PIPER

So triplets. That was going to be interesting.

Piper had been ready for the care that she knew would come with having a child, but she wasn't sure she was ready for that times three...

But that was life. She and Jason would cope with it, especially with all of the friends they had; only two had children of their own, but she'd trust any of them with her own life or even her children's.

She was laying on her bed, just thinking, when she began to feel a strange tugging sensation in her stomach. She sat up quickly, hand on her stomach. Were the babies moving in there? Could they even move yet? There were hardly a week old.

Was something wrong? It sure felt like it. Before she could decide what was happening, the room around her began to fade. Or maybe she was losing conciousness, her vision slowly giving way to blackness. Or...

Suddenly, she was standing in the middle of a busy city street. For a second, she stood there. Then a car honked, and blinked, hurrying off the road.

She looked around in bewilderment and realized that the people passing were returning her the same expression.

Something was seriously wrong. Nothing looked right; all of the women passing were wearing vintage dresses, their hair short and curled or wavy. The vehicles all looked like something you'd see at an old car show, the music drifting out of a nearby restaurant slow jazzy with a deep-voiced guy crooning, nothing like what you'd hear today.

Without fully processing what was happening, she ran into the bathroom of a near cafe and willed her hair to curl itself into something like the same soft, wavy style she saw on most of the women walking by, and miraculously, it obeyed; maybe she had found one benefit of being the goddess she was. She then willed her jeans, t-shirt and old sneakers to change into a simple, vintage-y blue dress reaching just pass her knees and some modest black heels.

Satisfied with her look, she took a deep breath and went back out to face the strange world she had been suddenly set into. She did a double-take as a man walked in the cafe who looked strangely familiar. For a second, she couldn't place who he was or where she'd known him from; then it clicked. It was almost hard to tell at first, but if you added a few wrinkles, turned his thick black hair salt-and-pepper colored and thinned it out a bit, Piper knew he'd look much more familiar.

"Tom!" the man behind the cafe counter called, confirming her suspicions. "Great to see you again, buddy. I thought you'd never come back. The usual?"

"Yessir, my friend," Tom said, and if Piper had any doubts that her theory was correct, they were all removed when she heard his voice. Sure, she'd remembered it a bit more gravelly and wisened, but there was no denying it.

Somehow, she had gone back in time and staring right at a younger version of her Grandpa Tom.

***

After Grandpa Tom had ordered sat down with is coffee and a newspaper, the man at the counter had asked Piper if she need anything. She ordered the first thing she saw on the menu and sat down in an empty booth, still in a daze and trying to process everything that had just taken place.

It sounded crazy, but there was no way to deny it; she had traveled back in time, and she was now witnessing Grandpa Tom in his younger years. She supposed they were in the 1940s or 50s judging by the hair, the clothes, the cars, and the age of her grandfather.

But how? There hadn't even been a prophecy that she knew of. Why was she suddenly thrown back in time, and what were the odds that she'd end up right in the same cafe as her grandfather?

Or maybe what the odds were wasn't the question. It couldn't possibly be a coincidence; her life as a demigod turned god had taught her that much. There was a reason she was here; she just didn't have the slightest clue what it might be.

The little cafe was mostly empty except for Grandpa Tom and one other brown-haired woman who had her back to her.

Piper had drained the coffee she'd ordered quickly; the substance she had once loved tasted foreign and wrong to her newly immortal tastebuds, but she wanted to remain as inconsipicuous as possible. She hated to sit there andn stare at her Grandpa Tom, but she didn't want to leave. It was strange but amazing to see him so young and alive, full of youth and life. He was probably even younger than her. He had passed away so many years ago that it felt like watching a ghost; it was almost haunting to see him sitting there just sipping coffee, unaware that he was just a seat away from his future granddaughter. 

She almost considered going up to him, pretending she knew him from work or something, but she wasn't sure if that would be advisable. What if later in life when Piper was little he had some flashback of the Piper in her twenties that he had met many years ago in the 1940s? He might go crazy over it. She wanted to talk to him so badly, but she knew that the risks were too great; so she continued to sit in her booth as if she were just a regular woman getting her regular morning coffee before heading to her job as a secretary or something.

She figured she should try and figure out how to get back to the year she belonged, the one with Jason and her friends where she actually belonged, but for the moment she was entranced. It wasn't everyday that you got to see your long-dead grandfather in the prime of his life.

The dark haired woman at the other booth got up, collecting her purse and pulling on a coat before making her way to the door. Grandpa Tom looked up absently and seemed enamored with what he saw, hurriedly getting up and rushing over to the door to open it for the woman; she turned in Piper's direction and it only took a brief second to realize that she, too, looked familiar. Only, Piper knew she'd never seen her in real life; only in the many framed pictures on the mantle of her grandpa's cabin. She had been dead before Piper was born, but she'd looked those pictures many a time, wondering what it would've been like to meet her grandmother.

Now Piper saw her smile hurriedly and mutter a rushed thank-you to Grandpa Tom before hurrying out the door. Still stunned, Grandpa Tom grabbed quickly grabbed his coat and rushed after her.

"Hey!" he called. "Wait!" It was like watching a scene from an old movie play out in full, vivid technicolor.

Piper ushed out of the cafe behind them, hoping she could catch the rest of their conversation without drawint attention to herself. 

"I really must be going,"her grandmother, Rosemary, said in a soft, smooth voice.

"Are you free tonight?" Grandpa Tom called.

She kept walking.

"I think you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen," he called as if this might convince her. It was cheesy and he knew it, but she turned around briefly, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

"I might just be at the restaurant Italia at six o'clock tonight," she said slyly. "And I might just be alone." Then she turned back around, gathering her coat around her, and hurried off into the mass of people, leaving Grandpa Tom standing there in the middle of the street, a goofy grin on his face.

And then Piper felt that pull on her stomach, and before she knew it everything was fading. She closed my eyes, ready to be back in her own house, her own year, when everything cleared again and she was right back in 1940s New York. Then she felt a tug again, but it was different, like being pulled into two directions at the same. She was getting nauseos, dizzy, she thought her body might split in half...

And then she was back in her bed in Camp Demigod, staring at the ceiling as if nothing had even happened. As if she hadn't just traveled back in time to witness her grandparents' first meeting.

As if there was no reason for her to have a thousand and one questions, all without answers.

***

Well, there's your chapter! It was a little bit out of context maybe but it's kind of part of the plot and I've really been in a vintage mood lately. Is anyone else into stuff from like the 40s and early 50s? Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Dean Martin? And movies from that time too with like Gene Kelly and Danny Kaye and Grace Kelly? I don't know. I've been obsessed with that lately.

Anyways.

Sorry for the lack of updates for way too long of a time. I'm not going to probably update every week like I said before, but I'll try to at least do one or two a month. I would've updated before but I was swamped between midterms and my NaNoWriMo project.

Happy December and I love y'all.

-Evelyn