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CHAPTER SIXTEEN do not fear the hunt
——— VERONA! ( CAMP HALF BLOOD, EARLY JUNE )
VERONA WAS FALLING through the sky again.
Falling and falling and falling, her limbs flailing out before her. She fell through trees and olive branches and almost smacked her head against a bird — a dove — and screamed as she continued to fall. Finally, after thousands of years of falling, she landed softly with a thump in a large bed of grass. She groaned, feeling a twig in her hair stick at her scalp and flashing to a major case of déjà vu. The whole experience in itself felt oddly familiar, and as Verona managed to take her face out of the ground, sticking her tongue out disgustingly as some of the dirt got into her mouth, she looked around at her surrounding and realized why she was feeling a sort of familiarity in the first place.
She was in a field.
A daisy field, to be completely specific. All that was growing was daisies, and blades of grass the seemingly danced together in surreptitious and regal harmony.
She was in the stupid, stupid daisy field again.
Verona swore on Hades that if Aphrodite appeared with another major outfit accessory of hers missing and demanded that Verona go and get it back...Verona would not care that she was her mother, or a millenium old Goddess. She swore right then and there that she'd clock Aphrodite her hardest right hook — and let her be honest, it hurt like a bitch. (Connor could confirm, having been the product of her right hook's aim during multiple Camp training sessions).
She fell again, limbs flailing and when she landed this time, her feet were actually on the ground instead of being face caked with dirt. She was still in the horrid daisy field. Verona swore on the Styx she had begun developing an allergy to daisies after this horrid dream and the one reminiscent before it. Her upper arm had a glittery gold band on it, and gold rings littered her still—red nailed fingers and her nimble wrists, hanging off of them elegantly. She was in a dress, much to her lack of delight at a time of night where she should be asleep (technically speaking, she was) and she could feel her hair braided on the back of her head, before being pinned up into a weird shaped bun on touch that she was sure was intricate and not something she was actually capable of accomplishing as fast as Aphrodite did.
"Well, don't you clean up nicely."
Aphrodite was already there. She had taken the same form she had taken in the first dream Verona had of her — her true form, to her children at least. Curly brown hair just above her shoulders, a mix between olive and chocolate skin, full lips, except this time she was on a full on toga, dressed to the absolute nines. She was sitting under a newly appeared willow tree on a table with two chairs, and doves crowded around her, sitting on the table and flapping their wings eagerly.
