𝐎, 𝐀𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐄! ; Percy Jackson

𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞

( xvii );

( court of angels )

           DR. CHASE'S YELLOW VW CONVERTIBLE SEEMED TO MOVE IN SLOW MOTION IN TIMES OF NEED. With Nicoletta being smooshed into the middle seat in-between Thalia and a nervous Percy Jackson her only hope was that they would arrive upon their destination, fast.

          "Can't this thing go any faster?" Thalia demanded. Zoe glared at her.

           "I cannot control traffic," Zoe grumbled, hitting the steering wheel.

            "You both sound like my mother," Percy quipped, watching the two quarrel.

              "Shut up!"

              Nicoletta closed her eyes and took a deep breath, rubbing her temples. "Any way you could turn the radio on?"

             Percy let out a short snort, trying to find amusement in a daunting situation. "I don't think listening to ABBA would help right now, 'Letta."

             Nicoletta almost replied with an 'ABBA always helps' but she shut her mouth. An array of mist covered the car with a blanket of tranquility, stimulating drops of water onto the windows and cloaking her own heart in the condensation. Her dark eyes, coffee black with the prolepsis of her own fate upon that mountain, they watched at the droplets of tears shed down the windows and reflected the ones she had shed before. She couldn't help but look at Percy with her grainy, ruinous eyes and let a feeling of consensus flow through her, touching the fingertips of the boy with their own accord. She had grown to the feeling of acceptance, her mind had locked out any wild notion of proving her lonesome, no longer scared of her mother's words, only afraid of failing her friends. And she wouldn't.

         "You'd be surprised," she smiled at him. A true smile and the only true smile he had received from the girl and he couldn't help the giddiness in his chest, thanking ABBA and their wonders.

           "Why does everything smell like cough drops?" Percy hiccuped away the cavity in his chest.

           "Eucalyptus." Zoe pointed to the huge trees all around them.

            "The stuff koala bears eat?"

             "And monsters," she said. "They love chewing the leaves. Especially dragons."

             "Dragon's chew eucalyptus?" Nicoletta leaned over slightly to try and bend her vision through the mist.

              "Believe me," Zoe said, "if you had dragon breath, you would chew eucalyptus too."

            The Moutain of Despair came closer and closer into sight, as the breadth of the road got smaller, Zoe grew tenser, her lips almost a ghostly white as they chalked together in a straight line of slight torment.