Astra Minus The Olympians Chapter 5

I'm tired of passing out. All the time. I'll wake up and be all, "Woah, when did I fall asleep, and where the heck am I?" and I feel so freaking vulnerable.

This time was no different. I woke up in a tent, on top of a sleeping bag. I was pretty sure I did not own a tent. It was a small, blue tent, and the low sun shining through it illuminated the space a light green. To my left I saw thick bowls and jars of what looked like herbs and crushed up powder, like medicine. I looked down and saw my thin jacket had been taken off, and my shirt was completly blood-soken, and folded upwards to reveal fresh gauze and what felt like ointment on my skin, over my gash on my abs. Either I was a really talented sleep-worker, or I was someone's captive. And they were...poinsoning me?

I didn't remember anyone when I passed out, only that weird water-bending boy. But he seemed too arrogant to care, and seemed like he wanted to kill me. I decided I didn't trust whatever was on me. I started to unravel the gauze and the cotton filled with cream, but thats when the tent door opened.

"No, no stop it!" The boy who tried to kill me walked into the tent with a bowl and a spoon, mixing something that smelled like mint leaves. He knelt by me, shoved my hands away, and hastily fixed the wrapping I had undone. He had a concentrated look on his face, as if I was slowing down the turture process.

I pushed his hands away from me and shot up. Lights danced before my eyes, and I stumbled on my wobbly feet a little, but I ignored it. I reached for my knife on the small of my back where I always keep it, but it wasn't there. This made my blood cold. No one messes with my knife. Instead, I quickly grabbed the nearest weapon, a bowl filled with a sticky, orange paste, and held it to him in defense. How threatening I must, seem, I thought, with my rat's nest hair, my frail, injured body, but I scowled deeply anyway, and glared as best I could while my abdomen ached.

He stood up, and his face muscles relaxed. He chuckled a bit, which made me mader. "Relax, princess. I'm only trying to help you."

"Yea, then why'd you try to kill me yesterday?"

"Why did you steal my sword?" His hands were on his hips. He didn't have any pity in his look, which good.  I despised pity.

"I don't know if you're an enemy or not yet."

"Same with me." He raised an eyebrow at me. I had a strong sensation to throw something at him, so I did.  The stone bowl sailed through the air as I dashed towards the exit.  

I didn't hear a crash, and knew it was hopeless before I could even extend my hand to the door of the tent.  Strong arms wrapped around my waist and chest, pulling me back.  Pain exploded through my injury, and I fought the pain by shoving the source of strength with the heel of my hand.  The arms unraveled and I fell to the ground clutching my stomach. Bad choice, I thought, BAD CHOICE!  The sound of rushing water filled my ears as rages of pain throbbed my body.  After a while, the pain subsided.  When I opened my eyes and could see again, the boy was watching me with a bored look on his face.

"You done?"  He asked, then kneeled back down, crushing the herbs in the bowls, setting the orange paste I had thrown back down.   He picked up the spoon that had flown out off the ground and wiping it off with his shirt.  It made me resentful that I hadn't actually done any damage.

"Who are you, and why are you poisoning me?"  I asked.  My skin shivered in sweat and my stomach felt about to overturn with pain.  Escaping- no, moving- was out of question.  

His eyes questioned why I had spoken, then he laughed and shook his head.  "It's called herbology, princess.  If you want to be able to stomach anything ever again, you might want to lay down and let me help."  

I glared at him for good measure to prove my irritation.  "How do I know your not trying to kill me?"

He looked impassively annoyed. "You can't. I don't even know why I am helping you, but here I am.  Now you can either let that injury infect itself and spread, or die from loss of blood, sure to happen in about, I don't know, five minutes, or you can shut up and let me treat you.  I couldn't care less which one it is."  My senses screamed to run, but with the ache exploding every time I merely shifted my feet, that felt out of question.  Deciding to kill myself later, I rolled onto the sleeping bag that pressed down to fit my body shape, propping myself up on my elbows.

