DESTINY ↳ WILL SOLACE

5. I Play Pinochle with a Horse

CHAPTER FIVE

I Play Pinochle with a Horse

I don't own Percy Jackson.

Percy's dreams were strange. It first started out with barn animals. Half of them wanted food, and half of them wanted to kill her, and the half that wanted to kill her only wanted to kill her because she had no food and they thought she would make a good substitute. It was kind of funny, in a twisted way. It soon turned into a dream that was far more terrifying. Endless darkness. Voices chanting in an ancient language, words that she didn't understand, and yet made her skin crawl. Fire. Death. Lightning. Drowning.

And laughter.

Twisted, high, cold laughter.

Her eyes fluttered open weakly.

The blond that had brought her in, the one she had seen on the porch, was feeding her some sort of golden pudding that tasted strangely like buttered popcorn; a soothing taste to combat her nerves from her dreams. As soon as he saw that she was awake, he reached forward and gently felt her forehead as if taking her temperature, giving her an encouraging smile.

"Go back to sleep," he said, and Percy, drowsy, noted that he had a melodious voice. "You need your rest."

I'm fine, Percy wanted to protest, but she had hardly thought of even opening her mouth when she fell back asleep.

The second time she woke up, the blond boy was gone. Instead, there was a guy standing in the corner, with eyes all over his body. Half of them were on her, and half were watching the door. As Percy watched, one of the eyes winked at her, though she couldn't tell if she was hallucinating or not. She was so exhausted, she fell asleep almost immediately after that.

The third time, it was the blonde girl who was feeding her the same golden pudding the blond boy had been feeding her, smirking as she scraped bits of it off Percy's chin. She was too tired to even be humiliated, and as she blinked slowly, her eyelids feeling as though they weighed a hundred pounds, the girl, noticing that she was awake, immediately looked worried, setting down the cup with the strange, butter-flavored pudding.

"What will happen at the summer solstice?" she asked.

Percy managed to croak out, "What?"

She looked around, as if she was afraid that someone else would hear her. "There isn't much time, and I need to know!"

Percy didn't even have time to think about how to answer that question when someone knocked on the door, and the girl quickly filled her mouth with pudding.

The fourth time she woke up, she felt far better than the other three. She was sitting in a deck chair on a huge porch, and her surroundings were far nicer than what she was used to. She had been buried underneath a mountain of fluffy white pillows, and there was a blanket draped loosely on her legs. Maybe someone knew she was going to wake up, or maybe they thought that it would've been nice for an unconscious person to get some fresh air, or that some sunlight would do some good too. Wincing, she gingerly touched her head, her mouth dry, like a scorpion had been using it as a nest.

Next to her sat a glass full of some sort of golden liquid on a table, complete with a paper umbrella, straw, and cherry. For some reason, Percy knew it was for her, but when she picked it up with trembling fingers, she almost dropped it.

"Careful."

Percy nearly dropped the glass again when her head snapped up, a smile forming on her face. "Grover!"