Percy POV

Italics is inside dialogue. As in he's speaking to himself. Also, important info down below.

Its been 2 days since I was adopted and gained wings. During that time I've spent forever just stretching them opening and closing them and such and so on. I've also realized why other dragons keep them sheathed. They are a pain to sleep on, literally, and tend to knock into a lot of stuff if I'm not careful or stop paying attention to holding them against my back. Jar-Dad says that eventually I'll just be able to hold them there without thinking about it and develop a subconscious lock so they don't unfold or something while I'm doing other things that require my attention. I tended to be prone to snapping them open if I was surprised. My siblings refuse to sit next to me when we play MarioKart until I've got it under control. It's their fault for sending so much stuff at me! Mostly Melody. Speaking of Melody, she was assigned the task of teaching me to fly by Int-Mom. Today was the first day. The basics. I thought it was going to go pretty smoothly, "How hard could flapping my wings be?" I thought. VERY HARD.

I woke up, go dressed, ate breakfast (BLUEBERRY WAFFLES! Not as good as pancakes but still pretty darn amazing!) and then it began. I was dressed in a simple T-shirt and jean shorts with converse shoes. The shirt had slits in the back that I, with some difficulty, slid my wings through. The shirts are made so that if you unsheathe your wings while already wearing it they could go through the slits, but I didn't know how to sheathe or unsheathe them so I had to fold them in tight and slip them through the slits. Its more difficult than it sounds. I then headed outside to where Melody was waiting, her wings unsheathed.

"Okay," She started, "Flying in and of itself is pretty simple. Like riding a bike a bit. You stay calm and in motion you stay in the air, however you do have to have the correct motion. Each wingbeats have to completely in sync if you don't want to be flailing all over the place. And I mean COMPLETELY in sync" She said seriously.

"Got it." I replied. Hadn't I already been doing it in sync when I was opening and closing them? Shouldn't be that hard.

"Go on then, test it out. Try to get yourself off the ground for a solid 2 seconds." Melody challenged. She demonstrated take off by crouching down a bit then jumping up while giving a powerful flap of her wings. She stayed air-born for two seconds, hovering in place by keeping her wings widely extended to catch the slight breeze flowing through then lightly fell back to the ground as she was only a few feet in the air. I was making endless metal notes so that I'd be able to do this quicker and with the least amount of teasing possible.

I then tried to copy what she did for take off. I crouched down a bit and sprung into the air, extending my wings and then pushing down ward only to tip drastically right and fall on my side. I then heard something like static before,

"OH MY GOSH! YOUR FACE! HAAAA!" Before Melody choked on her laughter. Served her right. I picked my self up and tried again for the same result, although I did go a bit higher that time. "Okay,"Melody said. She had evidently calmed down,"Let me tell you what your doing wrong. First off, you're trying to launch WAY too hard for what we're trying to achieve. Secondly the reason you tipped right is because your left wing was in motion before your left so it caught the wind first and you tipped over. Try again."

So I did. Over and over and over. We eventually lost track of how many tries I had and soon it was time for lunch. Melody went in but I stayed out to keep practicing. I wan't hungry anyway, I was still pretty full from breakfast. I had to be careful not to eat too much at once, as I was still getting used to having 3 full means a day.

So I prepared myself for another try and just as I pushed myself in the air I was hit with a sudden, mighty gust of wind that instantly lifted me off the ground and off the roof over the backyard. Suddenly I was not 2 feet in the air but at least 20 with 0 control and the wind stopped and I began heading down. I panicked and closed my eyes and pushed down with both wings as hard as I could and suddenly, there was no more wind tearing at my skin. I opened my eyes slowly and looked down. I was about 5 feet above the side walk and staying there. I was so shocked I stopped functioning and fell out of the sky again landing ungracefully on my butt. I then proceeded to sit there for a second before yelling "YES!" and laughing triumphantly. I picked myself up and tried to launch intentionally into the air. Now that I had done it once muscle memory kicked in and after a second of wobbling I was steadily hovering in the air. I pushed a little harder and gained altitude. I couldn't believe I was actually doing it! I flew back up to the roof and touched down. I heard clapping and turned around to find Melody clapping and smiling.

