#earle gresham jr. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

scarred-but-still-smiling · 10 days ago

Text

Jay's Odyssey (chapter 5 of 7)

More pain, another scar, and more trauma to hand around. Gods above, this last week has sucked.

Read here on AO3

The ticking faded, and Jay felt a searing pain streak across his bare back and shoulders, screaming as he felt a distinct grinding as the blade scraped over bone and his arms, involunatarily, fell limply away from where he had them draped over Hermes' back, and heard a cacophony of screaming and swearing from behind him. He stood, knees shaking, cursing as gravity dragged his arms downward like pendulums. Every minute movement; every breath, the slight swaying of his useless arms, damn near every heartbeat blinding him with pain. He glared down at Earle, feeling blood run down his back, still feeling that radiating hate coming from the man before him, "Let. Him. Go." he ordered, trying and failing to keep his trembling voice firm. "Now."

He watched as the reality of things fell together in Earle's eyes, and felt the hate fade. "Okay," Earle released the god and stood back up, hands raised, not in fear but in shock.

Jay tried to turn his head to look at his mom, another shout of pain torn from him as he strained frayed muscle fibers, his vision swimming and his knees unsteady. He screwed his eyes shut, trying not to breathe too deeply, "Mom? Can you grab Hermes' coat? KJ is gonna need it, and she'd probably feel more comfortable once she calms down if you're the one to give it to her."

He heard his mom approach, "Mijo, please, stop this; you need a doctor!"

"Mom, I'm begging you, just help KJ. Her clothes tore when she transformed, she's in a room with mostly men, help her cover up, please."

He opened his eyes, looking down at Hermes as his mom took the coat, trying to ignore the panic in the rest of the room, "Hermes," he tried to scan the god's face, searching for any kind of hint of what he was thinking, but Hermes looked away in shame, "why didn't you even try to resist? Do you really feel so guilty that you're willing to literally die?"

For the first time since the two had met, Hermes was silent.

From inches behind him, Jay heard the resonating clang of godly weapons hitting the floor, and he began to turn, "Son?" He felt a hand on his wound, his vision flashing white from the pain and his knees buckling, sending him crashing to the ground with no arms to catch himself, his head hitting the ground, hard, and he blacked out.

He came to, feeling his arms bound to his torso both above and below the elbow, and hearing the room buzz with panicked voices. He felt blood trickle over the curve of his bicep, thankfully on the side he was facing, and strained his eyes to look, eyes going wide and panic rising in his chest.

It was sparkling with flecks of gold.

"Athena!" He shouted, voice tinged with panic, "Athena, what's happening, why is my blood weird?! Why are my arms tied?! What's happening?!"

The voices went silent, and he saw Athena's sandles and silver greaves come into view. "It's okay, Jay, we bound your arms to your sides so they would not move with motion or breath, sparing you some of the pain." She knelt down next to him, taking some of his blood onto her fingers and raising the hand to her face to examine more closely. "Hmm... I believe that this might have something to do with the ambrosia we used to revive you."

"The ambrosia?!" The panic grew, and he heard conversation buzzing behind him, "is this why I've been hallucinating? Is it fucking with my system? What's going on? I asked you at the time if there were gonna be any side effects, and you didn't answer, why didn't you answer?"

Athena glanced to one side, presumably towards Hermes, "In truth, we did not know, and we still are not sure. There have been very few cases of true mortals consuming ambrosia, and you being of a different world added another variable that would be impossible to account for." She looked at the rest of the room, "I want to make something clear to you all; Hermes is the reason Jorge is alive. I was too ashamed and afraid to leave his side, even after his corpse had long since grown cold. He could have been alive hours before he was were it not for my weakness. Gods, had I not allowed myself to become overwhelmed, he would not have died at all, I deserve some of your ire as well. It is thanks to Hermes speeding to Olympus and speaking with Apollo that we were able to attain the ambrosia that revived him at all." Her expression was stern, almost protective, "I understand your emotions, especially you, Mr Rivera; your friend, your son, died in pain and fear, and the root cause was the revocation of the blessing of the god of travellers. I have seen the rage of a parent before, you all know that I have, you know that I understand, but I have also seen the hollowness of revenge. Killing the suitors gave Odysseus no fulfillment, and, likewise, killing Hermes would bring you all naught but guilt and emptiness." She looked back down at him, expression softening, "You saw how he tried to protect Hermes, what he was willing to suffer to stop you from making that mistake, from scarring your souls by taking a life."

