Golden Green

Ch. 10

Percy Jackson and the Olympians belong to Rick Riordan. All credit to him.

Blaming the gods was an easy outlet when you have a really bad day but now walking through the woods, cold, and not knowing what happened to your best friend is kind of not worth it, especially after fighting monsters ladies sent to kill you.

Percy, Grover, Annabeth, and I were walking along the foul smelling Hutson river with New York's lights shining the sky yellow behind us, all huddled under my tree which I grew about seven feet long and sprouted branches thick enough to keep the rain off us and a root bowl at the end for the tree to get more of a drink from.

The rain didn't bother me because it made me feel refreshed but my stomach running on low made everything seem more annoying.

"Three kindly ones," Grover shivered. "All three at once."

I was in shock too. Those monsters were in a different league of tough, scary, and smart from what I ever fought in my city. The idea of one of them killing Fidi and sending him to Tartarus to reform for maybe years was more horrifying than any bat lady with a flaming barbed whip. Annabeth kept us from making camp under my umbrella for the night and starting a warm fire.

"Come on. The further we get away the better," she kept telling us all.

"Sure, Grover's few apples were enough to keep us from starving but all the food and rations were in your bag. We can't eat tin cans and plastic," Percy protested, stomach grumbling.

"Well maybe if you hadn't had us all jump into the fight," Annabeth said, leaving a blank for Percy to fill.

"What did you want me to do? Let you get killed?"

"You didn't need to protect me, Percy. I would have been fine."

"Keep thinking that, bud. The look in your eyes when we were cornered said otherwise," I said, wiping water from my eyes and face.

"Sliced like sandwich bread, but fine," Grover commented, smiling through the shivers.

"Shut up, goat boy," Annabeth barked back.

"I ate all my tin cans. Allllllll the tin cans," Grover said, regretting not rationing his food.

"I wish I had some seeds to see if I could grow some instant fruit or vegetables," I daydreamed.

"Well you don't, so stop talking about it and making us all more hungry," Annabeth said, shaking her head, slapping us all with her wet blonde hair.

I should have kicked her out from the umbrella for her insolence but I bit my tongue again and kept sloshing through mud and ducking under branches.

I wished Fanos gave off heat. If it did I would have lit it up and carried that under our umbrella, but I discovered during training that the fire didn't even burn or catch other things on fire. It was more a visual or indicator that it was working, maybe even an intimidation factor because who wants to fight a sword on fire.

Annabeth eventually moved through the huddle and apologized to Percy and began chatting it up for a long while, but I was focused on listing the different trees I could make out in the dark. The innocent talking of Percy and Annabeth stooped and Grover hoarsely played his red pipes to sound out what he told was a find path hym to get us out of the woods. The off tune music started to agitate me, so I stopped completely.

"What are you doing?" Grover asked, trotting in place to try and keep himself warm.

"Taking off my shoes and socks," I grunted, trying to balance my tree in my armpit while unlacing my shoes.