"Percy!"

Someone called my name. I turned around, squinting into the glare of the sunrise, and tried to see who could have shouted at me. It had sounded like a girl's voice, but not anyone I knew.

"Percy!"

The voice called out again, seemingly closer than before, but this time it had a distinctly familiar ring to it. I felt like I should recognize the voice and that I would at any moment, but I couldn't place it.

I scanned the wide open field before me for a girl or any movement at all, but it appeared to be completely empty.

Then, I heard something- the sound of grass being smothered under feet. The footfalls came rapidly, steadily growing louder, and I figured that this girl must be running toward me, invisible.

Instinctively, I grabbed my pen out of my pocket and uncapped it, and it instantly elongated into a celestial bronze sword.

"Who's there?" I shouted, scanning the field around me.

"Percy!" The girl's voice broke, sounding almost distressed.

That caught me off guard, and I relaxed my stance a little. Maybe this girl was in trouble, maybe she needed my help. Her voice sounded so familiar now, it felt wrong to have my sword in my hands.

Suddenly, there was a girl running right at me. She looked as if she hadn't slept in days, but at the same time, I knew that if she weren't propelling herself towards me like a cheetah, I would have momentarily forgotten how to use my vocal chords.

The girl was tall and lean, with wavy blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail at the crown of her head. She wore jeans and an orange T-shirt with a picture of a winged horse and some words I couldn't decipher because she was moving too fast. There was a dagger strapped to her side and she clutched a blue baseball cap.

I could hear the girl's breathing now, she was so close.

We locked eyes and a tingle went up my spine. I dropped my sword and tried to move out of the girl's path, but my legs wouldn't let me.

The impact of her body colliding with mine came with much more force than I expected, and I had to take a few steps backward to keep myself from tumbling into the grass.

The girl wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her body against mine. It felt so familiar, but I couldn't tell exactly why and it made my head hurt immensely. I suppressed the urge to return the girl's warm embrace, afraid that she might get the wrong idea when I didn't even know who she was. But she clearly knew me, and that made me even more confused. What was our relationship? The way the girl clung to me made me think that we were more than just friends or allies, and the tugging sensation behind my navel definitely didn't deny that theory.

The girl let go of me and stepped back, looking hurt. Her hair was disheveled and her cheeks and eyes were red. Then something caught my eye. A single strand of silver hair was plastered to the side of her face with sweat. My eyes followed the strand to where it was rooted in her scalp, and I found that a portion of her hair was silver- exactly like mine.

The girl also wore a choker with several beads and a ring strung on it. Most of the beads were rotated so that I couldn't see the images on them, but one sea green bead had a trident neatly painted on it.

I looked into the girl's sparkling gray eyes, begging them to relent any information as to why I wouldn't let myself move.

Then, like magic, I knew who was standing before me.

I wrapped my arms around her and held her, not wanting to let go for fear that she would be taken away from me again. I kissed her.

When we pulled away, I gazed into the bright, gray eyes I had been subconsciously craving for months, the only eyes that could see straight through me, the eyes only one child of Athena could have. The eyes of Annabeth Chase.