Riptide by Annabeth Chase

Chapter Two: Home and Other Realms

I must have fallen asleep while I was crying because I woke to birds chirping and the sun shining. Luke and Thalia were eating food near the charred wood that used to be a fire.

When they noticed I was awake Thalia gestured for me to come sit with them and said, "want some food?"

I sat with them, and they handed me a stick that had some type of meat on it but even though I didn't have any idea what it was, it looked amazing considering how hungry I was. The meat was tough and kind of stringy but when you're starving food is food.

As we gathered our stuff and walked towards their hideout I felt a million percent better. I had slept and eaten. I had two new friends and they had confirmed that their dads were gods just like my mom. Thalia's dad was Zeus, and Luke told me his dad was Hermes, and I had more questions for them than I would ever be able to ask.

I decided to start with the most pressing one, "if monsters sense you guys as well, does that mean it would be easier for them to find us when we are all together?"

"Kind of," Thalia replied, "it does make us a bit more obvious to the monsters, but Luke and I have found that even though we attract more monsters the benefits of fighting in a group outweigh any negatives."

"Plus, we try to keep moving and have found a few other things that help us cover our tracks so they can't find us as easily," Luke said. "It's not always easy but having friends helps make it less scary."

"Do spiders bother you two as well or is that just an Athena thing?" I asked.

"Eh, that's probably an Athena thing, but we all have our share of automatic enemies based on who our parents have managed to piss off," Thalia explained. "I attract a lot more sea and underworld enemies than Luke does since my dad and his brothers don't seem to get along very well."

"Yeah, our parents like to make sure we are fighting their battles so we get the negatives and the positives," Luke said, "not much we can do about those things, but we make do."

"How does your shield work?" I asked Thalia.

"I don't actually know too much, we found it right before we found you," she said, "I just tap the bracelet and say 'Aegis' and the shield pops out. Then I just touch it and it shrinks back into a bracelet."

"Ok but how? How does the whole shield fit in the bracelet, does it fold up or shrink, or maybe it goes to a different dimension? Is it the actual Aegis shield, like, from mythology? Does it have Medusa's face on it? Or is it like a replica? Or —"

"Whoa," Thalia cut me off, "I have no idea how it works. It does have Medusa's face on it, or at least I think it does. I've never seen Medusa and I don't ever want to see anything more of her than this shield."

"Do you think it's magical or mechanical?" I kept asking questions. I was talking more to myself than to them by that point anyway. I just couldn't stop even though I knew I was probably being annoying. "Can I see how it opens?"

"I don't know if that's a good idea," Luke chimed in, "it's a pretty scary shield. It's even scared me a couple of times. Didn't you see it at the docks?"

"Oh, I won't be scared. I didn't get a good look at it before because I was trying to keep you from eating me. I didn't really have a chance to see the whole thing, please, I won't be scared, please." Honestly, I had no idea if the shield would be scary. If Luke was scared of it, I probably would be too, but I was too curious about it to care.

Thalia looked at me and then glanced toward Luke who shrugged. "She did kill that snake yesterday, she might be brave enough," he said as he chuckled, and we stopped walking for a bit.