SERENDIPITY ~ A. Chase

xi ~ Gossiping with the Goddess of Love

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chapter eleven ˏˋ°•*⁀➷
011. Gossiping with the Goddess of Love

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Riding on a boar's back was not comfortable.

Think of it as riding a giant steel brush over a bed of gravel. Cassie was so thankful when they got off at sunset.

The ride to wherever they were was all a blur. Just miles and miles of dirt and flat, dry land. Definitely a desert. There were mountains in the distance at one point, but now they were nowhere to be found. No more grass or scrubs anywhere.

As night fell, the boar stopped by a creek bed to drink the murky water. He snorted and pulled a saguaro cactus from the ground for a little snack. Needles and all.

"This is as far as he'll go. We need to get off while he's eating." Grover stated.

Nobody complained. The five just slid off the boar and distanced themselves. Cassie was sore from the boar's uncomfortable back.

Speaking of the pig, it managed to down three cacti and another drink of dirty water, before it squealed and charged off back east.

"It likes the mountains better," Percy assumed.

"I can't blame it," Thalia agreed. "Look."

In front of them was a two-lane road basically buried in sand. On the other side was a gathering of stores, too small to be a town.

Cassie glanced at the buildings: a boarded-up house, a taco shop that was probably last opened before Zoë was even born, and a little white post office with a GILA CLAW, ARIZONA sign barely holding on above the door.

Then in the back, beyond the cluster were giant piles of junk. You could almost mistake them for hills. Enormous mounds of old cars, appliances, and other scrap metal just thrown on top of each other.

And the junkyard that seemed to go on forever.

"What the—"

Cassie was interrupted by Percy's, "Woah."

"Something tells me we're not going to find a car rental here," Thalia deadpanned.

She sassed Grover, "I don't suppose you got another wild boar up your sleeve?"

The satyr smelled the wind apprehensively. He took his acorns, threw them in the sand, and began to play a tune with his pipes.

They rolled around into some strange pattern no one understood but Grover looked concerned.

"That's us. Those five nuts right there."

"I'm gonna go nuts." Cassie muttered, running a hand through her hair.

"Which one is me?" Percy questioned.

"The little deformed one," Zoë offered.

"Oh, shut up."

Both Thalia and Cassie shared an amused look.

"That cluster right there," Grover gestured to the left, "that's trouble."

"A monster?" Thalia inquired.

Grover was uncertain. "I don't smell anything, which doesn't make sense. But the acorns don't lie. Our next challenge..."

The satyr raised his finger and the group trailed their gaze to junkyard. In the dim dying sunlight, the metal hills looked like something from an alien movie.