Chapter 1: the mysterious visitor
It was a day like any other, and, like always, Jinx was failing a test.
Why is this so hard!???? she screamed in her head. It's just one math test! The only subject I seem to be good at is Greek—even the language! But this is just math, she thought to herself.
Thinking hard, she stared at the problem in front of her, reading it over and over again.
A colony of bacteria is growing exponentially in a lab experiment. The population of the bacteria, P, after t hours is modeled by the exponential equation:
P(t) = 100 • (2)ᵗ
Aha! she yelled to herself.
2 × 100 means 200! So 1,600 = 200 ×... Wait! 1,600 divided by 200 is... uh, cancel the zeros... 16 divided by 2 is 8! So that means...
T = 8 hours!
Just then—
RINGGGGGG!
The bell rang. The doors from all the classrooms burst open. Students turned in their papers as well, and everyone rushed out, trampling one particular blonde-haired girl with green eyes and glasses.
"Ow!! Hey, watch it!!!!" yelled Jinx, getting trampled by the other students like always.
She blew a loose piece of her blonde hair out of her face and tucked it back into her braided pigtails. When she finally looked up, the echoing of footsteps receded outside, and she rushed to her locker—but slipped on air, falling face-first onto the floor.
She quickly scrambled back up, making a squeaking sound as her shoes collided with the floor. She finally made it to her locker and opened it when suddenly, someone stuck their head out.
"BOOO!" the figure yelled.
When she looked up, it was a young, athletic-looking man, about twenty years old, with no beard in sight. He had a lean build and short, curly brown hair.
When Jinx looked up at him, she screamed in terror.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
She pointed at his staff—or more like a short rod intertwined with two entwined serpents, topped with wings.
"Oh, it's just the Caduceus—or... Kerykeion, if you call it that," he said.
Suddenly, Jinx realized she could hear a faint flapping sound coming from his feet. She looked down, and, to her surprise, she found two golden sandals with wings.
She remembered from her Greek class that he was Hermes, as those sandals were his Talaria—not to mention the Caduceus.
She also noticed another pair of wings, though these were much tinier. They were attached to his traveler's hat—or Petasos. The equally generated wind from all the wings seemed to make his cloak, the Chlamys attached to his shoulder, blow in the wind despite its short stature.
On his side was a brown leather satchel.
"This here marsupium holds all my stuff," he said, patting his satchel after noticing her staring at it.
"Name's Hermes," he said, grabbing her hands and pulling her up. "And I have some details to fill you in on."
