Percy Jackson and the Olympians belong to Rick Riordan. All credit to him.
Blaming the gods was an easy outlet when you have a really bad day but now walking through the woods, cold, and not knowing what happened to your best friend is kind of not worth it, especially after fighting monsters ladies sent to kill you.
Percy, Grover, Annabeth, and I were walking along the foul smelling Hutson river with New York's lights shining the sky yellow behind us, all huddled under my tree which I grew about seven feet long and sprouted branches thick enough to keep the rain off us and a root bowl at the end for the tree to get more of a drink from.
The rain didn't bother me because it made me feel refreshed but my stomach running on low made everything seem more annoying.
"Three kindly ones," Grover shivered. "All three at once."
I was in shock too. Those monsters were in a different league of tough, scary, and smart from what I ever fought in my city. The idea of one of them killing Fidi and sending him to Tartarus to reform for maybe years was more horrifying than any bat lady with a flaming barbed whip. Annabeth kept us from making camp under my umbrella for the night and starting a warm fire.
"Come on. The further we get away the better," she kept telling us all.
"Sure, Grover's few apples were enough to keep us from starving but all the food and rations were in your bag. We can't eat tin cans and plastic," Percy protested, stomach grumbling.
"Well maybe if you hadn't had us all jump into the fight," Annabeth said, leaving a blank for Percy to fill.
"What did you want me to do? Let you get killed?"
"You didn't need to protect me, Percy. I would have been fine."
"Keep thinking that, bud. The look in your eyes when we were cornered said otherwise," I said, wiping water from my eyes and face.
"Sliced like sandwich bread, but fine," Grover commented, smiling through the shivers.
"Shut up, goat boy," Annabeth barked back.
"I ate all my tin cans. Allllllll the tin cans," Grover said, regretting not rationing his food.
"I wish I had some seeds to see if I could grow some instant fruit or vegetables," I daydreamed.
"Well you don't, so stop talking about it and making us all more hungry," Annabeth said, shaking her head, slapping us all with her wet blonde hair.
I should have kicked her out from the umbrella for her insolence but I bit my tongue again and kept sloshing through mud and ducking under branches.
I wished Fanos gave off heat. If it did I would have lit it up and carried that under our umbrella, but I discovered during training that the fire didn't even burn or catch other things on fire. It was more a visual or indicator that it was working, maybe even an intimidation factor because who wants to fight a sword on fire.
Annabeth eventually moved through the huddle and apologized to Percy and began chatting it up for a long while, but I was focused on listing the different trees I could make out in the dark. The innocent talking of Percy and Annabeth stooped and Grover hoarsely played his red pipes to sound out what he told was a find path hym to get us out of the woods. The off tune music started to agitate me, so I stopped completely.
"What are you doing?" Grover asked, trotting in place to try and keep himself warm.
"Taking off my shoes and socks," I grunted, trying to balance my tree in my armpit while unlacing my shoes.
"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.
I had torn my clothes and shoes as I had grown and only a loincloth of denim was covering me. Percy and Grover were on their butts behind me with the fear I recognized as what I felt my last night in my city as in their eyes, arms in front of them just like how I had when I woke up. I left all my things and just walked away from them all, without speaking.
I kept walking in the direction of where I threw my tree deeper into the woods. I was eye level with so many of the branches now and it felt natural. I wasn't feeling any regret at what I had just done. I felt accomplished and satisfied at my work on lecturing that prideful girl, and that bothered me more that I did like it.
I was following the path of split, downed, and damaged trees and finally found my spear halfway through a young oak tree.
I looked at the damage I had done to this innocent forest with one of its own trees. I let silent tears drop from my fading golden eyes as my skin turned back to normal slowly as I shrunk back down, and with the shrinking came the growing guilt.
I pulled my spear from the tree that was so much like mine when it was young and spry. I felt terrible and only hugged my tree while I leaned onto the one I hurt. I cried unto the damaged tree and tried to pull close the hole that I put through it and only cut myself on the splintered wood.
I almost felt all the damaged trees cursing me while I curled into a ball around my spear on the ground and just leaned into it.
I was such a terrible friend to them. I scared them and left them there in the cold night, vulnerable to monsters who were probably still after us with that horrible bat woman that probably destroyed Fidi still out there.
More and more tears only came as I sank into my tree, merging with it, like the good times before that horrible night came.
I felt like the lonely child I was on the edge of the runty city with no father, with no mother, and with no one to tell me it would be okay. I couldn't help myself now like I did then, pushing down that lonely feeling I always had.
One with my spear completely again, I remembered the feeling of seeing my mother for the first time, and hugging my sister Katie, and smiling with Kaden and Anderson, and eating with all my siblings that I felt loved me.
Remembering all that only made the lonely feeling hurt more. The ringing of the outside rain hitting my spear lulled me to sleep while my spear only spat out the tears that I cried back at the forest floor.
The night was no better than I deserved. I had flashes of Luke beating down the bird shoes he must have given Grover with the handle of the hoe I gave Beckendorf to finish and he was smiling and repeating all night.
What woke me wasn't the wetness from the rain but a smellier and familiar wetness.
