The sky was a soft, stretching shade of grey, the barest hint of the rising sun peaking through the rolling clouds overhead, the mountains dreaming under their woolen blankets of white. The snow swirled; it reminded Zelia of dandelions, with their little puffs of white whirling through the air, distracting her with their elegant beauty. It clung to everything, glittering and glimmering, and when a gust came, it turned into white fog. A grin pulled at her flushed cheeks, and she spun in a wide circle, laughing as the wind swirled around her, kicking up the powdery snow and raising it into the air.
"Upon Olympus’ storm-crowned throne, Zeus spoke in a thunderous, wrathful tone." She practically sang the words up to the sky, relishing in the distant rumble of thunder that echoed back down to her. She’d reread the poem for what felt like a hundred times since opening the letter, over and over, despite not needing to physically look at the page, the tip of her pointer finger tracing the elegant script. "Let me shape them, bold and bright, with minds like flame and hearts of light. They’ll build with stone, they’ll climb the skies, their dreams as vast as eagles rise." The wind kicked up harder around her, a small whirlwind of biting cold that filled Zelia with overwhelming joy. She’d strayed from the initial path, following the small pawprints that dotted the top of the snow, the creature too light to break through the thick glaze of it. She’d found a fox den, the little creatures poking their noses out at her with curiosity lining their furry faces, and she’d taken time to share her jerky with them.
Days of sunlight caressing the top of the snow melted an ice layer, reforming over several days. She could feel the fragile sheet break, a craquelure spreading from her feet with every step. Zee spread her arms wide as she finally stopped spinning, feeling the wind bite at the tips of her frozen fingers, little snowflakes catching in her hair and holding their shape due to the temperature. Weather like this always held an air of winsomeness for her, especially when tromping through scenery that ought to be on a Christmas card. " From shadowed halls and molten floor, rose Hades, Lord of Death and War." She continued onwards, giggling high and bright as wind whispered nonsensically in her ears, following the swirls of it as it led her further into the forest.
Her fingers dragged across every surface she passed, the rough bark of a tree, the dark green pine blanketed by snow, hardy shrubs, and ice-slicked ground. There was a sense of unyielding wonder with every step, as if she’d stepped into the world of Narnia at some point when she hadn’t quite been looking. "You give them fire, but I give fate. Each heartbeat ticks toward my gate. You build them high, but I make them whole. What good is man without his soul?" Zelia’s voice echoed dreamily through the silent forest, a clap of lightning arcing through the grey sky followed by a rumble of thunder that, oddly enough, sounded quite appreciative of the brooding and sad voice she’d used for Hades. "They are not yours! the thunder cried, They breathe beneath the open sky! Let them rejoice in song and feast, let love and war be theirs at least!" More thunder, and she found it fitting, really, that Zeus would advocate for his creations. She’d put it together at some point between putting in for leave with her college and the long plane ride to Greece, that it was more than likely that her father was Zeus.
The idea still felt…outlandish, even for Zee. She focused on the snow for a moment, the wind guiding her on her path enchantingly. It was wild and beautiful at the same time; rebellious and whimsical. The wilderness around her felt like a liminal space, a crossing point between the mundane and the magical. "Hades laughed, in low despair,” her tone flipped from the impression of loud, powerful, and masculine, to that softer and sadder breath, respectful in the gentleness with which so spoke, after all, if Zeus was her father, that made Hades her…uncle? How odd the family tree must be, a tapestry sewn not unlike a quilt, not a single square the same as another. "And yet, they whisper to me in prayer. You give them hope, I give them truth. The mirror time holds up to youth. Their gods may lie, their hearts may roam, but every man comes crawling home." A rumble in the sky, it always told her that the lightning appreciated not only her reading, but the theatrics that she put into the stories she shared. For a moment, standing between two towering pines, Zelia tried to recall where this habit began. The wind spun back toward her, tangible because of the snow, spinning three fast loops before going back from whence it came, and the train of thought trailed away with it as she continued to follow.
"They shall defy you! Zeus proclaimed, With temples, towers, songs unnamed! They’ll name me father—" her voice caught on the syllables, choking for a moment, and the thunder rolled softly over the sky, encouragingly, and so she carried on, bypassing the moment as if it were a glove discarded and forgotten in the snow. "—King of Kings, Their lives uplifted on my wings!" She jumped from one spot to the next, arms extended, wind kicking up, a moment of unnatural suspension in the air, and then Zee landed with an audible crunch upon the snow, her grin still fixed upon her face. Ahead of her, there was the curve of a wall half hidden by a heavy pile of snow along its edges.
"But when the wine runs dry, Hades said, They’ll find their way from gods to me. Let them rise but not forget, their roots are born in ash and debt. For what you raise, I shall receive, the last to hold them as they leave." Her voice was softer now, mindful of where she was as the numb palm of her hand dragged along the side of the wall. Zelia followed the wind still, though she reckoned she’d have found the entrance without its guidance, eventually. It was a comforting thought, a distant part of her registering, even after she left this world her family would still be there no matter what. "And so the world was born of strife, between the spark and end of life." Each word was murmured slowly, eyes trailing along the edges of the snow bank, until she drew closer and closer to the entrance. Snow was falling in fat flurries now; it would hide her steps within the hour, Zelia was quite certain of that.
She stopped in front of the entrance, head tilted to the side with open interest at the gate that awaited her. Was the poem a warning in its own sort of way? It wasn’t what she’d pictured, but the world was a wild and unpredictable place; perhaps this was actually a secret government organization, and she’d be experimented on upon entrance. That would be quite the adventure. She thought idly, pressing her thumb over the little scanner, smiling serenely when the gate clicked open. Zelia stepped through without fanfare, the wind finally leaving her be now that she’d found her way. The back of her heel kicked at the door idly, snapping it shut, before she began to pace forward, a slight skip in her step.
She wandered in a way that felt senseless to any but Zelia herself, following the path for several long minutes, taking in the camp with wide and wonder-filled eyes. Despite the wind's departure, it still swirled around her ankles on occasion, twisting the snow up into soft swirls of beautiful white. The sight of it made her smile turn soft, chest warm with affection that felt misplaced. "One gave will, the other doom, and man walked bravely toward his tomb." Her voice was pulled away by the wind, and behind her, lightning split a spiderweb’s pattern into the sky. She tilted her head back, pausing in her exploration to look upwards.
"With dreams from Zeus and dusk from shades, a creature born of both light… and grave." One last low rumble overhead as she finished the poem, and Zee took a theatrical bow mid-step, twisting around as she did to spin with the remnants of the wind, feeling it tug gently at her hair in a way that could only be characterized as playful. The camp felt quite large, her walk bringing her in further than what she knew to do with, blankets of snow covering cabins and smothering well-worn trails. She hesitated beside a tree that was quite tall, head tilted back as she considered what the snow from the higher branches would taste like. It looked fluffy, not unlike cotton candy, without the hard and slick shell of ice over top. Her grin widened, and she began to climb upwards, boots fitting into notches on the cold tree, numb hands warming against the ragged bark.
She only made it a few branches up, high enough to see over the tops of the closest cabins, scooping up some snow and unceremoniously plopping it into her mouth as she took in the camp around her. It was quaint, calm and quiet as the sun lazily rose; a few cabins had the faintest wisps of smoke curling up their chimneys. The snow tasted vaguely of the pine it had been sitting on, enjoyable in the strangest of ways. "I’m very hungry," she told the wind, because it was her only companion thus far and she’d given all her jerky to the foxes she’d found earlier.
Another scoop of snow went into her mouth before she began to climb back down after a few long moments. The red of her jacket was a bright pop of color against the washed-out scenery, and a few branches down, Zee paused, hooking her legs around the edge of a thinner branch, and allowing gravity to take her downward. She grinned as the camp flipped upside down. She found it compelling to take in the view from all angles, after all, and so Zelia hung there for a moment, smiling and flush with victory from having found the camp in her letter.
The sky was still the pale blue-gray of pre-dawn when Rae stirred, though calling it stirring was generous as she hadn’t slept more than a few hours, her mind refusing to quiet after the night’s events. She’d spent what little rest she managed drifting in and out of shallow dreams where Wes’s voice repeated that same self-deprecating joke about hiding in his cabin, and Trinity’s cool expression hovered just at the edge of her vision. By the time the first light began to creep across her cabin’s windowpanes, painting faint silver lines across the walls, Rae had pretty much given up pretending to sleep.
A profound hush had settled over the camp as she left her cabin, a stillness so complete it felt like a held breath. The air outside was a sharp cold that nipped at her exposed skin, and somewhere in the deep woods, a single crow announced the coming day, its call a lonely sound in the quiet.
Her boots crunched softly as she crossed to the small structure just off the main path to the side of her cabin, the one she’d noticed the night before but hadn’t dared to investigate, given how late it had been. Now, in the thin morning light, the workshop seemed almost to blend into the landscape, its simple lines camouflaged by the frost-kissed pines.
After a moment’s hesitation, Rae’s fingers found the cold metal of the latch and lifted it. The hinges gave a soft groan as she stepped inside, and the world instantly shifted. The space within was immersed in a honeyed, buttery light streaming from the skylights overhead, where the nascent predawn filtered through. And then the scents enveloped her: a comforting aroma of rich cedar, machine oil, fresh sawdust, and worked steel. They were the fragrances of diligence and invention, and they wrapped around her with the immediacy of a long-lost recollection.
