"Send me! Send an army! Send a thousand ships! I don't care, just bring her home. I hate being without her."
[ PERCY JACKSON x FEMALE OC ]
[ PERCY JACKSON SERIES ]
cover by @humaneity !
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0012. | HIS HEART'S DESIRE TURNED TO NEW HOPE
The tow truck ran out of gas sooner than they would have liked.
Percy felt the running water of the river canyon before he heard it or even saw it. He felt more peaceful knowing it was there, feeling the currents and water webbing down below. He remembered feeling the water in the humid air when they fought the skeletons, but nothing compared to the feel of real water. Saltwater was better, but the fresh water was still nice and made his head stop singing with thoughts of grief.
Judging by the way Thalia got out of the car and slammed the door shut, he was the only person pleased to see the river canyon.
"Great." Thalia kicked the front wheel so hard it burst. "What now?"
Percy helped Travis get down from the truck. Grover had fashioned him a sling for his broken arm, but even still, the splint that his bone rested against was only a shaft of wood. The injury was delicate and wouldn't take the boy falling from the truck so Percy gave him a hand. Travis used his head as a balance.
"There's a path." Grover noted. He had jumped down from the truck like it was nothing. His goat legs helped with that. "We could get to the river."
Percy shrugged Travis' hand off his head and scanned their surroundings. He stepped up to the edge of the canyon and checked out the distance. Desert was in every direction. The canyon was the only thing of depth on the entire horizon. It was small, only around fifty meters across and green in colour with a few rapids that he could hear as loud as music. The rock face dropped away below him straight to the river that scarred the desert as deep as lightning.
He tried to find the supposed path that Grover had seen. In the absence of a grand staircase with a railing or even trolley support, Grover had found a winding path wide enough for pigeon steps.
"That's a goat path." Percy looked at him.
"So?" Grover frowned.
"The rest of us aren't goats."
"We can make it." Grover insisted. "I think."
Percy looked back at the path again. The last time he had been on a cliff like this, it was snowing and he had lost Octavia. The thought shot through him as fiercely as the bullets that fired at him when he tried to go after her.
He looked between Travis' broken arm and Thalia's pale expression. The height was too much, she wouldn't like it. Percy didn't want her to get embarrassed.
"No." He decided. "I, uh, think we should go further upstream."
"But—,"
"Come on." He shut Grover down. "A walk won't hurt us. Besides, how will Travis balance?"
