Fire
Her calculating eyes stare into the fading night sky. The stars she gazes at are never moving, never changing from her vantage point.
The stars are balls of fire.
Fire.
I watch, somewhat transfixed as her fingers skim across the springy grass. They shoot up, the fingertips glazed with droplets of dew. She absentmindedly shakes them from her hand and continues looking at the stars.
She's just like fire in its purest, most awesome form.
Fire is always changing, always moving. It can burn to become a roaring blaze that mows everything down in its path, or it can splutter weakly in the bitter air, the last embers dying in the presence of a blast of a winter storm.
Fire is an entire story of the human race, the sum of our existence. Prometheus knew enough of that philosophy to take pity on our ancestors by bringing the spark of fire to the humans.
Fire is beautiful. The dancing streams of red and orange are flickering in the air, heating a pair of frozen hands that are bitten with the frostbite of hopelessness. It is a constant reminder of everything that you love.
Fire is dangerous. It burns through every single thing, not even sparing a single microbe. It charges recklessly through the landscape, heedless of everything in its path. It is the fuse of everything explosive—mostly.
Fire is everything.
She is forever shifting, forever running. She is like a rabid tiger, pouncing on some hapless Sambar deer. She is like a rabbit, not daring to cause the slightest strife between two sides.
She is an epic of my life. She can work wonders to the soul. Without her, I wouldn't be anything but a dried out husk of myself.
She is stunning. She could, quite possibly charm her way through a whole band of hellhounds if she put her mind to it. Don't you ever dare tell her I said that.
She is formidable. She is an expert battle tactician, and excellent at hacking through hoards of monsters, too.
She is everything.
Annabeth Chase is Fire.
Ice
She slinks through the night like a wolf that's stalking prey. The fluffy snow gives way underneath her combat boots without a whisper.
Snow is a softer appearance of ice.
Ice.
Her gait slows down, until she is just standing there, the frosty wind whipping through her clothes. Even her jacket has a theme of winter to it.
Her pale fingers reach out to stroke a thin layer of frost on the bark of a tree.
She's just like ice in its most reclusive, coldest variety.
Ice is freezing to the point where your fingers fall off, and it provides surreal relief. A man can be treading through a remote landscape in the North on a sunny day, and he can be dead within the next by encountering a freak snowstorm.
Ice is unyielding. Thousands of people skate on ice every year, and it stays resilient, refusing to break up into pieces.
Ice is sharp. It cuts straight into you, and if you're very lucky, it draws blood without a second thought. It doesn't even say "sorry" for the inconvenience.
Ice is a contradiction to ice. It is freezing and scorching. It doesn't let you into its secrets, yet it tells you everything about itself. It hides true intentions, whether it be to freeze you to death or let you ice skate on it.
Ice is an enigma.
She is cold and awkwardly comforting. She shows absolutely no emotion while people are in a state of mortal peril—like when Annabethdumps a bucketful of sand on me. She is caring, like when she took the statue of Peacock Freak that was originally meant for Annabeth and me.
She is obstinate to the point of annoyance. When she sets her mind to something, nothing short of dying would stop her, unless there's a really good cheeseburger place around town.
She is prickly. Sometimes, words speak louder than actions in her presence. Like the time when she insulted me by rattling off a very long list of nicknames for me (it took her forty minutes to recite them all), all the way from "Anemone Head" to "Zooplankton Brine". (I didn't really get the last one.)
She is the exact opposite of herself. She is indifferent and considerate. (To a certain extent, anyway.) She refuses to tell you anything, and then ends up telling you everything. She hates love, yet she's wistful of her past relationship.
She is an enigma.
Thalia Grace is Ice.
This pretty much makes me wonder exactly how Annabeth and Thalia met with each other and became best friends. Aren't they polar opposites? I mean, seriously: Fire does not equal Ice.
As I am writing this, the subjects of these short vignettes are currently glaring daggers at me, having read what I was scribbling down, so I guess I better go and rip this thing up before "Fire" and "Ice" can both take turns killing me.
—Percy Jackson
