Deep under the sea of the Mediterranean, where the sands turn from gold to blue and fish like you've never seen before swim amongst the foreign plants and in the centre, Poseidon Lord of the MerPeople, had built his castle.

Lord Poseidon had many children, of them all, his youngest son, Perseus, was one of his favourites. Perseus, or Percy, as he preferred to be called, was the illegitimate child of Lord Poseidon and a mortal queen, this annoyed his step mother quite a bit, but Percy had never really minded, he was his father's second favourite, after his eldest brother, Triton, (though some felt that he was the favourite, and would have been his father's heir if he weren't a bastard child).

Percy didn't mind, he never wanted to be heir anyway, he didn't think that he'd be quite suited to taking over from his father, and Triton would be fine as the future king (or, at least everyone hoped).

And on this particular day, Percy was swimming through the coral reefs in the shallower waters near the beach, this was as close as he ever got, he always worried that he might be caught by fishermen or spotted by the land dwellers or 'Humans' as they called themselves. If he did, his father would rage like a mad man and he would be confined to deeps for a year. But nothing could ever really stem Percy's intense desire to see the land, and maybe meet his mother. No one else really understood his desire to explore beyond the borders of the sea, his brothers and sisters wanted travel around to the pacific and Indian oceans. They wanted to see the Mariana trenches, they wanted to see the deep north where they would have to wrap themselves in seal skins and eat the penguins that an ambassador had let them sample. They wanted to swim along the legendary barrier reef and explore the sunken library of Alexandria. Percy didn't, well, he did, he was just as excited as his siblings to see the underwater world. But he wanted to see the land too.

He wanted to see the cities and the rivers, rivers of unsalted water. He wanted to walk along mountain tops. He wanted to be held to the ground by an invisible force and he wanted to see the land of endless sand, where there was no water. Percy could hardly imagine it, how could there be a place with no water for miles around? It shouldn't be possible, it couldn't, and yet there were so many stories about the land beyond the beaches it made him giddy.

But for now, he had to settle for watching the humans from the safety of the edge of the reef. It was early morning, and the humans were preparing their boats made out of driftwood, Percy had always wondered where driftwood came from, it did not grow from the sand, and it didn't fall from the cliffs that sometimes collapsed into the ocean. And sometimes he thought that maybe it came from the tall plants that grew in great forests, like his cousin, Jason had told him once. He wasn't exactly sure whether to trust him or not. Jason was prone to exaggeration.

Percy was far away from the shore, no one would see him unless they were out on the ocean or looking really hard. He liked to watch the shipmen at work, it was interesting, they were always doing things, tying the ships to dock, loading crates of fish into large open boxes where they were carted away by strange four legged creatures. Percy sometimes felt a bit jealous of those creatures, even they had legs, sometimes Percy wondered if he would ever be able to travel around the land.

"What are you doing?" Percy almost flew out of the water in surprise. His cousin was floating behind him, smirking at him. Jason was wearing loose cotton trousers and a white shirt, both garments were loose and airy, and they were transparent too, just like Jason.

"Watching," Percy shrugged turned back towards the shore.

"Still obsessing?"

"You know it." Jason chuckled and lowered himself down so that he appeared to laying flat on his stomach with his chin resting on his hand. He looked like he was on the surface of the water, but Percy knows that he's not, otherwise there' be Jason shaped indents in the water.

"You're way to obsessed with humanity,"

"I'm half human, what do you expect?" Jason gave Percy a sideways look.

"You still want to find you mother?"

"Yeah,"

"You know that she might not be the kind of person that you want her to be," Percy winced slightly, thinking of when Jason had found out about his mother, she had been horrible in life, apparently, Percy had only heard stories, but they were all bad.

"She'll be different," Percy muttered. He swam over to a rock that he liked, it was dark and warmed quickly. He liked to sun himself on it sometimes, but right now, he just wanted to have better view and somewhere to rest.

He pulled himself up, the sunlight glinted off his scales in a hundred different shades of blue. He laid down like his cousin had before, and Jason floated over to join him.

