A therapeutic house call (Milo)

[Deleted]

There are things Egeria Echo makes a habit of and thing she does not. Egeria will not inflict physical pain intentionally on any living thing. Egeria doesn't always let you know she's around, but she will not ever lie. Egeria will not engage herself in a conflict unless completely necessary, but Egeria does remember those she has selected for independent studies and she will check up on those said subjects with or without warning, usually the latter. Milo had be marked as a sort of harmless experiment before she had even seen his face. It was all part of her process really, showing up unannounced could unlock the doors to a wealth of information. Of course, previously informing your subject can be just as informative on occasion, but in this particular circumstance she was convinced otherwise. From what she gathered from their date a little while back, Milo was one to plan, so, naturally, a little spontaneity was in order. Not only could she mark down his actions to such an event, but, because she was showing up at his dorm, she could note the way he treats his space. The living area could tell a lot about a person.

The day was just starting when she floated her way into the male dormitories. The sky was a pretty shade of pink and the sun could be seen peeking through the windows about the building. She didn't hesitate before heading directly for Milo's room, she always kept an ear open for information on those she wished to observe. It wasn't hard to find thing out about people when you listen so closely as Miss Echo does. Her steps hardly made a sound, being that she didn't need to even touch the ground at all if she had the urge not to. She was wearing a pare of simple tan ballet flats, she liked to be able to feel the ground beneath her feet. Outside of shoes she had dressed herself in a simply greenish dress. Her hair fell to her shoulders, naturally wavy and fluttered gently as she paced swiftly toward his door.

Upon arriving she debated for a split second on how to enter. The nymph was not one to knock, it seemed like such a strange tradition these humans had adopted. She decided upon something a bit less awkward and suddenly vanished into a cloud of petals. after a moment the free falling flowers seemed to catch a nonexistent breeze and they began to slip easily through the cracks around the door frame, many finding their way through the key hole. Once through, they gathered immediately and quickly pieced themselves together to form Egeria's feminine guise. With her normal look of mild mirth, her eyes searched the room for that dear man who called himself Milo Thatch.


outfit.
here
notes.
well. she can make an entrance.....poor Milo.

[Milo Thatch]

Milo considered himself vastly inexperienced with women. It wasn't one of those things he bothered trying to lie about. There wasn't any sense in putting up a front, or trying to look like he was some sort of ladies' man just to impress people...particularly because he couldn't have fooled anyone if he'd been trying. And secondly, he was sort of resigned now to the fact that if love was going to find him, it'd find him...there wasn't much he could do to hurry it along. Past events had all but proven that.

But even with his lack of understanding of the opposite gender, he was fairly certain that it was not normal for a girl to come streaming in through your keyhole without knocking. He had been writing something in a notebook at his desk, which faced away from the door, and when he heard the rustle of wind or whatever it was behind him, he turned around. His jaw dropped open rather dramatically, and the pencil he'd been holding fell out of his hand, unnoticed, onto the floor.

"...Hi," he breathed, because that was all he could possibly think of to say. Well, that wasn't entirely accurate, a lot of other things came to mind too, but none of them were eloquent or polite, so he settled on the greeting. He recognized her, of course...she'd been his date at that matchmaker thing, but he hadn't been expecting her to...whatever, into his room. "Sorry, I was just...writing this thing, and I didn't know you were..." Why was he apologizing?

[Deleted]

She found it curious, the amount of shock and aw she brought about here at Tintagel. This was a magical school after all, wasn't it? There are so many here that could outshine her powers it seems, not that she was interested in any sort of a competition. It's true that none here have quite the same gifts as she, but Egeria couldn't help but wonder just exactly why her specific talents brought about so much amazement. It was easy enough to categorize and understand what kind of fascination each person was experiencing, some laced with more terror and others envy, but the reason where still a tad foggy to her. This troubled Egeria slightly, but she was confident she'd come to a proper conclusion soon enough. As of this very moment, she had other things to focus on, namely: Milo Thatch.