All in all, it honestly felt like coming home.
Every surface spoke of meticulous care. The workbenches were worn smooth by use, their wood grain a topography of past projects that Rae was sure had never truly happened; she was the first to make use of the place, after all. Some tools were hung on the walls in an artistic arrangement, sorted by function and size. Pegboards held bins of sorted hardware—washers, screws, bolts—and pinned near a gooseneck lamp was a half-finished sketch, its graphite lines smudged by a touch she recognized instantly. It was her own drafting style or perhaps a flawless facsimile of it. After her recent encounter with her divine progenitor, however, it wouldn’t surprise her if it was the real thing.
Rae ran her fingers along the edge of the nearest table, tracing the tiny imperfections in the grain. Her reflection wavered in the sheen of a freshly polished wrench, and for the first time since arriving and, fortunately and unfortunately, running into her old crush, she felt a spark of calm ignite in her chest.
"Thank you for this," she whispered, unsure if the words would even travel beyond the four walls. The irony was not lost on her either that a sanctuary crafted by an immortal hand could feel more authentically her own than any makeshift workspace she had ever pieced together in the mortal world.
Rae shed her coat, hanging it on a nearby peg, and worked her fingers to restore circulation, the chill of the morning still clinging to her joints despite her naturally warm disposition. The heft of the first tool she picked up was a solid, reassuring presence in her grip. "Alright," she murmured, her attention shifting toward the window and the eventual dawn beyond."Let’s see what we can make of—"
The thought evaporated, unfinished.
Beyond the glass, the world was not softening into the gentle gold of a typical sunrise. Instead, the sky was a chaos of sudden, brilliant filaments, arteries of blue-white energy that pulsed and forked without warning. This was not distant sheet lightning; a shattering report accompanied the flash, a percussive force that vibrated through the very air and made the windowpane shudder. For one frozen instant, the entire landscape was bleached in a spectral glare, every snowdrift, every branch, every wall of her workshop etched in impossible detail before the light was snatched away.
Rae stood motionless, her mind struggling to reconcile the vision."Okay…that’s new," she breathed, the statement a little inadequate if she were being honest. Where was all this even coming from?
She set the tool down with a clink and moved to the window. As she did, the phenomenon repeated itself. Another lance of energy unspooled across the heavens, but this time her eyes caught a detail that stripped the event of any natural explanation. There was a figure at the epicentre of the display, poised at the tree line. A red coat. A young woman, much like herself.
Rae pressed closer, her breath fogging the cold pane. The stranger’s posture was one of open embrace, her body turning in slow pirouettes as if moving to a silent, storm-born rhythm heard only by herself. The snow itself seemed to be in thrall to her, whipping into elegant vortices that caught and refracted the violent light. Though the glass muffled all sound, Rae could see the girl’s lips moving, forming words with a cadence that felt less like speech and more like a recitation.
And with every syllable, the lightning appeared to respond.
A deep frown settled on Rae’s features. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me…"
This was not how she’d envisioned her morning with thunder poetry at dawn. She considered ignoring it, going back to her workbench and pretending this wasn’t happening. Another rumble rolled through the ground beneath her boots, and this time a prickling sensation ran across her skin as if the air itself had been ionized.
She sighed, muttering, "You better not be setting anything on fire out there." Theoretically, she could manage a fire, but the promised training today was a complete unknown. What did one even learn at a demigod boot camp anyway, beyond a mastery of one’s powers? Shaking her head, she retrieved her coat and stepped back out into the biting cold, curiosity ultimately trumping her desire for a simple start.
Her boots made a series of crisp impressions in the snow as she approached, each exhale a plume of condensation. When she finally closed the distance, the scene that greeted her was more bizarre than she could have anticipated. The girl’s face was flushed with exhilaration, split by a wide, unselfconscious grin. And most confounding of all, she was now suspended upside down, utterly indifferent to the frosty conditions.
Alright. How much was she in for here?
Regardless of the many answers that internal question caused, Rae cleared her throat, offering a tentative, small wave. "Uh…morning? Hanging in there?"
The sun slipped through the cloud in bursts, reminding the snow-covered landscape that it was still there, the beginnings of the day creeping along the edges of the sky, gentle as it smothered out what remained of the night. Zelia was transfixed from where she hung, watching the light sprawl across the ground, turning sheets of ice into luminescent crystalline panes of fractured art. She counted her heartbeat, taking measured breaths of air so cold it burned her lungs, feeling the rush of blood to her head. For a long moment, all there was around Zee was the cold, the wind, the snow, and then— her.
"Winter fire," she breathed, blinking at the other girl with a vague sense of surprise, her warm breath visible in the chill. The starkness of her hair stood out so brightly against the fine sheen of sugary frost that blanketed their surroundings. She was bundled up in her jacket but presumably still in her sleep clothes, looking both intrigued and weary. The wind crooned softly in their ears, ruffling locks of amber and curling around cheeks flushed from the cold. Zelia made a vague sound of disapproval in the back of her throat, and the wind twisted away from Rae with mischievous delight, swirling up the loose powder that blanketed the ground several feet away. "I wanted an alternative perspective, everything is quite beguiling when you aren’t right side up."
Rae stared for a beat, half-expecting the girl to resume her silent communion with the clouds. "Winter fire?" she repeated, her expression shifting to one of confusion as she glanced down at her own form. A lingering smear of workshop grime darkened the cuff of her sleeve, but she knew instinctively that wasn’t the reference. Before she could form a question, a capricious breeze swept through, tossing a lock of her auburn hair directly across her eyes. The penny dropped.
"Oh," she said, the sound soft with revelation as she tucked the strand back into place. "You meant my hair."
The weak morning light caught the rich russet tones, her hair colour igniting momentarily against the monochrome backdrop of snow and leaden sky."Yeah. I suppose that’s one way to put it. Winter fire." The phrase felt foreign in her mouth, an unfamiliar label Rae was testing for fit. She wasn’t certain if it chafed or carried a strange, poetic appeal. Her mother had always favoured simpler terms like chestnut or auburn, but her peers throughout her schooling had inevitably landed on more combustible monikers. She’d learned to shrug them off with a forced laugh, a defence mechanism against the juvenile teasing. These days, however, the comparison struck a different, more unnerving chord, especially when the potential for literal combustion was a nearly constant negotiation in the back of her mind because of her demigod status.
"This particular shade does tend to make you stand out," she acknowledged with a wry twist of her lips, conceding to the girl’s observation. "And not always for the best." Yet, there was an undeniable lack of malice in the way the comment had been offered. It felt less like a label and more like a genuine observation, as if this stranger had looked at her and identified a unique, natural phenomenon that others routinely failed to appreciate. That quiet sincerity threw Rae off balance, leaving her with a sudden, unexpected urge to put the hood of her coat up. It was the sensation of being pulled into a picture’s focal point after a lifetime of preferring its frame.
"Right," she continued, clearing her throat. "So, is this inverted meditation your standard practice? Can’t say it’s a technique I know well."
"Not always for the best." Zelia parroted the words, head tilting to the side like a bird. Her gaze slid away from the other girl, toward the snow-crested tree behind her. Light was a soft, golden illumination as it blanketed the branches, creating stretching shadows of contrasting grey against the white. Everything was so beautiful here, it seemed reasonable to become distracted so easily. "In the presence of the sun, no one can see the stars. People tend to be jealous when one's beauty eclipses their own." She slid one hand into her pocket so she would withdraw her letting and fiddle with the paper. The creases where it was folded were worn, the ink over the word Daughter fading from how many times she’d run her fingers over it. Distractedly, Zelia ran the edge of her thumb along the side of the parchment, still feeling relatively victorious about having found the camp from the letter, whilst her brain was rolling over Rae’s words. People still wrote poetry about the sun, just as much as they did for the stars. It often took an artist’s gaze to truly appreciate the things other people would treat negatively. At least, that’s what Zee liked to believe.
Rae found herself at a loss for a moment, caught between the impulse to laugh and the urge to glance away from the pleasant but unexpected words. People tend to be jealous when one’s beauty eclipses their own. That wasn’t the kind of response Rae was used to hearing, certainly not before eight in the morning, and definitely not while standing in the snow in mismatched socks under her boots. Still, the way she’d said it wasn’t arrogant; it was matter-of-fact, like she was quoting an old proverb she really believed.
"Well, that was…something," she finally said, the words leaving her mouth in a cloud of condensed vapour. She watched the tiny crystals gather on her interlocutor’s eyelashes and make a frame of a completely tranquil gaze, wondering if she was looking at a depiction of wisdom or a delightful kind of madness.
Zelia’s eyes fluttered back toward those bright stands of auburn, her smile serene. "The problem with introspection is that it can have no end, though I’d like to believe meditation could be useful to some people, just…not me."
Zelia offered a small shrug, shuffling her feet a little in the snow as the cold began to creep back into her limbs. It was the first time since she’d begun her journey that she allowed her body to actually process just how cold she had become. The stiffness in her fingers ached, cold air biting at her cheeks and nose, a slight shiver rolling down her spine. It was absolutely exhilarating, and victory was singing in her veins because of it all, which gave Zee a stronger sense of confidence than usual.
