#gays by the river styx or smth

[daisychainsandbowties]

chapter 3/? [15k}

r: M

a percy jackson au

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She stood under the faucet, looking up at it and wincing as the water splashed over her face, sending grey-black tear tracts down her cheeks. She could hear the two of them – Shannon and Mary – arguing in hushed voices outside, keen senses bringing shreds of it to bear in her ears.

 “-can’t just land that on her now. I mean, fuck, this is satyr business. I don’t know how to even start explaining all this to her.”

 “Mary, do I have to invest in a swear jar?”

She stuck her head fully underneath the spray, drowning out their noise. High on the wall of the shower, she watched an indistinct shape crawling along the tiles. It was as big as her fist and made of shadows, but condensed. It reminded her of dust captured by wind after bombs fall, turning up into shapes that can make you flinch before you realise it’s only pulverised brick, or whatever they put between the bricks to get them to stick together.

The whole world loud and quiet at the same time.

Her shadow, nibbling at a cobweb up in the corner of the stall, was in the shape of a teardrop or a comet. It had a long, trailing tail and two large yellow eyes that glowed faintly. Two stubby, antler-like things protruded from its head, and little arms drooped underneath it as it turned around, staring sadly down at Lilith.

“Go away,” she hissed, but it just blinked, blackly, and returning to its slow circuit around the stall.

It had glommed up from her chest as they walked along the beach, Lilith staring at the hand trapped firmly in Shannon’s grip. She gasped as it happened, but when the older girl looked over her shoulder, brow wrinkled with concern, she didn’t seem to notice the great dark shape spreading over Lilith’s chest.

She knew what it was without having to ask, not that it would tell her if she did.

“Grief,” she pronounced carefully into the sound of the water. “What are you doing here?”

But she knew.

It was coming back to her. All of it, not just the harsh jabs that had assaulted her back down on the edge of the ocean. Maybe it was the water warming her skin, flushing the scent of the grave off her, down into the plughole, which gurgled fretfully at the clods rushing down into it.

She drifted, watching the whorls of dust spreading around her feet like the big splotches of candlewax that used to drip onto her windowsill from the candles her mother lit at night.

“To frighten the monsters,” she’d whisper, dipping to kiss the crown of Lilith’s head.

“Quali monstri?”

Lilith always asked this as her mother tucked the sheets in around her, going to fetch her stuffed toy. It was homemade from pieces of mismatched fabric, all of them black because they came from her mother’s old dresses and shawls. It was a spider, with eight dangly legs and two eyes made of scratched buttons. It lay next to her head on the pillow, perched to ward off its brethren.

Lilith was afraid of spiders, but they seemed to like her – slipping beneath her sheets at night to curl up against her legs, or to skitter over her ribs. They weren’t monsters though; they were just creatures and they lived everywhere Lilith lived.

“Mamma,” she’d say, as her mother shook the box of matches, peering anxiously through the glass at the world beyond, past the strawberry trees hunkered in behind the garden walls. “Are we safe?”

Her mother was thin, with outspoken elbows and a way of standing so she was just draped in her clothes. It had been difficult to buy flour for the past month, and no matter how many strawberries Lilith picked for her from the trees in the garden – washing them in the bucket outside the back door – her mother only grew more shrunken.

Set against the candlelight she looked even more ghoulish than she did with her arms all over in suds, washing the plates from a dinner she’d skipped in favour of one of her few remaining cigarettes. She turned at the sound of Lilith’s voice, the shadows cupping her face, her cheek – as though the dark itself loved her and wanted anything but to let her go.

The candles beat them back feebly as she crossed back to Lilith’s beside, brushed a thumb over her brow. Her hands were chilly despite the heat. “They will not find us,” she promised. “Not tonight.”

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