"Five years ago," Luke starts, "I met a girl named Thalia."
I was half-listening, half-messing around with my new sword Riptide.
"We were both runaways, and we became a team. Fighting monsters. Building safehouse."
"Hi-YAH!" I shout as I slice a leaf in midair. My sword goes flying and sticks itself in a muddy ditch. Luke stares at me expectantly.
"What? I'm trying my-- oh."
I'm an idiot. It dawned on me that Luke wasn't storytelling - he was proposing to run away with me.
"Uh, sure?!"
Don't act too happy, I snapped at myself. But it would be nice to have a friend.
He exhales, "Good. Phew."
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Luke grins at me like a six-year-old. "Show me your powers!"
"Well, I--..."
"You're a son of Poseidon, right? You should have control over water. Do you have a trident?"
"Well, I don't have control over water," I lie (hey, every lie has a grain of truth in it. I still can't control my powers.) "And no trident. But I have a sword."
I pulled out Riptide.
"That's a pen," Luke deadpans.
I uncapped it.
"Whoa," Luke stepped back. His expression of awe turned to discomfort. "That's... Chiron gave you..."
"Riptide," I finish for him.
He shook his head. "Anaklusmos. Call it by its real name."
A part of me thought: Anna-who?
The other part of me answered: It's Greek for Riptide.
Yet another part of me wondered: How do I know ancient Greek?
Luke pulls out his sword. "You wanna learn from the master?"
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Luke groans as Riptide falls in a ditch for the 8th or 9th time. He sets down his sword.
"You suck at swordplay."
"It's my first day," I say defensively.
"Fair enough, I guess."
------------
"Ugh," I moan as we trudge up yet another hill.
"We're not far. There's a house here, alone in the middle of the woods. Closest human settlement to camp."
"So we're going to loot it?"
He stares at me, deadly serious. "Yes."
"Ah," he stretches his arms and swings them downwards. "We're here."
Two minutes later, we were inside.
"They're upstairs. Stay here. I'll loot the fridge."
I stood around, trying to whistle to sound cool (I'm hopelessly bad at whistling) and in a minute Luke was back, his arms full of food items.
"I have some sliced turkey, crackers, milk, some glasses to drink the milk in and some leftover falafel."
We sat and ate in a blind spot in the house's backyard. Luke was dipping his falafel in the milk, and I was busy convincing him it was a horrible sin. Casually, as my hands are full of crackers, he asks me to pour him some milk. The milk carton tipped over and it poured into a glass.
"You have milk powers," he laughs.
It dawned on me that I wasn't touching the milk carton.
YOU ARE READING
The Dark Percy Jackson
FanfictionPercy Jackson woke up to Grover telling him his mother died. Something inside him snapped. As he leaves Camp Half-Blood, he runs into another kid who's escaping too. The boy smiles at Percy and introduces himself as Luke.