"She's right," Jay said, weakly, head still swimming from the radiating pain in his shoulders with every breath, "I love you too much to let you do that to yourselves; I still feel the guilt from having to kill the harpies that night, I think it may haunt me for life, and I can't bear the thought of you all having to suffer that."

The room became hushed, and Jay wished he could see them, wished he could show them his sincerity.

He heard footsteps thundering down the stairs, breaking the tension, and JP's voice calling from the other side of the room excitedly, "I just talked to Mason, we can fix this!" Jay felt rushing footfalls draw close to him and then suddenly stop, and heard the creaking of jeans as someone knelt down beside him. "Okay," JP warned gently, "this is gonna hurt like hell; like you're probably gonna pass out again and maybe vomit, but you're definitely gonna want to scream. Are you ready?"

Jay whimpered; all the pain, and fear of it somehow getting even worse, collapsing onto him, leaving him feeling like a scared child. "Mami!" A sob bubbled up in his throat, and he desperately, fruitlessly, tried to reach out to her, forgetting he was bound and that his shoulder muscles were severed, grasping desperately behind himself for her, his eyes welling with tears at the strain, "Mami, please!"

He felt his mom gently take his hand in her own, "I'm here, mijo, I've got you," her voice was soft and soothing, just like when he was a little boy, "you can do this."

He took a deep, painful, breath, "I'm ready."

"Okay," JP replied, "brace yourself."

After a gentle swipe across his back, just below the wound, Jay felt JP touch one end of the wound itself, and he cried out in pain, the shout growing into a bloodcurdling scream as his friend dragged his hand, slowly, across his back, and he felt his exposed and severed muscle melt together from the inside out. He screamed and screamed, tears streaming from his eyes and the world around him crumbling into shards of glass through the pain-twisted eternity that it took for muscle, tendon and flesh to thread themselves back together.

Eventually, the searing pain began to fade into a thudding, pounding, ache, and his screams faded into sobs, the world gradually coming back into focus around him, and one of the first things he noticed was the sound of a torrential thunderstorm outside, and he began to worry.

"L-luke?" he rasped, his throat raw from screaming, "are you okay? This storm is pretty intense, what's going on?" He tried to lift his head to turn to finally face his friends, but stopped abruptly, hissing in pain. He smiled weakly, looking at Athena, the only person in his view, "could you turn my head please? I can't quite do it myself just yet."

"Are you sure?" He hadn't heard Athena that concerned since the harpies, "This is still going to be very painful."

Jay smiled, "Can't be any worse than what I just went through."

"Very well," Athena smiled sadly, reaching forward, and Jay felt callused hands on his face and the back of his head, "one, two, three."

With his muscles burning, Jay felt Athena gently lift and turn his head, and he could finally see the rest of the room; his friends pale and worried, his mom looking at him with tears in her eyes, his dad on his knees and staring down at the golden swords on the floor, glittering blood still clinging to one of the blades.

To the back of the room, he saw Miguel with his hands on Luke's shoulders, and Luke with his face screwed up in a focused rage, fists clenched and staring at the floor. Miguel gently shoook Luke, "You can stop now, buddy, he's not screaming anymore."

He saw Luke's expression shift into one of slightly dazed confusion. "Huh?" The man looked up at Miguel, and then over at Jay, and his face shifted into a look of joy and relief. "Jay! You're okay!"

Jay smiled, "I mean, I wouldn't say I'm okay, but the pain is definately a lot better. I can see straight now, for one thing."

Luke walked over and knelt beside him, next to his mom, laying a cautious hand on his shoulder, "I'm glad to hear that, friend."

"Are you okay, though? Like I said before, that was one helluva storm."

