Goodnight Moon ↣ P. Jackson + A. Chase

1.04

Light painted the back of her eyes, casting a warm glow, a gentle caress against cheeks with the dawn light and sweet chirping of birds as they sing their greetings to the sun as the golden chariot raised across the sky.

Of course, it wasn't a chariot, nor was the light gentle and kind. Kassandra's face scrunched as she groans, shuffling herself out of the swinging hammock. It seemed Clarisse decided against shifts and had simply chosen to just go to bed herself, likely trusting the crew to take care of everything in her absence or wake her if anything of importance was to occur.

(And it seemed like it her friend had felt bad for sending her to sleep in a hammock and had figured that was a good enough reason to ditch the semi-comfortable looking bed that she had glimpsed from the captains quarters.)

Raising her hands up high above her head, she stretches her back with a muffled groan and a pop, twisting herself through the movements and waking her limbs. With a glance at the slumbering daughter of the war god, she decides it's probably best to let her rest and silences herself with a quick inhale, holding the sound of her steps to herself as she climbs back to the upper deck.

Morning chill hit her with a blast, bursting against flushed tawny skin that had been cast with a darkened golden brush from hours spent under the suns burning rays, but she could not feel cold as she stretched out once more, rising on the balls of her feet to reach as high as she could.

Her plain black running shorts had risen on her hips when she slept, her orange camp shirt shifting until it was crooked on her frame. Kassandra scowled into the early morning, turning her glare to the zombie soldiers that tried to approach her.

Sometimes, just sometimes, Apollo would pass through the sky in the morning riding his golden chariot of the sun burning and aflame and would play the worst music possible at a frequency that only his children could hear just so that they would wake and see him drive by. Kassandra has never heard this music of course, but some of her cabin mates have, the outcome varying on occasion at times to who would be woken. That didn't stop her from being jolted awake at the phantom feeling of something attempting to disturb her peaceful sleep.

If it was the case of her father waking her, she wouldn't even find herself surprised that he would wake her for seemingly no reason when she was on a very important quest.

Fixing the state of her clothes, she wandered over the side of the ship and peered down into the water. They were moving through a river still, the ironclad not all that far from the bank. She cracked her back before she leans forward, resting her arms against the dew-covered metal. She wondered how far they had travelled since she went to bed.

"Lady Kassandra--" a soldier begins.

She winces. "Oh, please don't call me that. I'm not an Ares kid."

"Something has been spotted near the stern of the vessel," he continues on uncaring of her words.

Jerking further awake, she jogs over to the stern, quickly scaling the top of the cabin to get a better look as she crouched on the roof.

"Go wake Clarisse and bring back my bow and arrow immediately," she orders, scanning her surroundings with a careful, keen eye.

She doesn't turn to see if they've acknowledged her words. She focuses on a cluster of trees that dip closer into the water, roots growing from the earth at the back under the surface of the murky river beneath.

Whatever it was, it was there, it seemed. Three or four of them, for sure. A flash and her vision blurs around the edges as she watches it move.

"What is it?" Clarisse demands, spear in hand.