He initial reaction seemed to be very common to her eyes at first, but she could sense something else there, something she was quite as familiar with as she would have liked. She was happy to realize that this something was very possibly a form of sexual attraction. This was the very purpose of this experiment, to understand the strange workings of the love language in the human race. It would appear that she had chosen wisely to keep up with Milo. The shadow of a smile appeared on her lips as she looked down upon the stuttering boy. She instinctively conjured the wooden pencil to her hand the moment it hit the ground, but her warm eyes never left his. She found him rather endearing actually, rather pleasant to be around and, though she had made it clear that she was not here to make friends exactly, she was glad to have someone who was kind to work on for a change. Now, if only she could get him to form a complete sentence.

With a mild smile still tracing her features, she closed the space between them and gently placed a hand on his chin to close his apparently loose jaw. Hello dear Milo she said softly before her eyes focused on his notebook. Wouldn't you tell me what were you writing? she asked with the tone of a curious child. Just like the living space, a lot could be told about a person by their writing, and not just what they wrote, but how they wrote it. This boy seemed rather neat and tidy, a rule book probably planted in his mind. She would have to change that if she held any hope of learning the ways of intimacy with this boy.

[Milo Thatch]

Touching, touching, touching, she was touching him, why was her hand on his face? Did she understand how odd this was, coming into somebody's room and touching their face? And...what had he been writing about? He couldn't even remember. An interruption like this didn't leave much room for extemporaneous thought.

"It was just a...thing." he finished lamely. "A journal thing, about what happened in my day." Nothing, in other words...the contents of that particular page held a detailed account of his breakfast, the classes he'd taken, the questions he'd answered in said classes, and how he was hoping for a good grade on an assignment he'd turned in that morning. Nothing exciting. But for some reason, he wasn't sure whether he wanted her reading it. Primarily because he wasn't sure if she could like...open it and suddenly know all the stuff inside. Like how fascinated he'd been with her at the matchmaker thing...like how hung up he still was on the disappearance of the only girl he'd ever successfully kissed...like how he still dreamed about his parents sometimes and woke up convinced that they'd never died.

"It's nothing interesting," he said, quietly, and looked away, towards the window. "Sorry to ramble. I just...I didn't hear you knock." There, mention the not-knocking thing, but lay the blame on yourself so she doesn't think you're pointing fingers. Maybe she doesn't know it's not polite to come in through somebody's keyhole. "I get wrapped up in writing sometimes. Was there something I could touch you with? Help! Help you with! Sorry, I...brain....stupid brain, does...really weird things sometimes." He smacked his head gently with the back of his hand, as if shaking his brain back into order (which didn't seem likely).

[Deleted]

Egeria felt....tempted. Which was a strange thing for her to feel, she'd never really experienced such an emotion before, but she knew enough about it that she could identify it easily. She stood completely still for a bit, just letting her body play with this new found emotion. She found that she wanted, quite a lot, to see what he had written down on those pages of his diary. It would be all too easy really. The paper was really just a very small part of a tree, which she was very familiar with. Now, the graphite used to mark his words was far too much a processed thing for her to to control but, should he have pressed hard enough, she could simply place her hand on the book and feel every indent his pencil made on the nature-made pages.

The reason that this was not simply an option of hers, but something that brought about temptation was the fact that she had promised herself to know little about Milo in order for her to fully learn how relationships and the like are formed. If she were to glean so much information like this, rather than just taking in his words and his actions, she could harm her experiment greatly. She was all too aware that, unless particularly obsessed, no possible sexual partner could know nearly everything about their hopeful mate before meeting them, like Egeria could. No, she decided after deliberation, if she was going to know, he would have to tell her himself, or otherwise she'd have to persuade him. She could not simply just gather the information so certainly against his will.

She brought her eyes away from his desk and let them fall back onto the, apparently, rather flustered Milo. He again discredited his writings and, though Egeria highly doubted she would find them uninteresting, she remained silent as she watched him turn toward the window. This was a sign of apprehension, clearly she was making him uncomfortable and yet, she sensed that he found her appealing in a way. She was glad to gather this knowledge, how strange and wonderful it all was! He was nervous, but she couldn't quite decide if he'd rather she left him be. He kept speaking anyway.