His friend laughed, "Oh, that. I thought that we could probably do with something to cover up your screaming, so no one outside would hear it and try to investigate. So I focused on the rage I'd felt at Hermes just now and used it to bring that storm up."

He heard Athena chuckle behind him, "That was very clever, Luke, thank you."

Luke blushed and stood, stepping back and rubbing at the back of his neck, "Aw, thanks. That means a lot, coming from you."

Armando walked into Jay's field of view and knelt beside him, his face lined with worry, and eyes holding a spark of relief. "Hey, buddy."

"Hey, Armando, you good?"

Armando laughed, "You've been cut down to the bone and then agonisingly healed in a matter of seconds, and you're still so worried about everyone else," he shook his head, "that's so like you."

"He did that that night, too." Athena said, softly, "the last words he said before he slipped away were a decleration of relief that I was alright."

Jay chuckled, "Look, Athena, you were getting harrassed by what looked to me like an unending number of harpies. And Armando, you just watched one of your friends suffer indescribable pain, I know I'd be freaking out in your place." He sighed, grateful that the pain it caused was now only a dull ache, "Can someone help me sit up, please? My chest is starting to hurt, and I'm not even gonna try and push myself up on my own."

Armando nodded, and gently took a hold of the shoulder on his side. Jay felt hands he recognised as Athena's on his other shoulder, and then felt someone standing over him, their hands scooped underneath him on each side and stabilising his torso. "Are you ready?"

"Ready."

"Actually," The person behind him spoke, and Jay realised it was Earle, "should we get him on the couch? Then he can lean against something, so he's not having to support his neck and shoulders on such a freshly healed injury?"

"That sounds like a good idea," Athena responded, and Jay cautiously turned his head to look at her, chin scraping the ground, hissing at his muscles protested. Her face was lined with worry, and he could feel the ticking energy she emanated grow faster for a moment, before it faded again to its normal steady pace. "I recall, on our journey, Jay mentioned a friend called Steven Dookie, a man educated in medicine. Maybe one of you could use your," she hesitated, "cell phones, to contact him and ask him what might aid our friend, before we try anything that could hurt Jay further."

"I'm on it," Janani said, and Jay heard the buzzing of a phonecall waiting to be picked up, "I'm writing another novel at the moment, so I can just tell him it's for that, because this is very specific and he'll probably want to know the context."

Athena nodded, "Thank you Janani," she looked back to Earle, Armando and himself, "so, are we sitting Jay up? Or should we wait for instruction?"

"We should wait," his mom's voice was firm, "I know you're uncomfortable mijo, but we don't know which parts of your upper body need to be supported so you aren't injured more."

He smiled, "Sure, I suppose that would be best."

"Very well." Athena conceded.

"Okay," Jay heard Steven's voice, slightly tinny from Janani's phone's speaker, "while I'm not an expert in emergency medicine, do your characters have a c collar available? I know you typically write in a historical fantasy setting, so I'm not sure what your toolkit is for this story."

"Yeah," Janani said, "a c collar isn't an option in this setting, no, but from just that question, I'm gonna assume that supporting the neck is important?"

Jay saw his mom wordlessly come into view at the edge of his vision, level with his head.

"Supporting the neck is always important," Steven said, "you said that the blade was stopped by the shoulder blades before it could reach the spine, which is good, but considering the nature and location of the injury, any movement of the neck would cause agonising pain, and, if it's possible to eliminate that, you should take it," a pause, "your characters I mean. Also, you said the injured character fell and hit their head on the ground hard enough to pass out, and head injuries are always serious."

Janani nodded, "Noted, what else needs supporting?"

"Well, the injury definitely severed the upper reigon of the trapezius, which moves the neck, and, depending on how far around the shoulder your guy was cut, may have completely severed the deltoids, which would leave the shoulders unusable. In addition, the trapezius spans until around the mid-back, which means supporting the spine would, at the very least, limit pain. Ideally, your character would be transported lying down as he fell, but if that's just not possible for whatever plot reasons, and you absolutely need your character to be on his feet, standing him up with as little pain as possible would involve rolling him onto his back, supporting the spine at the chest and the small of the back, immobilising the arms by tying them to the torso at the mid-bicep and mid-forearm, and supporting the shoulders to prevent medial movement, ideally with some kind of branch or staff to use as a splint."

