blurred | revised

V • shape without form

Sunlight streamed into both the girl's eyes and the room, and it was almost overwhelming. Four figures stood in the room, and as soon as the girl and Cameron walked in, their heads turned to face them. The girl found Esperanza first, and the small girl wordlessly threaded through the other three people to hug her. Tears pricked at the girl's eyes, for an unknown reason, as she squeezed the girl.

"Nice to see you awake!" Drew said peppily, giving her a beaming smile over Esperanza's head. "I was worried when you passed out two days ago, but you look fine now!"

"I gave her nectar," Cameron explained, apparently oblivious to the shock that the girl felt. Two days had passed? How was that possible? But the questions in the room ceased as the girl noticed a mean-looking girl was staring at her in shock.

"Annabeth," she gasped.

There was, apparently, an unlimited amount of people that wanted to gasp out this name. The girl plastered a blank smile onto her face, staring back at the more muscular girl.

"She doesn't remember you," Drew whispered softly, but that did nothing to erase the look of shock on the other girl's face. "She doesn't remember any of us."

The man standing by the window stepped closer, a warm smile on his face. He held his hand out and said, "Hi, Annabeth. I'm Chris Rodriguez. It's nice to see you again."

She reached out to shake his hand, and her hand felt small and cold inside his larger grip. It was difficult to ignore the various shocked gasps that echoed as her skinny, scarred arm was exposed. Esperanza's hand squeezed her other arm twice.

"Are you feeling better, Annabeth?" asked Chris tentatively.

All she could produce was a small nod, but that gesture did not convey her confusion at why she felt so fine. She felt overwhelmed and uncertain and so tired. But the five people staring at her seemed just as out of place and confused as she felt.

"Are you hungry?" Drew asked with a wide smile, the warm scent of cinnamon wafting off her.

The girl found that she was hungry, so she nodded hesitantly, unconsciously holding Esperanza closer to her body.

"So it's true?" asked the mean-looking girl, finally uncrossing her arms, "you really don't remember anything?"

"I remember the cellar," she said, "and everything that happened there. But nothing else."

Drew's eyes were dark and sad as she handed an apple to the girl. "We'll catch you up to speed." It sounded like a promise.

"Tell them about your dream," Esperanza said suddenly, wide eyes alit with a foreign gleam. The girl paused halfway through biting the skin of the apple (it was sweet, almost sickeningly so. Had apples always been this sweet?).

"What dream?" asked Cameron, with an expression akin to hunger written across his face.

The girl frowned, and lowered the apple away from her mouth. The mean-looking girl eyed Esperanza distrustfully, her thin eyebrows raising higher. "Annabeth didn't say anything about a dream."

The room's other occupants eyed Esperanza as a collective unit, but this wasn't strange to the girl; Esperanza always seemed to possess an uncanny amount of knowledge about things that she had no way of knowing. The girl had simply grown accustomed to it over the years.

"It was strange," she said aloud, watching as the gazes went from Esperanza to her, "I was speaking to a woman."

Cameron and Drew exchanged a glance. "What did she look like?" Drew asked cautiously.

"Dark hair," the girl supplied while taking another bite of the apple; her hunger was howling like a wolf deep within her, and the thought of lasting another second without food was painful. "White dress. I didn't trust her."

She took another bite, letting the crunch reverberate. Cameron took half a step closer to her, but before he could say or do anything, Esperanza asked "what did she tell you?"

The others seemed taken aback, but this felt normal, in a strange way. She swallowed the apple bite before hesitantly speaking. "She said to find the heirs and make my way to Olympus. There was something about a new prophecy and the fourteen, and to look for the mark of Hera."

The name seemed to create a collective sigh of relief. Esperanza seemed content with the answer as she sat back down on the large, plush sofa.

"So she doesn't know yet," Chris concluded, as if those words were supposed to mean something obvious.

"But we don't know how long that will last," argued the mean girl, "we're living on borrowed time."

"That's the name of the game we've been playing for years," Drew retorted with a flashy wink. The girl scowled back at her, but it soon dissolved into something much warmer.

"We can stay here for awhile," said Cameron, and the girl did not fail to recognize the way everyone swiveled their heads at the sound of his voice. He was their leader, for some reason, and they all looked up to him. "Allow Annabeth to recover. But then, we need to find Olympus and find whatever heirs Hera wants us to."

"But what's the mark of Hera?" asked Chris, frowning thoughtfully. "I've never heard of anything like that."

The girl was torn from watching the conversation by a sudden stinging sensation on her left wrist. She released a hiss of pain before staring at the scarred skin. There was a myriad of scars, but there was a new one, one that had not been there mere moments ago. An omega symbol, no larger than a fingernail, was etched into her skin, burning bright white.

Esperanza was watching her with a slight smile on her face. And then, several things happened at once. Four identical gasps of pain echoed, and four pairs of eyes turned to look at their wrists. A large hum echoed from something hanging from Cameron's neck, and his face paled. Esperanza stood up and latched onto the girl's arm, pulling her away from the others.

"We have to hide," she whispered, as if the walls had ears.

The girl was about to protest, but Drew nodded, and waved her arms in a shooing motion. So, she followed Esperanza down the hall, back to the room she had recently vacated, leaving her four saviors to face whatever had scared Cameron.

As she pulled the door shut, she heard the words "she wants to see me" echo down the hall. And some deep, forgotten, mortal part of her felt fear.

Some deep, forgotten, mortal part of her began to wake up.

• • •

author's note:
the election is stressing me out, so i thought i'd release an update! i hope everyone is staying safe (and trying to stay sane)!