That is because I did not she stated simply when he claimed to have not heard her knock. Obviously, these humans took that curtesy a lot more seriously than she had bothered to assume. He had yet to say anything of real use to her until he continued and let slip his true desires for a moment. A tiny smile curled her lips and her head tipped to one side slightly as she gazed upon him with soft eyes. Touch. He was hung up on touch. She reached out and let her fingers brush his cheek, her skin as soft as the petals she was so often evaporating into. Would you like to? she said simply, she would leave it up to him to decide weather she meant helping or touching. His answer to greatly help her cause.

[Milo Thatch]

Milo would probably have felt equally tempted if he hadn't been so confused. As it was, the confusion outweighed the bizarre sense of attraction...or fascination, or whatever it was, he felt towards her. And then she was touching him. Again. Milo flinched involuntarily, not because he didn't like the sensation of her fingers on his skin, but because he was not entirely sure why she had suddenly decided to come into his room and start touching his face.

"Like to..." Wait, did she think he was really offering to touch her? That was just...one of those unfortunate blunders he had a habit of making, mostly when he was nervous, mostly because of pretty girls. "Help you?" he managed, tilting his head slightly. "Sure, if you...need help with something, I can help, what did you need? Helping is great." Yep, back to rambling.

"Don't uh...don't worry about the knocking thing, people don't always bother anyway. Most of them come in through the doorway, not through the keyhole, though, heheh." He laughed, rather nervously, before apparently realizing that his joke hadn't been that funny.

He tucked his journal away into one of the drawers in his desk, hoping she'd just...forget about it. He didn't want her picking it up and doing some weird magic reading thing where she made everything on the pages come to life or something like that. He had no idea whether she actually had the ability to do that, but he wasn't taking any chances here. His experiences with girls were embarrassing enough without adding an exposé of his innermost thoughts.

[Deleted]

Egeria had decided that she was indeed in a fix now. She could not allow herself to simply know everything about him, to glean information the way she did with others. She could not simply observe him from afar, read his writings, listen to whispers. In order to gain what knowledge she was looking for first hand, she was going to have do that old fashion thing called carrying on a real conversation with the boy. Sure, she could riddle him to no end, get her answers that way, they'd still be coming from his mouth wouldn't they? She somehow thought this would be less...genuine, however. It should not be extraordinarily hard for one to simply ask what she wanted to know, but there was this....thing that humans had. They liked to share things, if a human offers their name, they tend to expect you to offer your own. It was an odd thing that Egeria often overlooked, but this tended to prompt a certain distain from her subject. Now, this was not usually much of a issue, being that causing strong enough emotion in any direction, albeit often anger, could offer her an opening to dig deep into a being's soul. Anger, however, was the last thing she wanted from dear Milo and so, she feared, she would have to give this 'sharing' idea a try.

She stood, smiling slightly as he rambled on, pondering how she just might go about this. It was easy to gather that he was, on at least some level, rather afraid of her. That won't do at all. Dearest Mr Thatch, I wish not to make you fret, you intrigued me from the moment we met. she spoke slowly, building up the will to break away from her nature and reveal her identity. I am called Egeria Echo, a Dryad from a place far from here. My knowledge stretches far beyond the imagination of men, but never have I encountered a race such as the humans. she said the words as if they were something cursed, never to be repeated. She found that she was not very fond of sharing so far, but she was confident that her confessions would be worth it.

[Milo Thatch]

Milo's history with women was a study in cultural differences. His first, rather ill-fated interest had been the daughter of a Chinese diplomat, back in Washington, where he had developed a crush, then ended up throwing up on her feet. That was a story he didn't like to tell very often, not unless somebody asked, in which case he often couldn't help himself. He was a bit of an overexplainer in that regard. Then there had been Kida - yet another cultural anomaly; leave it to Milo to fall in love with the princess of an ancient empire nobody else had believed in the existence of.

And now he was being...touched, or approached, or whatever she was doing, by...a Dryad. Whatever a Dryad was. So he'd gone from...a girl from another country, to a girl from...well, a much more bizarre country, to this girl who wasn't even human. Excellent track record he was accumulating there.

