Petrichor| (Paul Atreides x Fem! Percy Jackson)

Chapter 4: Charades with Percy - A Lesson in Epic Failure

     I awoke with a gasp, the dream I had was fleeting and I could only grasp bits and pieces of what happened. I remembered the face of a boy. Or was it a man? Maybe both? I couldn't quite remember.

What I could clearly notice, however, was that whatever I had seen in my dream had shaken me to my core. My heart was racing and my palms were sweaty and the only thing I could think of was getting some water for my mouth which was as dry as the desert sands I had fallen into.

And as I looked around, I noticed that I was not surrounded by sand and goo in the middle of the desert as I had expected. Instead, I found myself on a cot of sorts covered in some kind of blanket. Coincidentally, the blanket did not make me sweat in the slight heat of the room but rather cooled me, nearly to the point of freezing. The walls that surrounded me were made of a type of sandstone. It was carved with symbols, some of which somewhat resembled Ancient Greek letters and others that I did not recognize at all. The few words I could make out (and I do mean few), my dyslexia unscrambling the letters for me, seemed to be part of a prayer or something of healing and recovery. I must have been in someone's hospital wing.

That thought was confirmed when a young woman walked in holding a tray with what might be food and a bowl with some kind of brown paste. Some dried herbs were also placed beside the bowl of paste on the tray. I assumed it was some kind of topical medication. For what I wasn't sure, but the woman looked surprised to find me awake. She set the tray down on a carved stone table and left the room. I soon heard a distant call, the contents of which I couldn't make out, and then quick footsteps followed. I braced myself for a fight just in case (though I highly doubted I'd find one considering they had used their resources to heal me).

The woman returned with an intimidating man. Despite his slim build, he had a commanding presence about him as if he had been born to lead. He wore a white keffiyeh to cover the top of his head, but I could assume that his hair was the same color as the well-kempt beard that framed his face. His features looked Middle Eastern with his deeply tanned complexion and dark beard that had a couple specks of grey (not nearly enough to accurately call it salt and pepper). The thing that stood out the most were his glowing blue eyes. When I say glowing blue eyes, I don't mean that they were such a unique color that they metaphorically glowed (not to say they weren't unique). I mean they were actually glowing with a bright blue halo bleeding into his sclera. I glanced at the young woman and noticed her eyes looked exactly the same.

As my eyes darted between them, attempting to figure out the cause of their strange eyes, the man seemed to read it as panic and seemed to attempt to calm me in a language I did not understand and barely recognized. It seemed to be a form of Russian with some English words thrown into the mix. Although, even the English words were barely decipherable, as if they were spoken with several accents mixed into a single word. It was like putting sentences through google translate as it glitched out. I supposed 20,000 years would do that to a language.

The man must have noticed my confusion and furrowed his brows. He then launched into another language. One that I would argue resembled Arabic, but I do not understand even a little bit of Arabic, so how would I know?

The man looked really frustrated with my lack of understanding, so I gave him a sheepish smile which was my attempt at an apology. I then attempted to be friendly and give them my name.

I felt like Tarzan as I put my hand to my chest and said, "Percy."

I then pointed at the man who, unlike Jane from Tarzan, understood immediately.

"Stilgar," He said, his voice gruff. He then pointed to the woman beside him. "Tharja."

I nodded in greeting before thinking of a way to ask for water to quench my dry throat. I tried the universal sign for drink; I acted like I had a glass of water and was drinking it.