"Yeah," Rae responded to the mention of introspection with a thoughtful expression on her face. "Introspection’s kind of a trap if you’re not careful. One minute you’re thinking about your day, and the next thing you know, you’re reliving every stupid thing you’ve ever said since you were twelve." She gave a self-deprecating laugh.
Zelia laughed, chest warming, and there was an odd and transfixing hush without the wind; the only noises that cut through the silence were their breathing and the sound made by trapezoidal sections of snow falling from branches overhead. Zee’s mind wandered for a moment as snowflakes fell ever so gently all around them. She couldn’t help but wonder if the snow loved the trees and earth with how gently it caressed the land, covering it up in a snug quilt of soft white as if to tuck everything away into a restful sleep until summer emerged once more. The thought made her lips tilt up ever so slightly more, and she unhooked her legs from the branch, letting gravity do the work for her as she fell, twisting in the air to land on the balls of her feet in a way that spoke of years of practice.
"Good morning," Zelia pushed an irate curl away from her face, frost clinging desperately to the dark strands she could see from her peripheral vision. Snow was catching in the other girl's vibrant hair as well, small dots of white decorating the crown of her head like a winter's celestial constellation. Zee rocked back and forth on her feet for a moment, considering the stranger and her dusting of freckles, blue eyes reminding her of the sea at high tide when a snow storm was lingering on the horizon, each crashing wave grey and ghostly with the tinge of arctic blue to them. "I’m Zelia, did you know red hair and blue eyes are exceptionally rare? Both traits are recessive, which means the estimated global prevalence is around…0.17 percent. " Her hands fiddled with the hem of her jacket for a moment, tugging and smoothing the fabric before she let them drop to her sides once more, expression flickering with a sort of bashful embarrassment.
A short laugh escaped Rae’s lips as she found herself straddling the line between bewilderment and amusement. "Wow," she managed, her mouth curving into an unresisting smile. "That’s… the most poetic introduction and the most statistical one I’ve ever gotten in the same breath."
She adjusted her stance, absently brushing at the snow already dusting her sleeve. The tiny flakes vanished into fleeting, dark constellations against the fabric. "I suppose that officially makes me a statistical anomaly, then," she added, accompanied by a shy lift of her shoulders. Her fingers moved to her hair, dislodging a small shower of melting ice. "But a word of advice? Maybe let a person have some coffee before you hit them with their own rarity percentage."
"I like anomalies," the words were leaving her mouth before she could even think to filter the thought, but there wasn’t an ounce of embarrassment in her tone or face, smile fixed on her face genuine and open. "Sorry, I ramble when I’m nervous." After all, in her entire life, Zelia had made a total of five friends, and so far she had the impression she wasn’t off to such a great start.
Rae couldn’t help the fact that Zelia’s words pulled another small laugh from her. There was something oddly endearing about how unfiltered she was, like every thought that passed through her mind simply refused to stay there. Rae could almost admire it.
"Hey, I think anomaly might be the nicest way anyone’s called me weird," she said, the teasing in her tone mellowing into reassurance. "Don’t apologize for that, by the way. Rambling’s kind of my native language, too. I think it’s a side effect of having a brain that never shuts up."
Zelia’s laughter bubbled out before she could stop it, a quiet, breathy sound that misted in the cold air between them. The tension that had been clinging to her shoulders melted just a little more with Rae’s words. She hadn’t realized how tightly she’d been holding herself until now.
"My brain is a bit like a radio stuck between stations. Lots of noise, occasionally music." For a moment, she looked down at the snow, tracing lazy shapes with the toe of her boot. The flakes were catching on her lashes, melting into tiny drops that she could almost pretend were starlight instead of frost. When she looked back up, her eyes were bright, earnest.
"Weird is a compliment anyway, to me anyways" she said lightly, though there was a quiet truth beneath the humor. "Normal’s never made the world more interesting." Her smile softened, a little uncertain but full of warmth. "I’m glad you don’t mind my rambling. It’s nice not to feel like I have to hold my breath while I talk."
A gust of wind loosened a crimson strand of hair, and Rae brushed it back from her face. Her fingers paused at her temple, a silent acknowledgment of the unusual sensation of being truly perceived without having to contort herself into something smaller. Zelia’s final confession—It’s nice not to feel like I have to hold my breath while I talk—sank deep, finding a home in a part of Rae that understood that particular exhaustion all too well. A look of recognition, soft and unguarded, passed over her features. In that bit of recognition, Rae also realized how much distance there really was between who she’d been and who she was now: the girl who survived cafeteria politics by making herself a shadow in the corner when she could versus the woman standing outside a workshop at dawn, hair full of snow and spine unbowed, not apologizing for taking up space.
"I know that feeling exactly," she replied, her voice lowering into a more intimate register. "Holding your breath so your presence doesn’t become an inconvenience and to avoid being seen as…too much. I get it…." A knowing smile touched her lips. "Consider that a non-issue with me. And you know what? I’ll make you a deal. If you start to ramble, I’ll keep up with you. Thought for thought. Cool with you?"
The promise was unexpected, but it felt like the first real exhale of air after holding her breath for far too long. She tilted her head slightly, her eyes glinting with quiet amusement, though there was a depth in them, a sort of quiet relief that couldn’t be masked. For a moment, she simply stood there, boots pressed against the cold earth, watching Rae with a quiet intensity. The snowflakes had started to settle more densely in her hair, catching the light in tiny prisms, and Zelia was struck by how still Rae was, how entirely present. She felt her chest expand, her breath catching just slightly. There was something in that, something she hadn’t known she was waiting for.
"I think," Zelia began, her voice softer now, more contemplative, "that I’ve been waiting for someone who gets it. I think the only person who ever really tolerated my rambling was my mom." She swallowed, face twisting into something that was wrought with pain for a second, her fingers nervously tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, but there was no self-consciousness in the motion, just the ease of someone not afraid to show a little bit of themselves. Rae had made space for her. Without question.
"So yeah," Zelia said with a grin that felt lighter now, the warmth in her chest spreading into her words. Painful memories were easy to push aside in the face of the prospect of someone who understood her."It’s cool with me, thank you."
"They are," Rae agreed, a little nostalgic. "They have a way of giving you the one piece of advice that sticks forever. Mine always told me not to sit around hoping for a miracle and that if I needed something, I could always build it with my own two hands."
An affectionate smile graced Rae’s features as the memory solidified. "She worked two jobs most of my life, and she’d come home dead tired a lot but still find a way to check in on whatever disaster I’d left on our kitchen table. Never told me to stop taking things apart either. Just… asked that I put them back together again before dinner."
Rae’s gaze dropped to her own hands, fidgeting slightly. "I think that’s where it started, honestly. This whole need to fix things. Machines made sense. People didn’t. But Mom? She always found a way to make both work, even when she shouldn’t have had to." At least one of those, Rae felt, should have been held up by her divine father.
She looked up, meeting Zelia’s eyes directly, the personal history receding to make room for the present moment."But you know…you’re welcome and all."
Zelia laughed, and it felt strange to laugh so easily, as if she hadn’t spent years bracing herself for the weight of a world that refused to slow down. Rae’s presence made that easier somehow, steady, grounded, like lightning finding a safe place to strike. "My mom used to say," she began softly, almost as if speaking to herself, "that there’s no such thing as coincidence, only the universe trying to tell you a story." A small, wistful smile tugged at her lips. "She always found a way to make everything sound like poetry— even burnt toast or power outages, most of which I caused."
Her voice trailed off for a moment, lost to the hush of falling snow. She blinked, once, twice, the motion quick and deliberate, and for a heartbeat her expression faltered, the smile turning brittle, the light in her eyes flickering like a candle caught in a draft. She ducked her head slightly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, the motion gentle, reverent, almost like she was afraid to disturb the memory.
"She’d probably have loved it here," Zelia continued, voice steadier now. "We’re like myths walking around like they’ve just stepped out of a dream. She was the one that told me I had lightning in my veins, and not to be scared of it." Her laugh now was soft, airy, full of fondness that almost, but not quite, covered the ache beneath it.
The sky rumbled faintly in the distance, a faraway growl of thunder rolling over the mountains, and the corners of Zelia’s mouth curved upward again. She looked toward the sound instinctively, as though she were listening for something only she could hear, head tilted ever so slightly. When she turned back to Rae, her expression had gentled into something warm and quietly luminous.
Rae glanced toward the rumbling sky, then back. "What did the thunder say that time?"
"I’m still learning its language," she admitted, biting her lip as a sharp wave of anxiety rolled through her. Zelia had always believed thunder was the world’s oldest language. Not a warning, not a threat, just the sky remembering how to speak. A deep, bone-heavy murmur that rolled across the earth as if the heavens themselves were clearing their throat after too long a silence. Others heard danger in it. She heard honesty.
Thunder did not pretend.
It didn’t mask its unrest with pleasantries or restraint. When the pressure grew too great, when the weight inside the clouds became unbearable, the sky simply… split itself open. It bared its turmoil, let the sound loose, and did not apologize for the force of its own truth.
