Unfamiliar Surroundings

AN: Wow, so yeah, it's been quite a while.

Hope everybody had a good holiday, or if you don't celebrate anything, hope you've just had a nice couple of weeks. I won't bore you with excuses for my absence, but I will attempt to bribe you with gifts. Hope you enjoy!

Paul could have sworn he had closed the window in the kitchen, and yet here was a bird looking him straight in the eye. It sat in the hallway as he sat on his bed with his laptop, and the bird really seemed like he was taunting Paul, as it cooed and cocked his little gray head. Like it was saying "whatcha gonna do about it?"

Paul carefully placed his laptop on the bed next to him and put his slippered feet on the ground, moving cautiously so as not to scare the bird. The bird seemed unbothered, only ruffling its feathers some and daring Paul with his eyes some more. Paul walked to the window at the foot of his bed and opened it, then turned to the pigeon.

"Go on," he urged the bird. He gestured grandly to the window, trying to entice the little guy. "Be free." No such luck.

Paul sighed. He moved away from the window, in case the bird just didn't want to fly close to a human, and sat on the foot of the bed. The bird did nothing other than look at him strangely, even when he snapped his fingers close to the glass to try to lure it there. He then did his level best to look like a total fool, making kissy noises and snaps and even patting his knees like he was calling a dog. The bird just stared at him judgmentally.

Finally Paul gave up. Grabbing a dirty shirt out of the hamper, he approached the pigeon with the cloth on his hands to grab him. The bird just ruffled his feathers and cooed some more.

When he was a foot away from grabbing the dumb thing, the bird decided it was time to leave and hopped around to face away from the bedroom. Giving Paul one last fleeting, "goodbye, idiot" look, he took off down the hallway toward the living room. Paul stumbled to try to catch it in time, but he was too late.

Grumbling to himself, Paul rubbed his eyes tiredly. He had been planning on spending this Saturday afternoon in bed until Sally got home. Now it would seem that he had to go catch a bird.

He walked down the hallway, searching for his little feathered friend in every nook and cranny. Then, as he tip-toed over the threshold into the living room, he got a sudden case of vertigo. He squeezed his eyes shut and leaned against the wall next to him until it went away. It left as quickly as it had come, but what he saw when he opened his eyes made him wonder if perhaps it wasn't a bout of dizziness that had come over him, but insanity. Because the scene before him made absolutely no sense.

He stood in the middle of a crowd-blocked sidewalk, the people around him bustling in and out of stores. On the corner of the block, a jazz band played "When the Saints Go Marching In" with a small crowd of onlookers clapping along and throwing coins into a copper pot at one of the band member's feet. One man in a white sailor's uniform came out of a bar to Paul's left, sporting a tattooed arm to his buddies, all wearing the same WWII navy fatigues.

In fact, as he looked around, no one was wearing 'modern' clothing. A woman with a 40's era dress and hair done up in a fanciful beehive strolled past, hand-in-hand with a child who wore a green dress that flounced to her knees and hair curled to look like mommy's. The pair looked straight past him as if he weren't there and he had to quickly slide out of the way to avoid being run into.

Paul didn't know what to do. He turned around, to where he knew he had just left his hallway to find that damn bird, to see nothing behind him but a continuation of what was in front of him. More brick buildings, more soldiers picking their sweethearts up in their arms, more cloudy gray sky so different from the sunny sky he had somehow left back home.

Right then, as the panic began to set in, the scene began to disappear. The color faded from everything, and the people and buildings around him turned to mist and fell away. The vertigo returned for a millisecond but when it was gone, he found himself standing in his apartment with a bird at his feet. It crossed his mind to ask it if he had seen that scene as well, before he realized that would be crazy, because it's a bird. I'm actually losing my mind, he thought to himself sadly. As would be expected, the bird flew off before it even crossed his mind to catch it. He watched it fly out the open kitchen window, dazed.

"That was the coolest one you've done yet, Hazel," came Percy's voice from the couch.

Paul looked around the living room to find Percy sitting next to a girl on their couch. He didn't remember ever meeting this girl. She had dark skin, with toffee colored curls. She was a few years younger than Percy, and she had a wistful look on her face.

"That was a road I had to walk down on the way to the French Quarter. It was always pretty lively. I wish I could've shown you the same road during Mardi Gras… it was so beautiful. But it would have been too complex to create," the girl, Hazel, said. The way she spoke of the French Quarter and Mardi Gras made him think she was from around New Orleans, especially the way she pronounced certain things. Like she had the lightest of accents.

"You'll get there. You're already the most talented person I know when it comes to the Mist. Even the Hecate kids can't do what you can," Percy encouraged her.

Hazel smiled a little sheepishly. "Thanks, Percy." She then looked up and saw Paul standing in the hallway. "Oh!"

Percy looked surprised as well. "Paul! I forgot you were here." He stood up and approached him, Hazel right beside him. "This is my friend Hazel. She's visiting from Camp Jupiter to work on camp relations between my camp and hers."

