At least for now.
And the farther away I got from Portland, the more eerie my surroundings became. There were no towns between Ashbourne and Rockaway Beach, and as darkness fell over the forest, I couldn't help myself and started asking the questions I didn't even dare think about while I was still at the house.
Was my mom talking about something supernatural? She always told me my lack of belief would one day bite me in the ass, but I was too stubborn to listen to her. I, like many other children, was dead set in separating my beliefs from my parents', but maybe I should have listened. I kept replaying the stories she told me.
The stories of fallen ones, of Mount Olympus, and the way the ruled over the human world. I kept replaying the stories ofthe heroes and the games those very Gods played when they were too bored with their own lives. Was she trying to teach me something or were they just stories she had heard somewhere and decided to tell them to me?
She was adamant for both Thalia and me to learn as much as possible about the history, but more so me. Many of our fights resulted after the conversations where she would push for me to study the lore, as she called it, while she never pushed Thalia to do the same. My sister was cherished, sometimes maybe even spoiled, but she was a good kid. Yet, my mom never pushed her as much as she did me to take up all the sports, to learn the history.
I could read Greek by the time I was ten, even though none of our family members were Greek. At least not that I knew of.
Was maybe my biological father Greek? Was that why she wanted me to know the history?
But that wouldn't make any sense, would it? I looked like my mom, for the most part, but my eyes didn't resemble hers. My hair didn't resemble hers either. Her dark locks were the same as Thalia's, like my dad's, while I always felt like I was the black sheep of my family with my golden, almost white hair and silver eyes.
And the older I got, the lighter my hair became until it started looking almost silver, with dark brown streaks coming through the roots. She didn't want me to color it, to touch its natural state, and so I didn't because I actually liked it even if it made me look completely different than the rest of my family. But after reading her journal and seeing how she said that I resembled my biological father, at least in her dreams, it probably made sense why she didn't want me to touch it.
God, I had so many questions and so little answers and I could feel an impending headache coming in. After more thantwo hours of driving, I needed a break, but if my navigation was anything to go by, I was close to Ashbourne.
"Just a bit longer," I told myself, trying to focus on the illuminated part of the road in front of me.
The forest around me was pitch-black, uninviting, and I didn't want to taunt destiny and get attacked by some sort of a wild animal.
I gripped the steering wheel tighter, pressing my foot on the gas pedal just a little bit more when, out of nowhere, the fog started rising, meeting me as I drove, making it almost impossible to see anything in front of me. I relaxed my foot on the gas and turned on the fog lights, afraid someone wouldn't see me.
Not that I have seen even a single car in the last hour, but you can never be too careful.
The song from my playlist suddenly started glitching, and as I looked at my phone connected via Bluetooth to the car's audio system, I realized there wasn't even a signal here.
"Great," I huffed as I pressed the button to play the next song. "Pull Away" by Forged in Fire started playing, and as I focused back on the road, squinting through the fog, I almost missed the peeling sign on the right side of the road.
Welcome to Ashbourne
Population: 1,147
Where the fog never leaves
My heart crawled into my throat as I slowed the car down to a stop, staring at the fucking sign as if it had all the answers I needed. It definitely didn't, but coming to this town was a start. It was the start of either the wildest adventure or the biggest disappointment of my life.
But doing this was better than lying in my bed the entire day, staring at the ceiling, replaying that night over and over again asif that would help me come to terms with reality. These last three days I didn't have time to think about the accident.
I didn't have time to think about anything at all, and last night was the first dreamless night in almost a year and I liked to think it was because I was doing something for myself. Dreams were often a reflection of how we felt, of our biggest fears and desires, and I refused to think me dying over and over again on that cliff was the sign of me wanting to be dead.
My parents raised me to be stronger than that. They left me with a legacy I refused to let die with me, and I would live. I would fucking live for them and I would find the family I knew nothing about, not to replace them but to ground myself. To find something else to grab, because I could feel that life was slipping through my fingers and I didn't know how to hold on.
And if I felt sadness over the dreamless night and the lack of those emerald green eyes, I told myself it was because I got used to them.
Nothing more.
5
KAIRA
My entire bodytrembled as I stood on the familiar cliffs, overlooking the black sand beach and the ocean spanning into the infinity in front of me. The soil underneath my bare feet should've felt familiar, but it didn't.
There was something wrong. Something that wasn't there before.
Even before turning around as the wind slammed into me, almost making me lose my balance, I knew that this was just another dream. Just another nightmare I would wake up from.
