ᴄᴀᴠᴇ ᴄᴀɴᴇᴍ: ᴘᴀʀᴛ ɪɪ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴇʀᴄᴀʙᴇᴛʜ/ꜱᴏʟᴀɴɢᴇʟᴏ ᴘʀᴏᴊᴇᴄᴛ

ᴠ | ᴛᴜʟɪᴘꜱ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡɪɴᴅᴍɪʟʟ, ᴍᴀ'ᴀᴍ?

Being in the Netherlands makes Annabeth nervous.

Sure, the chomped tulips are bad, and the implications of having to fight the sacred boar of a maiden goddess when you yourself are not a maiden are ironic, but Annabeth's dealt with that kind of thing before. She deals with boars—literally and figuratively—every couple of days. That's nothing new.

She's nervous because there are Dutch windmills everywhere. They're cute; she can see herself hitting a golf ball through just about every one of them, but those visions are obscured by memories she should remember.

Spoiler alert: She doesn't remember much of anything, and what she does remember is a little hazy. Not being able to trust herself because the god of unfulfilled desires is tapping into her brain is more than a little daunting, and so is the fact that she seems to play a role in whatever plan the god in question has.

So in conclusion, the Dutch windmills dotting the path are a little unnerving, and sort of distracting her from hunting a goddamn copy of the Erymanthian Boar, which is inevitably going to ruin the outfit she wore especially to piss off Percy.

Plus, this shirt makes her boobs look fantastic, and she sort of needs the confidence boost right now because she has a feeling her dry spell could quite possibly last until the end of the summer. Damn, she is dryer than the Sahara Desert!

She chuckles to herself. Her confidence isn't the only thing her Hooters uniform boosts.

"Are you sure your shoes can't fit in your backpack?" Percy asks, frantically pedaling behind her. It's not that he can't ride a bicycle. He definitely can ride a bicycle, although Annabeth's not entirely sure where a kid from New York City would learn to do that. The problem is that there's something wrong with the chain in the bike, so while Annabeth glides along the road with ease on her roller skates, Percy is sweating profusely and pedaling way faster than should be necessary.

Her stinky beat-up Converse sneakers in the basket probably don't help either.

She turns around, skating backward so that she can see his reaction when she says, "No."

"You can skate backward?" he asks. And then Annabeth's pretty sure he mutters something along the lines of, "Why the hell didn't we have skating dates?"

Because I didn't have a void to fill with useless hobbies and an absurd lifestyle.

"Hell yeah, I can!" she says, topping off her cheeky twirl with a curtsey.

Percy slows the bicycle. "Hang on," he pants. "I need a water break." He puts the kickstand down and checks to make sure the bike is sturdy against the concrete.

The bicycle falls over, and the kickstand rolls into the grass.

"Well that just about sums up this trip," Annabeth says.

"I thought you were having a blast," he says. He sounds annoyed.

Truth be told, she'd love to be curled up on the couch watching shitty reality shows with Will, sharing pints of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, and drinking sangria out of mugs because they're too lazy to wash the wine glasses. The I'm-having-a-blast facade is kind of her go-to when she's uncomfortable. It gets her out of one shitty situation and into a perhaps even shittier one.

They have a saying for that: out of the frying pan and into the fire. 

Right about now, the contents of Annabeth's metaphorical frying pan are charred to a crisp, what with her having no apartment to go back to and possibly no job either. She risked that for a quest with her ex-boyfriend who has this delusional vision of her, didn't she?