Zelia admired that.
The storm never feared being too much. It never softened itself for the comfort of bystanders. It spoke in the only voice it had—a raw, resonant declaration that something within it had changed. Sometimes she wondered what it would feel like to do the same. To release the held-in weight of unspoken things, to let her own thunder roll across the quiet places inside her without worrying who flinched or stared. To be heard in a way that did not require permission.
Thunder was not cruel. It was simply unavoidable.
And in her quieter moments, she wished she could be too.
Zee glanced down at the ground, snow curled around the edges of her boots, tracks from the night before half covered with the fresh powder. They intersected, going in all different directions, leaving the impression that the camp was quite full, unless it was only a few people with very busy schedules. She took a steadying breath and glanced back up at the other girl through her lashes. "It’s very pretty here, I feel as if I’ve stepped out of a wardrobe into the world of Narnia. Though I haven’t met any talkative animals yet, just a small den of foxes earlier. I shared the beef jerky I’d bought at the airport with them. They were very cute, and— sorry, what was your name?"
The darkening of her cheeks had very little to do with the crispness of the air, and everything to do with being very aware of how odd other people found her. Her mom used to quote Alice in Wonderland to her when she was young and easily discouraged after long days of teasing and ridicule; it was easier to try and pretend that only the best of people were mad, but she knew not everyone adhered to such opinions. To normal people, someone like Zelia was weird. She wore her optimism on her sleeve, though, a proud badge of honor even in the bleakest of conditions, and thus she’d privately latched onto the idea that in a camp full of other people like her, she wouldn’t seem quite so strange.
Her grandma would say to not be too hopeful, because it was all the more crushing when you were proven wrong, but Zee clung to the idea of hope like it was a fallen star she’d caught with her bare hands; it required a tentative and tender passion to clutch it just so, too delicate for anything more fierce. She supposed hope could be akin to a snowflake, so fragile but so arrestingly beautiful. Her train of thought derailed from there, because the girl in front of her could be described as beautiful, reminding Zelia of Patupaiarehe from Māori folklore with her fair skin and red hair. They typically lived in forests and mountains as well, though it was the lack of flute song that convinced her this was an ordinary girl and not some enchanting and ethereal being.
Learning that Greek mythology was real filled Zee with so many questions, and there was no one who could answer her properly. Did it mean other historical mythologies and folklore were real as well? She bit her lip, pushing down the urge to ask with a valiant sort of effort. Her excitement could be stifled for the time being, because for the very first time in quite a long time, Zelia was presented with a prospect that was often foreign to her. The thought was even more fragile and indefinite than hope was, but the idea that she could make a friend here was a catalyst for years and years of optimism bottled up in her chest, set free at last. She’d make at least one friend and be happy with just that one if it was all she could manage.
A response rose to Rae’s lips, one that was not the socially acceptable kind but an unbidden, authentic reaction that felt disarming in its simplicity.
"Hey, don’t apologize. I really was just kidding before," she said, her voice gentler than she’d intended. "You’re speaking to someone who holds full-volume conversations with inanimate objects when a project isn’t going right. So, consider this a judgment-free zone."
A genuine warmth spread through her at the story of the foxes. "You gave them your airport jerky?" she asked, her head tilting slightly. "That’s… pretty thoughtful. I’m not sure many people would have even noticed them, let alone shared their last good snack." Her gaze dropped to the fine layer of powder clinging to Zelia’s boots before meeting her earnest, slightly anxious eyes. "Sounds like they had a much better welcome than most of us probably get around here." The comparison might have been a bit of a low bar on her part, yet it was one she couldn’t help but trip over.
Zelia’s direct question, however, caught Rae off guard, highlighting the social oversight. "Oh, right. Introductions." An imperceptible flush touched her cheeks. "I’m Rae. Rae Kowalewski. But just Rae is fine for everyone, honestly."
The line of tension that had collected in the delicate slope of her shoulders drained away with a surprising amount of ease at the softness in the other girl’s voice, her smile rising the corners of her lips until each cheek dimpled. So many questions lifted up within her at the mention of speaking to inanimate objects and projects, and she had to temper her sudden and violent surge of curiosity, reminding herself of the story of Icarus. It wouldn’t do to fly so close to the sun before proper introductions had even been formed, lest her figurative wax wings begin to melt. Zelia knew that there was such a thing as being too curious, and that it often deterred and off put others, people tended to not like people who were too enthusiastic.
"I followed the paw prints in the snow," she admitted, feeling oddly shy about this fact, running her pointer finger over one of the creases in the letter helped soothe the sudden swelling of emotion. "Lovely to meet you, Rae. I’m Zelia Darling, yes like Wendy Darling from Peter Pan, I know it sounds ridiculous." The way she said the last part was almost rehearsed, as if she was familiar with the reactions her last name warranted and wanted to skip an interaction that commonly had an unfavorable turn. Zee shifted, the toe of her boot pressing an indent into the snow in front of her.
"Zelia is fine, but…my friends call me Zee." She didn’t look at Rae when she said this, blaming the color of her cheeks on the cold and not giving her embarrassment the oxygen it needed to breathe and therefore live. Instead, she forged onwards with little delicacy, eyes tracing the tracks in the snow at their feet— were those pawprints? Right, focus.
Rae’s lips curved into a more curious smile as she gestured vaguely toward the sky. "So, was that your handiwork earlier? The whole… atmospheric light show?"
"It was, did I wake you up? I’m sorry, I got lost in it." Zelia let her eyes trail back upwards to connect with the solid blue of Rae’s gaze, lifting her letter a little so the other girl could see it clearly. "I was reading the poem that was in my letter, the lightning likes when I read to it." While she was perfectly aware that this was a bizarre statement, Zee knew in her heart that it was true. She’d been reading to the sky for as long as she could remember, and even on days clear and full of sunshine, there would be a distant rumble in response. She’d latched onto it, feeling safer each time a flash of lightning had split the sky growing up.
Rae blinked slowly, processing what she’d just heard. For a moment, her mind scrambled to decide whether Zelia was joking or if she had genuinely just confessed to performing interpretive poetry for lightning. The absolute lack of guile in her delivery, however, left little room for doubt.
"...The lightning likes when you read to it," Rae repeated, not quite a question but not disbelief either. "I can honestly say I’ve never heard that before." She leaned lightly against the nearest fencepost, a small smile creeping across her lips despite herself. The girl’s words were strange, sure, but there was something about the way she said them, like it wasn’t meant to impress or explain. It just was.
"You didn’t wake me by the way," Rae felt the need to clarify. "I was already awake. Sleep and I aren’t on the best of terms since getting here." Her attention drifted to the letter in Zelia’s hand. The parchment looked well-handled, like something read so often that it had memorized the reader as much as the reader had memorized it.
"That poem sounds like it means a lot to you," Rae observed, her voice gentler now. "If I’m guessing right, you’re a Zeus kid, yeah? Mine’s Hephaestus."
For a second, she let herself just breathe— just be —and in that space, the snow around Zelia seemed to take on a life of its own. The light hit the snow at a perfect angle, making the tiny crystals shimmer like a blanket of diamonds spread over the earth. A few flakes drifted down in a soft cascade, catching the light as they twirled lazily through the crisp morning air.
Zee’s eyes followed one of them as it floated past her cheek, drawn to the way it danced in the wind, as if it had a secret only it knew. She reached up, fingers brushing her hair back behind her ear once more when the wind ruffled that same irate curl free, trying to focus on what Rae had said, but the snow had captured her attention, like a gentle call to curiosity that was impossible to ignore.
How could something so tiny… She blinked again, pulling herself out of the trance just in time to catch Rae’s words again. "Zeus kid," she repeated quietly to herself, as if the words were an unfamiliar melody she needed to remember. A small, thoughtful hum escaped her lips as she met Rae’s gaze. "Well, yes," she admitted, her voice quiet and almost hesitant, as if testing the waters. "I am a Zeus kid, that’s what the letter implied, at least. I like to believe lightning doesn’t just strike, it chooses. I just keep wondering why it's only just…chosen me."
She supposed trying to find sense in the whims of Gods was illogical, though Zelia did many things that could be considered as such. It was the sort of thing that could drive a man crazy, though, and she didn’t reckon going genuinely insane would be a very pleasant experience. It would be easy to lose herself puzzling over it, to wonder why her father had taken so long to find her, claim her. It would be even easier to resent him for it all, for allowing her to go through a childhood without the father figure she so desperately yearned for. And yet, despite it all, she’d chosen to do the significantly harder thing, and forgive him, to move on from the dizzying questions. He was her father; it was as simple as that.
A look of deep, shared comprehension softened Rae’s features.
"Hephaestus isn’t exactly the poster god for timely Hallmark moments either, " she said, her tone laced with familiarity that spoke of personal experience. "Either way, you’re here now. If lightning chose you today, then today is the first day it has to answer for that. You get to decide what you do with it." As if to punctuate her words, a low, disgruntled gurgle came from her stomach. The timing was almost comedic. Rae froze for half a second before sighing through her nose and offering a sheepish laugh. "...And apparently I’m hungry." She brought a hand to the nape of her neck, a faint warmth rising to her cheeks. "Sorry. I haven’t eaten yet. Got distracted by the new workspace and forgot I’m still a mortal being who requires food." Her hand gestured vaguely in the direction of the cabins. "I don’t really know what the dining sitch is like here, but I’m down to find out. You’re welcome to come along, if you’d like. You could tell me more about that letter."