"You, um...introduced yourself before," he blurted, then immediately felt bad because he didn't want to hurt her feelings or anything. Maybe she was just...curious. "But I didn't know you were a Dryad. What...what's that?" And how far was a place far from the school? Milo had been a lot of places, and a lot of them were extremely far apart. Was she talking about another planet? Or some kind of separate realm, like...Olympus or whatever?

"How do you like us so far?" he couldn't help asking.

[Deleted]

Well observed, sweet Milo she said softly, a smile threatening to betray her careful porcelain mask. Even that in its self was a wonder, her offering her name. She recalled this event, believing in this very primal act of sharing. Perhaps wishing that simply speaking her name would be enough information to give, she had come to the conclusion, however, that this would not due on account that she was vying for so much more than a name from him. You could call it a cautious game of give and take, at least, thats how Egeria saw. All the complexities and motives behind human interaction simplified to a mere child's game. On some levels, she throughly believed this to be accurate, but oh, it was all the motives and emotions that brought interest to human conversation. It was all the complexities that left Egeria intrigued and slightly mystified. In this way, human's were occasionally rather hard to predict. Occasionally.

As he continued to speak, Egeria experience as sort of unpleasant tugging at her stomach and she realized that, for the first time, she was rather....out of control. She's gotten so good at her trade of the years, learning and riddling and solving, but this endeavor was like nothing she'd attempted before and it was proving rather difficult. She had hoped that he would feel compelled to reveal something about himself once she did so, but alas he only wished for more from her. Apparently he would need a stronger, or possibly more direct, prompt. She experienced the strangest sensation of feeling...slightly off kilter, lost for a brief moment when he didn't answer as she expected. And yet...this is just what she wanted wasn't it? To break away and experience things more as a human might? She'd be pleased only she couldn't help, but wonder how one could cope with that drifting feeling she'd just gone through, multiplied and far more often. How strange.

She blinked at him once, the turned to look out the window. She brushed of his first question, and what a silly question it was. She was a Dryad, obviously, had she not made that clear? Would he prefer she began to list synonyms of the word? That seemed rather purposeless, and so focused herself on his second inquiry instead: "How do you like us so far?" Simple was the first word to reach her lips, gentle and calm. Her eyes wandered back to meet Milo's and she allowed the slighted amount of perplexity show on her pretty face. And yet, I struggle to solve you. she paused for a moment, then lifted her hand to his cheek, like she had done before, only this time it was rather different. She wasn't looking for his reaction. She felt curious, tempted again, just to touch his skin. It was smooth, warm...solid. She addressed the faintest longing to be so whole. She remembered his previous offer to help and this paired with her new found discovery she willed herself to ask a question that she perhaps has never uttered, or at least not often enough to recall. Would you help me please?

[Milo Thatch]

Sweet Milo? Milo couldn't remember anyone in his life ever having called him that before...maybe his mom had when he was little, but his memory of his parents was hazy at best, and that definitely wasn't on the list of valued moments that he made a point to recall. He wasn't quite sure how he felt about Egeria calling him that...on one hand, he would be lying if he said he wasn't the tiniest bit attracted to her. She was pretty, as far as people who could assemble themselves out of petals. But there was something else about her, something ancient and totally, completely out of his league. Not in a "you're hot and I'm a nerd" kind of way, either, more like...she seemed to have an awareness of things on a whole other level than he did. It was almost as if she had some other set of senses, was perceiving things he didn't even know how to quantify with touch, smell, sight, taste, or sound.

But she was asking for his help, and Milo's white knight complex kicked in at full strength. He might not be able to help everyone who asked him to, but darned if he wasn't going to try. She wanted to solve people? Milo could help her out with language matters, at least.

