𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐎𝐖 ༄ ᴘercy ᴊᴀᴄᴋꜱᴏɴ

grover realises the rest of us aren't goats

We walked some more, until we found a working tow truck at the edge of the dump.

Zoë had stayed silent, staring down at her fingers. Her cheeks were still wet, and her eyes red.

Percy and Grover were also silent, both looking out in the distance.

Thalia was seemingly unaffected. When she got the truck, she immediately jumped in, ready to go. "The skeletons are still out there," she had said. "We need to keep moving."

Zoë sat with Thalia at the front, whilst me Percy and Grover sat on the pickup bed. The air was cool and a nice breeze ran in the wind. The skies were blue, and the sand was so bright, it almost hurt to look at.

I hated it.

You'd think pathetic fallacy or something would be real, and the clouds would be dark and gloomy, the remaining five of us standing in the middle of a storm, threatening to ruin us all.

Or at the very least, a grey cloud.

My fingers curled around the mythomagic figure again, Kalon laying beside me. Oh, god. Nico. How was I supposed to tell him? He'd made me promise to keep her safe.

No.

He hadn't made me do anything. I promised him out of my own volition and I had failed to keep it.

The wind whistled softly as we drove, easy to hear in the dead silence of my companions. No one was speaking.

I knew what they were all thinking though.

It should have been me. I was the camper who had only been here a few days, that came on this quest for no apparent reason. I was the one that was not a hunter, and planned to leave this whole world behind after I had my fun. I was supposed to die instead of Bianca.

I agreed with them.

I wondered how Nico would react. Would he scream and cry? Would he blame and curse me? Would I be the one who took his childish youth away? Would he mourn, and just want his big sister back?

Percy and Grover began talking quietly near me, but I wasn't bothered enough to tune into their conversation.

The tow truck ran out of gas at the edge of a river canyon. That was just as well, because the road dead-ended.

Thalia got out and slammed the door. Immediately, one of the tires blew. "Great. What now?"

I scanned the horizon. There wasn't much to see. Desert in all directions, occasional clumps of barren mountains plopped here and there. The canyon was the only thing interesting. The river itself wasn't very big, maybe fifty yards across, green water with a few rapids, but it carved a huge scar out of the desert. The rock cliffs dropped away below us.

I walked to the edge.

A long fall.

If I fell, I wouldn't survive. Nobody would.

I mused on it for a second. How death was always so close. Yet we were given chances again, and again. And sometimes, our luck ran out.

I pocketed the mythomagic figure and turned Kalon back into it's pin form - this time clipping it to the end of my sleeve.

"There's a path," Grover said. "We could get to the river."

I looked to see what he was talking about, and finally noticed a tiny ledge winding down the cliff face.

"That's a goat path," Percy said.

"So?" he asked.

"The rest of us aren't goats."