"Did You Try to Turn Them On and Off Again?"

As states a general unspoken rule which all of the Olympians should follow, a god must always present themselves as a decisive and strong personality - the archetypal leader that has no weakness or hesitation, no fear or doubt. However, of course, as the deeply flawed and secretly terrified beings that we are, none of us actually follow that rule.
For many days following the conversation I had with my mother, I didn't either.

The chance of getting my friends back safe and sound and being capable of helping them in a way that wasn't the typical "Here you go kid, a magical item that will delay your death by a couple of hours!" (something that, by the way, was also technically against the Ancient Laws) instilled in me a sense of dread that I hadn't felt since I was still a mortal. I kept wondering whether or not it would be wise to go to ask Mnemosyne for help, fearing repercussions and, most of all, fearing that, if something went wrong, the demigods would be in danger.

In short, I was stalling; and very, very cowardly so.

For the entire week that followed my visit to Leto, I teleported myself back and forth between Camps, probably thinking that watching on the demigods would help me decide and also momentarily protect them against anything deadlier than a climbing wall.

The first day, I disguised myself as a bird - not a raven, for sure, given my last mortal adventure in San Francisco, but a robin. Nothing much happened while I was there, or at least that's what it seemed like from the spot where I was observing them from.
Sadly, I wasn't able to get a better view because, whenever I got too close, the little kids would start running after me, convinced that they could catch me and make me play with them; something that is not bad per se, except that those were demigod kids, meaning that I got my backside burned many, many times.

On the second day, I decided to disguise myself as one of the campers, thinking that no one would notice me. I underestimated the kids' invasive friendliness and the amount of black pepper that Hermes' offspring could get on someone. In the evening, I returned home sneezing and crying - that too, of course, because of the pepper.

On the third day, then, it finally occurred to me that other than being able to shift my appearance I was also able to become invisible, and so the next three days went on without accidents. Two monsters tried to attack a couple of campers (a gorgon and a weird eagle, maybe? They all start to look the same, after the first two centuries), but the demigods didn't even have to take out their weapons as a mysterious, absolutely non-magical wind current made them fly against a tree and disintegrate in a cloud of grey dust, Infinity War style.

It was only on the seventh day that I decided to finally go to Mnemosyne.

As always, after splitting myself so that I was able to fulfill my duties while being at Camp, I teleported to Camp Halfblood. I tried to spend equal time at both camps but, most of the time, I found that the Romans didn't need any help from my part: Camp Jupiter was the demigod equivalent of a military camp, and as such, it had a tightly organized schedule and highly trained sentries, so that any dangerous creature that would try to attack Camp wouldn't even be able to step inside the border without being instantly eliminated.
Camp Halfblood, on the other hand, wasn't so protected, even though it had magical borders and a literal dragon as a guard, so even during the time I spent at Camp Jupiter I often had to return to Long Island because of some dangerous threat I sensed. It was quite exhausting, both physically and emotionally, but not as exhausting as having to wonder 24/7 about whatever might be happening to my kids.

I immediately knew something was wrong as soon as I set foot inside the borders. Almost no one was around, and the few demigods that were outside weren't chatting or laughing as usual - I could see the tension in each of their movements, and the heaviness weighing them down as they attempted to do any of their typical activities.

It didn't take a great mental effort to connect the dots, and, as fear overtook every cell in my body, with my heart in my throat and my ears ringing, I teleported myself to the Big House, hissing as soon as I saw the crowd of demigods crowded outside, all standing around a big pyre. Chiron, the good man, who always seemed so content and at peace, was standing beside it with a frown on his face, looking much older than usual and incredibly more tired.

I didn't hear what he was saying, trying to focus instead on the two figures standing beside him: a boy and a girl, respectively 15 and 12 years old, who were silently listening to their mentor's words. I didn't know who they were - they hadn't been at Camp for long, maybe just one year -, but I did know that they had recently been on a quest: during the seven days of my stay, I overheard the demigods talking about some quest for a lost, ancient sword, and its dangers. Judging by their bruised appearance and the bandages that covered various parts of their bodies, they probably were two of the chosen three. Surely, the friend that was being carried toward the pyre had been the third.