"What is it you need help with?" he asked carefully. "I know languages...a few of them, anyhow, and I'm not really part of the in crowd, but I guess I know the lingo around here. Are you wanting to fit in, or..." And there she was touching him again. Touching his face....why did she keep doing that? Did she know how disorienting it was for him, was she trying to throw him off his game? Not that he had much game in the first place, but when she was touching him like that, he could hardly put together a coherent sentence. "Um. We could practice...stuff." Stuff, in Milo's mind, equaled grammar and putting together properly constructed sentences...usually, although the close proximity between them at the moment was putting other ideas into his head that he felt a little ashamed to be thinking.

"What don't you understand?" he asked quietly...she was so close that he hardly had to speak above a whisper, it seemed.

[Deleted]

She all but disregarded his first bit of ramblings, deeming them irrelevant at the moment. She did, however, take in the fact that he knew something about languages. She herself knew a good few hundred or so. She wasn't quite sure she wanted to be so direct with him on the specific point of what, exactly, she wanted. She had it in her head that it would seem more...sincere somehow if she were to find a way to naturally light a spark between them. The only problem being that she wasn't the most practiced in doing so. In truth, she'd never had to seduce a human in her life and she was quite certain that these kind of things could not be learned through books and words. You must experience some things and that, it would seem, was hardest of all for the whimsical nymph.

Even now she was calculating when she should have been feeling, should have been allowing herself to experience this moment. She was very close to him, her hand on his cheek, and he was obviously affected by her proximity. She took this as another sign of attraction, though it could safely just be another one of those moments when people felt uncomfortable when their personal space was invaded. She had a hunch he was having different thoughts, however. He mentioned practice and she considered this for a moment. Practice what exactly? She could easily assume he meant language like he had mentioned before, but his eyes said differently.

Her blue eyes bored deep into his own, hunting for his very soul, though her face remanded unchanging. Shouldn't she kiss him now? Or he her? Then were plenty close close enough, she need only move the slightest bit forward, but she had to address the idea that this could very well scare him away. Yet, it could do just the opposite too, he seemed to skittish. A bold move like such may send him running, so to speak. There he asked it, he asked for precisely what she didn't want to give him directly. Perhaps now would be the perfect time for a poem she knew well. Trip no further, pretty sweeting; Journeys end in lovers meeting, she began softly, moving her hand to tip his chin up slightly. Every wise man's son doth know. What is love? 'Tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What's to come is still unsure she recited, a love poem by none other than William Shakespeare. The next line implied hat there was no gain in waiting and that they should kiss, but something stopped her. An idea that she could not rush this man, he would have to make some further indication that that is what he wanted before she could oblige. So she held her position, watching him carefully still.


POEM. O Mistriss Mine

[Milo Thatch]

Milo didn't have the luxury of thinking about how to feel, or considering what the appropriate emotional response would be in this situation. His mind had made that decision for him pretty quickly. He knew exactly how he felt - awkward as heck. Didn't take any brain power to figure that one out; he was fairly well used to it, given that that was the way he'd felt around women since he was old enough to care what they thought of him. And she was really close to him, way up in his personal space, entirely uninvited, though he couldn't really say he minded. There was just something weird about it, like...she was an expert at all the things he was completely inexperienced at. Actually, with the way she spoke and carried herself, it seemed sort of like she was an expert at everything.

"Practice...languages, or...whatever it was you needed help with." He still hadn't picked up on the fact that maybe the thing she wanted to practice was the thing he was trying to keep his mind off of. She sure did have an unsettling way of watching people...like she wasn't looking at them, or through them even, but right into them. Like she could see what he was thinking...

Oh, golly, he hoped not.

The poem was familiar...Milo wasn't a literary buff by any means, but when you spent a lot of time reading scientific papers and reports on digs, you spent a lot of time in the library. Libraries liked Shakespeare, and he'd probably read the poem on a poster or something in a study room at some point in his life. It didn't matter. The only reason he was trying to focus on the poem was that it was the only thing making a lot of sense at the moment.

"Egeria," he breathed, carefully, because it felt like he ought to breathe carefully, given that she was all of three inches from his face. "What is it you really want from me?"

[Apollo]

The thing about such poignant moments; such moments mixed with awkwardness and tension, building up and up and up until neither person or anyone present in the room could bare it much longer, as it was just reaching breaking point, the moment before an argument, the moment before a fight, the moment before a kiss… The thing about these kind of moments is that just as it’s about to all happen, something or someone decides that moment is the perfect opportunity to make an appearance.
 
