it. It's Piper's turn to talk.

"It's what happened or at least, it's how I feel when I think about it. The only way to keep on living, to keep existing in this new, 'western civilized' world when reminders of how little our people count to the country gets rubbed in our faces wherever we go, is to find an in; a way to assimilate. It's not what we want, but it is how it works. It's not how it should work, just how it is ..."