Blind Sun

Chapter 11 (44) Snow Boarding With A Pig

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We’d arrived on the outskirts of a little ski town nestled in the mountains. The sign said WELCOME 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.

Y/n seemed to be freezing even with the nemean lion coat, well I assume he was since he was sticking close to Thalia. I know I was freezing by the time we got to Main Street, which was about half a mile from the train tracks. As we walked, I told Grover about my conversation with Apollo the night before – how he’d told me to seek out Nereus in San Francisco and what he had said about Y/n.

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

I tried not to get too depressed about our chances. I didn’t want to send Grover into a panic, but I knew we had another huge deadline looming, aside from saving Artemis in time for her council of the gods. The General had said Annabeth would only be kept alive until the winter solstice. That was Friday, only four days away. And he’d said something about a sacrifice. I didn’t like the sound of that at all.

"What'd he mean by 'his smiles more like the sun than you know'?" I asked looking towards Y/n who was hugging Thalia's arm. Lucky her since I do believe she has a crush on him.

"I think I have an idea." Grover said staring at the two aswell, "That smile is just so bright and radiates such positivity that you don't question what it hides, as satyr I can sense emotions and sometimes his emotions and his smile don't line up."

That was a suprise for me. Y/n has never really looked short of happy, or trying to be happy atleast. But I trusted Grover and knew that satyrs could infact sense emotions.

Grover sighed, "But Apollo is right, Y/n really is like his mother."

"You knew her?" I asked him.

"Kinda." Grover shrugged, "But I get what Apollo means, Y/n really does remind me of his mother sometimes. They smile the same and have the same excited voice too, not to mention the love of baking."

We stopped in the middle of town. You could pretty much see everything from there: a school, a bunch of tourist stores and cafés, 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," Zoë said. "Coffee is good."

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

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

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

Inside the store, we 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 you had your 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, I bought a rubber rat. Then we 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."