She was a young girl, probably the middle child among the three. Auburn curls laid around her head like a halo, and her right hand was sticking from under the fabric she was covered with, the pale wrist surrounded by all kinds of colorful bracelets. Judging by the caduceus embroidered on the blue funeral shroud, she was one of Hermes'.

I didn't know her name, but I didn't have to wait long to have that question answered.

"Her name was Kara," I heard a voice say, beside me.

At first, when I turned around, I couldn't see anyone who could have talked to me, but as I focused on my right side the Mist began to dissolve, and hair that was the same color as the girl's, with white wings fluttering in it, and blue eyes as bright as a mid-summer sky suddenly appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

Hermes' face was dry, and his expression didn't seem one that a parent would wear at their child's funeral, so it would be no surprise if someone thought of him as cruel, or indifferent - the mortals' perception of what should be a normal display of emotion is vastly different from ours, after all. A divine parent is not an ordinary one, and while we can feel and laugh and cry like any human being, after millennia of endless funerals and shrouds and buried bodies, with the memories of our pale and bloodied children stuck in our minds, we simply chose not to.

Therefore, while in his first years as an immortal he used to be furious and disappointed in the so-called justice of the Fates, not hesitating to shout and weep and dig the earth to collect at least some of the ashes from the pyre, convinced that he could bring his loved ones back, now he learned and mastered a blank, emotionless expression that could have been perfect, if not for the slight clenching of his jaw, and the sad shine in his eyes.

I chose not to say anything, and so we didn't talk for the whole ceremony. After the crowd was starting to disperse, however, I put a hand on his shoulder, a resolution already forming in my head. "Hey," I whispered. He turned in surprise, raising his eyebrows, and I could see his expression falling, for a moment - but after just a second, he turned his back to me again. "I'm sorry for what happened." I stared at him, in search of a reaction, anything that would suggest that he didn't appreciate my comment. "Kara looked like a lovely child."

He stayed still, his arms crossed and his gaze focused on the burning pyre as if he thought that if he stared at it enough it would bring her back. A yawn, a stretch, and a cheerful "Gotcha dad, I'm alive! It was all a prank!"

He huffed, smiling. "What do you have to be sorry for? It's not like..." He hesitated, pressing his lips together. "I mean, sure, it was your Oracle. But you can't control when the prophecies get revealed, right?"

That would be the simple truth, of course - yes, I couldn't choose when to make the great broccoli-infused spirit of the Oracle manifest itself. Yet it would be ridiculous for me to think of myself as a god of prophecies if I didn't have at least some control over them, wouldn't it? I would be just a guardian, then; Delphi's divine janitor.
In a way, I still had some influence over the future: I couldn't radically modify it, but since I get premonitions way before a prophecy is revealed, I could still tweak it a little bit - change a couple of verses to soften it a bit, prepare so that some of the most catastrophic consequences can be avoided, bribe the Fates with some Red Velvet so they would not release the prophecy at all for a little while.

But I didn't do anything to save that kid, as focused as I was on my own problems, true to my old, egotistical self.

Hermes didn't seem to mind my silence, and from his body language, I couldn't tell whether he understood why I didn't answer at all or not. "I think I'm the one who should apologize here. To her. To my other children." He looked up, staring off somewhere in the clouds. "Eighty years are so few already, and yet we're here making their lifespans even shorter." After letting out a shuddered breath, he lowered his head again, turning to me. The creases on his forehead and under his eyes became deeper. He said, "This isn't how it should be, is it?"

I thought about it. "No, it isn't."

After a beat or two, he nodded to me, lost and far away from camp already, his mind wandering off to dark, inconsistent voids. Then, without saying a word, he vanished, leaving me alone with the giant, collapsing pyre and Kara's shadow slowly disappearing in the light of the fire.