"Upon Olympus’ storm-crowned throne, Zeus spoke in a thunderous, wrathful tone." She practically sang the words up to the sky, relishing in the distant rumble of thunder that echoed back down to her. She’d reread the poem for what felt like a hundred times since opening the letter, over and over, despite not needing to physically look at the page, the tip of her pointer finger tracing the elegant script. "Let me shape them, bold and bright, with minds like flame and hearts of light. They’ll build with stone, they’ll climb the skies, their dreams as vast as eagles rise." The wind kicked up harder around her, a small whirlwind of biting cold that filled Zelia with overwhelming joy. She’d strayed from the initial path, following the small pawprints that dotted the top of the snow, the creature too light to break through the thick glaze of it. She’d found a fox den, the little creatures poking their noses out at her with curiosity lining their furry faces, and she’d taken time to share her jerky with them.
Days of sunlight caressing the top of the snow melted an ice layer, reforming over several days. She could feel the fragile sheet break, a craquelure spreading from her feet with every step. Zee spread her arms wide as she finally stopped spinning, feeling the wind bite at the tips of her frozen fingers, little snowflakes catching in her hair and holding their shape due to the temperature. Weather like this always held an air of winsomeness for her, especially when tromping through scenery that ought to be on a Christmas card. " From shadowed halls and molten floor, rose Hades, Lord of Death and War." She continued onwards, giggling high and bright as wind whispered nonsensically in her ears, following the swirls of it as it led her further into the forest.
Her fingers dragged across every surface she passed, the rough bark of a tree, the dark green pine blanketed by snow, hardy shrubs, and ice-slicked ground. There was a sense of unyielding wonder with every step, as if she’d stepped into the world of Narnia at some point when she hadn’t quite been looking. "You give them fire, but I give fate. Each heartbeat ticks toward my gate. You build them high, but I make them whole. What good is man without his soul?" Zelia’s voice echoed dreamily through the silent forest, a clap of lightning arcing through the grey sky followed by a rumble of thunder that, oddly enough, sounded quite appreciative of the brooding and sad voice she’d used for Hades. "They are not yours! the thunder cried, They breathe beneath the open sky! Let them rejoice in song and feast, let love and war be theirs at least!" More thunder, and she found it fitting, really, that Zeus would advocate for his creations. She’d put it together at some point between putting in for leave with her college and the long plane ride to Greece, that it was more than likely that her father was Zeus.
The idea still felt…outlandish, even for Zee. She focused on the snow for a moment, the wind guiding her on her path enchantingly. It was wild and beautiful at the same time; rebellious and whimsical. The wilderness around her felt like a liminal space, a crossing point between the mundane and the magical. "Hades laughed, in low despair,” her tone flipped from the impression of loud, powerful, and masculine, to that softer and sadder breath, respectful in the gentleness with which so spoke, after all, if Zeus was her father, that made Hades her…uncle? How odd the family tree must be, a tapestry sewn not unlike a quilt, not a single square the same as another. "And yet, they whisper to me in prayer. You give them hope, I give them truth. The mirror time holds up to youth. Their gods may lie, their hearts may roam, but every man comes crawling home." A rumble in the sky, it always told her that the lightning appreciated not only her reading, but the theatrics that she put into the stories she shared. For a moment, standing between two towering pines, Zelia tried to recall where this habit began. The wind spun back toward her, tangible because of the snow, spinning three fast loops before going back from whence it came, and the train of thought trailed away with it as she continued to follow.
"They shall defy you! Zeus proclaimed, With temples, towers, songs unnamed! They’ll name me father—" her voice caught on the syllables, choking for a moment, and the thunder rolled softly over the sky, encouragingly, and so she carried on, bypassing the moment as if it were a glove discarded and forgotten in the snow. "—King of Kings, Their lives uplifted on my wings!" She jumped from one spot to the next, arms extended, wind kicking up, a moment of unnatural suspension in the air, and then Zee landed with an audible crunch upon the snow, her grin still fixed upon her face. Ahead of her, there was the curve of a wall half hidden by a heavy pile of snow along its edges.
"But when the wine runs dry, Hades said, They’ll find their way from gods to me. Let them rise but not forget, their roots are born in ash and debt. For what you raise, I shall receive, the last to hold them as they leave." Her voice was softer now, mindful of where she was as the numb palm of her hand dragged along the side of the wall. Zelia followed the wind still, though she reckoned she’d have found the entrance without its guidance, eventually. It was a comforting thought, a distant part of her registering, even after she left this world her family would still be there no matter what. "And so the world was born of strife, between the spark and end of life." Each word was murmured slowly, eyes trailing along the edges of the snow bank, until she drew closer and closer to the entrance. Snow was falling in fat flurries now; it would hide her steps within the hour, Zelia was quite certain of that.
She stopped in front of the entrance, head tilted to the side with open interest at the gate that awaited her. Was the poem a warning in its own sort of way? It wasn’t what she’d pictured, but the world was a wild and unpredictable place; perhaps this was actually a secret government organization, and she’d be experimented on upon entrance. That would be quite the adventure. She thought idly, pressing her thumb over the little scanner, smiling serenely when the gate clicked open. Zelia stepped through without fanfare, the wind finally leaving her be now that she’d found her way. The back of her heel kicked at the door idly, snapping it shut, before she began to pace forward, a slight skip in her step.
She wandered in a way that felt senseless to any but Zelia herself, following the path for several long minutes, taking in the camp with wide and wonder-filled eyes. Despite the wind's departure, it still swirled around her ankles on occasion, twisting the snow up into soft swirls of beautiful white. The sight of it made her smile turn soft, chest warm with affection that felt misplaced. "One gave will, the other doom, and man walked bravely toward his tomb." Her voice was pulled away by the wind, and behind her, lightning split a spiderweb’s pattern into the sky. She tilted her head back, pausing in her exploration to look upwards.
"With dreams from Zeus and dusk from shades, a creature born of both light… and grave." One last low rumble overhead as she finished the poem, and Zee took a theatrical bow mid-step, twisting around as she did to spin with the remnants of the wind, feeling it tug gently at her hair in a way that could only be characterized as playful. The camp felt quite large, her walk bringing her in further than what she knew to do with, blankets of snow covering cabins and smothering well-worn trails. She hesitated beside a tree that was quite tall, head tilted back as she considered what the snow from the higher branches would taste like. It looked fluffy, not unlike cotton candy, without the hard and slick shell of ice over top. Her grin widened, and she began to climb upwards, boots fitting into notches on the cold tree, numb hands warming against the ragged bark.
She only made it a few branches up, high enough to see over the tops of the closest cabins, scooping up some snow and unceremoniously plopping it into her mouth as she took in the camp around her. It was quaint, calm and quiet as the sun lazily rose; a few cabins had the faintest wisps of smoke curling up their chimneys. The snow tasted vaguely of the pine it had been sitting on, enjoyable in the strangest of ways. "I’m very hungry," she told the wind, because it was her only companion thus far and she’d given all her jerky to the foxes she’d found earlier.
Another scoop of snow went into her mouth before she began to climb back down after a few long moments. The red of her jacket was a bright pop of color against the washed-out scenery, and a few branches down, Zee paused, hooking her legs around the edge of a thinner branch, and allowing gravity to take her downward. She grinned as the camp flipped upside down. She found it compelling to take in the view from all angles, after all, and so Zelia hung there for a moment, smiling and flush with victory from having found the camp in her letter.
The sky was still the pale blue-gray of pre-dawn when Rae stirred, though calling it stirring was generous as she hadn’t slept more than a few hours, her mind refusing to quiet after the night’s events. She’d spent what little rest she managed drifting in and out of shallow dreams where Wes’s voice repeated that same self-deprecating joke about hiding in his cabin, and Trinity’s cool expression hovered just at the edge of her vision. By the time the first light began to creep across her cabin’s windowpanes, painting faint silver lines across the walls, Rae had pretty much given up pretending to sleep.
A profound hush had settled over the camp as she left her cabin, a stillness so complete it felt like a held breath. The air outside was a sharp cold that nipped at her exposed skin, and somewhere in the deep woods, a single crow announced the coming day, its call a lonely sound in the quiet.
Her boots crunched softly as she crossed to the small structure just off the main path to the side of her cabin, the one she’d noticed the night before but hadn’t dared to investigate, given how late it had been. Now, in the thin morning light, the workshop seemed almost to blend into the landscape, its simple lines camouflaged by the frost-kissed pines.
After a moment’s hesitation, Rae’s fingers found the cold metal of the latch and lifted it. The hinges gave a soft groan as she stepped inside, and the world instantly shifted. The space within was immersed in a honeyed, buttery light streaming from the skylights overhead, where the nascent predawn filtered through. And then the scents enveloped her: a comforting aroma of rich cedar, machine oil, fresh sawdust, and worked steel. They were the fragrances of diligence and invention, and they wrapped around her with the immediacy of a long-lost recollection.
All in all, it honestly felt like coming home.