Jay felt Earle move from standing over him and saw him enter his field of view, face ashen and concerned, gently placing hands on his side. "Are we ready?" Earle whispered.

"Yeah," Armando replied.

"Ready," his mom added, carefully cradling his head in her hands.

"As am I," Athena said.

Jay gritted his teeth and nodded, "do it."

He felt himself begin to roll, whimpering as his shoulder briefly bore the weight of his whole body, and a sob escaping him as the, very fresh, scar on his back came in contact with the floor.

"Yeah, his torso and shoulders are supported, and his arms are already immobilised, that much I already figured." Janani replied, "anything else?"

"Assuming bleeding isn't an issue anymore, no, nothing I can think of without having the wound in front of me. There's also enviromental infection vectors to worry about, so I could help with that if you want."

"Okay," Troy's voice came from somewhere outside of his range of vision, "I've got a broomstick and the cords from the makeshift ropes Jay used to bind KJ's extra heads."

Jay felt the broomstick slide under his shoulders, and the thin cords cutting into his underarms as the pole was tied in place.

As the broomstick was secured, Athena nodded, and he felt Earle's grip shift; placing a hand on the small of his back and a very cautious hand over the scars on his chest, and everyone else's grip grow firm.

With a yelp of pain, Jay felt his the muscles in his uppper back strain slightly as the others sat him up.

"Alright," Armando whispered, "on three, Jay stands, got it?"

Earle adjusted his hands to Jay's hips, "There we go, buddy, don't want your whole bodyweight being dragged up by your shoulders. Okay, Armando, I'm ready."

"Ready," his mom confirmed.

Athena nodded.

He heard Armando take a deep breath, "One, two, three!"

As the others lifted him up, Jay planted his feet beneath himself, grunting loudly in pain as his muscles tensed, and slowly began to walk, with the help of his friends, towards and around the couch.

After being lowered down, he reclined back into the plush back of the couch with a groan, his new scar burning at the pressure, but the muscles finally relaxing. "Okay, can I have my arms back now, please?" He wiggled a little, wincing.

As Armando untied his bindings and removed the broomstick supporting his shoulders, Jay's focus drifted back to the conversation with Steven, "Janani, my friend, I love you, but you aren't the best liar in our friend group."

Janani sighed, "What gave it away?"

Steven chuckled, "well, for one thing, I can hear Jorge making pain noises in the background; he sounds like he's just been through hell." Their friend's voice sounded calm, but Jay supposed that it was just a facade; keeping calm in the face of grave injuries is something you need to master in the medical field. "Also, you kept looking at something off camera while you were describing the injury." He sighed, "Can you show me the wound? I'm gonna assume there's a reason you're asking me instead of calling 911-"

"It's 112 here, actually," Jay called over, just barely managing to hide the pain in his voice with a joyful smile, "hi Steven!"

"Hi Jay," Steven sounded exasperated, "what happened?"

"It's a long story," Janani laughed, "how much time do you have before you have to go to work?"

"About an hour, that enough?"

"Maybe, gimme a sec, I'm gonna show you the scale we're talking about."

"Okay," Steven's voice grew closer as Janani approached, "have you at least stopped the bleedi-" Steven stopped suddenly, "wait, who is that behind you? The lady in armour?"

Jay cautiously turned, laboriously raising his arms to rest them on the back of the couch, gritting his teeth through the strain, and saw Athena trying to sneak a look at the video call over Janani's shoulder. The goddess blushed, her ears and nose turning a warm golden yellow, "Oh, hello, Steven Dookie. Jorge has told me much about you, I apologize if my presence here has caused you distress."

He heard Steven sigh deeply, "You know what? I'll have to call you back."

Janani and Athena looked at each other and blinked owlishly. Athena looked guilty, "Did I do something wrong? I am not yet used to the social norms of this time."

