AN: I'm so sorry I'm so late! Almost six months, it's been so long, I've had writer's block, I've gotten distracted, I've been preoccupied with other things (like camp and canning peaches and making applesauce with my mom and spending time with my sister who I only get to see during the summer 'cause she lives on the other side of the state and is really busy with college stuff and also finishing up my senior year of high school trying to keep my GPA above a 3.0 and taking SATs and AP tests and doing yard work for my dad and a lot of other things), and as pathetic of a life as I have, I do have one (sort of) outside of fanfiction. I am a quiz master for my area's bible quiz program. I am trying to get a job. I am working towards getting my driver's license. I attend Youth Group. I help my parents with their little around-the-house projects. I also don't own a copy of HoH or BoO so I had to head back to the library to get my hands on one so that I could actually continue.

So I apologize for taking so long. I apologize for having writer's block. I apologize for getting distracted. I apologize for forgetting

I don't apologize for having a life, however. And I never will.

So anyway, I hope you enjoy chapter 3 of Horizon Line.

Calypso would give him one thing - this demigod didn't know when to give up.

He was almost never idle, spending his days wandering the island searching for materials to help him in his escape. In the span of a few hours he had stitched together a bed made out of random bits of discarded cloth she had left lying around and had (she gritted her teeth at the thought but sullenly admitted that he was nothing if not resourceful) built a bonfire out of the remains of her dining table to keep warm. At one point she'd seen him constructing a miniature shelter out of nothing but sticks and bits of scrap cloth. Later he'd constructed for himself what looked like a bench and a miniature table out of driftwood and dead branches, as well as some odd metal contraption with a needle that spun in circles and seemed pretty much useless (but was still oddly impressive despite this). He polished and tinkered with that ridiculous sphere, sometimes setting his hands on fire when he let his frustration get the better of him (A fire user? she thought. How unusual). She'd spotted him on numerous occasions tossing random pieces of metal into the sea spray in an attempt to contact the outside world - a fruitless effort, considering that a) the island was completely cut off from the outside world rendering any attempt at communication moot and b) the goddess Iris would never be interested in anything that wasn't a golden drachma or denaari or other type of celestial currency anyway - but his persistence, Calypso admitted begrudgingly, was admirable, if a tad bit pathetic.

She watched him from the shadows, never daring to show her face lest he get the wrong impression and think she was interested in him (she wasn't. He was obnoxious and rude and scrawny and disruptive, no matter how fascinating it was to watch him pull out little bits of metal from his tool belt and rapidly construct them into little trinkets that he'd send flying into the air or scuttling across the sand like a shiny, undersized crab), but she couldn't help but keep an eye on him. Maybe it was the instincts built up from three thousand years of taking care of other heroes that made her do it. Or maybe it was because she was maybe-sort-of-kind-of-just-a-tiny-itty-bitty-bit interested in observing him work. As annoying and runty and sarcastic as he was… he certainly knew how to use his hands.

With how good he was at making things, there was no way he wasn't a son of Hephaestus. Which of course also explained why he was so dull to look at and seemed to have no social skills but certainly did not explain his tiny statue or his irritating sense of humor.

Despite those few minor differences however, the boy did, in some ways, remind her very much of her old friend.

That didn't mean that Calypso wanted to be around him, however. The first time he visited her, she had to fight back the urge to brain him with one of her trowels when he started interrogating her on how long he had been there. Apparently a simple "time is difficult here" wasn't good enough for him if the way that he had glared at her and started grumbling under his breath as he turned and stomped away in a rage. It would have been so easy to throw the tiny shovel at the back of his head and knock him unconscious for a few days so she could be rid of his idiocy - lucky for him, however, she refrained.

He had no idea how lucky he was that she was able to maintain her self-control.

XXX

The longer she observed him wandering about, the more she began to realize something - he wasn't eating. She'd seen him scoop up water from the creek and keep himself hydrated, she'd seen him sleep and exercise and even work a bit on trying to build things to help him get off her island with the scarce resources available to him, but never once had she seen him eat, even though there was plenty of fruit growing on the trees all around the island and fish in the water and there were plenty of small root vegetables growing deeper in the woods. He didn't touch any of it.

Calypso tried to ignore it. She tried to tell herself that it didn't matter, that if he was going to go and starve himself it wasn't any of her business, but damn her soft heart, she couldn't sit back and feast on her fresh bread and beef stew while he went to sleep hungry every night. She resisted for two days. Then on the third, she gave up. Filling a basket with a loaf of bread, some stew and a goblet of apple cider, she set off towards his campsite. Having noticed that his smoldered clothing left quite an unpleasant smell that followed him everywhere he went, she had also woven a new set of clothes for him as well.

Originally, she'd meant to drop it off a few yards away from his camp, but halfway through her garden she got cold feet. Why should she go the entire way for such an insufferable little dolt like him? She'd done the hard work, let him do the rest! So she left the basket at the edge of the garden before stomping back to her cave.

A few hours later, when she went back to check, the basket was gone.

