𝚃𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚔𝚜 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙼𝚎𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚜

Depressing Stories by the Fire? Why Not

I woke up freezing, wrapped in a blanket next to Leo, in front of a fire. Jason and Piper were across the fire from us, and Coach Hedge was adjacent to where I was sitting. I groaned and sat up, holding my head. I looked around the cave, firelight flickered against the rock walls. We were in a shallow cave, but it didn't offer much protection. Outside, the wind howled. Snow blew sideways. It might've been day or night. The storm made it too dark to tell.

"Where are we?" I asked.

No one answered.

"Welcome to the living word, Kody," Leo joked. "How're you feeling?"

"I'm feeling." Was my response.

"Are you cold?"

"A little bit."

Coach handed me another blanket. "You're on the verge of hypothermia, so let's try to keep you as warm as possible," he explained.

I nodded and took the blanket gratefully, wrapping it around me.

Piper woke up a few minutes later.

"Oh, god." Her teeth chattered. "He turned me to gold!"

"You're okay now." Jason leaned over and tucked a blanket around her.

"L-L-Leo? Ko-ody?" Piper managed.

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

"You've got hypothermia," Jason said. "We risked as much nectar as we could. Coach Hedge did a little nature magic—"

"Sports medicine." Coach spoke up. "Kind of a hobby of mine. Your breath might smell like wild mushrooms and Gatorade for a few days, but it'll pass. You probably won't die. Probably."

"Thanks," Piper said weakly. "How did you beat Midas?"

Jason told us 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 was just warming up. "Then I came in with my club, and we dominated that room. Afterward, I told him, 'Kid, I'm proud of you! If you could just work on your upper body strength—'"

"Coach," Jason said.

"Yeah?"

"Shut up, please."

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

Jason put his hand on Piper's forehead and checked her temperature. "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. "Where are we?"

"Pikes Peak," Jason said. "Colorado."

"But that's, what—five hundred miles from Omaha?" I asked.

"Something like that," Jason agreed. "I harnessed the storm spirits to bring us this far. They didn't like it—went a little faster than I wanted, almost crashed us into the mountainside before I could get them back in the bag. I'm not going to be trying that again."