"You sure about that? Children think that their parents are perfect when they're kids," Percy decided to ignore Jason's pessimism and continued to watch the figures in the distance.

"I know that she was nice, and sweet, but she was sad, I remember that she was crying when she gave me to my father..." Percy could remember when his mother gave him up to the sea. He'd been constantly shifting between his legs and his tail randomly, he could be running through the forest and all of a sudden his legs would snap together and his scaled would appear. He had to leave, his mother couldn't help him control his emerging powers and constant transformations. He could remember his mother sobbing as she hugged his and cried. Then she placed him in Poseidon's arms and they descended into the sea, his mother sobbing on the beach, watching him go.

"If you're sure, I still don't know why you don't ask your dad," Percy rolled his eyes.

"Because I've been asking him since I got here, he always says 'not yet, Percy, not yet'" he said in a crude imitation of his father. "I've waited forever, first I thought that he would take me when I turned ten, and then when I was fourteen, and then again when I turned sixteen. He's determined to keep me in the castle!"

"Maybe he's waiting until you turn eighteen, maybe it's part of your heritage, ya' know? I mean, Thesus didn't get to go to the south until he was eighteen, and he's there as an ambassador now, maybe your dad had you to be his ambassador to the humans?" Percy scoffed at the notion. His father didn't have anything against humans in general (except for a bit of over fishing in a few areas) but he did hate Lady Athena.

Lady Athena had been placed in charge of the cities of Jove and kataskí̱no̱si̱, by their ruler, King Zeus King of the humans and Graecia, when he went off to war in Asia. And they'd hated each other for years, Percy didn't quite know why.

"My father would never let me anywhere near a human from Jove or kataskí̱no̱si̱, he'd rather hand over his kingdom to Athena." Jason shrugged and nodded.

"He probably would." he admitted. They sat in silence for a little white, and watched the sailors on the shore, docked further along the beach, a huge boat rolled gently in the waves, it dwarfed every other vessel, and carried the seal of Lady Athena.

Percy always felt a sense of dread whenever he saw that seal. When Percy was younger, around ten years old, one of his sisters was washed up on the beach, Lady Athena had her dragged to the centre of the city, and hung by her tail from a hook. She had died of dehydration, and it was the last time that Percy had been allowed anywhere near shallow water. Poseidon's kingdom withdrew from the shore and moved deeper into the ocean, away from the humans and their land.

"Why do does my father hate Athena?" he turned to his cousin, who shrugged, but he seemed just as confused as Percy.

"I don't know, it's always been like that, they'd never really gotten along, but then something happened, and they started to hate each other. My sister still won't tell me," Jason and Percy shared a look of exasperation.

"What's it like on the land?" he could see his cousin's shoulders slump in annoyance. Percy knew that he hated talking about the land, he wasn't supposed to descend past human height, unless he was on the water, and he never broke the rule, Percy knew for sure, because Thalia had bound him so that he couldn't do it even if he wanted to, much like Poseidon had cast a spell on him so that he could never step out of the sea.

"You're going to have to be more specific."

"Why do they build such big boats?"

"Because, the little boats are just fishing boats, Lady Athena's boat is going across the sea, it has to be able to withstand the storms that your father will throw at it."

"I still don't see why they don't transport everything along their woads,"

"Wodes?" Jason snickered.

"What? What's so funny?"

"It's pronounced roads, kelp head,"

"Oh, well why don't they use those?"

"Because," Jason sighed. "It takes longer, and it's more expensive, you remember money, don't you?" Percy gave an affirmative nod. "Well, money is the key to almost everything in the human world, their lives are based around working to get it, so that they can use it to buy food and clothes and all of the other things that humans use and need to survive.

"Humans are strange."

"And yet you still want to be one."

"I never said that I wanted to be one," Jason rolled his eyes. "No, really, I don't want to be a human, I just want to see it for myself."

"Yeah, I'm sure that's it," Jason rolled his eyes. "Anyway, I'll see you later, Perce," Jason drifted off on the winds, back to his home in the sky, leaving his cousin to stare wistfully at the shore.