Lottie looked at him, totally bemused by the words coming out of his mouth. First, there was the half-joke about others being foolish to underestimate her family. It was almost, not quite, but almost as though he'd like to agree with her. But he couldn't quite bring himself to do so. Then there was the comment about Olympus. Despite her earlier decision not to touch him because it made him uncomfortable, she really couldn't help herself after that. Plus, she sort of forgot. So once again, she looped her arm through his.
“I'm not sure I would have thought of it that way,” she confessed. “I guess I viewed you as an Olympian because, you know, the rest of your family is there. And home is where the heart is, don't you think? So it would be very understandable if you felt a connection to that place, even if you didn't live there. I'm sorry for making assumptions. Again. I'll do my best to avoid doing it anymore.”
She felt terrible about doing that. Wasn't that what she so disliked about others? How they made assumptions about the Underworld and those that lived there? She'd just yelled at Hades a few minutes ago for doing so, when he hadn't been at all. Really, Lottie thought, she needed to be more open to people and not so judgmental. If she kept doing that, Hades was going to think they were all horrible people, and she'd been completely honest when she told him she thought he could be a good king, that he could be somebody they'd all want to lead them. Somebody needed to be in charge, to keep things organized, and he seemed to have a good handle on being stiff and he looked like he'd like to make lists. Lists would be good.
“So,” she said after a very, very long pause during which a thousand things rolled through her mind. “Does that mean you consider yourself one of... us?”
It was a stretch, really. And Lottie knew that. He'd just arrived, she wasn't making the best first impression, but he'd just said he didn't feel like an Olympian. And everybody needed a place to belong, to feel like they had a home. If not on the mountain, then why not here? He was going to live here, wasn't he? So this would be his home. The question was, just how would he view himself?