madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-history has its eyes on you-

"WHO WANTS TO PLAY?"

"Not me." Teqi muttered, she knew how this worked, yet she still flinched when the jack in the box burst out at her. She had 'woken up' in her nightmare land yet again, and decided there was no getting out of it, so she just started running for the tent immediately.

She went through the whole nightmare again, and couldn't decide if it was worse the second time, knowing what would happen and being able to do nothing about any of it. Teqi found herself in the same place minutes, or hours later, sitting in the middle of her tent with tears blurring her view of the blankets and pillows.

Her heart dropped when something walked up to the tent and stopped in front of it. 

This hadn't happened last time. It couldn't be happening; she couldn't go through anything else. She was supposed to be safe here, unreachable, untouchable.

"Delivery for Ms... Teqi?"

That was odd. Was she scared of postmen? 

Teqi looked down at her bare scratched up legs, thorns digging into the pale skin. She stacked the heart shaped pillow and the Yankee's themed one in front of the tent zip, but she knew it wouldn't do anything against whoever was out there. She wrapped the blankets around her and waited, holding her breathe.

"Okay, I know you're in there, so there's really no point pretending your not. Could you let me in? The guillotine is kind of unnerving, and George and Martha don't like your killer snake."

The snake should be in Tartarus, not in a demigod's head

I want rats

"Who's George and Martha?" Teqi asked, then realised she should probably ask who she was talking to in the first place.

"My snakes."

You don't own us

Rats

Teqi figured that this person wasn't being outrightly aggressive, so they probably didn't want to kill her.                                                                                                                                                                                                          A terrible outlook on life for a demigod, but she unzipped the tent anyway. She was still as impulsive as any of her friends, it turned out.

She poked her head out, ready for it to be bitten off, but instead was greeted by a businessman sitting cross-legged in the red dirt, with a golden snake on each shoulder. He had a spider on his leg she decided not to tell him about, and thorns imbedded in the soles of his black shoes.

"Who are you." Teqi said, wrinkling her nose. The man in front of her shrieked at the question, and both snakes writhed around like they were dying. His appearance flickered slightly, to someone wearing one of the bedsheets like Jason had. The snakes turned bronze, and then back to gold.

"A god." The god grumbled, picking a thorn off his shoe, and Teqi only then noticed the gold wing design imprinted in it. Hermes. Teqi glared at him, and he gulped.

"If you had been a better dad then-" She lunged for him, clawing at his face aggressively, and Hermes fell back in the dirt, screeching loudly. The golden snakes flew at her, and she batted them out of the way. He sat far enough away so that she couldn't try to kill him without leaving the tent, so she just glared.