-

Despite whatever could have been my expectations and despite the few memories I retained from the last time I visited her, somewhere in Homer's time, Mnemosyne's home wasn't at all like I expected it to be.

In an age like this, you would think that a Titan would choose something more modern as their house - a small, minimalist apartment, the entire floor of a skyscraper; something similar to what I had seen when I went to visit my mother. Surely, not a cavern in the middle of a forgotten forest.

It was nothing special - carved in the side of the mountain and as bare as only something so natural could be, from how it looked outside, the cavern didn't seem to be much larger than an average bedroom. When I came in, however, and a thick fog started gathering around me, I noticed that my expectations were not something to rely on, after all; I summoned some light, thinking that it would help me orientate myself, but to no use. It wasn't ordinary fog - the sunlight wasn't enough to see through a Titan's magic.

While I was trying to orient myself, an imposing shadow appeared seemingly out of nowhere. It was a hooded figure, probably a woman, covered by a pure white cloak long enough to reach the ground and surrounded by an aura of power and regality; as she approached me in a slow and careful manner, her silk chestnut hair escaped the hood it was covered with.

"I am the Titaness Mnemosyne, daughter of Uranus and Gaia, goddess of memory and remembrance, mother of the nine Muses," she boomed, her voice resonating in the cave like a judge's words in an empty hall, "You stepped into my sacred house, stranger. I hope that there's a good reason for that."

I sighed, rubbing a hand over my eyes. "It's me, Mnemosyne. It's Apollo."

The hood fell off her head as she quickly raised it, and I saw her warm brown eyes lit up with delight. "Oh, thank the gods! I hate doing this, the dress is itchy."

She snapped her fingers, and the fog quickly dissipated, uncovering a much more welcoming environment. The house I now found myself in looked like a typical little New York City apartment; the disposition of the furniture and the furniture itself looked strangely familiar, although the one detail that didn't seem to fit was the fact that it was completely stuffed with thousands of souvenirs: bottles carrying small boats, postcards from all over the world, magnets upon magnets, many more trinkets of unknown origin and photos from different eras. There were some of those old black and white photos, some polaroids, some sepia photos - but no sign of any newer photo, no selfies, no digital pictures.
After further observation, it occurred to me that this was, in fact, an almost identical copy of the Jacksons' house. I pretended not to be confused, but it didn't seem to work.

"I've been messing around with magic a bit, since you've last visited me," Mnemosyne explained, and her melodious voice brought my attention back to her.

She had gotten rid of her cloak, and instead, she was now wearing a puffy-sleeved white blouse with dark trousers and leather boots, so that she looked like those classy pirates from the 700s, just without their bright, worn-out coats.

She patted her arms as if she was trying to get some dust off her sleeves. "Now, whenever someone enters, it takes on the appearance of one of the places they hold dearest." She looked around, excitedly clapping her hands. "Interesting choice, this one! I love New York. Whether they're good or bad, the memories there are always fun to glance at."

I looked out, seeing the same old roads I was used to, the busy traffic, the people walking around, even though they all seemed to be slightly newer, with cars that I hadn't seen since the past century. Everything was slowed down, like a dramatic scene in a typical Hollywood movie. "Wouldn't it be easier to just live in New York, then?"

"Oh, but moving wouldn't be as easy as it is!" she retorted, opening her arms to show the nonexistent vastity of that house of hers. "I can be anywhere I want to like this, all it takes is a tiny memory. Even in the past."

She snapped her fingers again, and in the blink of an eye, the comfortable little apartment disappeared, getting replaced by a vast afternoon landscape. The green grass of the rolling hills shone in the sunlight, looking almost golden, and the few trees made the whole scenery look almost pacific, if not for the laughter in the distance - a burst of silvery laughter that I knew too well to be able to ignore it, bright and young like a bird in the countryside. It shook my whole being to its core, bringing back memories of ivory palaces, flowers, eyes that looked like amethysts, and blood as dark as wine.

Closing my eyes didn't make it all go away, but I figured I'd try anyway.