"So what is all this?" I gestured to the herbs around me.

"What do you think they are?  You wouldn't know them if I told you. Lay down." He said, picking up the mixture he had come in with, and pouring it into a clear vile. The resulting colour from the clear liquid with a light green paste was a terrific purple. Chemistry.

I glared at him.  "I thought you were trying to get rid of me, not help me."

He looked ready to punch me.  "Do you want to be healed or not, princess?" He said.

"I want to get out of here."

He pushed my shoulders, not very gently. "Thats not an option."

I reluctantly layed down. His hands were large and cold when they touched my skin.  First instinct I slapped them away, and he exhaled impatiently through his nose.  I gritted my teeth and rested my hands behind my head, swearing under my breath.  He undid the rest of my gauze that wasn't already undone, and applied the cream to my skin. At first I grimaced, my skin twitching to his bitter fingers, but I got used to it.  It caused a cool sensation, almost numbing the burn. He took some powder he had been crushing in another bowl, sprinkled it on the wound, dabbed a little off of it with some cotton, and reapplied the purple mixture. I tried not to look at him. He annoyed me, his arrogance and his...rightness. But I wouldn't admit that he actually might have been helpful.

He readjusted my gauze, and told me I could sit up straight, just not to twist my waist around. He seemed skilled enough to be a doctor, but his people skills were awful.  He started mixing more mixtures and packing up. I remembered how he had twisted water with the will of his fingers, like I could with the wind. I didn't know how to ask, so I just went and said it.

"Hey, are you like me? Are you...different?"

He grinned with the side of his mouth.  "Well, sunshine, if you're going to go and say it, I'd have to agree you are rather strange."

"Hey listen, arse, you're not like a usual human.  Don't get cocky with me." I drawled.

He looked at me without cockiness or frustration or even hate. He opened his mouth and closed it again, rubbing the back of his neck. "So you can...fly?"

"I can contol the winds. Its different," I snapped. "But... where are you from?" Maybe this kid shared in the same orphanage sob story.

"Well...I come from California.  South. But I haven't really been in California for a long time." He had stopped packing up his stuff and stood at the entrance of the tent patiently. "You?"

"Uh, I'm from a few different places...my dad, uh...well, I had troubles with him, and we moved constantly." I realized how pathetic that sounded. It was really much more than that.

"Have you been...well, the only company I've really had was...well, things. Like monsters. And they've all tried to kill me so far." His voice was on the lower side. Not as low as Seth's, but low.

"So I'm not the only one!" I gasped. He looked at me, and I noticed for the first time a scar on his face that led from the corner of his left eye, up through his eyebrow, ending on his hairline. I wasn't alone on this monster nightmare.

"You fight them too?" He said curiously.

I looked away. A moment passed, and I said, "Where is my knife?"

"I was waiting to see if you were a friend or an enemy," He said mockingly. Then he reached behind his back, and unloosed my knife and scabbord from his belt. He tossed it towards me, and my fingers eagerly caught it and snapped it to its place on my waist. I suddenly felt a lot more cheery.  He packed up his things and started to exit the tent.

Before he left, he stopped and slightly turned his head. "Who are you?"

"My name is Astra."

"I'm Swindal. " He said, without making eye contact.  My captor slipped out of the tent silently.

---

I didn't feel safe enough to sleep, so I ended up staring at the blue corner of a tent for an hour.  I could feel my wound healing, especially after I had sipped a drink that Swindal placed on the inside of the tent.  His hand just appeared and disappeared, as if to prove I wasn't worth his full attention.   It looked like clear lemonade, but tasted like Eileen's homemade oatmeal raison caramel cookies.   Swindal never apologized for throwing me at a tree.  I never apologized for stealing his sword.  I figured we were even.  

When I smelled barbaque, I couldn't stand it any longer.  I got up and changed my shirt with an extra I found crumpled in the corner which I assumed he had given me (which was too big, but I didn't care).  Stuffing my bloody shirt in my bag-one I had picked up in a drug store and had toted around ever since-I exited the tent.  

