Neither Romantic Nor Sexual Nor Platonic But A Secret Fourth Thing (bonded Like Stray Cats Who Cannot

Back on the SPINX train! Also didn't realize how much I missed sgraffito until I was back at it!

“You are not a reflection of the people who can’t love you.”

— Unknown

I like to think that pre-Oracle Rachel painted scenes from both wars, but she and Percy have no idea until they go back and reflect.

Percy notices, cause Rachel shows him her art, but he just rights it off as weird, even tho something doesn’t feel right.

Like, that’s DEFINITELY a replica Achilles mourning Patroclus. Only it’s two girls, one with flowing hair and a melted face, the other kneeling over her friend, face stricken with grief. He thinks her eyes look familiar. An immortal stands over them. Although they remind more of Ares and less of Thetis.

She has another painting that reminds Percy of a story from the Gigantomachy. Hera cowers under Porphyrion, about to be attacked. Only instead of Zeus and Heracles coming to her aid, it’s a guy with blond hair. His armor and sword is distinctively NOT Greek, but he opts to not comment on it. Rachel did a good job.

There’s more in her little studio, they both dismiss them as dreams. They make Rachel uncomfortable and Percy feels bile rise the more he looks.

He doesn’t realize until months later. It hits him while on the Argo. Him, Jason, Clarisse. THEY were the heroes in those paintings. Jason was the one coming to Hera’s aid. Clarisse was mourning Selina. He was fighting giants.

It all clicked into place, and he tried to remember what else her paintings for-told.

do you think bianca di angelo welcomed jason into the afterlife?

do you think she thanked jason for being one of nico’s first real friends?

do you think she told him she understood the feeling of dying so young, with so much ahead of her?

do you think she grieved alongside him for the lives they could’ve had?

Eli McMullen (American, based Richmond, VA, USA) - Dusk Fall, 2022, Paintings: Acrylic, Gouache on Panel

that Diana Wynne Jones interview where she’s like “I don’t understand why so many girls are into Howl, it must be because they want the challenge of fixing him” is so optimistic, like DWJ’s out here hoping I at least want to make him a more functional person as if “rogue academic turned melodramatic fashion disaster whose social skills Do Not live up to his own hype” is not a perfectly valid thing to be attracted to