The hellhound yelps once before dissolving into monster dust. Thalia pulls her spear back into her body, then whirls around to take on the rest of the pack.

Except there is no pack. Where five hellhounds once stood, Luke now crouches, his sword still held in an extremely aggressive position that leaves his entire body open. It's the stance somebody extremely confident in their superiority would take. That, or an extremely angry, wrathful, moody, young demigod.

Grover and Annabeth emerge from the sidelines meekly. "That was amazing," Grover murmurs, his eyes peeled on Luke. "You didn't even get scratched."

"Hellhounds are hierarchal monsters and they know it when a top dog comes around to kick their butts," Annabeth grins, her eyes shining. "You were amazing, Luke."

"And incredibly rash," Thalia scoffs, slapping Luke upside the head. "Keep your sword crossed over your body. I could easily slip underneath your guard and impale you through the stomach, the way you're holding your sword now."

Luke offers a grim smirk. "You're only jealous because I slaughtered five while you took your time with one."

The next moment, Luke's on his back with Thalia sitting on top of him, pushing the shaft of her weapon into the soft flesh beneath his throat. The butt of her spear holds his sword on the ground. "Say that again?"

"Thalia!" Annabeth protests, tackling Thalia off Luke. She's a lot heavier than the seven year old, and they all just end up in a tangled mess of limbs on top of Luke. Then Luke rolls all of them over and Thalia ends up on bottom.

Luke laughs in Thalia's face, literally. "You're just jealous because I have an amazing partner-in-crime." He and Annabeth high-five. "Now what do you think we should do to her this time?"

"I'm pretty sure those berries are poisonous," Annabeth cautions as Thalia drops the hem of her loose sweater, dumping the tiny fruits out of the makeshift basket.

Thalia's nose wrinkles. "But they look like blueberries."

"Were the bushes' leaves rounded or spiky?"

"Spiky. I got poked so many times, so these better be edible," Thalia huffs.

"Sorry," Annabeth sighs, sitting back to tend their weak fire again. Heated water sits in a large tin can but refuses to boil. "Fakes. Grover might be able to eat them though."

Thalia laughs bitterly, wiping red berry juice on her hands onto the grass. "Goat-boy can stomach everything."

Annabeth frowns as she slips a couple more sap-covered branches into the fire. "He may be able to digest anything, but his stomach isn't very strong. He gets sick at the slightest gore."

"Scaredy-goat. Well, I'm sure he'll be able to tell which mushrooms are poisonous or not. Has he come back yet?"

As if in response, a bloodcurdling scream rises from a nearby grove of trees. Thalia and Annabeth don't even hesitate; they take off, crashing through low brush and wet leaves from last night's summer rain. Nearby, even louder trampling noise heralds Luke's passage through the forest.

Then Grover screams once, so loudly that his voice breaks at the end. Dead silence. Thalia and Annabeth crash into a small clearing; Thalia stops, incredibly confused, but Annabeth keeps running towards Luke. On the other side of the small meadow, Grover lies in a terrified heap.

Thalia goes to Grover first, kneeling down next to him. A trail of mushrooms stretches out behind him, leading to where Luke and Annabeth now stand in the knee-high grass. "Grover," she says urgently, shaking him. "It's alright. We're here. Tell me what happened."

Grover sits up, his entire body still trembling. "Ra-ra-ra-rab…"

"Rabid?" Thalia scans the area for animals foaming at the mouth. Nothing. Annabeth and Luke are still staring at a point on the ground. Annabeth's expression is full of horror; bewilderment is scrawled all over Luke's.

"What is it?" Thalia calls. "What's wrong?"

"It's a bunny," Annabeth murmurs faintly. "A bunny rabbit."

Luke abruptly dissolves into laughter. He braces his hands against his knees and chuckles until he's breathless; when he stands back up, he's holding two small, mangled animals by their necks. "It's dinner," he gasps at Thalia. "I stabbed us some dinner."

"Amazing, Luke," Thalia quips. "You absolutely destroyed these bunnies."

