Better late than never:
Hazel I
Hazel felt her pocket heavy as she walked to the post center. The day was truly beautiful; the sun shined making the water in the San Francisco bay look like a million diamonds. She turned the street and faced her favorite bakery, the air smelled like a mixture of oranges and sea water; she stopped for a muffin hoping it will calm her nerves.
She still remembered the first time she saw the bay; it was in an ice cream afternoon with her brother Nico. A few weeks after he had brought her from the underworld, they had shadowed traveled to this little gelato store near the pier because she was having a bad time adjusting to her new life. Nico was trying to teach her some Italian to distract her, trying to comfort her.
Wow that seemed like a million years ago.
A honk from a ferry boat brought her back to reality; she finished her muffin and continued her way to the post station. Walking, deep in thought, she remembered her life back then, when she was a regular at camp Jupiter; the war games, the feasts with the abundance horns and the annoying Lares, just hanging around with his friends after the war. A smiled appeared in his face, things were so different now. 10 years later.
Yeaaah, the war had sure united them more than ever back then and in the following year they had been as thick as thieves' all living together as best friends helping each other recover from the battle and the destructor of their homes. But after that everyone just…. broke apart, moved on.
The had promised to keep in touch, but then Jason and piper moved to CHB, Annabeth and Percy started college in California to be near Camp Jupiter and even Leo went back to Texas. She still sometimes spoke to piper and Annabeth, brief phone talks on birthdays or an occasionally iris message. And of course her brother Nico came to visit her on weekends and the holidays; he had started working on Italy in some old family business and was no longer the skinny and gloomy son of Hades.
She had chosen to stay at camp Jupiter with Frank, supporting him as the new praetor. And sure had been the right choice. The whole camp responsibility had rested in his arms, after a mysterious desertion from Reyna (who she had a letter for too), but he surprisingly managed the charge very well and had already been reelected once.
But as the time passed everyone just realized that for having the normal lives they always wanted, safe from monsters and weird mist tricks, they had to live forever in camp or slowly start forget their "mythical" lives. Guess what everybody chose.
Hazel saw a glimpse of the building that was the post office, with its classic windows and ripped red paint. She didn't even know if it still was functioning, it was 2025 after all, but she decided to give it a shot. She checked that she still had the 5 letters written for her old friends and confirmed the directions Annabeth had gave her on a brief email. She entered the building and reached for the only desk that remained open. An old lady attended her with a quizzical expression. Sure, if it was an odd thing to send a letter at 2015; even more know 10 years later. But she didn't knew how to reach her friends anymore, a letter was a nice classic detail, personal and yet left the option of rejecting without the awkwardness, and it sure will be a surprise for all of them.
So Hazel sent the letters trusting that they would arrive to their destinies, and with the slightest hope of a reunion of old best friends, she left the building.