Sun kissed - Apollo.

49: We Get A Surprise On Miami Beach.

I felt groggy, feeling better knowing that Kronos couldn't any longer terrorise me through my dreams. I looked around me and saw Clarisse speaking to Annabeth for a moment before the fleece slips off Annabeth and is handed to Clarisse.

Clarisse steers the hippocampus she's on over to me and smiles at me. I rub the sleep from my eyes and smiled at her as she slips the fleece over my shoulders. I had expected the fleece to feel a lot heavier than it did. It's lighter than a seventy pounds but still weighed heavy on my shoulders.

"Thanks." I told her.

She squeezed my shoulder. "No worries, Sea princess." She told me. "I was foretold to wrap you in gold."

I hissed, clutching my wrist. Clarisse grabbed it before i could and held it in hers. The mark was slowly bleeding away, turning it into an ugly white mark before my skin begins to get its colour back and disappear entirely from my wrist.

The felling of a constant pull starts to disappear along with the mark, a weight being lifted off my chest not that i look at it and feel free from the fact that Kronos had tied himself to me. Never again.

"Thanks you, War child," I grinned.

"You're welcome, Sea child." She replied.

"Now let's get this to camp!" I said as i snuggled closer into the fleece.

We ride for a bit longer, and i converse for a long while with Tyson and Clarisse. Grover how he had been and how he had managed to fool a cyclops by playing the part of a female cyclops. Annabeth butted in once or twice but mostly kept to herself.

"Percy, wake up." Annabeth said after a while.

Salt water splashed his face. Annabeth was shaking his shoulder.

In the distance, the sun was setting behind a city skyline. I could see a beachside highway lined with palm trees, storefronts glowing with red and blue neon, a harbor filled with sailboats and cruise ships.

"Miami, I think," Annabeth said. "But the hippocampi are acting funny."

Sure enough, our fishy friends had slowed down and were whinnying and swimming in circles, sniffing the water. They didn't look happy. One of them sneezed. I could tell what they were thinking. They were making me worried in some way, so i held the fleece tighter around me.

"This is as far as they'll take us," Percy said. "Too many humans. Too much pollution. We'll have to swim to shore on our own."

None of us was very psyched about that, but we thanked Rainbow and his friends for the ride. Tyson cried a little. He unfastened the makeshift saddle pack he'd made, which contained his tool kit and a couple of other things he'd salvaged from the Birmingham wreck. He hugged Rainbow around the neck, gave him a soggy mango he'd picked up on the island, and said good-bye.

Once the hippocampi's white manes disappeared into the sea, we swam for shore. The waves pushed us forward, and in no time we were back in the mortal world. We wandered along the cruise line docks, pushing through crowds of people arriving for vacations. Porters bustled around with carts of luggage. Taxi drivers yelled at each other in Spanish and tried to cut in line for customers. If anybody noticed us—six kids dripping wet and looking like they'd just had a fight with a monster—they didn't let on.

Percy held my free hand as we walked, i could still feel the guilt for what happened from the quest radiate off him. He held my hand rather tightly like i would get hurt if he were to let go of me.

Now that we were back among mortals, Tyson's single eye had blurred from the Mist. Grover had put on his cap and sneakers. Even the Fleece had transformed from a sheepskin to a red-and-gold high school letter jacket with a large glittery Omega on the pocket.