Red Skies at Morning | Clarisse La Rue x OC | Percy Jackson AU

My American Citizenship was Provided by a Goat

After getting over the initial shock of the situation, I pocketed the letter and whistle and resumed packing. I figured that I shouldn't have been surprised at this point.

A postcard from my dead mother, delivered right to my sleeping bag in the abandoned building no one knew I was squatting in wasn't that hard to believe after my grasp on reality was already so loose. I could believe ghosts can send postcards.

With nowhere else to go, I began heading southeast in the vague direction of New York. I wasn't in much of a hurry, even if the card promised that the address would lead me somewhere safe from monsters. I was only really going because I had to keep moving anyway, and it was easier to do that when I was traveling from A to B and not just aimlessly running.

And so began the worst three months of my life.

Most days went something like this:

In the morning, I'd wake up from a nightmare at some unholy hour of the morning before trying and failing to go back to sleep. After a while of laying there, I'd get up and pack my sleeping bag, eat something I had stolen the day before, and find the nearest public bathroom– if there were any– and wash up for the day. Then, I'd check a map to confirm my route and start walking, stealing from any unattended bags or unaware pedestrians until I had enough money to take a bus or a train.

In the afternoons, I'd eat whatever I had left in my bag for lunch, or buy something if I had the money. I'd walk as far as I could until sundown before beginning to look for a bridge or empty building to crash in for the night.

But despite my efforts to keep moving and avoid monsters, I'd sometimes get delayed long enough for something to pick up my scent, or I'd just run into one by chance. It was on a day that the bus I'd taken had broken down. They refused to refund everyone and I was too stubborn to just walk away after paying, so I stayed with the bus for a few hours before they fixed the problem.

It was because of that delay that another one of those giant dogs tracked me down and gave chase until the day's exhaustion caught up to me. I ran out of stamina too quickly and I decided to hide in a small, catholic cathedral. I'd already been shaky in my faith– I'd begun questioning everything I knew since running away– but in my exhausted delirious state, I must have figured I'd be safe since a demon wouldn't be able to enter the house of God.

Unsurprisingly, it wasn't safe in the church, and the giant dog had smashed through Mother Mary's mosaic and embedded a glass shard in my face. I was lucky not to have caught it in the eye, but the glass had pierced my nose and gotten stuck.

That night I finally had the guts and adrenaline to confirm that my whistle could indeed turn into a sword and vaporize monsters, as promised on the postcard.

I think if I went to the hospital the doctors might have said that I needed plastic surgery- or at the very least stitches- but I couldn't risk them calling the police and finding out I was on a missing persons list.

So instead, I just went back to the bridge that I was sleeping under at the time and extracted the piece of glass myself. I sat there digging it out with my knife for two hours. Desperately trying to keep the tip of my nose from falling off and praying I wouldn't slip and stab myself in the eye.

After I finally got the glass shard out, I had to go to a grocery store for some real medical supplies. The biggest problem was that a minor couldn't purchase painkillers.

So I decided on walking into a pharmacy and asking the woman behind the counter if the store had a first aid kit. The blood seeping through tissues and duct tape on my face must have scared her because she didn't take the time to ask questions before she ran off to a back room.