Rain

In the style of Athena and Frederick Chase

Alert for I_Am_Athena

Demigod children didn't come with handbooks and perhaps they should more than regular children did.

But he knew he'd screwed up. He hadn't seen Annabeth in 15 hours. 15 hours. That wasn't normal. Sometimes she went to spend the day with the neighbourhood boys and came back for supper scruffy and dirty and smiling, but he'd checked on her early in the morning because Bobby and Matthew had him up anyways, and she'd been gone. She wasn't just gone for a play date or some kind of adventure.

Her window was open. She'd jumped to the big oak tree by her window and climbed down. He'd gone looking as soon as he'd finished turning the house around and combing through her room.

She hadn't been in her usual places- not in the trees by the park that she liked to climb, not the library, the school yard... He'd even gone to check at the university (she loved going to his lectures and sitting in the front row to read a book of her own, she loved, loved loved it even if he hadn't brought her over for a while...) All the neighborhood kids were still around. She didn't want to be found. She'd left.

And now it was raining outside so he was starting to get paranoid hardcore. Was she cold? Was she somewhere warm? How was she even dressed? He'd checked her closet and he was pretty sure that nothing was missing except a spare hoody and a pair of jeans, so she must have left in her pajamas. Her raincoat was still hanging by the door.

Speaking of things missing, there wasn't enough. Food-wise, Annabeth had grabbed a box of granola bars and a bunch of bananas. Her waterbottle was probably still in her school bag, which she must have taken. No money was gone except her tooth fairy money, so she hadn't taken a train or anything (which he wouldn't put beyond her)... Apart from that, she'd left everything else alone. Except for a hammer according to Jia, but he wasn't too sure where she'd go with that.

Was he supposed to call social services? "Hello yes my child ran away because I'm absolutely horrible to her regarding her divine heritage that I don't understand for the life of me". There were things that he couldn't explain- the nightmares... it would be worst for Annabeth if she tried, he knew how littered with monsters child protection organisations were.

He had to do something. The rain was coming down hard, she'd be soaked and frozen...

He chewed his thumb.

He had a phone number in his desk, his private office at the university.... for Camp. Should he call? Annabeth knew that her mother was from New York, was that where she was trying to go? She knew that her mother was nor dead nor heartless, nor oblivious to her existence. (Annabeth's mix of knowledge was a weird hodge-podge of weird stories, Greek myths and illogical genealogy as she'd already pointed out to him on multiple occasions. Dear God he wanted her to walk out of her bedroom and argue with him about it, or about Lord of the Rings trivia or world capitals or something right now, he wanted her here as if everything was okay).

Did he need to call the cops before something happened to her? Or was that just as bad as calling social services?

Rain pattering on the window became hail.

He was about to rip his hair out and head out to drive around town some more, but then he realised.

He was like a man dying of hunger in a grocery store. A totally oblivious idiot. Usually he was able to be reasonable and find solutions under stress, but it took him forever to realise that all he had to do was pray.

He didn't know how. That was the problem. Yes, he'd grown up in South Carolina which, in the case of his small town, meant tight button-down shirts and starring at the fly tape dangling from the church roof every Sunday morning. He'd grown up smack in the middle of the Bible belt among creationist and other such nonsense. He'd been eleven when he'd taken his mother's favourite refrain seriously ('well the christians and the scientists can't both be right') and shut out religion for good (which was, in retrospect, made him as close-minded as his mother was, but he'd been 11 and forgave himself the mistake). He'd spent more years working on his PhD than he had praying. That struck him as funny all of a sudden. How did you do it? Pray? Was there a ritual? And even if he had a clue, there had to be a difference when you were addressing a pagan Greek deity. Especially your ex...

Thunder clapped.

Oh God I hope that she's okay, he thought as panic seized him.

A familiar, clinical voice in the back of his head said: I'll keep an eye on her. Don't worry. Thank you for calling.