Goodnight Moon ↣ P. Jackson + A. Chase

2.15

Sometimes, quite often at that, Kassandra wonders if she's the problem. She wonders if there was truly something wrong with her that she was abandoned as a newborn, that her parents were ready to ship her away, that Apollo never wanted her.

She wondered if perhaps she had been better, a little softer on the inside more like the early dawn like Will was, or sunset same as Lee, instead of angry noon sun that burned angrily and glared, if her father would have liked her better, would have liked her enough to claim her instead of leaving her to suffer from doubt, embarrassment, and her complete lack of self-worth.

Kassandra had ripped her way to the top, had banished all (read most of) her feelings of inadequacy and along the way she had lost that little sense of hope and faith that carried her long and weightless, that made her feel like a child and not like a weapon forged for her own vengeance.

She wondered if she was the problem, if her own hatred and casting away of the gods was truly going to be her downfall.

Holding grudges, it was what she did best, it was what came easiest. Kassandra could hate the gods until the end of the world, but was that really such a problem?

Was she the problem that her prayers had never been answered? That they had taken one look at her and had already decided on how useless and unimportant that she was?

It was difficult to push away the intrusive thoughts when the image of Dionysus coming to their aid so clearly plagues the back of her eyelids. All Percy had to do was say please and he had saved their lives, but when Kassandra had cried and begged and pleaded, no one was ever there.

"We'll never make it," Zoe says, slowing until she stopped running. "We're moving too slow."

Kassandra stops next to her, fully capable of running a lot longer, but the sun was already dipping in the West since they had long left the shopping centre. They had been heading toward the Golden Gate Bridge, but it was much further than any of them realized.

"We need a car," Thalia says, hands on her hips.

"We can't just leave the Ophiotaurus," Kassandra says, glancing down to the water and the monster that had been swimming alongside them.

"Moo!" the water cow intones, and she automatically turned to Grover as she waited for a translation.

"I don't get it," Percy says. "Why do we have to get there at sunset?"

"The Hesperides are the nymphs of the sunset," Zoe says. "We can only enter their garden as day changes to night."

"What happens if we miss it?"

"Tomorrow is the winter solstice. If we miss sunset tonight, we would have to wait until tomorrow evening. And by then, the Olympian Council will be over. We must free Lady Artemis tonight."

"We need a car," Thalia repeats.

Kassandra looked around, searching the waterfront that apparently had no cars. She couldn't exactly steal what wasn't around.

"What about Bessie?" Percy asks.

"Can't you just ask it to go down in the water and not come back up until you call for it?" she asks.

Grover stops in his tracks. "I've got an idea! Bessie can appear in different bodies of water, right?"

Percy nods. "Well, I saved him in Long Island and then he turned up at the Hoover Dam and now he's here, so I guess."

"So maybe we could coax him back to Long Island Sound," Grover says. "Then Chiron could help us get him to Olympus."

"But he was following me," he says. "If I'm not there, would he know where he's going?"