so imagine that everything in ithaca has settled down, suitors and families dealt with, kingdom up and running, etc. now that there isn’t an active crisis in the country, athena has to return to her usual godly duties and can’t be around all the time— she still drops in to train telemachus and check on the general state of affairs, but she can’t Always be on ithaca when she has an entire domain to rule over/business on olympus. so she comes by less often, which telemachus is obviously very sad about (she is kind of his only friend, after all)
and now imagine athena, who obviously cares about telemachus very much (and is well acquainted with his not-so-subtle abandonment issues), deciding to leave a token with him to comfort him during her absences. so she tames an owl for him, a beautiful barn owl with a massive wingspan and honey-colored feathers, because of course her student/friend deserves nothing but the best
(more under the cut bc i care for your dash)
athena gives the owl to telemachus so A. he has a loyal animal companion again (he’s been down ever since argos passed) and B. so he knows that athena might be away from ithaca, but she’s never really gone, she’s still with him
telemachus is overjoyed and he names her after one of athena’s many epithets: Acraea, meaning “of the heights” (yes, because she’s a bird. he’s not the most creative prince on the planet). and he absolutely ADORES this owl. takes her everywhere with him— to the marketplaces, on the royal hunting grounds, she even sits on the arm of his chair while he and his parents hold court. no one sees telemachus without seeing acraea perched on his forearm, or on his shoulder, or even plopping down right on his head when his arms are busy (he looks especially silly like that, average-sized prince with a very large bird roosting in his hair, but no one would dare to tell him. not because he is the prince, but because he looks so entirely happy that they don’t want to ruin it)
so everyone knows about telemachus’s (very large, very beautiful) owl friend acraea
at this point— after the trojan war, the slaughtering of the suitors, athena’s odyssey-canon appearance in order to stop more bloodshed— it’s common knowledge on ithaca that athena favors the royal family. the bards sing about odysseus’s patron all the time, and telemachus is the heir to the throne.
so now imagine. that the wires got crossed somewhere and now the entirety of ithaca thinks prince telemachus is casually carrying the goddess of wisdom around on his arm.
it all makes sense— it’s very clearly a special bird, with its size and the way its feathers seem to glitter in the light, it is attached to the ithaca royal family (it sits court with them! it must be advising them!), and it literally has one of athena’s names. that has to be it, right? right??
and one day at the market telemachus notices that more people are bowing to him than usual. as the prince, he’s used to signs of respect, but he always considered himself friendly and approachable. one of the fishermen even kneeled to him as he walked past, isn’t that strange? and when one of the guards asked him to come over to the armory and help take stock of their weapons he seemed to direct his eyes at acraea when he said “if that’s alright with you.” at first telemachus thinks it’s an odd series of coincidences, until one day a servant who came to his room to deliver a message bowed to his owl before even addressing him
and on one hand telemachus wants to immediately clear up this misunderstanding so people will stop being weird to him (and his owl) again. on the other hand, the opportunity to royally fuck with the entire island is just too good to pass up and who knows, athena might find it funny
so he starts talking to acraea more often and more loudly, publicly asking her for advice and pretending to consult with her before he makes a decision. he has her fly beside him more often to show off her wings, and best of all, he brings owl treats with him everywhere to see the look on people’s faces when they see him feeding “athena” a treat and telling her to behave. odysseus is mildly concerned that using athena’s image like this might offend some god and cause them more issues all over again. penelope thinks it’s fucking hilarious.
TLDR: athena gifts telemachus an insanely pretty owl so he doesn’t miss her too much post-odyssey and now all of ithaca is convinced that telemachus’s emotional support animal is actual literal athena
My guess is that the mystery box is similar to a Jack in the box, but instead of a doll you have a piece of paper attached to a spring that is jumping out of the box when opened. On the paper it says: "There is no mystery in that box!"
you coupled with the glitter bomb guess are closest.
SO I WILL REVEAL.
Every now and then, Rose or Kyle, maybe one of the visiting kids, a particularly nosey staff member, Theo, i'm looking at you, will go rummaging through her desk draw, usually for a roll of tape or a pen.
Those who are nosey enough to open the box will find it's locked. A good deterrent for most. But some people have to know. If they can get it open, they'll find themselves doused in octillery ink, a substance thats oily and starts to smell after a short while. You wont get it off you, no matter how hard you scrub, it'll take a week minimum for that stain to leave your skin.
This way peach can easily identify the ones that she's got to be more careful around. Those who'd pry in a persons desk, into locked areas, will undoubtedly be more inclined to look into her background.
Also serves them right for being snoops, jokes on them. The box is literally just an ink trap. Lesson learnt perhaps.
The note on it, is for herself, because she has forgotten whats in the box, picked it herself, and been covered in ink.
The thing I’ve been sitting on for weeks now until I can talk about it finally officially happened yesterday. After more than 8 years at my current job, which started out very good (good enough that Anaïs got a job there too) and got very bad (bad enough that last November they laid off 10% of our department at the end of a very successful year for no good reason, including Anaïs), I wound up looking around and seeing a position that looked promising elsewhere, one looking for fairly specific and I’m guessing relatively rare experience I happen to have.
And then I found out in my first interview for it that it’s also one with a much bigger salary than I would have guessed, big enough that Anaïs (who was already in school to become a relational psychotherapist, but it’ll be a few years before she’s set up with that) won’t have to look for another job until she’s done school and ready to start her practice. And after being offered the job and signing the employment agreement a few weeks ago and then sitting in limbo with the background check in progress, yesterday I was officially cleared and gave official notice at my soon-to-be-old job. Which I was dreading doing but actually went pretty well.
Now I just have to finish up my last round of publications at my old job and move on to one that I’m very excited about. I am sure it will be a job with issues like any other, but I have reason to be cautiously optimistic that in addition to everything else it will be a lot less stressful than the last one eventually got. And my new boss even told me when we were figuring out the start date he’d rather have me take a week if I need (I do) and come into the new position more refreshed.
The whole thing on the one hand has happened quite fast but on the other has felt like it’s been something I’ve been working on for years, and I still can’t quite believe that within days of me sending in my resume they wanted to interview me and within days of finishing interviews they offered me it and the whole time everyone involved acted like they wanted me there enough they kept acting kind of worried I’d get a better offer elsewhere (I might... have worth? believe me, I have been talking to my therapist about it). I’m very happy about it and last night was the first time in a while I fell asleep without worrying about one part of the process or another. Please clap.
