ichor - jason grace

XV

Nell woke up freezing and shivering. She looked around, having no idea where she was. The last thing she remembered that dickhead of a king was about to turn her into a gold statue.

"What the hell," she said, teeth chattering. She tried rubbing her arms to warm herself up, but she was soaking wet, so it was useless.

"Nice to see you awake," Jason said, leaning over and wrapping a warm blanket around her. She relished the warmth the blanket was giving her. They were sat in a shallow cave, but it wasn't offering much protection. Outside, the wind howled. Snow blew sideways. It might have been day or night. The storm made it too hard to tell.

"W-what about Leo and P-piper?" She asked.

"Present and un-gold-ified." Leo was also wrapped in blankets. He didn't look great, but better than Nell felt. "I got the precious metal treatment too," he said. "But I came out of it faster. Dunno why. We had to dunk you both in the river to get you back completely. Tried to dry you off, but... it's really cold,"

"N-nell," Piper said. Nell looked to find Piper sitting on the other side of Jason, in front of the fire.

"Nell, you don't seem to be as ill as Piper, but it's still not good. Piper's got hypothermia. We risked as much nectar as we could. Coach Hedge did a little nature magic -"

"Sports medicine." Hedge's face loomed over her. "Kind of a hobby of mine. Your breath might smell of wild mushrooms and Gatorade for a few days, but it'll pass. You probably won't die. Probably."

"Thanks," Piper said weakly.

"R-really reassuring, Hedge," Nell muttered, wrapping the blanket tighter around herself. "P-perks of being a c-child of the god of m-medicine, we all have e-excellent immune systems."

"How did you beat Midas?" Piper asked.

Jason told them the story, putting most of it down to luck.

The coach snorted. "Kid's being modest. You should've seen him. Hi-yah! Slice! Boom with the lightning!"

"Coach, you didn't even see it," Jason said. "You were outside eating the lawn."

But the satyr took no notice, he was just warming up. "Then I came in with my club, and we dominated that room. Afterwards, I told him, 'Kid, I'm proud of you! If you could just work on your upper body strength-'"

"Coach," said Jason.

"Yeah?"

"Shut up, please."

"Sure," the coach sat down at the fire and started chewing his cudgel.

Nell giggled, and Jason shook his head in disbelief.

"How much of that was actually true?" Nell asked Jason quietly.

"Not a lot, I'm not going to lie," he said, with a smile in her direction.

Jason put his hand on Piper's forehead and checked her temperature, before turning and doing the same to Nell.

"Leo, can you stoke the fire?"

"On it." Leo summoned a baseball-sized clump of flames and lobbed It into the campfire.

"Do I look that bad?" Piper shivered.

"Nah," Jason said.

"You're a terrible liar," she said.

"Dude, even if I wasn't a human lie detector, I'd have been able to tell you that," Nell said, agreeing with Piper.

Piper gave her a grin. "Thank you,"

Nell gave her finger guns and a wink in response.

"Where are we?" Piper asked.