Everything looked different since the last time he was here, but then again, the last time he had been here was the night before everything went downhill.
In the middle of the small clearing, the small circle of stones still stood where they were placed, only now, there as no fire burning merrily, there was no marshmallow being roasted. No, now it was just a small mound of dirt from the years gone by.
The tall boy, with sandy brown hair, and blue eyes, looked sadly at the site before him. Almost numbly he walked forward, and sat down by the fire pit. Almost exactly where he had sat over five years ago. He reached forwrd, his long fingers brushing the stones. Moss was covering the rocks, trying to erase the memoeris that remained there.
In his minds eye, he could see a small girl sitting opposite him. Her curly blonde hair had been pulled back into a braid, a futile attempt to control it, her grey eyes were narrowed in concentration as she roasted her marshmallow, pulling it out of the fire when it was lightly browned all over. Sitting next to him, was a pretty girl with shoulder-length spiky black hair, dressed in decidedly punk clothes. Her stormy blue eyes had a frustrated look in them as she pulled her now burning marshmallow out. Blowing it out, she grumbled, clearly not impressed as the seven year old happily ate her own sticky sugar on a stick.
"Hey, don't worry about it, Thalia," he had said, a smile on his face.
Thalia turned a glare on him. That had always been the one thing that he was actually scared of, but never showed it. "I swear I'm the only one here who can't roast a marshmallow properly," Thalia had replied, before shoving the stick at him. "Here, Luke, let's see you try."
Luke, wanting to make her feel better, purposely lit his on fire, but once the fire was out, he shoved it in his mouth.
Thalia made a face at him. "You did that on purpose," she accused him.
Adopting an innocent look, he looked at Thalia. "Me?" he said around the glob of melted sugar in his mouth.
Thalia glared and shocked him, while Annabeth giggled.
To Annabeth, Luke and Thalia weren't just her family, they were her source of entertainment each night.
Luke rubbed his arm where Thalia had shocked him, and kept a grin on his face. "Aw, don't be like that, Thals, roasting marshmallows is a long and difficult learning process-" he would have gone on, but Thalia's glare stopped him.
Luke let the memory fade in his minds eye. He didn't want to remember it anymore. Not something so happy, and so far in the past. Before he turned to leave, to accept his fate, he glanced around the clearing. This place, this park had been special to him, but now, it was just another clearing in the woods. This was the one place where he felt would still hold something important for him. He was hoping that maybe, just maybe he'd been sleep, maybe this was all a dream. Not worth coming to.