Reincarnation in the PJO verse: Volume 1

『Horror and Honour』

They arrived on the outskirts of a little ski town nestled in the mountains. The sign read COME TO CLOUDCROFT, NEW MEXICO. The air was cold and thin. The roofs of the cabins were heaped with snow, and dirty mounds of it were piled up on the sides of the streets. Tall pine trees loomed over the valley, casting pitch-black shadows, though the morning was sunny.

Even with his lion-skin coat, Diedre was freezing by the time they got to Main Street, which was about half a mile from the train tracks. As they walked, Percy told Grover and Diedre about his conversation with Apollo the night before—how he'd told me to seek out Nereus in San Francisco.

Diedre said, being as filial as he could be to Apollo, "That's nice. He's trying to help us."

Grover looked uneasy. "That's good, I guess. But they've got to get there first."

They stopped in the middle of town. Anyone could pretty much see everything from there: a school, a bunch of tourist stores and cafes, some ski cabins, and a grocery store.

"Great," Thalia said, looking around. "No bus station. No taxis. No car rental. No way out."

"There's a coffee shop!" said Grover.

"Yes," Zoe said. "Coffee is good."

Diedre sighed, "Coffee is the best."

"And pastries," Grover said dreamily. "And wax paper."

Thalia sighed. "Fine. How about you two go get us some food. Percy, Sara, Diedre and I will check in the grocery store. Maybe they can give us directions."

They agreed to meet back in front of the grocery store in fifteen minutes. Sara looked a little uncomfortable coming with us, but she did.

Inside the store, they found out a few valuable things about Cloudcroft: there wasn't enough snow for skiing, the grocery store sold rubber rats for a dollar each, and there was no easy way in or out of town unless someone had their own car.

"You could call for a taxi from Alamogordo," the clerk said doubtfully. "That's down at the bottom of the mountains, but it would take at least an hour to get here. Cost several hundred dollars."

The clerk looked so lonely, Percy bought a rubber rat. Then they headed back outside and stood on the porch.

"Wonderful," Thalia grumped. "I'm going to walk down the street, see if anybody in the other shops has a suggestion."

"But the clerk said—"

"I know," she told me. "I'm checking anyway."

Sara, Diedre and Percy stood together awkwardly. Percy never knew what to talk about and Diedre always had the churning cloud of guilt in his stomach whenever he looked at Sara.

"Nice rat," she said at last.
Percy set it on the porch railing probably thinking maybe it would attract more business for the store. "So... how do you like being a Hunter?" Diedre asked.
She pursed her lips. "It's good and quiet. And they keep you busy so that you don't have to think about other things."

"That's nice, that you are happy," Diedre hummed.

"Not happy per se. With Lady Artemis gone, the natural order within the hunters is a bit haywire but all of us are sisters now. We have fought together and lived together for a long time."

A blanket of silence spread over them and Diedre couldn't help but ask, "Why did you come along on this quest."

Sara said, "I had to come along. Zoe was in distress song with the hunters and we don't really like working with others but somebody had to come to save Artemis."