Goodnight Moon ↣ P. Jackson + A. Chase

2.12

There was something to say about finding your way into an empty, boarded-up town in the middle of nowhere on the back of an overgrown murder pig, and that was that it absolutely sucked.

As it turned out, meeting these monsters of legend wasn't as fun or thrill invoking that the campers were hoping. There was no glory in saddle sores, nor was there beauty in hobbling along as she tried to get her legs to work properly.

She muttered a silent hymn to her father in an embarrassing desire to spare herself the pain that she would forever deny having even considered. Still, it worked good enough for her to simply shake out her legs and make it out as if it just didn't bother her.

Despite all this, the town could have been hauntingly pretty if it wasn't for the way the sight of ti made her antsy and nervous. She wanted to run far away, go around and not pass directly through to the scraps of metal hills that shown dully in the setting sun. They bode only ill feelings and bad news, but she knew that it would take an extra day to go around, time that they didn't have, and Kassandra wasn't going to risk going the long way.

They made camp at the edge of town in the middle of the road right before the junkyard. Zoe and Bianca pulled mattresses and sleeping bags from their packs (something that Kassandra was endlessly jealous of because they seemed infinite and she could just bring as much as she needed and wanted on a quest if she had that?).

Grover and Percy collected wood for a fire and Thalia started it with a zap of lightning. Kassandra got comfortable on her little mattress, pulling off her jacket and searched through her bag for protein bars to hand out. It wasn't much, but it was enough to help regain their energy.

Zoe handed out packages of dried fruit as a snack.

Sniffing the air, Grover produced his acorns and threw them into the sand, then played his pipes. They rearranged themselves in a pattern that made Grover look concerned.

"That's us," he said. "Those six nuts right there."

"Which one is me?" Percy asks.

"The little deformed one," Zoe suggests.

"She might have a point," she teases, taking advantage of the play on words to be able to actually say it.

"Oh, shut up."

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

"A monster?" Thalia asks.

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

He pointed straight toward the junkyard. With the sunlight almost gone now, the hills of metal looked like something on an alien planet.

Kassandra shivered and quickly looked away. Biting her lip firmly, she finally brings up her concerns from when they had first arrived. "I know that we should go around," she says. "But that'll take way too long. We have to go through the junkyard as fast as possible. I would say run through if we could."

"Why?" Percy asks.

"Children of Apollo will occasionally get premonitions about things since their dad is the god of prophecy," Grover says nervously.

Zoe shakes her head. "That is not the case this time. You have excellent intuition at times, do thee not? It is thy intuition that is telling thee to stay away from the danger."

"If it's so bad, should we go around?" Percy asks.

"No, we don't have the time. We have to go straight through if we're to save Lady Artemis," Bianca declares. "We'll just be extra careful."