mum, can I stay home sick?

i'll be your hope, i'll be your love, be everything that you need.

What he says doesn't offer her much insight. It's nothing she couldn't have discerned for herself, and yet she'd naively hoped that hearing it from his lips might trigger some latent understanding. "You can't become ill from human-diseases, no.." The Voice agrees. Her hologram doesn't flinch as Sam nears the shrine, even though some still-human part of her wants to recoil in self-defence.

"No, Sam. It isn't because of that." She soothes, shaking her head. "For us to be sick...perhaps the gods manufactured something. Something to attack us." She knows not of the others who are sick, the demigods and other mortals.