When my tree was planted and normal I could walk up and down it and move through the branches but as a spear I was stuffed tight and had almost no wiggle room.
When I opened my eyes I saw the familiar brown patterns inside my tree but they were all folded and packed tighter so I stuck my head out of the spear shaft and had my open eyeball licked. I cursed every curse I knew and pulled my arms from my spear and gripped my eye.
Whatever licked my eye started licking the back of my hands and I held out my hands to push it away gently if it was a forest animal but when I distanced myself from it's tongue I felt the biggest feeling of relief fall over me. Fidi was here grinning a pearly white doggy grin.
I pulled myself out of the tree completely and stumbled over myself but brought in my dog and held him, he was so warm that I then realized that I was near naked except tattered jeans clinging onto my privates. I hugged the dog a little longer and stood up holding my pants to my waist.
"I thought the kindly one dusted you when I heard her calling for help from other monsters." I wiped my face which was still dirty from dry mud from me falling apart in the mud the night before.
"Woof." Fidi apparently wrestled her into a submissive coil until she pulled a hand free and shoved her fire whip down his throat, given the healing blisters and cuts. Fidi had a little hole, not even the diameter of a screw, in his left ear and one missing tooth on the side of his maw.
"Will all of that heal?" I asked, petting over some closed scars under his short fur.
"Woof." Yes it would. Before any real challenge came along again he estimated, "Woof?"
"I did something crazy with my sword and yelled at them," I explained to the dog. "I grew and went all crazy and used the voices of trees and yelled my past at them. I broke my whole promise to Chiron to not share it." I dropped my head and ran my hands through my hair, not knowing what to do now.
"Woof." Fidi kicked up dirt into my face.
"Ow." I tried rubbing the dirt out of my licked eyes. "I wouldn't even know where to start looking for them." Fidi turned around and stared at me like I was stupid. I then remembered that Fidi had the best nose I've seen and felt stupid. "Then let's go find them. I need to explain myself anyway and I can't just drop this quest."
Fidi turned back around and started walking back by the line of damaged trees I caused, so I picked up my tree and followed.
As we started walking I used my free hand to rub a damaged tree and apologised and wished for it's well recovery.
We walked in silence so I could put together how I was going to apologise to them and explain how I was just angry because everything was falling apart in our first day on the quest.
I had never transformed like that and only ever used the voices of the trees once but not deep like that and twisting them.
We came along the forest clearing where all the trees were bent and turned darker and on the ground I noticed a glimmer. I kicked away piles of wet leaves and branches and I found Fanos and my two only stretched open boots with shredded socks, making an arrow off in the direction we were originally heading.
I looked around more and did not find my bag or Pistos but could not blame them for wanting all the supplies they could get and not knowing if I would return. I slipped on by boots and relaced them, happy they weren't destroyed, and picked up my sword to begin following the direction it was pointing me in.
"Want to find our party, Fidi?" I patted the dog's side and held out my left hand calling for Pistos, hoping it would return to me in it's ring form. A sharp whistle whipped past my ear and a shiny golden bronze gleam flew onto my finger, and there was my faithful ring. I nodded to Fidi and we began sloshing through the mud and mist in the new morning light to find our friends and explain ourselves.
Fidi spent a mere 20 minutes walking in the direction we were originally walking before we came upon a dying smell of some disgusting, fake, artificial smell of city fast food I had smelled before on my trip to camp, walking near the particularly large city of Las Vegas.
A two laned road came into view as we broke through the treeline and across it was an out of use gasoline station for cars, a billboard advertising a moving painting showing, and one building with a busted light sign and looked as if once in business recently.
It had cement bears, lanky plastic pink birds, and wooden Native Americans with cloaks and hatchets in the front of it's lawn. The broken sign with swirly red letters said, "Auntie M's Garden Gnome Emporium." I read aloud to Fidi who was peeing on the lanky bird decoration. Flanking the entrance of the building with a busted down door were two little stone men with pointy hats and swirl beards with jolly faces that made me uncomfortable.
I waded into the building and immediately froze sickly still. There were dozens of statues. Rough stone statues of children, adults, animals, and one Satyr playing their reid pipes and I felt all of their eyes peering into me.
I drew Fanos and Pistos and held it up toward the closest statue with wood skin engulfing me, creaking with my puffing chest that was only speeding up, with my forehead feeling like waves and waves of sweat and heat washing over it.
I heard whispers and screams and fire crackling that night. Monsters and invaders roared their battle cries and I felt petrified again.
I had no idea what to do but I wanted the voices to stop, I cleaved a statue of a woman. It was grinning a toothy squinted grin at me, so much unlike my final expressions. I thrusted my sword through the next closest one and kept at it, seeing the enemy invaders in every face and hearing monster cries coming out of every mout.
I cut down more than a dozen statues before I came across one and froze. A giant bear with only one eye was standing over me, frozen in stone, arms outstretched above it's already ten foot frame, and more than double as wide as I was.