Swindal had set up a small camp fire and had meat hanging over it by a wooden stick.  My stomach grumbled.  I hadn't had meat for months.  

"What kind of meat is that?"  I asked him. He was poking the fire with a stick, and glanced at me from the corner of his eye as I sat down on the grass land a few feet away from him.  Swindal had made camp to the left of the road, in the grass feild, not far from the river.

"I dunno.  I got it at some frozen isle at a grocery store.  I didn't exactly have time to pick and choose."  I sensed the full annoyance in his tone. He turned the make-shift rotisserie, studying the fire.  Swindal was tall, a full head taller than I, about 6'3'', and was muscular.  He was tan, and had a guarded, yet wild look on his face, like he was expecting to pick a fight any moment.  Like I was.

"How did you come to be here?"  I asked.

"I'm not on some vacation, if thats what you're asking."

"That's not what I'm asking."

"Why are you here?  A little girl all alone, without her family?"

"I am not a little girl."

He snorted.

His judgments ticked me off.  "I'm looking to avenge my family's death." I boldy said.  I hated when people judged me.

He picked his eyes off the fire, and looked at me with mild amusement.  "Oh, so you're a bad girl, huh?"

I rolled my eyes.  "Please.  If I were a 'bad girl', you'de have a knife in your throat right now.  So why are you all alone, in the middle of nowhere?"

The muscles on his arms tensed.  "I've been sent...by my father.  That's it." His tone was as flat as the horizon.

"Your father?  Who is he?"

He looked back at the setting sun.  He breathed in.  "Well, lets just say, my father's a jerk."

"Tell me about it." I agreed.

"He never contacts me."

"He leaves me to defend myself in the wild."

"He sends me on impossible missions, alone."

"He refuses to help anyone who I love."

"He abandons my mother."

"He never cares if I'm hurt."

We look at eachother.  His wild green eyes study my deep blue ones, analyzing my words, determining the truth.

"Zeus." I tell him.

"Poseidon,"  He looks down and fingers a blade of grass, then leans back, his elbows resting on his backpack. "So it's true." He muttered as he exhaled.

"Well, you got another explanation for all the weird stuff thats been happening?"

"No."

The sun sets and orange light casts dark shadows across the boy's face.

"But why the hell did I get stuck with this life?" He says loudly.

"You can't ask that." I said quickly.

"What?  Ask why?"

"Yes. You can't.  It's not like we were selected.  Some god didn't say, 'You know, that kid has weird hair.  He's gunna suffer plague'.  It doesn't work that way.  Everything we do, everything that happens to us is luck.  We can't opt out.  We just have to suck it up and deal with it." I tell him.  I had been thinking the same thing in the past.  Why my family, why me?  And I've never had an answer.  There is none.  It's annoying to think like that.

A grin tugged at the side of his lips.  "You can preach your philosophy to someone else, Wonder Woman.  I've already given up on this world."

I wonder what he's gone through, what hardships he's suffered.  I doubt they aren't as bad as mine.  But if I asked him, and he told me, then he'd have opened up to me, which is more than I could afford.  Anyone who opened up to me and accepted me...well, they aren't around anymore.

I broke his gaze, and look at the road.  I can't stay, I decide.  It's too dangerous.

"Common sense is not philosophy."  I tell the grass.  A moment of silence passes between us.  My stomach growls, and I feel Swindal's gaze leave me.  He stands up and rips a chunk of mystery meat off the stick, handing it to me.

"Barbaque, I think.  Quite a delecacy out here in solidarity."  He hands me a good-sized chunk, more than double what I've had in the past 6 months at least.  But I refuse the chunk.  

"Please, no human being can resist the aroma of sloppy and messy barbecue." He said like a teacher telling a student the laws of physics.  "Take it.  I won't eat it."  He half grins, and I have another urge to throw something at him.  My stomach says, Oh gods, its dripping juice, but my brain says, shut up, you'll show weakness, and my stomach says, I think it's smiling at me.