Janani gave her an encouraging smile, "You're fine, Athena, he just got a lot of information, very quickly. I think we just overloaded him a bit."

Looking around the room, Jay caught sight of KJ, swaddled in Hermes' coat, his mom's arms around her. He smiled, "Hey, KJ, good to see you person-sized again. That coat looks good on you."

She smiled, "Thanks, Jay. And, uh," she looked away, "thanks for stopping me from hurting anyone, I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't"

"Of course," he nodded, and glanced at the small piles of shredded clothes around where KJ had been standing behind the couch, "I'll buy you a new outfit later to make up for the one that got shredded when you transformed."

"Now that you mention him," Earle cut in, "where is Hermes?"

Jay froze, Earle was right; Hermes had been silent since before the fight. He looked around, a brief panic beginning to well up inside him when he didn't see the god anywhere.

However, Jay did feel him. He stood, walking to the center of the room and spreading his senses outwards. Jay closed his eyes, trying to zero in on exactly where the sparkling, glittering, fizzing energy was coming from.

Hermes was close; still in the room, only a foot or two from him in fact.

He changed his searching method, away from proximity and towards which direction the energy was in.

The kitchen? No.

"Jay? What are you doing?" Luke sounded bemused, curious.

The dining area? Not there either.

"Buddy?" Armando sounded concerned.

The couch? Bingo.

Jay carefully moved towards the couch, eyes still closed, placing his hands on the back of the piece of furniture.

"Mijo?" His dad's voice was filled with guilt, fear, sorrow. His heart ached.

He refocused; the energy was small, low to the ground. He crouched, focusing further. "I need someone to move the couch for me, please. I think Hermes is under there." He stood and opened his eyes, turning and looking out at his assembled friends, seeing confusion and concern.

His father nodded, stepping forward and gripping one end of the couch, lifting it a few inches.

Jay crouched back down and cautiously lowered himself onto his stomach, arms shaking and shoulders burning.

The energy surged as he looked into the shadows, and he was slightly confused at what he saw: a small snake.

Gingerly reaching out, Jay softly caressed the cool scales of the creature in front of him, almost recoiling in shock at the spike in the fizzing aura when he made contact. He smiled, scooping the snake up and tucking his legs under himself so he could stand without having to use his shoulders.

He stood, "You can lower it now, dad, thanks. I found him."

As his dad set the couch back down, Jay turned to the rest of the room, smiling. "Look at this," he stroked the snake's back gently, "he's kinda cute like this, isn't he?"

"Are you sure that's him?" Luke asked, "how do you know?"

Troy approached him, eyes narrowing and scrutinising the snake, "Yeah, that's probably him."

Jay looked at Troy in shock, "You can feel it too?"

Troy looked back at him, mirroring his expression. "You feel it?"

"Feel what?" Miguel strode over, face and voice exasperated, "what are you two talking about?"

"I mean," Troy gestured absently, as if trying to find the words, "I kinda feel drawn to it, you know? Like in the same way as with Hermes." He shrugged, "I don't know, maybe it's because I played him?"

Jay nodded, "I get that, though that's not the feeling I was referring to. I feel a weird energy coming off of him; it's fizzing and sharp, like soda poured in a chilled glass." He looked back down at the snake, smiling down at him, "that's how I found him under the couch; it's where that energy was the strongest."

He walked back over to the couch, sitting down and focusing his attention on the serpentine form of the god, "You okay, man?" He asked, keeping his voice soft so as to hopefully not hurt Hermes' little snake ears, "I didn't know you had a connection to snakes," he hesitated, "actually, no, that makes perfect sense given the caduceus, forget I said anything."

The snake lifted his head, resting his chin on Jay's thumb, and Jay observed that the markings on the reptile's scales resembled the markings on the fur coat now wrapped around KJ's shoulders.

Jay laughed, "You must be really attatched to that coat if it's shown on this form, even though you weren't wearing it when you transformed. I don't blame you, though, it's a really nice coat."

He felt a familiar ticking approaching, and he looked towards it, smiling as Athena sat beside him. "Is he okay?" she asked, "he doesn't seem to be wounded, does he?"