Every surface spoke of meticulous care. The workbenches were worn smooth by use, their wood grain a topography of past projects that Rae was sure had never truly happened; she was the first to make use of the place, after all. Some tools were hung on the walls in an artistic arrangement, sorted by function and size. Pegboards held bins of sorted hardware—washers, screws, bolts—and pinned near a gooseneck lamp was a half-finished sketch, its graphite lines smudged by a touch she recognized instantly. It was her own drafting style or perhaps a flawless facsimile of it. After her recent encounter with her divine progenitor, however, it wouldn’t surprise her if it was the real thing.
Rae ran her fingers along the edge of the nearest table, tracing the tiny imperfections in the grain. Her reflection wavered in the sheen of a freshly polished wrench, and for the first time since arriving and, fortunately and unfortunately, running into her old crush, she felt a spark of calm ignite in her chest.
"Thank you for this," she whispered, unsure if the words would even travel beyond the four walls. The irony was not lost on her either that a sanctuary crafted by an immortal hand could feel more authentically her own than any makeshift workspace she had ever pieced together in the mortal world.
Rae shed her coat, hanging it on a nearby peg, and worked her fingers to restore circulation, the chill of the morning still clinging to her joints despite her naturally warm disposition. The heft of the first tool she picked up was a solid, reassuring presence in her grip. "Alright," she murmured, her attention shifting toward the window and the eventual dawn beyond."Let’s see what we can make of—"
The thought evaporated, unfinished.
Beyond the glass, the world was not softening into the gentle gold of a typical sunrise. Instead, the sky was a chaos of sudden, brilliant filaments, arteries of blue-white energy that pulsed and forked without warning. This was not distant sheet lightning; a shattering report accompanied the flash, a percussive force that vibrated through the very air and made the windowpane shudder. For one frozen instant, the entire landscape was bleached in a spectral glare, every snowdrift, every branch, every wall of her workshop etched in impossible detail before the light was snatched away.
Rae stood motionless, her mind struggling to reconcile the vision."Okay…that’s new," she breathed, the statement a little inadequate if she were being honest. Where was all this even coming from?
She set the tool down with a clink and moved to the window. As she did, the phenomenon repeated itself. Another lance of energy unspooled across the heavens, but this time her eyes caught a detail that stripped the event of any natural explanation. There was a figure at the epicentre of the display, poised at the tree line. A red coat. A young woman, much like herself.
Rae pressed closer, her breath fogging the cold pane. The stranger’s posture was one of open embrace, her body turning in slow pirouettes as if moving to a silent, storm-born rhythm heard only by herself. The snow itself seemed to be in thrall to her, whipping into elegant vortices that caught and refracted the violent light. Though the glass muffled all sound, Rae could see the girl’s lips moving, forming words with a cadence that felt less like speech and more like a recitation.
And with every syllable, the lightning appeared to respond.
A deep frown settled on Rae’s features. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me…"
This was not how she’d envisioned her morning with thunder poetry at dawn. She considered ignoring it, going back to her workbench and pretending this wasn’t happening. Another rumble rolled through the ground beneath her boots, and this time a prickling sensation ran across her skin as if the air itself had been ionized.
She sighed, muttering, "You better not be setting anything on fire out there." Theoretically, she could manage a fire, but the promised training today was a complete unknown. What did one even learn at a demigod boot camp anyway, beyond a mastery of one’s powers? Shaking her head, she retrieved her coat and stepped back out into the biting cold, curiosity ultimately trumping her desire for a simple start.
Her boots made a series of crisp impressions in the snow as she approached, each exhale a plume of condensation. When she finally closed the distance, the scene that greeted her was more bizarre than she could have anticipated. The girl’s face was flushed with exhilaration, split by a wide, unselfconscious grin. And most confounding of all, she was now suspended upside down, utterly indifferent to the frosty conditions.
Alright. How much was she in for here?
Regardless of the many answers that internal question caused, Rae cleared her throat, offering a tentative, small wave. "Uh…morning? Hanging in there?"
The sun slipped through the cloud in bursts, reminding the snow-covered landscape that it was still there, the beginnings of the day creeping along the edges of the sky, gentle as it smothered out what remained of the night. Zelia was transfixed from where she hung, watching the light sprawl across the ground, turning sheets of ice into luminescent crystalline panes of fractured art. She counted her heartbeat, taking measured breaths of air so cold it burned her lungs, feeling the rush of blood to her head. For a long moment, all there was around Zee was the cold, the wind, the snow, and then— her.
"Winter fire," she breathed, blinking at the other girl with a vague sense of surprise, her warm breath visible in the chill. The starkness of her hair stood out so brightly against the fine sheen of sugary frost that blanketed their surroundings. She was bundled up in her jacket but presumably still in her sleep clothes, looking both intrigued and weary. The wind crooned softly in their ears, ruffling locks of amber and curling around cheeks flushed from the cold. Zelia made a vague sound of disapproval in the back of her throat, and the wind twisted away from Rae with mischievous delight, swirling up the loose powder that blanketed the ground several feet away. "I wanted an alternative perspective, everything is quite beguiling when you aren’t right side up."
Rae stared for a beat, half-expecting the girl to resume her silent communion with the clouds. "Winter fire?" she repeated, her expression shifting to one of confusion as she glanced down at her own form. A lingering smear of workshop grime darkened the cuff of her sleeve, but she knew instinctively that wasn’t the reference. Before she could form a question, a capricious breeze swept through, tossing a lock of her auburn hair directly across her eyes. The penny dropped.
"Oh," she said, the sound soft with revelation as she tucked the strand back into place. "You meant my hair."
The weak morning light caught the rich russet tones, her hair colour igniting momentarily against the monochrome backdrop of snow and leaden sky."Yeah. I suppose that’s one way to put it. Winter fire." The phrase felt foreign in her mouth, an unfamiliar label Rae was testing for fit. She wasn’t certain if it chafed or carried a strange, poetic appeal. Her mother had always favoured simpler terms like chestnut or auburn, but her peers throughout her schooling had inevitably landed on more combustible monikers. She’d learned to shrug them off with a forced laugh, a defence mechanism against the juvenile teasing. These days, however, the comparison struck a different, more unnerving chord, especially when the potential for literal combustion was a nearly constant negotiation in the back of her mind because of her demigod status.
"This particular shade does tend to make you stand out," she acknowledged with a wry twist of her lips, conceding to the girl’s observation. "And not always for the best." Yet, there was an undeniable lack of malice in the way the comment had been offered. It felt less like a label and more like a genuine observation, as if this stranger had looked at her and identified a unique, natural phenomenon that others routinely failed to appreciate. That quiet sincerity threw Rae off balance, leaving her with a sudden, unexpected urge to put the hood of her coat up. It was the sensation of being pulled into a picture’s focal point after a lifetime of preferring its frame.
"Right," she continued, clearing her throat. "So, is this inverted meditation your standard practice? Can’t say it’s a technique I know well."
"Not always for the best." Zelia parroted the words, head tilting to the side like a bird. Her gaze slid away from the other girl, toward the snow-crested tree behind her. Light was a soft, golden illumination as it blanketed the branches, creating stretching shadows of contrasting grey against the white. Everything was so beautiful here, it seemed reasonable to become distracted so easily. "In the presence of the sun, no one can see the stars. People tend to be jealous when one's beauty eclipses their own." She slid one hand into her pocket so she would withdraw her letting and fiddle with the paper. The creases where it was folded were worn, the ink over the word Daughter fading from how many times she’d run her fingers over it. Distractedly, Zelia ran the edge of her thumb along the side of the parchment, still feeling relatively victorious about having found the camp from the letter, whilst her brain was rolling over Rae’s words. People still wrote poetry about the sun, just as much as they did for the stars. It often took an artist’s gaze to truly appreciate the things other people would treat negatively. At least, that’s what Zee liked to believe.
Rae found herself at a loss for a moment, caught between the impulse to laugh and the urge to glance away from the pleasant but unexpected words. People tend to be jealous when one’s beauty eclipses their own. That wasn’t the kind of response Rae was used to hearing, certainly not before eight in the morning, and definitely not while standing in the snow in mismatched socks under her boots. Still, the way she’d said it wasn’t arrogant; it was matter-of-fact, like she was quoting an old proverb she really believed.
"Well, that was…something," she finally said, the words leaving her mouth in a cloud of condensed vapour. She watched the tiny crystals gather on her interlocutor’s eyelashes and make a frame of a completely tranquil gaze, wondering if she was looking at a depiction of wisdom or a delightful kind of madness.
Zelia’s eyes fluttered back toward those bright stands of auburn, her smile serene. "The problem with introspection is that it can have no end, though I’d like to believe meditation could be useful to some people, just…not me."
Zelia offered a small shrug, shuffling her feet a little in the snow as the cold began to creep back into her limbs. It was the first time since she’d begun her journey that she allowed her body to actually process just how cold she had become. The stiffness in her fingers ached, cold air biting at her cheeks and nose, a slight shiver rolling down her spine. It was absolutely exhilarating, and victory was singing in her veins because of it all, which gave Zee a stronger sense of confidence than usual.
