Luke woke up with a dry taste in his mouth. He couldn't fathom the last time he'd eaten. He looked over to his left at Thalia, still dead asleep. Some say hardened people look younger, more peaceful in sleep, but not demigods. Thalia's brow was creased and she murmured in a fitful rest. Luke decided to wake her up.
She gasped, her bright blue eyes shocking and alert. She looked panicked for a moment, you could almost see the hair on her skin rise in alarm, but she quickly untensed and sighed.
"Another nightmare?" Luke asked. She nodded, rising to her feet from the gravely earth.
"Just the same stupid stuff," she dismissed him with a casual wave of the hand, trying to hide the pain in her eyes. Luke knew that she'd been dreaming about whatever had happened with her family, but apparently that was too touchy a subject even for him. He nodded understandingly as he also got up. Without a word, they both helped pack up their meager camp and set off to, well, to nowhere really.
"Where exactly are we going, anyway?" grumbled Thalia, as if reading his mind. Luke examined her as she trudged along. Her black leather boots were worn to the sole and were spotted with flecks of mud, her jeans in the same condition. She had a T-shirt with a skull grinning grimly that said "HAPPY" and a threadbare backpack slung over her shoulder. The can of pepper spray that held her spear shined in the early morning light. Somehow, though her hair was a total mess and her face was grimy, she managed to uphold that mixed aura of both utter beauty and deadly fierceness. Her electric blue eyes showed strength, but Luke knew the months of hardship they'd seen.
He slung his arm over her shoulder as he said, "As far away as we can get." He felt Thalia laugh at how stupid this entire concept was, but she smiled and determinedly marched on into the wood.
_
Luke and Thalia had been stumbling through the woods for at least two days, barely stopping to sleep and eat. She used the term "eat" lightly as the last thing she could remember eating were tough berries and dangerous tidbits of ambrosia. She wasn't even completely certain on what state they were in, at this point. Being in the hungry, deprived condition they were in, they were darn lucky they hadn't run into a monster by now. As if on cue, a clumsy, rustling sound was emitting from the trees only yards away. A glance at Luke, his muscles tensed and a deeper grimace than usual residing on his face, she knew he'd heard it, too.
Thalia almost laughed when he pulled out a golf club, but then she remembered the dented tip of her spear. She cursed under her breath at the memory, when the spear was knocked from her hands and pummeled into earth. To be fair, though, that was one nasty hellhound. She and Luke barely made it out of that one alive.
The snap of a branch brought her back to reality. She turned to Luke, her one true family left, and got anxious. Luke, who she'd fought side by side with for so long, nearly ending her life in the process. She looked at the tense pose he took now, the one she had gotten to know so well, and wondered if this could be their last fight.
Suddenly, a figure appeared before them. Luke held his club like a baseball bat and Thalia arms her spear only to see a young boy with rich berries spilling out of his gaping mouth.