Toby's Small Issue

“I don’t know. Like I said, my wings are on my shoes. I mean, my shoes didn’t have sex with your grandmother.”

“Okay... ” Toby was in the presence of three gods, all of which were vastly amused by his problem.

“Um, we could always ask Cadmus. I think he learned how to retract his horns.”

“We are not asking your brother.” Ari’s expression soured. They were now on the floor of the rock wall gymnasium, arguing. Well, the gods were kind of, sort of on the ground. They would forget that they were supposed to remain mortal and end up floating a few feet above before they would sink back down.

“Why not?”

“Um, let’s see. First of all, he didn’t send us a wedding gift. Oh, and did you forget the minor detail about him killing me?” Ari asked him, trying to punch his translucent body.She made it thud.

“Okay, understandable. But who do we call? My father?”

“I don’t know if he can be bothered.”

“Um, I don’t know if I want to meet him.” Toby pointed out. “I’m not exactly happy about this right now.”

“Sure you do. He’s not that much of an asshole. He usually has reasons behind whatever he does.” Arkonel said, smiling and extending a hand. “And since you’re a brother of mine, you’re bound to meet him eventually. Plus, you’re the youngest now. Not me.”

“But I’m mortal.”

“Only a little bit. Hell, you have wings. How much more proof do you need?” Arkonel laughed at Toby’s grimace. He flapped his wings, uselessly.

“I don’t know! I guess I can try again.” His face wrinkled in concentration as he tried to will the wings to go away.

“It looks like he’s constipated.” He heard Ari whisper to her husband.

“I can hear you.” Toby grumbled. “I don’t like you people. I led a normal life before you decided to come and interfere.”

“That’s actually how most mortals feel when the gods get involved. But, here, let me help.”Hermes spoke up. “What exactly are you willing your wings to do?”

“Go away.”

“Try visualizing them shrinking back into your back. Ari said they sprouted like a fast growing tree when they came out of you. How did you get them out?”

“I was trying not to die.”

“Well, if them shrinking doesn’t work, you can always remind yourself that you’re not going to die. Make your adrenals calm down a bit.”

“I have wings on my back!” Toby nearly shouted at Hermes, then sighed, and forced himself to calm down a little bit. Hermes was right. They would fix it. And he really, really wanted to fix it before they called his father. He wasn’t really sure he wanted to hit that milestone yet.

An hour later, Toby still had his wings. And they were all stumped. They had tried everything short of cutting them off. And that was looking like the best option at this point. Because as mentioned above, meeting his real father was not on the top of Toby’s priority list. In fact, it was on the ‘hell fucking no’ list.

“We don’t have to cut them off. And you really shouldn’t have to join the immortals yet, hun.” Ari said, reaching around and giving Toby a brief squeeze. “I doubt they’re permanent. Granted, we haven’t had that many occurrences of three quarter gods, but attributes have never just popped into existence and refused to go back from whence they came.”

“Except Cadmus’ horns.” Arkonel said and his wife slapped him.

“No, they were there when he was born, weren’t they?”

“No, they sprouted.” Arkonel said. “And if they could have taken pictures, I wish they would have. That would have been amazing.”

“Be nice.”

“Wasn’t it you, the one who said we couldn’t ask him because he killed you?” Arkonel challenged his wife, and she raised her hand to hit him again.

“But your brother was a half god, wasn’t he?”

“As far as I know, yes.” Arkonel said. “I’m a full immortal because I was born, here. He’s full immortal now, but of a lesser degree. You have a general idea of how it works, don’t you Toby?”

“Well, yeah. Ari has been drilling me for over a month now.” Toby said, flexing his wings and bringing himself up a few feet. He was fine with the whole wing thing, but to be honest, he didn’t think his friends would be alright with it. “But what if your lineage had a god somewhere in it that enabled him to be the same state as I am before turning?”

“I can check it out, but there’s no real way to tell with exception to finding some non godly descendants of my mother. If she had any. That will take a while, regardless of my immortal status, because I’ll have to deal with people.” Arkonel said. “I don’t know what you’re going to do until then.”

“I can call my dad and tell him I’m out with my friends.” Toby sighed. He had really wanted to go out tonight. “I can call my friends and tell them I’ll be gone all night. But what am I going to do for the night?”

“We... should call Zeus.” Ari frowned. “We have an entire assembly of gods here and we still don’t know what to do or how to make them go away. I’m sorry Toby, I know you don’t want to meet him.”

“Fine, whatever. I knew it was coming eventually.” Toby agreed, nodding. His stomach flipped three times. “But how am I supposed to see him without dying?”

“You can see an image of him, just like you’re seeing us.” Ari said, holding back her laughter. Mortals had such outlandish concepts sometimes.

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