Civil War

If's

Reyna's POV

"Nicoooo!" Frank yelled as we went into a free fall crashing through trees and landing painfully onto the ground. Thankfully it was somehow blanketed by a cushion of snow.

Disoriented for a moment and unsure which way was up or down I groaned sitting up. Nico was passed out in the snow next to me along with Hazel.

"They couldn't have picked somewhere warmer?" Frank shivered, his breath clouding in front of him. "Where are we even at?"

"I don't know," I mumbled standing shakily and picking Nico up. He was out cold but I was used to it. "Great power means taking a nap."

"No kidding," Frank snorted, gently picking Hazel up as well. "Where to?"

"Not sure. For now we should walk, it'll keep us warm." He nodded and started leading the way through the snow. It continued to fall around us, little snow flakes dancing in the wind and slowly falling to the ground.

It was almost scary how much this contrasted to where we'd previously been with all of the noise and chaos. Now, the deadly quiet and frozen bliss seemed almost haunted. As we walked, Nico curled up very much like a child in my arms and I sighed as he shook from the cold. Pausing for a brief moment I pulled off my praetor cape...well former praetor now, and wrapped him in it as best as I could before picking him up and resuming the walk.

Frank nearly fell a few times as the snow was sometimes deeper than it appeared.

"Careful, there's a deep spot here," he warned, one of his legs now knee deep in it. He struggled to try and shift his weight to get out of it but ended up sinking further in.

"Hang on." Setting Nico down once again I took Hazel from him and he shifted into a small snow fox and jumped out of the hole. Shifting back he took her from me and once again I collected Nico.

After what felt like forever we managed to stumble across a cave that was unoccupied and curled up inside of it.

"Stay here I'll be back." I set Nico down and turned to leave when Frank caught my arm.

"Be careful okay? E-everything looks th-the same out there." His teeth chattered uncontrollably.

"I know. I'm just getting fire wood." He nodded and went back inside sitting down and trying to somehow warm up. The snow was even thicker now. Sighing, I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to keep from shaking. It would be a surprise if I found anything that wasn't covered in ice that was usable for firewood.

I thought back to one particular situation that I'd been in which was similar to this. I'd been with the Hunters and Thalia had gotten us a little bit lost. Luckily she'd figured it out but I hadn't exactly been happy about freezing my ass off. The girl was somehow well adapted to the cold but I imagined she'd experienced all sorts of weather. So I'd had the luxury of stealing her jacket. In this case I did not which  only made me miss her more. Not because I wanted to be warm but because she'd make fun of me for being a big cry baby about the weather and I'd have to remind her it didn't snow where I was from.

Realizing I'd stopped walking having been too caught up in my own thoughts I kept going. Eventually after a lot of scrounging around I managed to return with a small amount of fire wood. The problem was figuring out how to light it. If Thalia had been here it would have taken a simple spark and flames would have ignited the wood instantly.

After a good amount of time had passed Frank and I had managed to get a small blaze going and this time he was the one to go and look for more kindling. Tucking my knees to my chest I closed my eyes. It was a bad thing to do.