A Son From Lands Unknown (PJO x Male Reader)

Philosophy and Dreams

The group was pretty miserable that night. They were camped out in the woods a hundred yards from the main road that previously held Medusa's shop, in a marshy clearing that local kids had obviously been using for parties. The ground was littered with flattened soda cans and fast-food wrappers.

They had taken some food and blankets from Aunty Em's, including the around $1500 that (Y/N) stole from the cash register and vault. It could get them AmTrack tickets for the four of them as far as Denver, but no further. They decided to stop and camp, get some rest, and take the morning train the next day. The group decided to sleep in shifts, Percy volunteering to take first watch.

Annabeth curled up on the blankets and was snoring as soon as her head hit the ground. Grover fluttered with his flying shoes to the lowest bough of a tree, put his back to the trunk, and stared at the night sky.

"Go ahead and sleep," Percy told him. "I'll wake you if there's trouble."

Grover nodded but didn't close his eyes, sighing, "It makes me sad, Percy."

"What does? The fact that you signed up for this stupid quest?"

"No. This makes me sad," the satyr said, pointing at all the garbage on the ground. "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."

Grover glared at Percy. "Only a human wouldn't be. Your species is clogging up the world so fast... ah, never mind. It's useless to lecture a human. At the rate things are going, I'll never find Pan."

"Just give us a couple hundred more years," (Y/N) said, a smile on his face. "Soon as it becomes profitable to give a fuck, I'm sure we'll get right on it."

"That's the problem, you-" Grover started, getting angry, "Oh, never mind." Gover crossed his arms in frustration.

"Worst case scenarios, machines that process the air for a fee, and some nice projectors of the stars," (Y/N) said, waving his hand in the air as if he could see it in front of him. "Charging to see them, of course."

"You really are Greed's son," Grover said, his annoyance severe. "You'd damn the world for a dollar."

"No, I wouldn't," (Y/N) said. "Just trying to keep scale in mind. Either you have a Plan B, or you plan to fail."

"Wait, back up, Pam?" Percy asked. "Like the cooking spray?"

"PAN!" Grover cried, indignantly. "P-A-N. The great god Pan! What do you think I want a searcher's license for?"

A strange breeze rustled through the clearing, temporarily overpowering the stink of trash and mulch. It brought the smell of berries and wildflowers and clean rainwater, things that might've once been in the woods the group was camped in. Suddenly, Percy felt nostalgic for something he'd never known. (Y/N), however, was starting to sneeze.

"Tell me about the search," Percy asked Grover, trying to raise the satyr's spirits. Grover looked at him cautiously, as if he were afraid the son of the sea was just making fun of him.

"The God of Wild Places disappeared two thousand years ago," Grover told him. "A sailor off the coast of Ephesos heard a mysterious voice crying out from the shore, 'Tell them that the great god Pan has died!' When humans heard the news, they believed it. They've been pillaging Pan's kingdom ever since, some even more than (Y/N) wants to. But for the satyrs, Pan was our lord and master. He protected us and the wild places of the earth. We refuse to believe that he died. In every generation, the bravest satyrs pledge their lives to finding Pan. They search the earth, exploring all the wildest places, hoping to find where he is hidden, and wake him from his sleep."