"Not wounded, I don't think, no. But I don't really think he's okay, either." He looked back to the snake, "Would you be okay if I handed you to Athena?"

As Athena reached her hand out, Hermes retreated, wrapping himself around Jay's wrist. Athena smiled sadly, "It's okay, Hermes," she said softly, "you don't have to." She sat back, "And don't feel pressured to change back, if you don't feel comfortable yet."

There were a few moments of quiet, the room silent but for a soft rumble of conversation, broken when Janani's phone rang.

She picked up, "Hey Steven, you good?"

Steven sighed, "Okay, so I got part of my shift covered; thankfully I still had a couple hours of PTO left for the year, so now you can explain everything. You said it's a long story, and now I have the time, so tell it. What happened to Jay, and why were you acting like he'd been severely injured? And who was that armoured lady, and why did her voice sound weird? And, actually, more importantly, why the fuck did she blush yellow?"

"So that's a no," Luke joked, and Jay turned back to face the others, placing Hermes on the back of the couch, "we don't quite know 100% of the story, the injury happened in the middle of Jay recounting it for reasons we'll get into, but it's very complicated."

"Yeah," Talya continued, "do you want the direct answers, or do you want the context?"

There was a pause, and Jay could almost feel the exhaustion radiating from the phone, "Give me as little context as you need to in order to explain Jay's injury."

"You know what?" Janani smiled, "I'm just gonna give you to Jay so he can explain it." She walked over and handed Jay the phone, and he saw the worried face of Steven on the screen.

"Hi, buddy, we've all missed you here in Ithaca."

"Jesus fucking Christ!" Steven shouted, eyes wide in shock and fear, and the view from the camera jolted, as though the phone had been dropped.

"Steven?!" Jay panicked; had something happened? "Steven, are you okay?"

The camera view shifted again, and Steven came back into view, face pale, "Jay?" His voice was shaking, "Jay, what happened to your face? And is your right eye different? It looks different."

Jay smiled kindly, "Ah, that. That's actually related to the back wound."

"Jay?"

"Yes, Steven?"

"Are you okay? Those scars look horrific, and the kinda injury Janani described would be agonising."

He chuckled, wincing slightly as his shoulders shook, "Yeah, like Janani said; it's a long story, but to cut it as short as possible; something went weird and I wound up in the Ancient Greece of Epic, and after talking to Odysseus and his family, Athena helped me sail to find Circe so we could ask Chronos to get me home. You with me so far?"

He saw Steven's eyes narrow, "Just about, go on."

Jay nodded as much as he could without causing himself pain, "Okay, so, Hermes showed up and, unbeknownst to me, Hermes had put a protective ward on the boat we were on, but after getting into an altercation with him where I pretended like I was gonna stab him, he dropped those protections and then something went very wrong, which is how this" he gestured to his face, "happened, and I wound up needing to be fed ambrosia, but the rest of the trip went fine and I got back okay. In addition to my whole thing, the same force that put me in Ancient Greece has caused the guys who played gods and monsters to now have powers associated with their characters. There's your context."

"Right, when this is all over, you are absolutely giving me that full story mister."

"Sure. Now then, for your questions;" Jay turned again and leaned back to rest his aching muscles on the backrest of the couch, "First, I got this injury because I was telling everyone what happened and they got real mad when I got to the thing that went wrong, and some of the ones who had powers got theirs triggered because they were so angry. Anyway, dad managed to summon a couple of godly swords and tried to behead Hermes, but thanks to Athena's Quick Thought, I was able to get over to Hermes and block the swing with my own body."

"You are aware that, in trying to stop your dad from killing Hermes, you put him in a position where he could have killed, oh, I don't know, his own son?"

"Oh..." He hadn't thought of that.

Steven pinched the bridge of his nose, "Continue, please; tell me how you're currently sat up and using your arms and not bleeding on the floor."

"Well, remember I mentioned I'd been fed ambrosia?"

"Uh-huh..."

