    “Nature loves to hide.”
-Heraclitus
  Myrah’s head bobbed as she nearly tripped. Could people not walk straight in ancient Greece? We walked past a large piece of hanging, blackened driftwood with something seemingly written on it in white. Notos stopped in front of it and squinted at it. I shifted uncomfortably, Myrah lifted her head, which she had been bobbing still, simply to do it.
“Hello?”
“This is not Greek.” The utter confusion on his face must have distracted Myrah because she clearly knew the answer to the question, obviously rushing through the god’s mind. “Yes, it is. It says Hellen’s cakei kai pota, Hellen’s Cakes and Drinks. It looks like a brewery of some sort.” Moving past how Myrah knew what it said when it was written in Greek characters, as well as I knew that cake in Greek was just cake–Dawn spent a semester in Greece in 6th grade and loved food more than us–I noticed Notos looked alarmed.
Myrah hopped from one foot to the other. Notos shoved past her and straight into a bush. My feet couldn’t move me forward at the ridiculousness of it. Myrah giggled and skipped into the bush as well, a yelp hitching in her throat as bristles caught her flesh. A grimace caught me but I forced myself to follow, except, I parted the undergrowth before me. A clearing had opened up and Myrah was taking me in. She glanced at the separated brush behind.
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” I responded, deadpan, scanning her scratched skin.
“Huh,” she said, smiling nervously, embarrassed.
Notos gave us both a look. “All right,” he began, separating the all and the right. “This clearing will be your home until we find the others and you figure out how to obliterate them.”
We were a while from the city now and couldn’t hear even the roll of a cart wheel nor the whinny of a horse. “Kip, look, mud.”
“Fantastic, now I know where the mud is.”
   Myrah eyed me before shrugging and turning back to where Notos was watching the sky. The clearing did have four cabins. Three that looked similar, except one was long and on was more boxy and had windows. The last of the three looked pretty normal, though it and the second one were the furthest away, as well as I could only manage to see one side.
The fourth cabin was probably the closest, and definitely the largest and wasn’t basically a large wooden box.
The other two just stood there expectantly. I cleared my throat awkwardly. “You know, the Greeks were called the Argives and the Trojans the-“
“And thus he proves even more boring.” Myrah snorted, apparently involuntary, as Notos rolled his eyes and started walking across the large clearing.
“I hope you know I do not plan to be here lo–“
“Oh, we should start making actual structures!” Myrah chirped proudly. I gave her a look… the look went unnoticed.
Notos froze like a rabbit, head twitching in the same fashion. “Eurus is nearby…”
I sighed, pivoting to follow him as he ran. Myrah was panting loudly at my side, giving me a strange look because I was not doing the same.
Fun fact about the Elf-Bird, he also ran like a rabbit. And randomly froze like one. Myrah tripped over herself in haste not to run into him.
Myrah scowled. “Notos, get the FUCK out of my way so I can FUCKING see.”
“He is in there.”
“Notos, hate to tell you, I mean, I truly do, but that is a solid rock.” I rolled my eyes as he ignored me. Notos brought his hand to it and shoved it at the stone as if it wasn’t there.
“Ow!” Good gods.
Myrah shifted so her side was facing the stone. “No idea where you were going with tha-” she was cut off due to the stoneface disappearing when she leaned to it.
Notos leaped back as I jumped forward to help her regain her balance. Myrah started, utterly bewildered.
“Are you okay?” I questioned as she staggered away from the cave opening that had revealed itself under her. It wasn’t as though it had crumbled- it faded.
“Told you he was here.” Notos snarked from behind, voice sounding shook nonetheless.
Surely, it seemed he was not wrong; something was moving in the shadows.
Cody…
Yeah, yeah. I see it. Stay behind me, draw your sword. The sound of metal being drawn alerted me that she had done as instructed.
We entered the cave slowly and, rightly enough, a man was lying on the ground. Notos cleared his throat beside me.
“Eurus, god of the East-“
“I do not wish to go.”
“But-“
The eastern god threw the moss ball he had been tossing into the air at Notos before he could finish. He yipped and leaped to the side, almost crashing into me. I glared at him before noticing how terrified he looked. A smirk crept onto my face as I turned back to Eurus. He pulled the moss ball, still intact, back to him, supposedly by wind.
Notos was still staring at him in wide-eyed shock. Eurus met his gaze with a tilt of his chin, back still to the cave floor. He scoffed, averting his gaze. “Notos,” he stated, an edge of scorn to his voice, just barely.
Notos flinched at my side. I shot him a look. He didn’t remove his sight from his brother.
“You really want to live here, in a dark cave, with no food for the rest of time? I understand you don’t need food, but don’t you want some?” Myrah grasped at her own words, peering around me.
“What about the taste of an incoming storm?” Notos flinched. “Zephyrus and Boreas?” Eurus didn’t appear to like Notos all that much, but can you blame him? Eurus looked at me thoughtfully.
“Where are they?” He asked, despite seeming to know the answer, shooting Notos another nasty look. Notos looked away, but not down.
“Troy,” Myrah said, excitement beginning to buzz off her.
“Troy…” Eurus’s eyes burned with recognition. “I watched the great Achilles slay Prince Hector…” He sat up, looking somewhere in the distance. “Troy still stands?”
Myrah shifted under Eurus’s refocused gaze as it danced on her, curiosity lingering in his eyes as they fell on hers.
“It would seem so,” I responded, pulling his attention off of Myrah. He nodded, gaze distant once again.
“Very well… We shall wait for Astraeus to come to pass. I have been in a cave long enough for man to evolve so greatly, facing Helios head on would be a death sentence for my vision for another few centuries.”
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