Sun kissed - Apollo.

17: we get advice from a pink poodle.

The moment we had stepped out of that statuary, i felt the presence of Apollo back. I could feel the worry and the anxiety through him, as we walked through the dark. I held my brother's hand while i concentrated on the connect i felt with Apollo.

"Apollo?"

"Glad to hear you alive, little starfish."

I had to suppress a giggle, i was so glad to hear of him too. The lack of his presence had made me feel a little anxious, like he wasn't able to look out for me.

"Glad i made it out alive." I told him back.

"I'll speak to you later, okay?"

"Of course, glow stick."

And so we went on.

We were pretty miserable that night.

We camped out in the woods, a hundred yards from the main road, in a marshy clearing that local kids had obviously been using for parties. The ground was littered with flattened soda cans and fast-food wrappers.

We'd taken some food and blankets from Aunty Em's, but we didn't dare light a fire to dry our damp clothes. The Furies and Medusa had provided enough excitement for one day. We didn't want to attract anything else. However, we didn't need to, it was hard to bend the water out of our clothes in the dark but after a while it succeeded.

We decided to sleep in shifts. Percy and I volunteered to take first watch.

Annabeth curled up on the blankets and was snoring as soon as her head hit the ground. Grover fluttered with his flying shoes to the lowest bough of a tree, put his back to the trunk, and stared at the night sky.

"Go ahead and sleep," Percy told him. "I'll wake you if there's trouble."

He nodded, but still didn't close his eyes. "It makes me sad, Percy, Daphne."

"What does? The fact that you signed up for this stupid quest?" Percy asked resentful about this quest.

"No. This makes me sad." He pointed at all the garbage on the ground. "And the sky. You can't even see the stars. They've polluted the sky. This is a terrible time to be a satyr."

"Same, Grover. It makes me sad too." I got a frown from Percy, which wasn't new. I had a record of cleaning up the beach whenever we were in Montauk. Or any litter that i saw laying around in a park. I didn't really dare to pick up litter from streets, my mother never liked me picking ip trash from the streets.

"Oh, yeah. I guess you'd be an environmentalist." Percy said to Grover, i hit him over the head.

He glared at me. "Only a human wouldn't be. Your species is clogging up the world so fast ... ah, never mind. It's useless to lecture a human. At the rate things are going, I'll never find Pan."

"Pam? Like the cooking spray?" Percy asked.

"Pan!" he cried indignantly. "P-A-N. The great god Pan! What do you think I want a searcher's license for?"

I raised my brow up at him. "Like the god of the wild, shepherds and flocks, rustic music and impromptus, and companion of the nymphs?" I asked Grover.

A strange breeze rustled through the clearing, temporarily overpowering the stink of trash and muck. It brought the smell of berries and wildflowers and clean rainwater, things that might've once been in these woods. Suddenly I was nostalgic for something I'd never known.

"Tell me about the search," Percy and I said.

Grover looked at Percy cautiously, as if he were afraid my twin was just making fun.