#mousike

Callie had a dream.

Callie had many dreams. She had many dreams that repeated over and over. But this one was different. Because in this dream, she’d been herself (it was so rare that in dreams that she remembered like this she played herself). She’d been herself and she’d been eleven years old and running along the beach by the temple.

She knew this memory. She had many memories of running along the beach, barefoot, the little pebbles getting stuck between her toes, the hot sun beating down on her.

“You can’t catch me!” she shouted in her dream.

And here is where it became something Callie could not remember.

Apollo was chasing her. Apollo was smiling. Apollo said something about how she must so fleet of foot to outrun him. She darted into the water. He darted after her and sent a splash towards her and they giggled and laughed and then sank back into the cool water, looking up at the sun.

She woke up the moment she lay back in the water and up to the sun.

It happened once, this dream. Then again. Then it became a dream Callie dreamed at least a few times a week. Sometimes in succession.

This had to be because she was working with Apollo, she’d reasoned. That’s how dreams worked. For normal people at least. At least it wasn’t a dream about work. Callie was enjoying this job, though sometimes it did stress her out a bit, but never in a way she could not handle.

She was typing something now, transcribing an interview Apollo had done, trying not to think of the Grecian sun and running on the beach with Apollo. Which of course meant that was all she could think about. Apollo came in from his coffee break and Callie pulled out one of her ear buds.

“When was the last time you went to a beach?” she asked, since that was a way to talk about a beach dream without talking about a beach dream.

@calliope-hesiod​

Apollo had thrown the whole of himself into the play. It was as natural as breathing to do, because Apollo was born with his soul on the outside of his body, and it yearned and ached to be poured into living vessels of expression. Sometimes, it meant writing sonnets until 4 in the morning. Other times, it meant waking up early to sing to the flowers in the garden. Whatever Apollo did, or sang, or wrote, or made thought, a little bit of his soul was always left over, like an unshaped mound of clay waiting for the right pair of hands.  

But a musical! A musical was exactly that pair of hands. It was a temple, inviting Apollo inside where he could lose himself in the scripture of Les Miserables, in the wants and needs of another body, another soul--!

And what a soul Enjolras was. If he had an aura, it would be the fire after the fire: embers glowing bright, resilient, bright red against the ash.

Apollo was thinking about all this when he had arrived an entire hour before he was called to. He sat in the back of the theatre, scribbling freestyle in a notebook with a pen as he tangled himself up in Enjolras’s backstory. He had one foot propped up on the seat in front of him, the Les Miserables tome balanced on the armrest, his script on the seat next to that--

And that was when a pair of shoes scuffed across the floor and came toward him, and a familiar voice pulled Apollo from Enjolras’s skin. 

He looked up and nearly dropped his pen.

It was Calliope. His Calliope. He knew she was here in Swynlake of course, Artemis had told him, but it was another thing entirely to face her again. He knew her younger, with rounder cheeks and skinnier legs. But she was still Calliope, the girl with whom he’d trade poems, the girl who, in their last moments together, had chirped excitedly about finally leaving Piperi Island. He’d smiled at her. He’d hugged her. And then, with his arms around her, he had reached inside, taken every memory of himself and Artemis, and erased it.

For him, those memories were carved in stone. But not for Callie, who looked at him like a stranger. 

“I-- I’m sorry, what did you say? I was journaling,” Apollo stuttered himself into a polite smile, his foot falling down onto the floor.

Woods - Bon Iver

Callie had a job at the newspaper – an internship really – and it was because of fate.

Let’s back track here. Basically, Callie’s powers had been kinda constipated, for lack of better word, over the past year or so, but since winter break, more specifically since she and Kiara had made up, confessed their love, and set their relationship back on track, she’d been absolutely flooded with dreams. So many dreams that she had a hard time parsing all of them and often woke up in the middle of the night scribbling half-formed thoughts down.

Who knew that her own romantic obstacles could’ve caused that?

That was besides the point – while Callie scribbled down things, realized that certain stories had already shifted in motion (Yay Arthur!), and certain ones were being set in place, she would have an itch in the back of her head. Something she just could not quite remember. Sometimes she dreamed and the dream felt important but she could no longer remember the dream

And then while walking around campus one day, she saw a flyer about the upcoming Swynlake Squire newspaper internships and that itch came back and, well, here Callie was on her first day as an intern in the Arts and Entertainment section.

To preface, Callie had no desire to be a journalist, not just because she was basically only supposed to be a Muse for her whole life, but also  because she knew about the economic instability of the job and the fact that local news was dying, as big ad-supported digital media companies absorbed smaller pubs. (A girl she sat next to in poetry class liked to rant about this). But she could write a review or analysis or two for the paper, sure thing!

“Hello!” said Callie, clutching a Very Reporter-like notepad on her first day as she bustled into the office. She looked up to see Apollo – her fellow Enjolras from the play! She knew he worked here, duh, they’d talked about it. She smiled wider.

And then, her head itched. It thrummed. It said something she could not quite hear. Her smile vanished for a moment, but the words, the thought, had escaped.

Quick as it had vanished, her smile reappeared.

“Showing up for first day of intern duty! Am I the only one for this section?”