"Well, for reasons we've not figured out just yet, my blood can heal wounds?" He knew that would definitely get Steven's attention.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Okay, I'll show you." With his free hand, he pulled his dagger from his pocket, "Watch this," bringing the blade up to his face, he made a shallow cut along his cheekbone, letting it bleed a bit as he returned the weapon to the sheath in his pocket.

He heard Steven gasp, "What the-" looking back to the phone screen, Jay saw Steven's face arranged in an expression of intense confusion, "Is that actually real? Is your blood really doing that?"

Jay smiled, "Yup, and that's not even the coolest part." He brought his hand back up to his face, collecting some of the sparkling blood on his finger and wiping it across the wound, wincing as the skin fused back together. "Aaaand..." He licked his thumb and wiped the blood from his face, showing Steven how the wound had vanished, "ta-da~"

His friend's face lit up with joy and wonder, "Oh my god, what? How?" Steven's eyes scanned Jay's face, "there's no filter I can think of that would do that, and that wound definitely looked real," he laughed, "okay, as soon as you get home I'm getting you a blood test. Under the table of course, I'm good friends with some of the guys in phlebotomy, they'd let me, I just have to know what's going on in there, medically."

Jay laughed, "Well, you're taking this very well."

"Of course I am, you seem to be totally okay, and if just the topical application of your blood can heal wounds then I probably don't need to worry about you as much in the future." Steven's smile never faltered, "And with this? Oh, Jorge, you've given me a puzzle here! This is fascinating!" He shook his head, as if trying to focus, "Now then; that lady. What's going on there?"

He looked to where Athena was sitting next to him, smiling at the curious expression on her face as her gaze was fixed on the phone. "Would you like to talk to him?"

The goddess' eyes lit up, "I would love to!"

Jay handed over the phone carefully, "If you see anything popping up at the top of the screen, just ignore it; that's just Janani getting notifications on her social media, she can check those later."

Athena nodded, holding the phone as though it were a baby bird, smiling at Steven, "Hello again, I apologize if I startled you last time."

"Hello," Steven's voice sounded measured, patient, but suspicious. "You said that you knew about me through Jorge?"

"Indeed. I am Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, it is an honour to meet you."

"Hmm... you certainly look strange enough to be a god."

Athena tilted her head in that owlish way that Jay had begun to find very charming, and he heard Steven laugh. "Strange?" She asked, "how do you mean?"

"Well, humans don't blush yellow for one thing," Steven explained, "the pink colour of blush is due to the red of the blood in our veins, blood being red due to its iron content, so the colour of your blush was very telling."

"Iron? Like the material used to make swords?" Jay recognised that look on her face; it was the facinated expression she had worn back in Ancient Greece when he taught her about things from the modern day. "How is that possible?"

"I mean, moleclular biology isn't my area of expertise, but I can tell you why it's there; iron is a very reactive metal, you probably already know that since rust isn't exactly a modern discovery." Jay recognised his tone as well; Steven had shifted into Science Mode, and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying teaching Athena, "The role iron plays in the blood is to react with, and thus carry, oxygen around the body." There was a pause, "Actually, I would be fascinated to learn about the biochemical makeup of godly ichor. I wonder if Jay could convince you to let him take a blood sample for me to look at."

"You know what?" Jay said, smiling, happy that the two were getting on well, "I think I'll let you chat for a while; I'm sure you could probably teach Athena a lot about how best to treat injuries according to modern medicine. In fact, maybe you could help her learn how best to help Odysseus recover from his journey."

"Could you?" Athena asked, excitedly.

"Of course! Just be aware that I'm not a specialist, so I might need to add a collegue or two to the call if your questions about Odysseus stray outside my area of expertise."

Jay smiled, getting up from the couch, picking Hermes up carefully and walking over to Troy, "Could you look after him for a bit? I wanna wash this blood off my back and grab another shirt."

Troy smiled down at the snake, "Sure, if he'll let me." He slowly reached his hand out, and Jay watched with a smile as the snake slithered forward, flicking his tongue cautiously, and slipped under the sleeve of Troy's sweater.

Jay laughed, "Oh yeah, he really trusts you," he turned and walked towards the stairs, "try not to lose him, okay?"

10 notes · View notes