XXX

The second time he came to visit her was to thank her for the food. Calypso was in the middle of washing dishes and was just about to hang a freshly cleaned soup pot up on its hook to dry when he poked his head in.

"Hey, I just wanted to say thanks -"

Calypso screamed at the top of her lungs, reflexively spinning on her heel and hurling the dripping pot straight at the boy's head. With a startled yelp, he dove sideways, narrowly avoiding getting brained by the metal cookware. "Hey!"

"GET OUT!" Calypso shrieked, picking up another pot and chucking it at him. This one nearly nicked his ear - he only just dodged in time.

"Okay, okay, I'm going!" he yelped, ducking out of sight. "Geez…"

And so he stormed away muttering things like "crazy goddess" and "damn psycho" as he went.

Calypso sank back against the cave wall, exhausted and embarrassed. That… was probably a bit of an overreaction on her part. But to be fair, he had startled her. She wasn't particularly fond of being startled. And it wasn't like she wanted to be around him anyway. It was a good thing she'd driven him away.

(So why did it hurt, just a little bit, when he didn't come by to visit again?)

XXX

The next morning, she walked out into her garden and noticed that something was off. It took her a few moments to realize what it was.

Then it hit her.

That annoying ticking sound that her satyr fountain had started making when the boy's explosion had shaken up her island? It was gone now. Bewildered, Calypso moved over to take a closer look at it.

The satyr was facing the same way it had always faced, silently spurting a steady stream of water back into its bowl. No water spilled over the rim. It was in perfect working order.

How…?

Of course. The demigod had fixed it for her. Calypso had seen how good he was with his hands - that was the only reasonable explanation. But why would he do it?

Looking around, the goddess noticed with some surprise that the fountain wasn't the only thing he had fixed. The rod above the entrance to her cave had been leveled out, so that the curtain was no longer dragging the ground. A short distance away, her gardening tools were sitting in a neat pile, the blades of her shears freshly sharpened, the hinges of her pruners oiled and gleaming in the morning sunlight, and her trowels smooth and polished, undented and unbent. They were all in such good condition, if she hadn't known better she might have thought they were brand new.

Clearly he had repaired everything. That much was obvious. But why? He despised her - he'd made that very clear within the first hour that she'd known him. He wanted nothing to do with her. And yet here he was, fixing her fountain and repairing her tools for her. It didn't make any sense. He didn't make any sense. Who the Tartarus was this boy?

Shaking her head in bewilderment, Calypso turned back toward the fountain. Waving her hand over the still water, she leaned down and whispered, "Show me the boy."

The reflection of the water shimmered and morphed into a very familiar shape. Setting her shoulders, Calypso leaned back and watched.

XXX

His name was Leo Valdez, she learned. He was sixteen, a son of Hephaestus (and a fire-starter, no less), and an expert mechanic and inventor. He was the youngest member of a group of seven demigods headed off to try and prevent Gaea (Calypso's own grandmother) from rising up and destroying the known world. He was builder and captain of their vessel, the Argo II. He had what mortals referred to as Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, meaning that he had difficulty focusing on anything for very long and he had a tendency to have an excess of energy that make him incredibly jumpy and skittish and unable to stay still for very long (wow, what a shocker).

His two best friends were named Jason Grace and Piper McLean - they were a couple, frequently leaving him feeling like a third wheel whenever he was around them, despite his attempts to conceal it. Apparently he felt like that a lot with all of the other members of the Seven as well. Calypso couldn't help but empathize. She knew what it was like to feel like she was only second-best to people she cared about. Their circumstances certainly weren't identical, as Leo was not in love with either Piper or Jason, but the general idea was the same. And she knew how it felt all too well.

Perhaps it was extremely nosey of her to pry into Leo's past, but Calypso couldn't stand her own curiosity anymore. She had to figure this boy out. And if prying into his personal life was what it took to do that, so be it.

Even just skimming the surface of his past, Calypso could tell that Leo had had a hard life. She saw the light leave him after his mother's death, watched him get weighed down by the pain as he struggled through one group home and then the next, and felt his heart shatter every time he was rejected and pushed aside by someone who was supposed to care about him. Her heart squeezed with sympathy as she saw him grow, changing from a bouncy, happy little boy to a burdened young man with personal walls so thick and high it would take a thousand yards of a metaphorical grappling hook just to scale them.

Thinking back to the sarcastic little imp that had crash-landed on her island several days ago, the one who had been so rude and sarcastic and had insulted her, she wondered just how much of it was actually genuine and how much was just an act put in place to protect himself.

Maybe they weren't as different as Calypso had first thought. Because she knew a thing or two about acting. She could relate.

Sighing, Calypso waved her hand again and the images disappeared. Dropping to her knees in the dirt, the young goddess hugged her knees to her chest and buried her face in them.

She had a lot to think about.

So I know I said that I'd be making every chapter in this coincide with a chapter in the books, but this one just kept dragging on and on and on and I decided it's best to split it in two. So… yeah. Might have to wait a little bit for part 2 to come out; I'll try to be quick but no promises.