Earth shaker (PJO)

A/N: My first try posting here, hope it is readable.


When I first woke up I was being held in soft but firm arms, I could smell earth and flowers, all I could see was blurred colours. I was being carried by someone.

Soon enough I heard my carrier talking to someone, though I couldn’t understand a word, as if they were mumbling instead of proper language. The newer person started mumbling louder, more agressively but after a few more unaffected mumbles from whoever was holding me they seemed to give up.

After a few more moments I was moved from one pair of arms into another. These arms were unsure and careful and smelled of smoke and sweat. There were a few words exchanged and then my new carrier was walking and my sight was a blur of changing colours.

As we moved the smells around us changed from flowers, trees and decaying leaves to cut grass, farm animals and motor oil.

We came to a large white smear of colour and one of the arms holding me left me precariously held by its twin as it stretched towards a smaller red smudge on this white canvas.

There was an uncomfortable noise and then the arm returned to holding me as we proceeded moving through red into a warmer brown and yellow. After further movement I was laid on something soft and covered up to my chin in something warm, smelling of soap and skin as my second carrier left.

There was sound of footsteps as they left and after a while there was the sound of voices-the carrier and two much older voices, one female one male. The old male voice started picking up and in turn my carrier started shouting back, while the female voice seemed to try to calm both down for a bit before shouting something that shut the two up.
There was silence for a few moments before I heard all three people walking towards me. There were a few words from the old woman and I was being picked up by old, shaking but still strong hands.

She smelled like soap, cookies and old age.

She held me for a bit before talking, the old man answering her with anger in his voice. A few sharp sounding words from her and some movement, I was being held by a new pair of arms, the old man presumably.

He smelled of farm work – sweat, dirt, cut grass and animals. His hold was hard and not at all gentle at first.

As I looked up at his face he slowly relaxed before saying a few words, which were answered by my former carrier. There were more words exchanged by the three people before I was given to the old woman and carried elsewhere.

After a few more moments interrupted by sparse conversation something soft poked me in the lips. The thing was insistent, after several pokes I decided to bite it and was surprised by warm, sweet liquid which I greedily drank as my hunger made itself known.

Too soon the liquid stopped, leaving me surprisingly tired. By the time I was put back down in something soft and warm I was halfway to sleep.

As far as I could remember Mother meant earth, flowers and soft, firm hands. Dad always told me she left me soon after I was born but I could remember warmth, soft-firm hands and her smell, I could remember being carried and then given to my dad-my first memory.

As I grew it was more and more obvious to my family that I was a strange child. For one, I never cried, never really felt the need to. For another I grew too fast, being taller than grandma by the time I was seven and overgrowing dad two years later.

By the time I was eleven I was almost two and a half metres tall and didn’t show any signs of stopping.

There was also my unnatural durability and strength, even considering my stature. I didn’t get injured from my fall out of a window when I was three and grandma wasn’t watching me at the moment. When we needed to replace a tyre on the tractor I simply picked the front of it up, I was six years old at the time.

The first time I cried was when grandma didn’t wake up one morning and I realised there would be only three people living in our home from now on. I didn’t really stop until after the funeral.

That was the first time I met Mother since I was left with dad. After the ceremony, while grandpa was staring into the wall and dad was practically swarmed with people bearing condolences, I smellt dirt and flowers and felt a warmth wash over me. I followed the smell to a tall woman, people seemed to avoid her or simply not even notice someone was there, she was looking directly at me.

„You have grown well.“ She said. I couldn’t respond, even though I had so many questions. Mother just nodded after a few moments of my silence before giving me an old copper coin with a map on one side and a symbol of a man with a half-moon mustache on the other and a leather sack full of other coins, telling me they were presents, briefly hugging me and leaving. I didn’t follow, though I wanted to run after her.

That was the last time I saw her.

When we returned to the farm, I realised there were only two of us-dad and I. Grandpa wasn’t there, only his still living body. His soul left with grandma. I just went into my room and played around with my presents. The old coin was cool, it turned into a staff with a blade, apparently called a naginata.

When we were at grandpa’s funeral just a few months later noone was really surprised.

Most of the work around the farm was done by me since grandma’s funeral, after grandpa’s body was buried I started doing even more of it, though dad tried helping. It helped me not be as sad.

The second time I cried was when I was ten and the police officer informed me that dad was killed by a drunk driver. This time there was a new feeling next to the sadness, anger.

After the officer left I went to the woods next to our farm and stayed there until the morning. When I came back home the forest was rather thinned out.

For some reason they let me stay on the farm instead of sending me into the system.

On my eleventh birthday I got a posthumous letter from dad informing me of the fact that Mother was Gaia, as in the Greek goddess of Earth, thus of the Greek mythology being real.

I wasn’t particularly surprised.

By this time it was rather obvious there was some sort of supernatural existence in the world, somehow hidden from normal people. Some automatic masking going on and hiding everything from them.

I say automatic because when a two metres tall student comes into a class in the primary school people should at least stare but instead everyone acted as if nothing out of the ordinary happened and I know that I didn’t do anything intentional. There is also the fact that I fit into doors without practically crawling as I should need to.

A week after I got dad’s letter the farm was attacked by what I can only guess was a band of Cyclopses (cyclopi, cyclopsi, cyclopes?). I thought I could maybe talk with them, get some information on this new world I now belonged in. Instead I was attacked and smashed through the wall of my family house. I wasn’t even scratched, the same couldn’t be said of my home. It had a hole all the way through.

By the end of the fight the house was in ruins, all the cyclopses were dead and I was, for the first time in my life, injured-two missing teeth, four broken fingers, two on each hand, and a cut across my left arm. All of my injuries healed in the matter of days.

After the fight I spent the days healing and sifting through my childhood to find anything left to remind me of my family. All that I could salvage was grandma’s half burnt cook book, grandpa’s dented silver flask and dad‘s snuffbox for weed-he thought noone knew, we all did. The only other things that survived and were worth keeping were my leather sack of Drachmas, the naginata coin and, surprisingly, my school bag.

I left after I found the few mementos, there was nothing left for me here.