I was woken up rather roughly by Leo.
Brushing my hair out of my face and looking up, it seemed to be the crack of dawn. Fairly early. Leo was staring back down at me with a pouty lip. I looked back up at him with a murderous glint in my eyes.
"What."
"I heard something," he whined. "Nobody else would get up to believe me. If we got attacked, I didn't want to fight it on my own.."
"Baby," I muttered, but low enough to the point that he couldn't hear me. I didn't want to get set to fire or tackled of the sorts. But I knew that he was too squishy to do any one of those.
Looking to the side, I saw that our fire was still smoking. But the moisture from the morning fog was slowly killing it.
"Leo, I don't hear anything. It was your imagination because you're paranoid."
"Am not!" He protested, but I shushed him.
"You're going to wake the others, you tw-"
"Oh, my gods!" Sophia shouted suddenly, sitting up in her bedroll with a start, making both me and Leo jump with surprise.
"I just had the weirdest dream.. I think it was the weirdest."
".. do tell," I eventually said.
"So, my mom was there."
"Athena?"
"Yeah. She talked to me. She told me that we would lose quest members, but also gain one. But she didn't tell me who. And she wanted me to tell us all to beware. Something was heading our way once I woke up. Something crazy. And pink. Amath, she said your mom was hidden in some giant lair. Oh, and she wanted me to tell Leo to back off."
Leo looked down in shame.
".. of my pride." Sophia flashed him a wink.
"Oh."
"Yeah."
There was a slight silence between us, until I broke it.
"Crazy and pink?"
"Don't ask me."
I pondered in thought, but Percy interrupted them. "Mornin', Amath."
The commotion that Sophia made had woken Ren and Percy, which they didn't look too happy about. Phillip, on the other hand, was still passed out. Typical.
"Percy!" Sophia greeted. "I just had the weirdest-"
"Yeah, I heard. I've seen enough crazy and pink things in my day."
That left me to wonder.
"I'm hungry!" Ren stated, tossing a half-eaten tin can in his pack.
"You're always hungry," I reminded him.
"This time it's different."
I rolled my eyes teasingly, digging around in my pack and tossing him one of my Twinkies.
"Who wants tacos?" Leo announced, shoving around in his pack. "I got plenty of 'em. Leo's Locos Tacos. Whooo wants one?"
Percy and Sophia's hands went up. With Sophia, I pondered, she'd eat anything Leo cooked, because she liked him. But she would still kill him when she needed to.
Even when Leo was serving his, uh, 'delicious' tacos, I worked at a Twinkie. I wasn't really all that excited to try them, but don't tell the poor little guy. But I'd just learned that my mom was being held hostage by some stupid giant. My appetite was small.