"Yeah," Rae responded to the mention of introspection with a thoughtful expression on her face. "Introspection’s kind of a trap if you’re not careful. One minute you’re thinking about your day, and the next thing you know, you’re reliving every stupid thing you’ve ever said since you were twelve." She gave a self-deprecating laugh.
Zelia laughed, chest warming, and there was an odd and transfixing hush without the wind; the only noises that cut through the silence were their breathing and the sound made by trapezoidal sections of snow falling from branches overhead. Zee’s mind wandered for a moment as snowflakes fell ever so gently all around them. She couldn’t help but wonder if the snow loved the trees and earth with how gently it caressed the land, covering it up in a snug quilt of soft white as if to tuck everything away into a restful sleep until summer emerged once more. The thought made her lips tilt up ever so slightly more, and she unhooked her legs from the branch, letting gravity do the work for her as she fell, twisting in the air to land on the balls of her feet in a way that spoke of years of practice.
"Good morning," Zelia pushed an irate curl away from her face, frost clinging desperately to the dark strands she could see from her peripheral vision. Snow was catching in the other girl's vibrant hair as well, small dots of white decorating the crown of her head like a winter's celestial constellation. Zee rocked back and forth on her feet for a moment, considering the stranger and her dusting of freckles, blue eyes reminding her of the sea at high tide when a snow storm was lingering on the horizon, each crashing wave grey and ghostly with the tinge of arctic blue to them. "I’m Zelia, did you know red hair and blue eyes are exceptionally rare? Both traits are recessive, which means the estimated global prevalence is around…0.17 percent. " Her hands fiddled with the hem of her jacket for a moment, tugging and smoothing the fabric before she let them drop to her sides once more, expression flickering with a sort of bashful embarrassment.
A short laugh escaped Rae’s lips as she found herself straddling the line between bewilderment and amusement. "Wow," she managed, her mouth curving into an unresisting smile. "That’s… the most poetic introduction and the most statistical one I’ve ever gotten in the same breath."
She adjusted her stance, absently brushing at the snow already dusting her sleeve. The tiny flakes vanished into fleeting, dark constellations against the fabric. "I suppose that officially makes me a statistical anomaly, then," she added, accompanied by a shy lift of her shoulders. Her fingers moved to her hair, dislodging a small shower of melting ice. "But a word of advice? Maybe let a person have some coffee before you hit them with their own rarity percentage."
"I like anomalies," the words were leaving her mouth before she could even think to filter the thought, but there wasn’t an ounce of embarrassment in her tone or face, smile fixed on her face genuine and open. "Sorry, I ramble when I’m nervous." After all, in her entire life, Zelia had made a total of five friends, and so far she had the impression she wasn’t off to such a great start.
Rae couldn’t help the fact that Zelia’s words pulled another small laugh from her. There was something oddly endearing about how unfiltered she was, like every thought that passed through her mind simply refused to stay there. Rae could almost admire it.
"Hey, I think anomaly might be the nicest way anyone’s called me weird," she said, the teasing in her tone mellowing into reassurance. "Don’t apologize for that, by the way. Rambling’s kind of my native language, too. I think it’s a side effect of having a brain that never shuts up."
Zelia’s laughter bubbled out before she could stop it, a quiet, breathy sound that misted in the cold air between them. The tension that had been clinging to her shoulders melted just a little more with Rae’s words. She hadn’t realized how tightly she’d been holding herself until now.
"My brain is a bit like a radio stuck between stations. Lots of noise, occasionally music." For a moment, she looked down at the snow, tracing lazy shapes with the toe of her boot. The flakes were catching on her lashes, melting into tiny drops that she could almost pretend were starlight instead of frost. When she looked back up, her eyes were bright, earnest.
"Weird is a compliment anyway, to me anyways" she said lightly, though there was a quiet truth beneath the humor. "Normal’s never made the world more interesting." Her smile softened, a little uncertain but full of warmth. "I’m glad you don’t mind my rambling. It’s nice not to feel like I have to hold my breath while I talk."
A gust of wind loosened a crimson strand of hair, and Rae brushed it back from her face. Her fingers paused at her temple, a silent acknowledgment of the unusual sensation of being truly perceived without having to contort herself into something smaller. Zelia’s final confession—It’s nice not to feel like I have to hold my breath while I talk—sank deep, finding a home in a part of Rae that understood that particular exhaustion all too well. A look of recognition, soft and unguarded, passed over her features. In that bit of recognition, Rae also realized how much distance there really was between who she’d been and who she was now: the girl who survived cafeteria politics by making herself a shadow in the corner when she could versus the woman standing outside a workshop at dawn, hair full of snow and spine unbowed, not apologizing for taking up space.
"I know that feeling exactly," she replied, her voice lowering into a more intimate register. "Holding your breath so your presence doesn’t become an inconvenience and to avoid being seen as…too much. I get it…." A knowing smile touched her lips. "Consider that a non-issue with me. And you know what? I’ll make you a deal. If you start to ramble, I’ll keep up with you. Thought for thought. Cool with you?"
The promise was unexpected, but it felt like the first real exhale of air after holding her breath for far too long. She tilted her head slightly, her eyes glinting with quiet amusement, though there was a depth in them, a sort of quiet relief that couldn’t be masked. For a moment, she simply stood there, boots pressed against the cold earth, watching Rae with a quiet intensity. The snowflakes had started to settle more densely in her hair, catching the light in tiny prisms, and Zelia was struck by how still Rae was, how entirely present. She felt her chest expand, her breath catching just slightly. There was something in that, something she hadn’t known she was waiting for.
"I think," Zelia began, her voice softer now, more contemplative, "that I’ve been waiting for someone who gets it. I think the only person who ever really tolerated my rambling was my mom." She swallowed, face twisting into something that was wrought with pain for a second, her fingers nervously tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, but there was no self-consciousness in the motion, just the ease of someone not afraid to show a little bit of themselves. Rae had made space for her. Without question.
"So yeah," Zelia said with a grin that felt lighter now, the warmth in her chest spreading into her words. Painful memories were easy to push aside in the face of the prospect of someone who understood her."It’s cool with me, thank you."
"They are," Rae agreed, a little nostalgic. "They have a way of giving you the one piece of advice that sticks forever. Mine always told me not to sit around hoping for a miracle and that if I needed something, I could always build it with my own two hands."
An affectionate smile graced Rae’s features as the memory solidified. "She worked two jobs most of my life, and she’d come home dead tired a lot but still find a way to check in on whatever disaster I’d left on our kitchen table. Never told me to stop taking things apart either. Just… asked that I put them back together again before dinner."
Rae’s gaze dropped to her own hands, fidgeting slightly. "I think that’s where it started, honestly. This whole need to fix things. Machines made sense. People didn’t. But Mom? She always found a way to make both work, even when she shouldn’t have had to." At least one of those, Rae felt, should have been held up by her divine father.
She looked up, meeting Zelia’s eyes directly, the personal history receding to make room for the present moment."But you know…you’re welcome and all."
Zelia laughed, and it felt strange to laugh so easily, as if she hadn’t spent years bracing herself for the weight of a world that refused to slow down. Rae’s presence made that easier somehow, steady, grounded, like lightning finding a safe place to strike. "My mom used to say," she began softly, almost as if speaking to herself, "that there’s no such thing as coincidence, only the universe trying to tell you a story." A small, wistful smile tugged at her lips. "She always found a way to make everything sound like poetry— even burnt toast or power outages, most of which I caused."
Her voice trailed off for a moment, lost to the hush of falling snow. She blinked, once, twice, the motion quick and deliberate, and for a heartbeat her expression faltered, the smile turning brittle, the light in her eyes flickering like a candle caught in a draft. She ducked her head slightly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, the motion gentle, reverent, almost like she was afraid to disturb the memory.
"She’d probably have loved it here," Zelia continued, voice steadier now. "We’re like myths walking around like they’ve just stepped out of a dream. She was the one that told me I had lightning in my veins, and not to be scared of it." Her laugh now was soft, airy, full of fondness that almost, but not quite, covered the ache beneath it.
The sky rumbled faintly in the distance, a faraway growl of thunder rolling over the mountains, and the corners of Zelia’s mouth curved upward again. She looked toward the sound instinctively, as though she were listening for something only she could hear, head tilted ever so slightly. When she turned back to Rae, her expression had gentled into something warm and quietly luminous.
Rae glanced toward the rumbling sky, then back. "What did the thunder say that time?"
"I’m still learning its language," she admitted, biting her lip as a sharp wave of anxiety rolled through her. Zelia had always believed thunder was the world’s oldest language. Not a warning, not a threat, just the sky remembering how to speak. A deep, bone-heavy murmur that rolled across the earth as if the heavens themselves were clearing their throat after too long a silence. Others heard danger in it. She heard honesty.
Thunder did not pretend.
It didn’t mask its unrest with pleasantries or restraint. When the pressure grew too great, when the weight inside the clouds became unbearable, the sky simply… split itself open. It bared its turmoil, let the sound loose, and did not apologize for the force of its own truth.
Zelia admired that.
The storm never feared being too much. It never softened itself for the comfort of bystanders. It spoke in the only voice it had—a raw, resonant declaration that something within it had changed. Sometimes she wondered what it would feel like to do the same. To release the held-in weight of unspoken things, to let her own thunder roll across the quiet places inside her without worrying who flinched or stared. To be heard in a way that did not require permission.
