Golden Green

Ch. 10

"That is the dumbest idea I've ever heard," Annabeth scoffed. "You'd lose so much of your body heat. Why would you do that?"

"Are you the tree spirit in the rain right now?" I asked Annabeth, staring back at her with wide eyes. "No, I thought so! Then stop talking to me, Wise Girl."

"What's your issue?" Annabeth demanded, backing away from Percy and stepping in front of me.

"Are you not agitated too by your empty stomach?" I asked, getting paranoid and thinking she ate something behind my back while I stared at my laces in the dark.

"Do you not get filled by the rain and sunlight?" Annabeth asked.

"For such a know-it-all that was a really dumb question," I said looking away from my laces to her while I shifted my umbrella in my arms. "I know you have seen me eat in the mess hall because you won't stop being paranoid about what I'm going to do like it's going to be something bad because you can't read me like a book like you think you can everybody else."

"Okay I didn't know what you could get full on. I thought it was just water because you always have your spear, which I'm supposed to believe is your tree, in a cup of water like it needs to be watered."

"My spear is my tree, not supposedly. Did you not see the massive mountain of a tree it grew into when I placed it in the ground by the Big House when you were spying on our conversation with Chiron. Is it so hard to believe that I'm just something you don't understand, you crazy, insufferable, big headed little girl!" I raised my voice, getting mad at my muddy shoes for not coming off.

"I'm the little girl?" Annabeth exclaimed, leaving her jaw hanging open like this was the greatest offense she ever heard.

"Yes, you're a little girl. You dislike Percy just because your mom doesn't get along with his dad. You down play everyone else because you think you're better." I was getting tired of the boots.

"You don't even know me!" Annabeth yelled back. "I have been through more than your fresh out of know-nothing Nevada self has ever experienced!"

"Oi theoí se katarató. I say again, gods Damn you, Annabeth Chase!" I yelled, shooting upright and throwing my spear right past her face and drew my sword, igniting it turning myself into wood with growing branches on me and radiating yellow eyes.

My voice became almost as deep as the one I heard in my dreams but like the forest itself yelling with each individual tree around us yelling with my voice. "You claim I know nothing but I am a being thousands of years old, trapped in petrification in a dreamless slumber after defending my city to my terrible fate and still watching my people slaughtered! I am the champion of the first city! I am the original Hero! I am as ancient as the gods you bend a knee to because I lived through the roughest time where Pandora's ignorance set forth the sins of the world! I built the first city to hold fire as a gift to us from Prometheus. I have witnessed the remains of battlefields of the titans against gods! I have built my city by my name alone through the ever perilous time I lived in. I watched it all be burned and torn down to the ground by you humans that are even more hideous than the monsters you worked with, all over greed and the name of your own cities! You had to take it all from me! You will not speak foul of my name anymore little girl!"

Wooden, I had grown several feet. I stood at least twelve feet tall. I had my blazing sword raised over my head like I was going to strike at Annabeth but I held my strike like I had held my tongue with her so many times.

I dropped my short feeling sword to my side and looked around. The tree's bark patterns had twisted into ugly and sharp angles with all the branches bending inward to where Annabeth and I stood.