Apollo was that something, bursting through the door, flinging it open and almost off it’s hinges as he positively leaped into the room. He liked to make an entrance, especially when there was someone special involved and that meant utilising and enhancing all his abilities and looks. He stood there just in front of the doorway, arms spread out to his side, the light shining in behind him, beaming at Milo. He bounded towards him and threw his arms around the young man booming, “APPLE!! Oh I have missed you Apple! You look well, and when I say well I mean positively gorgeous! How have you been?”
 
Letting the man go and taking a step back he ran a hand through his curly blonde hair and continued, not waiting for his reply, “I was so worried I had gone home for too long and you would have withered away to old age, or worse! Gone to the underworld, then I would have had to play my lyre for your soul, made a deal with uncle Hades and as much as I love the man he’s a little morbid and the underworld, it’s a little dark. But you here you are, all young and wonderful and beautiful! And-“
 
He glanced and the little nymph near by, briefly and then looked back at her harder. One would say with a slight glare. A nymph, troublesome dastardly creatures, how he hated them. There had been a few that had caused him so much pain, not like his dearest Muses who were so obedient and loving and ok they were girls but they were still all awesome. But nymphs, they were the bane of his life. Every time that dastardly little dwarf in the diaper cupid got involved it was a nymph that caused him the most trouble and more embarrassingly, the most heartache. Castalia, Acantha and…Daphne, how he loathed them these creatures that he found himself falling desperately in love with, despite their female nature, due to that brat with the arrows, how he chased them, how they enjoyed to make him suffer. And here was one such…demon, fluttering about his young man.
 
Humans were fragile and easily startled young things and he knew any show of his towering anger and hatred for the creatures would scare young Milo away, maybe even turn him against him. But the thing would know, the thing would be able to see how much it was loathed…how much he wished to destroy it. However to Milo he must seem cordial and respectful. “Oh hello there,” he said grinning brightly at the girl, “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced, I’m Apollo, God of the Sun, I’m sure you’ve heard of me, I’m sure Apple here as told you absolutely everything, he’s such a clever cookie isn’t he?”
 
Turning his back on the creature and smiling genuinely at Milo he said, “Anyway I’ve come to ask you a very important question my dear Apple…will you go to prom with me? I would so hate to go alone.”

[Deleted]

Conflict. Several new conflicts on top of the one she was still solves arose in the blink of an eye, or, rather, with the bounding entrance of a certain sun god. This should cause Egeria no such alarm or distress given that solving conflicts was her specialty, was it not. Unfortunately, she was far more practiced in solving other beings problems, not her own. She was still silently working out weather she might kiss him here and now, he hadn't moved away after all. His breathing so controlled, his thoughts surely wandering to such places most humans refrained from speaking aloud for fear of embarrassment and general rudeness. His face was warm in her hand, his words soft.

He used her name and she addressed an odd sense of relief. Like the use of her name reminded her that she was not the soul holder of the information and, for reasons she had yet to conclude, that felt nice. Was that why these little mortals shared so often? He repeated his inquiry with different words and she felt that temptation again. That urge to do something that she logically knew she should not. She moved closer only to have the moment shattered by the grand entrance of a greek god.

Place her internal issues to the side for a moment, she quickly assessed the situation and silently straightened her posture before blinking calmly at the powerful blonde as he went about his exuberant hello. Apollo. Greek god of music (principally the lyre, also directing the choir of the Muses) and also of prophecy, colonization, medicine, archery, poetry, dance, and of young men. The facts scrolled through her head the lang one ringing as he gathered Milo up into a huge embrace and called him by the name of 'Apple.' God of young men indeed, interesting. It took her a brief moment to connect the fact that 'Apple' was the greek form of Milo's name. She couldn't help but allow a light smile at this notion on account that she herself was, in fact, an apple tree, to be precise.