"Remember when you came here last time? You wanted me to take away this memory of yours," Mnemosyne said, as she walked in the rustling grass under her feet, "It's funny to think that now you came here to do just the opposite."

I furrowed my eyebrows, still with my eyes closed, trying to ignore the urge to yell at her for using my memories as some sort of demonstration. "Well, sorry if it wasn't quite pleasant to have it. How did you know what I wanted to ask you, anyway?"

When I heard the fingers snap for the third time (a sound that was beginning to irritate me, if I had to be honest), I looked again, confident that I would find myself again in the Jacksons' apartment - and so I did.

"Goddess of memories, remember?" she replied, tapping a finger on her temples, "Once you're in my home I get almost full access to your brain, pal. You should've gotten a VPN."

The possibility that she could now replay some of my most intimate memories (you know, really intimate) whenever she wanted grossed me out for a reason that I couldn't exactly pinpoint, but which was strongly related to the fact that she was as old and possibly even older than my parents. That 'almost' gave me some hope. "Oh gods, please get out."

"Too late, buddy!" she exclaimed, cackling at my expense, while I was attempting to remove the image of Mnemosyne watching my past with popcorn in hand from my head, "As I said, though, some pieces are missing, so you'll have to fill me in."

It didn't take as long as I thought it would, much to my surprise.
Mnemosyne's gaps were much wider than expected, and in short, it became evident that, rather than having a full HD and high-quality experience of my extremely exclusive 'I Didn't Know I Was An Idiot' channel, she was only able to see the previews; despite this, however, she was incredibly skilled in connecting thoughts and memories, and she was, after all, the one who Styx called to erase the demigods' memories, so she managed to get the full picture of the deal with Styx - the broken promise, the actual deal and all the ways by which I've been meaning to break it - in less than an hour, even when I had to stop at least once every ten minutes to explain to her that my name was not Asparagus nor Aspirin.

After I was finished, she paused - with a domain like hers, keeping track of all the memories and bits of stories collected over the years was, without a doubt, incredibly hard for her, even though she was a goddess. She was like an old computer with an overloaded hard disk, and as such she needed time to process new information and to store it in her already full memory, to keep it there for the rest of eternity - I was ready to bet that it was because of this that she lived in a cave in the middle of nowhere, isolated from the rest of civilization and the buzzing of the city and surrounded by outdated technology, in a New York stuck in the 1960s.

This is why I didn't mind her not calling me by my name; it was already hard for her as it was, without me fussing over some trivial detail. As long as she didn't slip into a state that I wouldn't be able to shake her from, it was fine.

After one more moment or two, she shook her head. "It makes sense that Styx would try to manipulate you," she said, drumming with her fingers on the table we were sitting at with increasing speed, to the point that they reached the rhythm of Vivaldi's Summer, "She wouldn't have asked my help if she wanted it to be something permanent."

"What do you mean?" I asked, cautiously.

"Lethe's the one who's in charge of erasing memories, remember?" Mnemosyne huffed, rubbing her eyes. "It'd be foolish to believe that I have the same power as her. She's the goddess of forgetfulness, I'm the goddess of memories - she was made to send memories into oblivion, I was made to save and serve them."

Some of the hope I lost came rushing back to me, and I almost jumped on the table just to take her hand. "You can help me, then?"

"According to common sense, I should tell you that I can't, since it's very dangerous, but I would be lying, and you probably would sense that. Regardless, there's a chance you won't send everyone to their deaths." She reminded me of a cat, with her sly smile and shining eyes. "So yes, I can help you. Any memory erased by my hand never really fades, after all - it just gets lost. The real question is whether you are sure you want to go through with this or not."

"Yes," I breathed, and after months my chest untightened, "Yes, of course."

She got up, clapping her hands. "Well then!"

Turning her back to me, she started to pinch the air, and thin silvery strings started to stretch from her fingers, connecting bright little dots like the invisible lines of a constellation. Once she was done, and pulled back, a large web of lines and stars extended in front of my eyes; it seemed to have a life of its own, and whenever I lost concentration, the design seemed to change, looking almost as beautiful as Arachne's shrouds.