Thunder was not cruel. It was simply unavoidable.
And in her quieter moments, she wished she could be too.
Zee glanced down at the ground, snow curled around the edges of her boots, tracks from the night before half covered with the fresh powder. They intersected, going in all different directions, leaving the impression that the camp was quite full, unless it was only a few people with very busy schedules. She took a steadying breath and glanced back up at the other girl through her lashes. "It’s very pretty here, I feel as if I’ve stepped out of a wardrobe into the world of Narnia. Though I haven’t met any talkative animals yet, just a small den of foxes earlier. I shared the beef jerky I’d bought at the airport with them. They were very cute, and— sorry, what was your name?"
The darkening of her cheeks had very little to do with the crispness of the air, and everything to do with being very aware of how odd other people found her. Her mom used to quote Alice in Wonderland to her when she was young and easily discouraged after long days of teasing and ridicule; it was easier to try and pretend that only the best of people were mad, but she knew not everyone adhered to such opinions. To normal people, someone like Zelia was weird. She wore her optimism on her sleeve, though, a proud badge of honor even in the bleakest of conditions, and thus she’d privately latched onto the idea that in a camp full of other people like her, she wouldn’t seem quite so strange.
Her grandma would say to not be too hopeful, because it was all the more crushing when you were proven wrong, but Zee clung to the idea of hope like it was a fallen star she’d caught with her bare hands; it required a tentative and tender passion to clutch it just so, too delicate for anything more fierce. She supposed hope could be akin to a snowflake, so fragile but so arrestingly beautiful. Her train of thought derailed from there, because the girl in front of her could be described as beautiful, reminding Zelia of Patupaiarehe from Māori folklore with her fair skin and red hair. They typically lived in forests and mountains as well, though it was the lack of flute song that convinced her this was an ordinary girl and not some enchanting and ethereal being.
Learning that Greek mythology was real filled Zee with so many questions, and there was no one who could answer her properly. Did it mean other historical mythologies and folklore were real as well? She bit her lip, pushing down the urge to ask with a valiant sort of effort. Her excitement could be stifled for the time being, because for the very first time in quite a long time, Zelia was presented with a prospect that was often foreign to her. The thought was even more fragile and indefinite than hope was, but the idea that she could make a friend here was a catalyst for years and years of optimism bottled up in her chest, set free at last. She’d make at least one friend and be happy with just that one if it was all she could manage.
A response rose to Rae’s lips, one that was not the socially acceptable kind but an unbidden, authentic reaction that felt disarming in its simplicity.
"Hey, don’t apologize. I really was just kidding before," she said, her voice gentler than she’d intended. "You’re speaking to someone who holds full-volume conversations with inanimate objects when a project isn’t going right. So, consider this a judgment-free zone."
A genuine warmth spread through her at the story of the foxes. "You gave them your airport jerky?" she asked, her head tilting slightly. "That’s… pretty thoughtful. I’m not sure many people would have even noticed them, let alone shared their last good snack." Her gaze dropped to the fine layer of powder clinging to Zelia’s boots before meeting her earnest, slightly anxious eyes. "Sounds like they had a much better welcome than most of us probably get around here." The comparison might have been a bit of a low bar on her part, yet it was one she couldn’t help but trip over.
Zelia’s direct question, however, caught Rae off guard, highlighting the social oversight. "Oh, right. Introductions." An imperceptible flush touched her cheeks. "I’m Rae. Rae Kowalewski. But just Rae is fine for everyone, honestly."
The line of tension that had collected in the delicate slope of her shoulders drained away with a surprising amount of ease at the softness in the other girl’s voice, her smile rising the corners of her lips until each cheek dimpled. So many questions lifted up within her at the mention of speaking to inanimate objects and projects, and she had to temper her sudden and violent surge of curiosity, reminding herself of the story of Icarus. It wouldn’t do to fly so close to the sun before proper introductions had even been formed, lest her figurative wax wings begin to melt. Zelia knew that there was such a thing as being too curious, and that it often deterred and off put others, people tended to not like people who were too enthusiastic.
"I followed the paw prints in the snow," she admitted, feeling oddly shy about this fact, running her pointer finger over one of the creases in the letter helped soothe the sudden swelling of emotion. "Lovely to meet you, Rae. I’m Zelia Darling, yes like Wendy Darling from Peter Pan, I know it sounds ridiculous." The way she said the last part was almost rehearsed, as if she was familiar with the reactions her last name warranted and wanted to skip an interaction that commonly had an unfavorable turn. Zee shifted, the toe of her boot pressing an indent into the snow in front of her.
"Zelia is fine, but…my friends call me Zee." She didn’t look at Rae when she said this, blaming the color of her cheeks on the cold and not giving her embarrassment the oxygen it needed to breathe and therefore live. Instead, she forged onwards with little delicacy, eyes tracing the tracks in the snow at their feet— were those pawprints? Right, focus.
Rae’s lips curved into a more curious smile as she gestured vaguely toward the sky. "So, was that your handiwork earlier? The whole… atmospheric light show?"
"It was, did I wake you up? I’m sorry, I got lost in it." Zelia let her eyes trail back upwards to connect with the solid blue of Rae’s gaze, lifting her letter a little so the other girl could see it clearly. "I was reading the poem that was in my letter, the lightning likes when I read to it." While she was perfectly aware that this was a bizarre statement, Zee knew in her heart that it was true. She’d been reading to the sky for as long as she could remember, and even on days clear and full of sunshine, there would be a distant rumble in response. She’d latched onto it, feeling safer each time a flash of lightning had split the sky growing up.
Rae blinked slowly, processing what she’d just heard. For a moment, her mind scrambled to decide whether Zelia was joking or if she had genuinely just confessed to performing interpretive poetry for lightning. The absolute lack of guile in her delivery, however, left little room for doubt.
"...The lightning likes when you read to it," Rae repeated, not quite a question but not disbelief either. "I can honestly say I’ve never heard that before." She leaned lightly against the nearest fencepost, a small smile creeping across her lips despite herself. The girl’s words were strange, sure, but there was something about the way she said them, like it wasn’t meant to impress or explain. It just was.
"You didn’t wake me by the way," Rae felt the need to clarify. "I was already awake. Sleep and I aren’t on the best of terms since getting here." Her attention drifted to the letter in Zelia’s hand. The parchment looked well-handled, like something read so often that it had memorized the reader as much as the reader had memorized it.
"That poem sounds like it means a lot to you," Rae observed, her voice gentler now. "If I’m guessing right, you’re a Zeus kid, yeah? Mine’s Hephaestus."
For a second, she let herself just breathe— just be —and in that space, the snow around Zelia seemed to take on a life of its own. The light hit the snow at a perfect angle, making the tiny crystals shimmer like a blanket of diamonds spread over the earth. A few flakes drifted down in a soft cascade, catching the light as they twirled lazily through the crisp morning air.
Zee’s eyes followed one of them as it floated past her cheek, drawn to the way it danced in the wind, as if it had a secret only it knew. She reached up, fingers brushing her hair back behind her ear once more when the wind ruffled that same irate curl free, trying to focus on what Rae had said, but the snow had captured her attention, like a gentle call to curiosity that was impossible to ignore.
How could something so tiny… She blinked again, pulling herself out of the trance just in time to catch Rae’s words again. "Zeus kid," she repeated quietly to herself, as if the words were an unfamiliar melody she needed to remember. A small, thoughtful hum escaped her lips as she met Rae’s gaze. "Well, yes," she admitted, her voice quiet and almost hesitant, as if testing the waters. "I am a Zeus kid, that’s what the letter implied, at least. I like to believe lightning doesn’t just strike, it chooses. I just keep wondering why it's only just…chosen me."
She supposed trying to find sense in the whims of Gods was illogical, though Zelia did many things that could be considered as such. It was the sort of thing that could drive a man crazy, though, and she didn’t reckon going genuinely insane would be a very pleasant experience. It would be easy to lose herself puzzling over it, to wonder why her father had taken so long to find her, claim her. It would be even easier to resent him for it all, for allowing her to go through a childhood without the father figure she so desperately yearned for. And yet, despite it all, she’d chosen to do the significantly harder thing, and forgive him, to move on from the dizzying questions. He was her father; it was as simple as that.
A look of deep, shared comprehension softened Rae’s features.
"Hephaestus isn’t exactly the poster god for timely Hallmark moments either, " she said, her tone laced with familiarity that spoke of personal experience. "Either way, you’re here now. If lightning chose you today, then today is the first day it has to answer for that. You get to decide what you do with it." As if to punctuate her words, a low, disgruntled gurgle came from her stomach. The timing was almost comedic. Rae froze for half a second before sighing through her nose and offering a sheepish laugh. "...And apparently I’m hungry." She brought a hand to the nape of her neck, a faint warmth rising to her cheeks. "Sorry. I haven’t eaten yet. Got distracted by the new workspace and forgot I’m still a mortal being who requires food." Her hand gestured vaguely in the direction of the cabins. "I don’t really know what the dining sitch is like here, but I’m down to find out. You’re welcome to come along, if you’d like. You could tell me more about that letter."
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