DESTINY ↳ WILL SOLACE

12. We Get Advice From A Poodle

CHAPTER TWELVE

We Get Advice From A Poodle

I don't own Percy Jackson.

Calling them miserable would've been the understatement of the year.

Will had collapsed first. Having used up a good chunk of his healing abilities so many times in the last couple hours had taken a toll on him, and he had been fighting despite being exhausted—by the time they were only a few hundred yards from the main road, he was already slumping against Percy, eyes fluttering shut. Right. As a child of Apollo, he would've probably been more worn out at night too.

"Let's just call it a day, yeah?" Percy suggested.

Grover looked like he was about to protest, but then he saw Percy, just barely-healed and definitely unable to carry Will for much longer, and Will just staggering forward at that point, and quickly agreed. Percy let Will half-sleep on her shoulder as she helped Grover set up camp, and then the two of them gently placed Will down on the mass of blankets, who was already sleeping before his head even touched the ground. Neither she or Grover dared light a fire—they had already had enough excitement from Medusa and the Furies.

"I'll take the first shift," Percy volunteered; after all, Grover looked exhausted too, and she had just gotten a burst of adrenaline from all the water she had drank. "I'll wake you if I need to go to sleep or if there's trouble."

Grover nodded, but he didn't close his eyes. His expression was sad.

"Percy, look at this place. It's a dump."

Percy blinked in surprise, and then looked around.

It was true—the place Will had so conveniently chosen for them was trashed, maybe because of local kids using it as a party venue and hadn't bothered cleaning up after themselves. The ground was littered with flattened soda cans and fast food wrappers, and there were plastic bits strewn everywhere, plastic bags plastered against trees.

"You can't even see the stars anymore." Grover pointed at the sky. "They've polluted the sky. It's a terrible time to be a satyr."

Percy was clever enough to know who "they" were without asking, but she wasn't clever enough to know what to say. She settled on asking, "Isn't there a god of forests, or something? Wouldn't he be able to help?"

"That's why I want a searcher's license. I want to find Pan. But seeing all this... defilement of nature... it makes me sad, Percy. There's so much for Pan to fix. What if he can't do it?"

Percy stared at the crumpled wrappers on the floor. As Grover spoke, a strange breeze rustled through the clearing, bringing with it the smell of berries and wildflowers and clean rainwater, things that might've once been in these woods. She was suddenly nostalgic for something she had never known.

"Tell me about it," she said. "The search."

Grover pursed his lips. "The God of Wild Places disappeared two thousand years ago. A sailor off the coast of Ephesosheard a mysterious voice crying out from the shore, 'Tell them that the great god Pan has died!' When humans heard the news, they believed it. They've been pillaging Pan's kingdom ever since. But for the satyrs, Pan was our lord and master. He protected us and the wild places of the earth. We refuse to believe that he died. In every generation, the bravest satyrs pledge their lives to finding Pan. They search the earth, exploring all the wildest places, hoping to find where he is hidden, and wake him from his sleep."

Percy was quiet. "You know, Grover, I don't know much about being a searcher, but I know this: you're definitely the bravest satyr I know, and I ever will know. If being a searcher is your life's dream, you deserve it more than anyone."