I reach for the hunk and dig in.  It's delicious pork that comes apart messily when I bite in.  It's heaven.  "So, not only can you pitch a tent and mix medicine, but you can also cook.  What can't you do?"

He laughed easily.  It made me want to smile.  "You forgot about how attractive I am.  I'm just a bundle."

I laughed.  Heaven food and saftey.  I haven't really talked to a person in ages, it seemed.  "No, I didn't forget it.  I wouldn't count your appearance as a benefit."

He pushed my shoulder.  We ate our pork and watched the colours in the sky change from orange to a dark ruby red, with clouds speckled pink over the green field.

"So what do you know about...us?"  I asked him.  I flicked his sword that he had around his belt, and he shifted a little, defensivly.

"Well, I remember in school learning about the Greek gods, but it was a while ago.  I don't remember all the names, but I remember who Poseidon, Zeus, and Hades are.  And Hera, and, um Aphrodite..."  Above us, thunder shook the sky.  

"If these peop- I mean, gods, exist, I have a feeling they don't like us calling their names." I told him.

He stood up and cupped his hands over his mouth.  "Poseidon! Hermes! Mother flippin Hepheustus!"   He yelled at the sky.  He looked back at me and grinned at my shocked face.  He flicked his eyebrows up really annoyingly, and I took that as a challenge. I stood up.

"Hades! You want me?  Come and get me, jerk!"  I screamed.  The ground shook.  We fell down from the mini earthquake and laughed.  

"So you've got a grudge too, huh?  I'm liking you more and more, now that you're not scowling at me."  He told me.  

I almost did.  My muscles on my face were in the process of moving to a smile- there was something in his pointed eyebrows and crazy- agile look that made it okay to smile.  But It had been a really, really long time since I had truly laughed from the welfare of another human being.  I hesitated, and had to look away before it made him cautious.  Sitting up, I thought of something to say.  Anything.  "You might smell good."

He looked at me quizzically.  I could tell he noticed my sudden absence, because he tried for a joke. "Excuse me, but I take lots of pride in my hygiene, especially since there are so many walking showers out here."

I just shook my head, my eyes still averted.  "A Cyclops once told me that I smell good, like the sky.  So, you and I must smell really good, way better than normal people, and thats how monsters find us."  I thought of saying something like,  "But that makes no sense, because you smell terrible." But that wasn't helping my Lone-Rider depiction.

I sensed him sit up.  His face slacked from its irritating grin.  "I hate how oblivious we are,"  He said, his words having edge in them. "The least they could do is inform us who we are.  If there's more like us.  I mean, I went about forever not knowing you existed.  All I know is that my dad is an immortal jerk," he was bordering a shout here, but then he softened and continued, "and my mom...well she was definatly mortal.  And I'm no god.  Are you a god?"  

I shook my head. "No, definitely not a god.  So what does that make us?  We've got powers, but we can die.  Right?"

"Never tried, but I'm pretty sure we can die."  He agreed.  "Thats all I know."  He finished off the last of his pork.  The sun was now gone, leaving a purple sky that was getting darker fast.

"Thanks for...uh...everything."  I told him, pulling and fingering the huge t-shirt.  He watched me and grinned.

"Can you, like, summon lightning?"  He asked.  He pointed to my necklace I had on, the lightning bolt my father had given me in what seemed like forever ago.  Since my last birthday, I'd gotten so much stronger and a whole lot wiser.  Defending myself was easier now, but when I thought back to Hades, I still got chills, and still felt...okay, maybe a little scared.

"No?  Why would I?"

"Well, I remember your father, now this could just be a myth, but he had like a lightning bolt or something.  It was called, like a super bolt.  The first of its kind."  He got up and started to add logs to the fire, so I got up and started throwing in logs, as well.

"No.  I can't.  Well, I've never tried, but it's not like I have the bolt.  It's huge, and it looks super heavy and inconvenient. And it's the Master Bolt, for your information."