"This is the magic I used on them - nothing too complicated, since I figured that someday it'll need to be undone, and I had crosswords to do, but," she said, touching delicately each string and making it vibrate like the chords of a lyre, "Definitely something that can become permanent."

She moved her hand, and the lines started to harden and crystallize. "The memories that were once on the surface get restricted by walls, and while, at first, they are easy to reach, and the walls are light and easy to break, as time passes they get pushed deep within the mind, and the walls become hard as steel. Once they are completely out of reach, it's practically impossible to restore the old memories, even though they're still there."

"And how much time would that be?"

"Around a year."

I frowned, trying to do some calculations.
Styx talked to me on August 1st, which was the day when I got called to attend the Olympians' extraordinary Council; it probably wasn't that much of a stretch to think that she would get done with it and erase the demigod's day on the same day. That meant that not counting today, I had...

To say that my stomach dropped as I heard that would not be expressive enough. The thought rearranged completely every single one of my organs in an order that I didn't even think to be possible, and the blood was pulsating in my head to the speed of a Presto.

"I have only a day to fix this," I squealed. "How am I supposed to do that in a day? There are probably hundreds of people I talked to during my trials." I slumped back on the chair. "Gods, I'm doomed."

"Don't fret, it's not like that. As I said, I knew that someday this web would need to be unraveled, so I acted ahead," she retorted, snickering. With another movement, the cords returned to their original state. Pointing at the cords, she said, "See these? They're invisible connections between the missing memories - nothing that the kids would feel, but something essential to what we'll need to do." She touched one of the lights, and the rest lit up like fairy lights. "One mind influences another, and if one of them will regain their memories, the rest will as well - you'll be the one to help with that, since it's not something I can rewind. Choose someone you have a deep emotional connection to, nudge a bit, throw hints at them, and if you're careful and fast enough, you will succeed by the end of the day."

For the first time since I came there, Mnemosyne looked at me without smiling or laughing, her chin lifted, her shoulders brought back. Her eyes bore into my soul, and they already seemed to be suggesting a name, someone she knew would be the key to break the spell.

I looked away, starting to rise.

"Alright," I whispered, nodding, "Alright, I will. Thank you, Mnemosyne."

As I was heading towards the door, almost on the point of teleporting myself, she stopped me, calling out, "Apollo."

I turned to her again, surprised and shining from the light of my true form, and I finally understood how it felt for a camper when Dionysus actually got their name right. "Yes?"

She was back to her old self - extravagant, cheerful, lively. "Good luck. I think you'll need it."

Warmth expanded in my chest. "Thank you. For everything," I said, smiling, and vanished.

-

I decided to keep the same appearance I used to have before my father made me mortal, in order to not confuse the campers too much - long, blond hair tied in a ponytail, bronzed skin worthy of any of the Baywatch lifeguards, muscular body, general frat boy appearance. Each of the scars I used to fondly keep on me as a reminder of my time as a human - the burned wrists, the scar on my forehead, the one on my stomach -, they all disappeared, except the one on my chest. It helped me overcome the tremor in my body and the slow realization that, if my plan backfired, Styx would tear everyone to shreds; on top of all that, it was also a reminder of the reason why I was still there, looking at the sun on top of a hill.

The camp was just the same as I had left it: the trees, the buildings, the people, nothing changed. Yet, while all the other times I was invisible, or disguised, right then I was just me, present, warm, definitely anthropomorphic, therefore it was just like the first time I set foot back into Camp, weeks ago. Leaning on Thalia's pine tree, I stared at the summer camp down below, pinned into place by the sudden rush of life I felt, and every edge blurred as my eyes filled with tears.

Was I really about to see everyone again?

"Apollo?" someone called, behind me.

I took in a silent breath, clearing my vision. I turned around, and looking at the two teens, who stared at me with wide eyes as if they'd just seen the ghost of Alexander the Great, made a wide, fond smile naturally rise to my lips. "Hello, Percy. Annabeth. Nice to see you again."