"I'll bet Grover is incredibly grateful for his valiant rescue," Annabeth giggles as she drops another strip of rabbit meat into their boiling tin.

"He'd better be," Luke grumbles. "I was ready for the freaking Minotaur when he screamed."

"But whatever was scaring Grover was like four inches tall," Annabeth objects. "You couldn't even see it above the grass."

Luke snorts. "When I got there, he just kept pointing and screaming. The grass was moving, I thought maybe it was a land serpent and kept hacking at it till it stopped moving."

"Damn straight," Thalia laughs. "Those fuzzy little bunnies died a blunt, bloody death thanks to you."

Annabeth is incredibly horrified at this statement. Her pretty gray eyes expand to the size of dinner plates. Thalia wants to bite her tongue, but Luke side-hugs Annabeth. "Luke: savior of Grover Underwood, slayer of bunny rabbits," he jokes, and Annabeth cracks a small grin as Luke smashes her face into his side.

"You're suffocating me," Annabeth mumbles into his shirt.

"You like it, kiddo," he grins, and Thalia takes the opportunity to tackle both of them into the ground.

It's a perfect summer's night. Not quite midsummer, because it's still June, but it's warm enough to sleep on the grass outside of their safehouse. Annabeth's content to just stare at the stars, tracing out the constellations in her mind's eye. Luke says that he can't see anything; to him, it's just a random scatter of pinpoints of light. Thalia's father is ruler of the sky and she says she can't see anything either. But Annabeth sees each collection of stars as if they were truly the characters they're named after. The Gemini twins and sons of Dionysus, Castor and Pollux. Orion with his glittering belt of three stars barely visible on one side of the sky, forever fleeing from the curling tail of Scorpio on the other side. Even the streamlined Draco twisting around everything else, representing the dragon which guarded the Garden of Hesperides.

On the hill above her, Grover practices his pipes. Still as terrible as ever. He constantly switches between putting too much air behind the note, causing it to sputter and waver, and not putting enough. In addition, he doesn't appear to remembering any songs; he just puts out whatever comes to his head, playing random notes.

Luke pokes his head out. "Grover," he hisses. "You're going to wake Annabeth up!"

"But I'm trying to put her to sleep," Grover whispers back. "See? She's not moving!"

Annabeth closes her eyes and remains still. Grover's been teased enough by both Thalia and Luke for his extreme leporiphobia—or "bunny phobia", as Thalia's calling it now.

There's a skeptical silence as Luke checks for signs of movement. Annabeth holds perfectly still, like a hibernating rabbit hidden deep underneath tree roots where large blunt objects can't beat her to death.

Yes, Thalia's statement has affected her more than she lets on. Annabeth knows it's ridiculous, but that experience in the meadow was the first time she's been around when the meat hasn't been isolated from the animal yet. Those bunnies were completely whole and their unblinking, glassy, empty eyes scared her on a totally different level. Grover is terrified of bunnies because of previous traumatic experiences: according to the satyr, a lair of large jackrabbits had kicked him silly when he was younger. That, and the small mammals continued to compete with him over the years for vegetation. But Annabeth's just scared because… well, it was her first look at death.

Blank, empty eyes in a face frozen with final fear.

Luke disappears back inside the safehouse and Grover resumes his terrible music. Annabeth relaxes a bit longer, but her ears perk when Thalia and Luke begin talking.

"She's asleep," Luke whispers.

"You sure?"

"Sure I'm sure. Now what did you want to tell me?"

Annabeth strains her ears; if Thalia wanted to insure that Annabeth was asleep before telling Luke something, then Annabeth has to know what it is. She only wishes she could see their facial expressions, because Thalia doesn't say anything for a while.

Finally, she murmurs, "You don't have to prove anything."

Stunned silence. "Huh?"

"We've been traveling together for over a year, Luke. Maybe six months with Annabeth. We've all been through a lot and we already know you."

"Yeah? And I know you pretty well too. Like how you never wash your hair—that's how you get it to stand up like that."

A smack sounds as Thalia socks him on the shoulder. Luke yelps. "Ow! Unnecessary."

