Chapter Text
Anneliese Clyborne is a daughter of Hermes, granddaughter of Athena and Wolfgang Clyborne, great-granddaughter of Apollo and Esther Jameson Clyborne, great-great-granddaughter of Aphrodite and Arthur Jameson, and daughter of literature professor Urania Clyborne. Urania, clear sighted but mortal, depressed after giving birth to Anneliese, summoned a drakon to kill herself and her daughter when Anneliese was five and a half. Anneliese, being a demigod, had instincts too good to actually perish like that, and she ran. She came back to her mother in a pool of what she understood as sticky ketchup. A month later, her landlord saw the lack of rent paid, and evicted a five and a half year old girl with no regard for where she went or if she survived.
Chapter 1
Mom was gone. Urania…what was our last name? I didn’t know. Dad had never been in the picture. Now I didn’t have a home either. They’d kicked me out, said they didn’t want a ‘liability’.
They thought that just because I was five years old meant I was a moron. That I didn’t know what ‘liability’ meant.
They thought wrong.
Wait, they didn’t think at all, because to think, one requires a brain. Clearly, asking too much of a capitalist landlord in New York.
All I had was a backpack almost too heavy for me, full of books, my four sets of clothes other than the ones on my back, and a toothbrush. With crackers. Did they expect me to be Marthe Robin? Did they expect me to survive off that? Beg on the street? Was I a gladiator to them? Was I entertainment?
I was sitting on the sidewalk, staring at the space where Mom had said the Twin Towers used to be before they fell when I was two. She said a plane crashed into them. I didn’t really care. The dead didn’t have to think about what they left behind. That was the burden of us survivors.
Slowly, the sun decided to go back to sleep. I stared at my reflection in a puddle in the dying sunlight. Two brown eyes, one light, one dark, blinked up at me, framed by ash blonde hair that wasn’t genetically possible but here I was. Then, as if deciding I had seen enough, the buildings behind me became eyes. I stood up and ran away.
As I finally found a place to be without being stared at, or so I hoped, a shadow fell over me, and I whirled around, hair tie loosening even more. A man in a leather jacket, and sunglasses (at dusk? What an idiot.) leaned against his motorcycle. Does he not know that those pollute the air? Or is he one of those…Russian industrialists? Does he just not care? That wouldn’t be a first, but-
Wait. Ares was said to appear as a warrior. A motorcyclist was practically a warrior of road rage. Worth a shot.
I stood up, all forty-one inches of me, and walked up to Mr. Clearly The Heat Does Not Apply To Me. Poked him in the gut. “I don’t have a sword like he did.”
The guy looked down at me as if contemplating whether I was worth replying to. “Like who, kid?”
“King of Argos.”
He looked offended for a split second, but I caught it. Correct answer, Ares.
“How old are you, kid?”
“First of all, my name isn’t ‘kid’. It’s Anneliese. I’m…” I counted on my fingers, the number of months Mom said I had lived till she died last month. “Sixty-six months old.”
“In years?”
“Five and seven months. If you could tell me the date and time, I could be more exact.”
“Anneliese. I don’t care about exact. We’re taking you home.”
“That’s where I’m coming from. They pushed me outside after Mom died.”
“Wait…was your mom named Urania?”
“Yeah?”
“Hermes, you thieving hack-”
“Why are you talking about him? He’s my favourite! Don’t insult him in front of me. Or ever.”
“Aren’t you a little feisty?”
“No. It’s called having standards, Ares. All you do is-” I did vague stabbing movements. “-that. Athena curses random women. Zeus…do I even need to say it? Poseidon is a temperamental jerk. Hades is too broody. Hera is just insufferable. Apollo is a narcissist. Artemis basically killed Iphigenia. Aphrodite caused the Trojan War. Need I go on?”
“Where did you learn that?”
“Mom. She never liked the gods in the first place. Said they were ‘idiot hacks’ who didn’t understand the ‘cost of a human life because they had already lost humanity’. Also, do you have a jellybean?”
“I think you’re on a watchlist now. Not the FBI or whatever you mortals have.”
“Yeah, let them smite me. Real original, guys.” My voice shook, and I hated that it did. “At least I get to be with my mom after I die. You don’t even have the pleasure of death. Also, you didn’t answer my question.”
“Anneliese? New rule.” Ares said, strapping me onto his motorcycle, backpack and all. I looked down at the ground. How easy it would be for me to fall. I went lightheaded for half a second. “No cursing at the gods before breakfast.”
“I had breakfast this morning. Also, jellybean.”
“It’s one in the morning, kid. You did not have breakfast this morning because you haven’t eaten in the past hour, and morning started an hour ago.”
“Is the meathead using his borrowed brain now? Use it to give me a jellybean, you absolute walnut!”
He grumbled something about ‘kids these days’ and how if ‘she weren’t a literal kid she would be a spot of grease on the sidewalk’. I rolled my eyes.
Though I had to admit, at least Ares was creative. Unlike Hera.