How Do You Say Gods- Last Olympian

7: WE BURN A METAL SHROUD

Will read the new title out loud without hesitation, hoping it would cause the usual round of laughter and debates what Percy would get up to.

Instead the silence of the ocean around them felt like it was trying to squeeze into the room.

Beckendorf. Percy had been trying hard to move with that pain leading him into the living who still needed him. Annabeth was shivering and beside herself, pressing on her stomach to try and convince it to stop knotting itself for knowing exactly how Silena had felt during this...but they weren't so lucky with another hero popping up from Calypso's island.

Percy wanted to reach for her. To hold her and promise it was the last funeral she'd ever have to attend. He might as well have decided to propose to Annabeth on the spot. Absolutely nothing was happening but a blank in him on how to actually act on that impulse.

Will wished he knew the perfect words to help everyone who had to feel this, but he didn't even think his dad could manage that without another gazillion years of life.

I dreamed Rachel Elizabeth Dare was throwing darts at my picture.

"I understand the sentiment," Annabeth nodded while Will got what he wanted. True it was subdued laughter, with a start like that it would take any of them a moment to wind up to their usual chaotic good time, but Will had a faint smile all the same that made his reading feel natural now.

"That's probably your most believable dream, including the ones that were actually just happening somewhere else," Alex chuckled.

...I have to explain that Rachel doesn't have a room.

"Did she annoy her dad too much and he made her sleep in the dog house, aka, the McMansion they keep outside?" Alex asked, but there was sympathy more than mocking in his voice.

"I think she'd consider that a reward," Percy reminded.

... top floor of her family's mansion...as big as my mom's apartment.

Will didn't have to wonder if she got lonely in there. She liked her cave and having her private space, something that drove him nuts when it felt quiet with only a handful of them in his cabin. Yet every meal she was down in the commons, every day she could she was striking up a conversation with someone at Camp, likely to make up for years of being in this large, empty space. It didn't feel like a wild guess she'd probably spent more time in holding cells waiting for her butler to come pick her up than in there.

...no two songs could sound the same, and they all had to be strange.

Alex laughed in appreciation. If he had an Ipod, that would probably be his tunes too.

She wore a kimono, and her hair was frizzy, like she'd been sleeping.

Annabeth sighed, an old tick of jealousy easily leaping to the surface. Had Percy ever had that kind of dream about her? Even knowing this was entangled in her coming Oracle powers and had a legitimate reason for penetrating his subconscious, she'd have still liked to hear he'd seen her pacing around in her pajamas in her cabin any of the million times she'd been stressed.

She knew it didn't matter now, honestly, there was nothing between them, but it was as easy to remember there almost had been in moments like this just as much as every other messed up feeling sprouting to the surface in this room.

...My expression in the picture was fierce—disturbing, even—so it was hard to tell if I was the good guy or the bad guy, but Rachel said I'd looked just like that after the battle.

Percy rubbed the back of his neck with a frown. He'd never really wanted to be described like that, even if it was kind of cool and should put the fear of Poseidon into whatever monsters wanted to harm his friends again.