He dropped a log into the fire, sparks flying up like brilliant flies, almost catching his face.  His green eyes reflected the fire, a beautiful little contrast.  His dark brown hair looked pitch black, but his eyes danced with curiosity.  "Woah, you've seen it?"

I paused, my arm frozen, about to toss the log in.  Shoot, should I have told him that?  Too much about my past.  I shoved the log in the fire, flames jumping up and welcoming it hungrily.  "Yea.  Once." My voice was flat and I turned around to sit down again, breaking eye contact.

He pestered on. "Have you ever tried?"

"No, and I don't think its possible." I tried to discourage conversation, but it wasn't working.

"Why not?"

"Look, I think I would know if I could just summon some lightning, okay?"  I snapped at him.  I hadn't meant to, but I didn't want to talk about it anymore.  The fire crackled.

He set down the logs and walked over to sit next to me.  I looked away from him.  "I didn't know that I would be able to hold my breath underwater until I almost drowned." He said it more like he was telling me facts of math, not like he was trying to encourage me.

I looked at his tangly hair.  It was tinted orange in the firelight.  I didn't like how he was trying to make me feel better. I don't need his pity, I just need answers, and I need saftey for my family. Thats it. But at the same time, he was challenging me, not pitying me.

"Listen, until we find out answers to who it is we are, we should stick together.  Then maybe I would be able to get some relaxed sleep." He said.  

Did he trust me already?  I found myself liking the idea.  A stressless night of sleep.  Not having to sleep clutching my sword sounded like an idiotic idea, but it could be possible.  My stress was like a mountain, bulding and building, but the thought of having someone with me, it felt like an avalanche was sliding down.  Bliss.  An avalanche of peace. Deep thoughts with Astra! I mentally slapped myself.

But I work best alone. If I were with him, I would have to worry about his actions.  If I'm alone, my actions will only affect me, and not others.  I can't be responsible for anymore deaths, and I know this.  Because of this, I have to reject.  

"I can't.  I'm dangerous."

"Like I don't know about danger." He rolled his eyes and played with another blade of grass between his two fingers.

"No, I just...I can't afford any more...please, just trust me.  You don't want to trust me."

The corner of his mouth tugged an annoying grin.  "You've already earned my trust.  You saved my life.  Plus, I can't trust you not to trust you."

I groaned.  I was regretting that decision to save his life already.  "And you saved my life.  We're equal.  And we're done."

"Nope.  I am determined.  We will both be safer with each other. Plus, I didn't save your life.  I was the one who almost killed you in the first place."

"No!  You don't understand."

"And I don't care.  You're sticking with me."

This was obviously not the way I was going to shake this kid off.  I decided to take another tactic.  "Fine.  Gods, you're stubborn.  And annoying."

"And you're aggresive and mad at me.  It's delightful."  I shoved his shoulder and he laughed, a good whole-heartedly laugh.

I smiled a little, but then a picture flashed before my eyes.  It was a boy with brown eyes and chocolate brown hair, not as crazy as Swindal, but ten times more sweet and smart.  It was Seth, helping me study for an exam last year.  Then, teaching me how to shoot a basketball and actually hitting the net instead of the tree 10 yards away, like I did.  Then it flashed to him looking into my eyes the last time I saw him, desperatly looking for another solution, but not able to find one.  Then I was back, looking at disheveled crazinness that sat before me.  The saftey that Seth had once brought me I now noticed rubbed completly off through the weeks I spent alone.  It scared me.  My smile melted away, and I turned my head.  

I don't know if Swindal noticed me.  His smile faultered, and his laugh hung in the air, like a deadly reminder.  The humid night was silent. I got up and brushed my hands off on my pants, and walked towards the fire.  

If Swindal ends up like...like Seth, I might give up.  I need him to stay alive.  I'm suprised I haven't given up already.  But I need to forge on; that's all I know. And it needs to be alone.