a story as endless as the ocean . pjo / allie jackson

1.1 wild blessings

1.1 Our Blessing From the Wild Attempts to Kill Us 

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.

Now that I no longer had the Lion Skin jacket, I had to depend on the coat I brought. It sorta did the job, but I would've been doing a lot better if I still had it on. At the very least, Artemis was given a little extra strength and my shoulders were given a tiny break. But 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.

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

"We will," I replied smoothly. Truthfully, though, I had my doubts.

I didn't want to jinx us by mentioning it, but I knew we had a huge deadline looming if we wanted to save Artemis, Luke, and Brylie in time. The winter solstice was on Friday, only four days away. And the General had said something about a sacrifice. I didn't like the sound of that at all.

In my opinion, the best decision ever made by humanity was to get rid of living sacrifices. I'd take burning my dinner to a deadbeat father any day. At least cooked meat doesn't know what's happening to it.

We stopped in the middle of town to get our bearings. You could pretty much see everything from there: a school, a bunch of tourist stores and cafes, some ski cabins, and a grocery store. Probably smaller than the entire campgrounds. I, ever free-spirited and claustrophobic, hated the place.

"Great," Thalia said, looking around. "No bus station. No taxis. No car rental. No way out."

"There's a coffee shop!" Grover pointed out brightly.

"Yes," Zoe nodded. "Coffee is good."

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

Thalia sighed, flinging her hands up in a silent gesture of 'seriously?' I decided to intervene, lest bloodshed break out between anyone.

"Okay," I clapped my hands together briskly, hoping to warm them up. "Zoe, Grover, could the two of you go get us some food while the rest of us check in the grocery store. Maybe they can give us directions to the nearest train station, or car rental. Here's some cash. Get me a venti iced caramel macchiato and a blueberry muffin, would you? Leave them the change."

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 (most importantly of all) 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 suggested 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."

"I have several hundred dollars," I sighed. "What I don't have, though, is the time."

I gave him a 50 for the help.

"Wonderful," Thalia hissed grumpily. "I'm going to walk down the street, see if anybody in the other shops has a suggestion."

"But the clerk said—" Bianca began.