Spall

Sara

Sara

I gently patted the ice pack on Echo's head, full of worry.

Why would Julian think of doing that? We're not sure if Kendall's  good or bad! What if she ends up saving our lives? According to Jake's dream, she will, and Jake's dream usually tends to be right. Kendall could have died! I looked up at her, she was sitting across from me next to Echo with worry burned in her blue eyes.

She stared back at me and her eyes put holes in my heart, they were so...so...so melancholy, so grievous, so sad. Then a terrible thought struck my mind.

One will die from others great slack.

It can't be Echo, it just can't be. My mouth was suddenly very dry, in great need of water. I looked over at Julian, who would be the cause of his death. Jake was shouting at him, face very red. Julian was very pale, and he was shuffling his hands nervously while sitting on a rock, obviously not listening to Jake's shouts.

Then, a miracle happened. Echo started stirring on the cold, hard ground. It suddenly became very quiet. Echo's face was very pale, all the color was sucked out of his face. Something was odd with him, but I couldn't tell, something was different. I looked harder, and I had to stiffle a gasp.

His short brown hair had a streak of gray, right on the side of his head. All the force that he had taken to save Kendall had pushed his powers so far, some of his hair had turned gray, just like Annabeth and Percy's in The Titan's Curse. My whole life I had dreamed of becoming a demigod, just like them. Now, I was kind of like one, and it wasn't going too well, I hate it in fact.

Kendall nearly knocked Echo out again with a gigantic hug.

"Oh Echo! Thank you so much! You're alive! You're alive!" she exclaimed.

Most of the color had returned to his face, which was now in a dazzling smile. Once Kendall got off him, he tried to stand up, but almost immediately he collapsed, and he would have fallen to the ground if Kendall and I hadn't caught him. We carefully set him back on the ground.

"Why don't you lay down for a bit, rest up and regain your strength," I said. Echo pouted.

"No," he said, plain and simple. "We're not stopping just to help me. We have a deadline, in case you didn't notice! Only 9 days left to get to the four corners, and we are not wasting any time on me."

The rest of us looked at each other with unsure faces. We finally gave in after a second, seeing that he looked back to normal, with a stubborn look on his face. I looked up to see where the sun was in the sky, the middle.

"If we're goin', we better hurry. The day is half way done." I said.

We all got up and started walking to the patch of woods near the cliff. When we walked in, I heard some faint rustling close by. Back to x-ray mode for me.

I looked around. Behind a tree was an animal that made me jump out of my skin.  A bear, a grizzly bear. My heart pounded in my chest. I looked around for a hiding spot. I knew there wouldn't be one though, for a grizzly could sniff us out wherever we were. Could we climb a tree? Nope, a grizzly can climb one too.

I blinked, and all of a sudden, a hard breath was thumping against my head. I looked up, and the bear was right in front of me, on it's hind legs, claws beared (ya get it? Beared? Ha!). It was around twice the size of me.

Think fast, a voice told me in the back of my brain. My friends were behind me, helping Jake, who had passed out. Probably from fright. Maybe if I could change it's thoughts...that's it!

I dug my way into it's mind, I'm gonna tell you right now, there were some, ahem, interesting thoughts in there. I spoke in a voice that came out in growls in the bear's head.

Stop.

I returned to the real world, and I screamed. It was still ready to attack me. I backed up, and it followed me, eyes narrowed.

All of a sudden, an arrow whizzed put of nowhere and struck the bear in it's left side. Blood poured out of the wound of the bear as it wiggled on its side.

A girl popped out of nowhere with a bow in hand and a bucket of arrows on her back. She had blond hair pulled back in a tight ponytail and green eyes with the longest eyelashes. Freckles were sprinkled across her nose and cheeks. She looked around 14.

"Score!" she said. We all stared at her, even Jake, who was sitting up straight now with wide eyes. "Sorry, did I frighten you? I'm Tiff. What's your names?"

"This is Julian. This is Echo Anderson. That's Sara Shermans. And I'm Jake Owen. What's your last name?" said Jake with no hesitation whatsoever. When did he get so open?

"My last name is Owen too. You said your name is Jake, right?" said Tiff, suddenly a little pale. Jake nodded. "My little brother was named...no. It can't be possible, can it?"

Jake came to my side.

"Sara, I had a vision! Urgent!" he whispered to me away from the others.

"What is it?" I asked, all ears.

"Hold on, I have to double check." he said, looking at Tiff. He turned to her.

"What was your little brother's name?" Jake asked.

"Er...Jake. But your probably not him." she replied.

"Why did you run away?"

"How do you know about that?"

"I have my ways."

"Hmph. I found out that I was, well, special. I found that out the hard way. In preschool my friends would mock each others voices, then when I did it, they got freaked out and never talked to me again. It turned out I could copy people's voices exactly, and I kept getting bullied, so I ran away."

Jake seemed pleased by this answer. He turned to us. "Guys and Sara, meet my big sister Tiff, short for Tiffany."

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Hullo! Hope you liked this chapter. It took me while to do... anyway, I have a few things to say here.

            1. shoutout to That_Kool_Cat, who posted her idea for her character (Tiff). Feel free to post your character in the comments!

            2. I have to go to Jake's point of view and skip Julian's for...reasons.

            3. I am STARVED. I am especially hungry because I am wearing oreo earings.

Toodaloo!