"Just write a book" they said. "It'll be easy," they said, "Everyone gets published these days." Yeah, well, it's a little harder when your editors are gods that will turn you into a gecko and use you as a ping pong ball if you don't write them exac...
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WE ENDED UP CAMPING. I guess we were all a little too paranoid about suddenly respawning monsters to sleep in Aunty Em's. Instead we set up in a marshy clearing covered in flattened soda cans and fast-food wrappers.
While the others set up the blankets we had gotten from Aunty Em's, I went around and picked them up. I knew it was sort of pointless. There was no where to throw it away, and I really wasn't in the mood to stuff soggy food wrappers and muddy cans into my bag. It just made me feel a little better. Maybe it was sleeping on the ground, but I had been able to clean it up a bit, and in the morning I might even be able to find a trash can to put it in.
It isn't a comfortable night. Obviously the blankets weren't enough to hide the fact we were basically sleeping in a swamp. The ground was somehow both frozen and squishy. I, at least, had the benefit of still having my backpack to use as a pillow. Our clothes were still damp, but we were too scared of monsters finding us to light a fire to dry them – or even provide some warmth.
We decided to sleep in shifts. Percy volunteered to take first watch.
Annabeth curled up on the blankets. She was snoring in seconds. Grover flittered with his flying shoes to the lowest branch of a tree, put his back on the trunk, and stared at the night sky.
I tried to do the same, tucking my glasses on the other side of my bag to keep them from being rolled over on. I suspected no one had brought extra magic glasses. But too much was rolling through my mind. I stared off into the darkness. Nothing seemed to be lurking out there...Hopefully. Evidently I was not the master of sensing monsters.
"It makes me sad, Percy," Grover suddenly said.
"What does?" Percy asked. "The fact that you signed up for this stupid quest?"
"No. This makes me sad."
Since I couldn't sleep any way, I sat up and tried to see what he was talking about without my glasses. I think Percy was under the impression I was asleep, because he jumped. Grover was motioning to the garbage on the ground, which I had attempted to safely store under the tree.
"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," Percy said.
Grover glared at us (Hey! What did I do?) "Only a human wouldn't be. Your species is clogging up the world so fast...ah, ever mind. It's useless to lecture a human. At the rate things are going, I'll never find Pan."
I wanted to point out I'd literally picked up the trash while he was busy chewing on blankets, but I got his point.