"Good job Percy! You finally got the hang of it and it only took a well timed, completely random gust of wind to do it!" She said.

"Thank yo- wait. YOU SENT THAT WIND?!" I couldn't believe it. "I could've broken something! Or died!"

"But you didn't. I knew you'd be fine. You just needed the incentive to activate your natural dragon instincts. Besides, your fine!" She said. I was still upset though. I was about to voice this when she cut me off, "Hey, now that you know how to hover and figured out how to go up, why not see how high you can go? Don't worry though, I'll be right up there with you in case you don't totally have it down yet. Promise." I considered this for a second before replying.

"You know what, sure!" I pointed to a cloud, "Race you there!" and took a running jump off the roof and took off. Flying was magical! The wind rushing against my face and I felt fully in control of my actions. The feeling is simply indescribable with spoken language. You'd have to experience it for yourself to truly understand the fullness of the feeling of being virtually weightless. I let out a yell of happiness and heard laughter. I had forgotten I was in a race for a second and pumped my wings as hard as I could when I realized Melody was right behind me. I shot through the cloud at top speed and hovered a bit above it. "I win!" Melody had also shot through the cloud and was hovering a bit above me.

"Hehe, ya you did. Only because I honestly wasn't trying that hard. If I had really wanted to win I would've." She said. I knew that was probably true, she had a lot more experience than I did. Suddenly I was overcome with a wave of tiredness and dropped a few feet. "Oh shoot I forgot! Your wings aren't used to being used quite yet. You need to sit down and rest them for a bit." I was becoming less and less in control by the second.

"WHERE!? If you hadn't noticed we are hundreds of feet in the air!" I was beginning to panic, my heart racing. If I fell I don't know if Melody could save us both from becoming grease spots on the sidewalk below.

"Okay, I need you to trust me. Set down on that cloud and just concentrate on staying there." She said, I could hear some panic in her voice as well. At this point I was willing to try anything to keep from plummeting to my untimely death. I wobblingly made my way down to the cloud and sat down, as my legs were jelly, hoping it would work and half expecting to fall straight through, but I didn't. Miraculously I was staying on the cloud. Melody sat down next to me.

"H-How am I staying up? Why is this working?" I asked her, calming down.

"Well, as we are from the water dragon colony and the cloud is made up of many water molecules that will respond to our will. Its solid now because we want it to be, however if at any moment you DON'T want it to be-" Suddenly she fell straight through the cloud and I yelped in surprise. Melody reappeared on the other side of the cloud and sat down again. "See? So you're fine as long as you still want to stay on the could." She finished. We spent another few minutes on the cloud resting before slowly heading back down to the house to tell everyone else what had transpired.

AN: Longest one shot yet! Over 1,500 words! Go me! Hope you all enjoy it. Just so you all know, The Crossbreed wont be updated for a bit. I made a big mistake in where I was taking the plot and it starts in the next chapter I was writing. I'm trying to figure out how to fix it and I think its going to take a bit and a lot more imagination. I may have to ask you to suspend belief of people's observation skills and logic, but we shall see. So this is probably going to be updated more often while I think of a solution. I was going to have Melody and Percy split up, instead of the minotaur "killing" Percy's mom, it was going to "kill" Melody and she gets trapped down in the Underworld but being not a mortal breaks free of the bond and eventually they meet up again. Then I realized that Hades lives in the Underworld and would notice her escaping and ask questions and stuff like that. So then I was all "Okay, so I'll just send her to CHB with Percy!" and then realized "Frick, she's not a demigod and someone would definitely see her appearance through the Mist." To clarify, Percy doesn't have the same physical features as the rest of his family being only part dragon so doesn't have any showing scales, just tough skin. So until I figure out a way around these problems there probably wont be more chapters on The Crossbreed. Suggestions are welcome and credit will be given! Thank you all so much and have a wonderful day! ~FictionGirl11