He wrote the first draft in September, alone in his room at Hillview, using a sheet of plain paper from the library.
It read: Claim all your children. Build them each a cabin. They have earned it.
He looked at it. He crossed it out and tried again.
He wrote: After everything — after whatever wish they offer you — ask for this: that every god claims their children by age thirteen, and that every claimed child has a cabin at camp. This has been wrong for a long time. You are the one who can fix it.
He looked at this one for longer. It was more specific and therefore more useful. But it was also telling Percy what to do, which was not what he wanted. Percy Jackson was not someone who responded well to being told what to do; he responded to understanding why something was right.
He tried again: When the gods offer you a wish, think about the children who sleep in the Hermes cabin because no one has claimed them. Think about what it means to belong nowhere. You know what that costs — you spent a year not knowing who your father was. You can make sure no one spends more than a year in that. All you have to do is ask.
He put the pen down. He read all three drafts. He thought about Percy Jackson — twelve years old, the son of Poseidon who had grown up feeling ordinary and deficient, who knew in his specific body what it meant to be unclaimed, to have no clear divine parent, to not know where you belonged.
The third draft was right. Not perfect — he would refine it over the next four years — but right in its approach. It appealed to what Percy already felt rather than telling him what to think.
He put the paper in the inside pocket of his Hillview jacket, where he kept things that needed to stay close. He thought: four years until Percy stands before the Olympians. Four years to keep refining. He would write the final version in Year 5 and hand it to Percy the night before the final battle.
He thought: that is an extraordinary sentence to be able to think. That is what it means to have the foreknowledge I carry. I am writing a note to be delivered four years from now to a person I have already met, to say something that will change the structure of this camp, because I can see far enough ahead to plant this seed in exactly the right soil at exactly the right moment.
He thought: do not take this for granted. Do not use it carelessly. The foreknowledge is not power; it is responsibility. The note is only valuable if Percy chooses to act on it, and Percy will only choose that if it resonates with what he genuinely wants, and it will only resonate if I write it honestly rather than strategically.
He went back to the page and added one more line: I know what it cost to belong nowhere. I was claimed by two gods at once and there was still no cabin for one of them. Let that change. — Kael
He put the note away. He thought: that is as honest as I know how to be about this. If it reaches him right, it reaches him right. The rest is Percy.