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IT WAS A TERRIBLE 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.
We decided to sleep in shifts. Percy volunteered to take first watch.
Annabeth and curled up on our 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.
I couldn't catch a wink of sleep, I just sat there feeling lost. The real world felt so strange to me. The more I observed, the more I realized this wasn't a dream. It's disgusting out here, with all the litter and trash. Being outside stirs up all sorts of strange feelings within me. Lost in my thoughts, I was jolted back to reality by Percy's voice. He wasn't talking to me but to Grover, yet I couldn't help but listen in since sleep eluded me.
"Go ahead and sleep," Percy told Grover. "I'll wake you if there's trouble." He nodded, but still didn't close his eyes. "It makes me sad, Percy."
"What does? The fact that you signed up for this stupid 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."
"Oh, yeah. I guess you'd be an environmentalist."
"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?"
"Pan!" he cried indignantly. "P-A-N. The great god Pan! What do you think I want a searcher's license for?"
A cool breeze shifted through the air. It also brought a new sent full of berries and clean waters. It was refreshing not to smell the stinky trash for once. The smell smelt like something that might have use to be in these woods.
"Tell me about the search," Percy said.
It sounded like Grover hesitated for a second
"The God of Wild Places disappeared two thousand years ago," he told Percy. "A sailor off the coast of Ephesos heard a mysterious voice crying out from the shore, 'Tell them that the great god Pan has died!' When humans heard the news, they believed it. They've been pillaging Pan's kingdom ever since. But for the satyrs, Pan was our lord and master. He protected us and the wild places of the earth. We refuse to believe that he died. In every generation, the bravest satyrs pledge their lives to finding Pan. They search the earth, exploring all the wildest places, hoping to find where he is hidden, and wake him from his sleep."
