Red Skies at Morning | Clarisse La Rue x OC | Percy Jackson AU

I Thought I Was Eaten by a Sea Monster

Air.

Open space allowed my ankle to wiggle without the resistance of the water. Humidity met my skin and a breeze told me the sky was still where it always was.

My foot had breached the surface of the water. More specifically, it'd been dragged out.

My lungs burned, a consequence of sacrificing oxygen to panic. Desperate, I swung my heel back and clawed at the water to flip myself around. My first breath was so greedy that I nearly choked on the heavy, tropical air. To my surprise, I hadn't resurfaced in the shallows of the river Styx.

Instead, I traded the cloudy visibility and sting of salt water in my eyes for the blinding burn of the sun. Even the dim light filtering through the clouds and dancing off the waves was painfully bright compared to the nothingness I'd just emerged from.

Then a melting plastic chair crashed into the water right next to me.

'Yeah, I'm alive alright,' I would have mumbled if a flaming piece of the engine hadn't splashed to my other side. The spotted bathroom mirror doing the same a few feet behind me. Piece by piece, flaming debris rained down like a plague I vaguely remembered from Sunday School.

I whipped my head around at every splash in the water, some of which were Scylla's heads, but then remembered that panicking made predators see you as prey. At least, that's what they say about normal animals. I wasn't sure what sea monsters looked for but the thought of attracting something's attention was enough to make my limbs grow stiff.

Which is really stressful while flaming pieces of shipwreck are crashing down all around you.

Amid all the chaos and paralyzing fear, I'd managed to miss the girl in miscellaneous pieces of Greek armor splashing around like a maniac.

"Come on!" The falling debris nearly drowned out Clarisse's voice as she grabbed my forearm. "The boat flipped. We need to right it!"

I struggled to move as she dragged me toward the rowboat. It was as if my legs were more scared of what could be hunting us than I was.

"Wren," Clarisse's tone was low, warning me to get moving before she made me. But Clarisse couldn't scare me out of this. The fear I'd been fighting since I'd stowed away on the Birmingham time was finally getting to me. I wanted to scream at Clarisse to stop moving, that every sound and move we made was a step closer to a painful death. I watched the water for movement, squinting through the waves and ripples; waiting for the inevitable.

"Wren are you seriously–" Clarisse started. I could see she'd turned to me out of the corner of my eye but didn't take my attention off the water, trying to figure out if the shadows tricks on my eyes or our end. She was silent for a second before I felt her hands slide over my shoulders. Her hands kept my head above water as she spoke.

"Wren, listen here. You kept us away from Charybdis long enough, good job." Clarisse's voice was barely loud enough to be heard over the chaos. Her voice wasn't soft by any means, but she spoke with a tone that sounded as close as she could get.

"But we're not out of the woods yet." I noticed that her helmet and chest plate were gone. She'd probably had to wrestle them off while I'd been panicking. "You gotta get your head out of the water and back on your shoulders. I need help flipping the lifeboat."

She held on to me a second longer before letting go. "You got all that, Punk?"

I gave a stiff nod to the question, which she'd rattled out more like her usual tone. I took a terrified breath and forced myself to listen to reason.

"Then c'mon," Clarisse turned and swam towards the boat, trusting me to follow.

I just needed to flip the boat. Then we'd be out of the water and I could panic and cry and be a baby all I wanted. I could manage to keep things together until then. Maybe.