Her smile quickly faded away to create an unreadable mask upon her face, as she often carried when without a whimsical grin. Apollo had noticed her now and it was immediately evident that he was not pleased in the slightest, though his bright words may have fooled any human. She knew he was thinking of those many endeavors he'd had running after nymphs and generally ending up with an aching heart and a hole in his pride. She should have guessed this would be the case, to think differently would be absurd, though she had thought that maybe he would know better than to judge all nymphs as the same. He was a greek god, however, and greek gods where rather well known for their ability to hold grudges despite that fact that she her homeland was Narnia, not Greece. Thats not so say she'd never visited before.

Her initial reaction to his words was a cordial nod, seeing that his rapid switch of interest back to Milo hardly provided her for room to speak. Then he said something that would layer that conflict she had so been wanting to avoid. He asked him to prom. A dance, a romantic dance with romantic moments and romantic implications. What an interesting pair they would make, and observing them may prove knowledgeable, yet, allowing such a thing would surely set back her plan or possibly destroy it altogether. That would not do.

Egeria carefully circled around so that she was in front of Apollo again and to the side of Milo. Hark, hark she began gently, with a tone that betrayed no emotion save perhaps the tinniest hint of mild displeasure. the god does play, and as he leads the way through heaven, the very spheres, as men turn all to ears. she finished, deciding that perhaps she would not want to learn from Apollo, and she had not interest in attempting to mend a greek god anyway. Her eyes stayed stead on the god and she placed her hand lightly, albeit rather protectively, upon Milo's shoulders. Her voice was simply matter-of-fact when she spoke again, simply. I find that, dear Apollo, I would prefer it if you found another young man to prey upon.

[Milo Thatch]

Milo used her name because he didn't know what else to say. She had baffled him from the moment he'd met her, and she wasn't showing any signs of changing. She asked for his help, and then made it look a whole lot like the thing she wanted help with was romance or lust or something. Milo had next to no experience in either of those, so why in the world would she choose him for this little quest of exploration into the human psyche?

His heart was surely up in his throat, he could hear it thundering in his ears, blood pulsing so strongly that he felt like he had to remind himself to breathe. This wasn't quite the way he'd felt when he'd thrown up all over Mei-Xing's shoes years ago, but it was definitely reminiscent of it.

Then the door was flung open (did nobody knock anymore?), and Milo's heart gave a violent lurch out of surprise, alarm, or something else as Apollo immediately launched into an extremely excited speech about...just about all he caught out of most of it was something about making a deal with Hades in exchange for his soul. Why would Hades have any claim on Milo's soul? He hadn't done anything horrible. And...wait, Apollo would bother to make a deal to get it back? He must have heard that wrong.

Except for...just as soon as he had himself convinced that he'd misheard Apollo sort-of saying he'd bother to save Milo's soul from Hades, Apollo was also asking him to go to prom. There was no mistaking that, it was plain as day. With that, Milo's level of confusion and uncertainty went from barely manageable to completely off the charts.

He had a nymph and an actual god fighting over him? Or...discussing him with veiled hostility? Was this some kind of really bad prank, or maybe a bizarre dream? He didn't really like the way Egeria said "prey upon" - not only insinuating that Apollo was stalking him in some creepy way or something, but that maybe she was going to do the same thing if Apollo would leave him alone.

What was he supposed to say here? Tell them both to shove it because he wasn't interested in being an object? That seemed really rude, especially considering...well the fact that he had worshipped Apollo in basically every way except for you know, the actual devoted religious way, since he was old enough to read. Right from the start, it had been Greek 'myth' that had captured his interest. It had been Greece, and Plato, that had eventually led him (through his grandfather, of course) to Atlantis, the only place he'd ever really felt at home. And at the center of all of that had always been Apollo, the legendary god of the sun...

...who was now asking him to go to prom. It was like...like a guitarist being propositioned by Jimi Hendrix. It didn't matter if you were male and he was male and you'd never even remotely thought of yourself as anything other than heterosexual because it was freaking Apollo the sun god.

"Um," he managed. "Okay." Then he immediately felt bad, because what if Egeria had been wanting him to ask her or something? "I mean, guys...guy and girl...uh...is this actually happening?"