❝Don't read the last page,
But I stay when it's hard, or it's wrong, or we're making mistakes.❞
Book 1 of 'The Blue' duology.
Percy Jackson x Fem!Oc
TTC - TLO
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THEY RODE THE BOAR UNTIL SUNSET. Kathleen would be a liar if she said it was as fun as she thought. Imagine riding a giant steel brush over a bed of gravel all day. That's about how comfortable boar-riding was.
Maybe she should stop finding everything funny.
She had no idea how many miles they 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 they were galloping (boars could gallop?) across the desert.
As night fell, the boar came to a stop at a creek bed and snorted. It started drinking the muddy water, then ripped a saguaro cactus out of the ground and chewed it, needles and all.
Kathleen glared around once again, and this time she froze. Desert. Without rain. One shall be lost in the land without rain.
"This is as far as he'll go," Grover said. "We need to get off while he's eating."
"Guys, maybe we can force it to go somewhere else? Maybe a less . . . dry area?" Kathleen suggested, her voice trembling.
"Force it?" Grover glared at her as if she just offered to kill the boar and eat it for dinner. "No, no. Let's get off."
Nobody needed convincing. They slipped off the boar's back while it was busy ripping up cacti. Then they waddled away as best they could with our saddle sores.
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 do too," Kathleen mumbled.
"I can't blame you," Thalia said. "Look."
Ahead of them 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 Zoë 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 . . . Those weren't hills.
It was a junkyard that seemed to go on forever.
"Whoa," Percy said.
"Something tells me we're not going to find a car rental here," Thalia muttered. She looked at Grover. "I don't suppose you got another wild boar up your sleeve?"
Grover was sniffing the wind, looking nervous. He fished out his acorns and threw them into the sand, then played his pipes. They rearranged themselves in a pattern that made no sense, but Grover looked concerned.
"That's us," he said. "Those five nuts right there."
"Which one is me?" Percy asked.
"The little deformed one," Zoë suggested, making Kathleen giggle.