I froze and fell to my bottom, remembering the last thing of my night being as hairy and uglier than this bear. Fidi walked over, in between me and the monster and had his serpentine eyes cutting into me, bared his fangs, and donkey kicked the statue over, shattering it like it was only frail glass. I gasped at the noise and back away from the head that rolled over to stare at me again from by it's shattered shoulders.
"Woof!" Fidi growled.
"You watch your mouth. I am no such thing!" I yelled back.
"Woof," Fidi said.
"I didn't know what else to do. You don't hear voices of your city do you. It's a terrible time and I can't bear it," I yelled.
"Woof." Fidi sat back and only squinted with his now-canine eyes.
"You don't even know what a pun is. I don't know how to make a real one anyway." I sat up and looked around and there were still statutes further back in the emporium which made me cringe away.
"Woof." Fidi threw his head back to the other statues. He smelled our friends back there but I didn't want to go back there.
I shook my head no and Fidi lunged at my leg and sunk his teeth into my booted ankle and wrestled me to the ground in a flash. I was getting dragged back in the forest of statues faster than I could pry the dog off and faster than I could yell.
"Pan help me!" bleated a nasally goat voice. Fidi had dragged me through Grover's legs.
I felt Fidi drop his grip on my foot so I sat up with both my weapons still in hand. Annabeth and Percy were standing battle ready with their bronze blades drawn but when we all made eye contact we lowered our weapons but they did not put theirs away.
To start preparing to apologise I shrank Fanos to put him away in my tattered pocket and shrak Pistos onto my finger.
"Hello." I waved and stood back and rocked on my feet.
"Hey," Percy greeted with an awkward but still welcoming smile. He pressed something to the tip of his shimmering bronze sword and it shrunk down to some tool.
"Hey, there," Grover said. He stood up in his winged shoes and walked to Percy's side. They both looked to Annabeth and so did I. She didn't sheath her dagger or look at me even but she nodded and threw something wrapped in black cloth at me.
"You missed some stuff while you were gone," Grover said, picking up a beaten and used tree branch.
"Don't unwrap it!" Annabeth lunged at my hand, unraveling the round object.
"Why?" I jumped. "What is in it?"
"Medusa was after your time right?" Annabeth noted, looking more solum.
"A lot was." I nodded, not wanting to keep the truth withheld any longer.
"Well then let's all catch up when we leave." Grover was already picking up his bag and switching out his magic shoes for normal ones.
"We should scavenge what supplies we can find here," Percy said, walking over to a table and eating the greasy food I smelled.
"Good idea," Annabeth agreed and nearly sprinted away from me, toward the back of the building.
We found plastic bags to double wrap the monster's head in, which I wanted to pitch through a window when I found out that it was the reason for all the petrified things, but relieved it was not the other monster.
I was downing a frosty vanilla milkshake, trying to ignore the statue stares, at a metal table with Grover who was eating a lunch tray while Annabeth stuffed human cash from a jingling box with numbers into her bag whilr Percy ate more greasy food.
"So we have Athena to thank for this monster?" Percy cut the silence.
"Can't it wait until we leave." Annabeth kept busy with rummaging through cabinets and shelves behind the counter.
"It's a useful way to kill time," Grover said, looking away from his plate.
"Fine," Annabeth grumbled. "Your dad actually was the cause, don't you remember. He was her boyfriend and they decided to meet in Athena's temple. That's why she turned her into a monster. Medusa and her two sisters who helped her get into the temple, which we thought was you knocking over statues out front at first, were turned into the three gorgons. Medusa wanted to slice me up especially because I was Athena's daughter and preserve you as a nice statue, because she's still sweet on your dad. You probably remind her of him."
"What's a girlfriend exactly?" I was ignored but Percy was red.
"Oh. So now it's my fault we ran into Medusa?"
Annabeth straightened and copied the boy's voice in a mock tone. "'It's just a photo, Annabeth, what's the harm'," Annabeth said, making silly facial expressions and waving her arms while sticking out her tongue.
"Forget it." Percy waved her off and turned his head. "You're impossible."
"You're insufferable."
"Hey!" Grover and I yelled in unison at the bickering two.
"You two are giving me a migraine, and Satyrs don't even get migraines."
"Calm down." I lowered my hands at the two. "That's how our argument started off in the forest." That comparison made everyone take it a peg down.
"What are we going to do with the head?" Grover asked. I looked to the plastic wrapped mistake and saw one little snake hanging out of a hole.
"I'll be back," Percy grumbled under his breath, sounding angry as he left the table.
"Percy," Annabeth called. "What are you doing?"
Percy was gone for a few minutes but came back with a box. He put it down and emptied his pockets, turning out more cash, drachmas, and papers about Hermes' shipping services. Percy took up the delivery slip paper and wrote on it for Mount Olympus with his best wishes.
"They're not going to like that," Grover warned.
"I don't think anyone would," I commented.
"They'll think you're being impertinent," Grover said again. Percy placed several drachma into a pouch attached to the papers and a sound like the money machine Annabeth went through earlier. The package floated off the table and disappeared with a quiet pop in the air.
"I am impertinent," Percy said, looking at Annabeth challengingly but she said nothing about it.
"Come on," She sighed. "We need a new plan and to talk about last night."