daylight - percy jackson¹

007

We rode the boar until sunset, which was about as much as my butt could take. Imagine riding a giant steel brush over a bed of gravel all day. That's about how comfortable boar-riding was.

I was exhausted, to say the least. I was sandwiched with Zoe in front of me and Percy behind me, so I did what anybody else would've done. I scooched away from Zoe, and leaned my back against Percy's chest. 

At first, he was tense. As a daughter of the love goddess, I could feel his heart beating out of his chest and I could sense his nerves from a mile away. But after a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, he finally relaxed. He made quite a good backrest.

As we rode across who knows how many miles of land, I let my mind wander.

That morning, what had Thalia been saying about Annabeth betting on me and Percy?

Me. And Percy Jackson.

I mean, you would only have to be a little delusional to not realize that Percy had a tiny crush on me.

You could see it in the way he protected me during battles, or the way his mood went from zero to 100 when he began talking to me. The way he made a point to get to know me, the way his eyes lit up when he was talking to me.

No. I must've been being completely and absurdly delusional- one of the many talents of us children of Aphrodite. There was no way. Percy Jackson- the infamous hero, who had saved so many lives, and looked good while he did it?

No way. He would never like me. Not me.

Maybe it was the way I did my hair? My makeup? Maybe the way I dressed or the way I spoke. I would go over it later- right now I had a bigger task at hand.

I have no idea how many miles we covered, but the mountains faded into the distance and were replaced by miles of flat, dry land. The grass and scrub brush got sparser until we were galloping (do boars gallop?) across the desert.

My heart dropped. 

One shall be lost in the land without rain.

I was seriously worrying about boys- or, in specific, a boy- when somebody was about to die. Good going, Isabella, good going.

As night fell, the boar came to a stop at a creek bed and snorted. He started drinking the muddy water, then ripped a saguaro cactus out of the ground and chewed it, needles and all. Ouch.

"This is as far as he'll go," Grover said. "We need to get off while he's eating."

Nobody needed convincing. We slipped off the boar's back while he was busy ripping up cacti. Then we waddled away as best we could with our saddle sores.

I was worried my butt would be flat forever after that ride.

After its third saguaro and another drink of muddy water, the boar squealed and belched, then whirled around and galloped back toward the east.

"It likes the mountains better," Percy guessed.

"I can't blame it," Thalia said. "Look."

Ahead of us was a two-lane road half covered with sand. On the other side of the road was a cluster of buildings too small to be a town: a boarded-up house, a taco shop that looked like it hadn't been open since before Zoe Nightshade was born, and a white stucco post office with a sign that said GILA CLAW, ARIZONA hanging crooked above the door. Beyond that was a range of hills... but then I noticed they weren't regular hills. The countryside was way too flat for that. The hills were enormous mounds of old cars, appliances, and other scrap metal. It was a junkyard that seemed to go on forever.