The sky over San Fransisco was purple and heavy with a storm that refused to break. Nine-year-old Thalia Grace huddled under a rusted overpass, her fingers trembling as she gripped the shaft of a celestial bronze spear she'd scavenged from a ruined shrine three towns back.
Every time she closed her eyes, the flashes came back, sharp and painful, like the vodka bottles her mother used to smash in the kitchen.
A sunny day that felt wrong. Her mother, Beryl, looking radiant and manic, dragging a golden-blonde toddler toward a car. "We're going for a picnic, Thalia! Stay here!"
Hours of waiting on the porch until the sun dipped below the horizon. The house felt empty.
The headlights cutting through the dark. Her mother stumbling out of the car alone, her eyes bloodshot, she was drunk and stank of alcohol.
"Where's Jason?, Thalia had asked.
"He's gone! He's as good as dead!" Beryl had screamed and wept.
Thalia had frozen for an instant. She rushed to the car and looked into the backseat and saw only an empty car seat. No Jason. No baby brother.
"Where is Jason!" Thalia had raged. In that moment of pure fury, a storm had formed directly above the house. Lightning struck the ground, the scent of ozone filling the air as mother and daughter screamed and raged at one another.
The aftermath had been a blur of sirens and bitterness. Thalia had called the police on her mother, leading to Beryl being questioned for a long time, but she was ultimately not arrested. When she returned, Beryl turned on Thalia with a newfound venom, claiming her own daughter had betrayed her.
After one final, explosive argument that shook the walls of the house, Thalia packed her things and ran.
x___________________________x
Thalia didn't cry. She couldn't afford to. Since she had stepped off that porch and into the woods, the world had tried to eat her.
At nine, she was small, but she carried a raw, electric fury. She had learned rapidly that she was different. When she was scared, the air around her hummed. When she was angry, the static electricity in the air made the hair on her arms stand up.
For months, her life had been a grueling rotation of temporary sanctuaries, drifting from the sterile, crowded floors of city shelters to the hollowed-out skeletons of abandoned tenements. She learned to navigate the life of the homeless, finding safety in numbers one night and retreating into the absolute solitude of a rusted overpass the next. In the shelters, she was a nameless statistic, avoiding the prying eyes of social workers and the predatory gazes of older runaways and traffickers.
Through these trials, she had finally pieced together the truth of her existence, she was a demigod, a child of a god and a mortal. This realization came from the terrifying reality of being hunted by things that shouldn't exist. Of monsters that called her half-blood, and a cyclops that had called her daughter of Zeus.
A dracaena, a snake-woman in mismatched armor, slithered into the light of the overpass, its yellow eyes fixed on the girl.
Thalia didn't hesitate. She lunged, thrusting the bronze spear forward. As she thrust, she tapped into the pressure building in her chest. A jagged arc of blue electricity leaped from the spear's tip. The bolt struck the monster square in the chest, and it burst into yellow dust.
Thalia stood alone in the rain, her chest heaving. Her clothes were tattered, and her eyes, a startling, stormy blue, looked far older than nine years.
"I'm not going back," she whispered to the thunder rumbling above. "I don't need a mother, and I don't need the gods."
She wiped a streak of monster dust from her cheek and tightened her grip on her spear. Somewhere out there, Jason was gone, but she was still standing. She would keep moving until the lightning took her, or until she found a place where the monsters couldn't reach.
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Aaaand Thalia's run away from home. Don't worry guys, I haven't forgotten Thalia one bit.
And don't worry guys, I have no plans on restricting the PJO universe to just Greek Mythology xD
Hope you enjoy the chapter!
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