"Our camps, I think you mean," Hazel corrected him.

"Right, right," Percy muttered. "I'm helping her work on her powers since her usual 'study-buddy' had to stay in California." Percy smirked at Hazel as he said study-buddy and chuckled as she blushed. She shoved him lightly with her shoulder and he laughed. Paul figured whoever usually helped her was more than just a friend.

Paul was still more than a little dazed by what he had just seen, or, probably more accurately, hallucinated. But he still shook Hazel's hand and told her it was nice to meet her. He then asked her what her godly parentage was.

"Pluto," she answered.

"Oh. Hades' equivalent. So is Nico your brother, then?" Paul asked.

"He may as well be," she said with a loving smile as she thought of her brother. "I guess he's kind of like a half-step-brother."

"By the way," Percy put in, "did he shadow-travel you here?" Hazel nodded. "I thought so. Wonder why he didn't stay?"

Hazel shrugged and looked at her shoes. "Uh, maybe he had somewhere to be?" she offered. Paul could tell just by looking at her that she was hiding something, he just had no clue what. Percy looked at her for a few moments, trying to meet her eyes. After a few seconds of awkward silence, Paul decided to rescue the poor girl by changing the subject.

"So what powers were you here working on?" He asked. He was genuinely curious.

"Oh," she said, clearly happy to change the subject away from what Paul figured was still Nico. "Well, I was practicing manipulating the Mist."

Paul remembered a night a couple of years back where Percy's friend Thalia had Jedi Mind-Tricked a couple of police officers into leaving Percy and herself alone after a day of fighting monsters. Percy had explained that she had manipulated the Mist into making the cops believe what she told them. Legal, no. Helpful, yes.

"You mean, making Percy believe things that aren't real? Seeing what you can come up with and making it plausible? That makes sense."

"Well actually, no," Hazel told him. "It's similar, but very different. I create images in my head and make the Mist act it out. So people see things that aren't really there. I create these scenes, and I have Percy find any problems in the image."

Paul thought about what she had told him. He felt a swell in his chest and let out a huff of relieved breath. "Oh, thank the gods," he muttered, rubbing his hand over his eyes.

Percy frowned slightly in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"You mean, you can create entirely new environments?" Hazel nodded slowly, obviously confused as to why Percy's step dad was so excited about her abilities. Paul chuckled. "Well that's fantastic news."

Percy was perplexed. "All these years of trying to impress you with water, and you really just wanted someone to change your surroundings?" He scoffed and ran a hand through his hair. "Wish I'd known that," he muttered.

Paul laughed again. "No, no, I'm just glad I'm not losing my mind!" he told them. Hazel and Percy exchanged worried/confused looks before Hazel seemed to figure it out.

"Oh my goodness, were you in here when I showed Percy New Orleans?" she asked. Paul nodded, and Hazel gasped. "I'm so sorry! I probably scared the daylights out of you!" Hazel then blubbered about how sorry she was, and Paul tried to comfort her and tell her it was all right, while Percy stood to the side and tried to hide his laughs.

After a minute, Percy offered Hazel something to eat. "We have popcorn," he offered.

"I'm fine, thanks. Popcorn takes too long to make," Hazel answered.

Percy made a face. "It takes like two minutes in the microwave," he informed her.

Hazel also made the same face. "Which one is that, again?"

Percy laughed. "It's the little box on the counter that speed-cooks things. Wanna see?"

Paul looked on in confusion as Hazel nodded interestedly. "Yeah, ok." What teen had never seen microwave popcorn?

Percy and Hazel walked into the kitchen, leaving Paul behind. Something about the whole scene Paul had witnessed didn't ring right. He walked into the kitchen after a moment, thinking hard. Suddenly he realized what didn't make sense.

"Wait a second," he called. "That looked like 1940's Louisiana!"

AN: Yes, I referenced the Nico thing. Because I love the Nico thing. And I made Hazel somewhat privy to that delicate information because hey, she's his sister, and Hazel strikes me as the kind of sister to be able to pick up on that kind of thing. Also I made her a bit clueless when it comes to kitchen appliances because I doubt she had much use of them at Camp Jupiter, and she died during the Second World War and the first microwave was created after the war using newfound technology discovered during blah, bla blah, bla blah.

Anyway. Seriously guys, I'm sorry the updates are so few and far between. BUT, I have a plan. I just recently discovered how very inspirational Tumblr is, so I plan to be a lot more efficient now (however convoluted that logic is).

Speaking of which, come follow me! It's all PJO/HoO stuff, where I post sneak peeks and snippets of my stories and short things that are too small to post on this site, and reblog stuff that I think my readers might enjoy. I want lots of asks, because I love talking to my readers. We have the most interesting conversations, I swear. I'm at hello-to-the-sun-and-the-stars. Or, there's a direct link in my profile. Go click it.

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