"You hate green beans," Thalia counters.

"Canned green beans. Big difference."

"You always scrape them onto Grover's plate."

"He likes them."

"He'll eat anything; you shouldn't take advantage of him like that."

Above Annabeth, Grover chuckles.

"You like strawberries," Luke declares.

"I… How did you know?"

"You told me. When we slipped into that berry farm and stuffed ourselves on blackberries. You said you would have preferred strawberries." Some springs creak; Luke must be sprawled on the couch they lugged all the way over from a dumpster. "Well, here's some good news: Grover told me that Camp Half-Blood grows strawberries for a living."

"Really?" Thalia can't contain the excitement in her voice. "You think we'll be able to stuff ourselves on strawberries there?"

"Maybe. Once we get there." Luke sighs. "What will we do when we're there? It seems like my entire life has just been fighting monsters."

"You've got us. We're family, right? And we'll always stick together. We'll still be together at Camp Half-Blood: you, me, and Annabeth."

Annabeth tries to imagine her life at in a camp. Grover keeps advertising it as they transport themselves over to New York, mostly by walking. Their pockets are completely devoid of money and the monster attacks are becoming incredibly frequent now, but Grover continues to promise great things about their destination, like food magically appearing out of thin air, a forest filled with ancient trees and nymph guardians, a canoeing lake, and cabins full of campers exactly like them: half-god, half-mortal. Annabeth has been alone for so long, alienated from her father and stepmother, that she welcomed Luke and Thalia's makeshift family unit; and now another opportunity has arisen to be part of something larger. Annabeth can't wait for Camp Half-Blood.

Luke, on the other hand, doesn't sound so enthusiastic about going to a camp controlled by the gods. "Yeah, sure… there'll be more of us there."

"Say what?"

"More children of the gods, like us. Except they'll all probably be from families who've actually taken care of them, and they don't mind that their godly parent is off banging another—"

He stops suddenly—probably Thalia calming him down by touching his arm or something. A couple moments pass before Thalia speaks. "We're family, Luke. You promised Annabeth. And you promised me. "We're your family too and we… I…" Another pause. "I care about you, Luke. So we're… I'm here for you, if you ever need… um, anyone."

Silence; then springs creak as Luke leans forward. "I care about you too, Thalia. And Annabeth. You both mean a lot to me."

Thalia's voice is muffled; Luke's probably hugging her. "Mrmph… we didn't turn out to be such bad parents after all, huh?"

"What?"

"Annabeth's not dead or screwed up or anything. She's smarter than the both of us plus Grover combined. When we first met her, I seriously thought she'd be in the way, or we'd get her killed."

More springs creaking. Annabeth shifts slowly, enough that she can roll her eyes and see her two friends through the top of her eyelashes. They're lying down, platonically curled into each other; there's still a space between them, just enough for Annabeth to squeeze into if she wanted to. But then they probably would discontinue releasing tidbits of blackmail material, so she restrains herself and continues to eavesdrop.

Luke laughs. "You're a great older sister."

Thalia doesn't say anything for a while. Memories? Annabeth remembers Thalia saying she once had a younger brother. Blonde, like Annabeth; but he was a toddler, and Thalia considered Annabeth as a sister.

"You're not too bad yourself," Thalia mutters. "Just as long as you don't drag us into another unnecessary monster fight."

The impatient child in Annabeth finally breaks through; she rolls to her knees, runs up to the safehouse entrance, and jumps heavily onto Luke and Thalia, who both grunt loudly in surprise. Before either can protest, she's snuggled her way in between both of them. "I love you guys too."

And between the two warm bodies, Annabeth quickly drifts off to sleep—missing the frantic look her friends exchange over her head.

A fluffy Thuke chapter... because the previous and the next chapters all deal with heavy stuff, and it's not like Luke-Thalia-Annabeth crashed from one disaster to the next, right? They had to have some down time and fun times in between unfortunate events... which unfortunately, happen all the time. So here's some happy stuff, and the rest from here on out is suffering - because that is the fate of half of on-the-road demigods. Someone might not make it...