!سال نو مابارک

Chapter 10: Jack Frost nippin' at your - HEY THAT AIN'T MY NOSE

Annabeth

As Apollo dragged me along a hallway, making for the exit of the infirmary, my mind drifted a little. Percy's fever was raging no matter how much sweat his body poured out, trying to lower its own temperature. His clothes – pajamas, more like – were already soaked through with sweat and dotted with blood from where he'd been coughing. If I were Percy, I'd want fresh, clean clothes that I hadn't been abducted and beaten in. Not jeans, obviously. Too rough and too likely to catch on bedsheets. There had to be something around Olympus that he could wear. The poor thing couldn't be expected to run around naked.

Not that I was thinking about him naked, obviously.

Actually, that was true. He was still covered in bruises. I don't think any of us wanted or needed the reminder of his treatment. Whatever. I'd find him new clothes that did not reek of sweat and the filth of that house by the docks.

But who the hell was Khione? My memory still hadn't come through for me, and Apollo wasn't clearing anything up.

"Er – Apollo? Sir?" I had a rough time dealing with Apollo. I'd heard plenty about him from Percy, but I'd never met the god personally. I'd been sort-of kind-of kidnapped, along with his sister, when they'd met Apollo. Was it a friend-of-my-friend thing? Was I allowed to adopt that kind of familiarity? Talking to gods had to be one of the trickiest social hurdles of all time. Percy basically bantered with every god he met, whether they were okay with it or not. He had the social grace of a rhino in a china shop, which is probably why Ares liked him so much. Poseidon was tough to read, but I think he was biased in Percy's favour in general. Everybody else just sort put up with him because he was easily the most competent hero we'd had in centuries. As long as they get the job done, who cares how insufferable they are, right? I did not have that get-out-of-jail-free card. Even if I did, I don't think I'd ever exercise it.

"Hm?" Apollo finally seemed to realise that I'd spoken. "What?"

"I thought we were going to get ice, but then you said something about Khione?" I asked.

"Yeah. Same thing. Khione's the daughter of, er… what's-his-face. The North Wind god."

"Boreas?"

"Yeah, him. We don't talk much. Khione's the snow goddess. Kinda nuts all around, and she calls me 'bloody git', and she has a thing for freezing heroes solid and then keeping their statues as home décor, but I'm sure she'll help us out. Chopped-up ice is much less comfortable a bed than fresh snow, wouldn't you say?"

Nothing Apollo said made me feel any better. We were all going to die.

Something must have shown on my face because Apollo started laughing. "Oh, c'mon! She's not that bad! Don't worry; I'm not going to let her freeze you. Or Percy, come to think of it. Usually she'll do me little favours if I fly a little higher so the sun doesn't melt her snow quite as much. I figure I can barter like that," he said. "The southern states will get a little mini-blizzard next winter, but they'll get over it."

Then, to my vague surprise, we side-stepped the exit and went into a different room just to the left of it. Apollo snapped his fingers and the lights hummed into being.

It was a small room with an obvious purpose in mind: Iris messaging. A fountain was arranged in the centre of the room with little sprays of water, lights around the rim of the basin positioned in just such a way that a rainbow was always present.

Apollo patted his pockets. "Er, kid? Sorry, Annabeth? You got any spare change? I don't carry around stuff that jingles if I can help it."

Anybody else and I'd have shot them my not-impressed face. I only barely held it in check as it was. I forked over a drachma. Maybe I'd bother the Apollo cabin to reimburse me later or something. Apollo took it with no delay and chucked it into the fountain. "Yo, Iris! Do yo' thang! Khione, if you'd be so kind." The air began to ripple. I couldn't help the way my expression instantly morphed into my what-the-hell face. "What?" Apollo said. "You act like there's some kind of script for this stuff."

A face began to form and solidify in the image. She was pale, almost deathly white, with long, straight white hair. She was also most definitely irritated the instant she laid eyes on Apollo.

"And what, pray tell, do you want, you blithering idiot?" she asked.

"That's the blithering idiot who's got a throne in the hall of Olympus to you."

"I hope you choke on a haiku."

"Lovely Khione/ My cousin Percy is sick/ Give me some damn snow," Apollo said. I could have slapped myself in the face. I could have slapped him in the face. I probably should have.

Her eyes narrowed. "In dark Alaska/ The winter bears no sunrise/ so fuck if I care." Ooh. Burn. Or, given that she was a snow goddess, frostbite? Freezer burn? I wasn't sure how to term it.

"I'll make it worth your while," Apollo sang.

She raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. "…Really, now?"

"Name your price."

"Next winter. A foot of snow in North Carolina."

"Five inches."

"Eight."

"Done."

"How much snow do you want right now?" Khione asked.

"Er… however much it would take to fill a bathtub, I guess. Hang on; I've got some buckets around here somewhere." He darted off through the door. I just sort of stood there awkwardly. The goddess and I ignored each other's presence, which was probably for the best. Okay, so maybe my social graces weren't much more advanced than Percy's. I just pissed off fewer people doing it my way.

Apollo, thankfully, was quick about it, and returned shortly carrying three massive buckets that looked like they were meant for industrial work. "These'll work, right?"

"Yeah, I guess. Also, if you melt it before it sees use, I'm not giving you any more, Apollo," Khione said peevishly.

"Yeah, yeah." The Iris message ran out of time, and Khione faded from view.

An icy wind suddenly swept through the room, chilling me to my bones. I was still wearing my t-shirt from camp, and my bare arms complained loudly. Apollo didn't seem to notice. Then I saw it. The wind seemed to be carrying something. Little white specs that appeared to be growing fatter all the while, clumping together and somehow falling directly into the buckets. Well, Khione came through on her promises; that was something. How long was this crap going to take? I suppose the snow was falling rather quickly… but we were kind of in a rush. Snow took a while to accrue – as a New York girl, I knew that perfectly well. Granted, the weather in Camp Half-Blood was predictable and temperate all year round, so it had been a while since I'd seen snow on a regular basis, but no child really forgets the joy of watching snow come down for the first time. I also had some family upstate that we went to visit on occasion, and the snow up there in the winter often piled so high it came up to my hips. They used to make me dig out the hot tub because "you're young; you'll adjust" – whatever the hell that meant. I think it was code for "I'm old and lazy and you are young and therefore free labour". Whatever. Not the point.

A full three minutes had passed, if my internal clock was correct (it was), and the buckets were not even a fourth of the way full. Percy needed this stuff now. Would it kill Khione to hurry up a little?

Percy

Dad left to find something. A bathtub, I think it was. Crazy stuff. Why would he need a bathtub? He spent a lot of time underwater; surely he couldn't get too dirty. Actually, no. Taking it back. I'd seen enough of the house where I'd been kept to know I could use a good bath (or twenty) myself. A cool bath, though. My head ached so bad I wanted to beat it on a wall to relieve the pressure. Not that my legs would have supported me if I'd tried to get up. At the risk of being gross, it felt like my eyeballs were trying to explode. Why did fevers do that? I mean, heat equals greater pressure when the volume is kept constant, I get that. Idiot-level physics. But a couple of degrees' worth of temperature difference shouldn't make me feel like my head was trying to contain an exploding grenade. I was starting to see the appeal in taking an axe to my forehead. It didn't help that my stomach was rolling. Illness equals mucus, which unfortunately rolls down the throat and into the stomach, were it reacts with stomach acids to produce a whole world of ew. If you've eaten something, you barely notice it, but if you haven't, it's nauseating like you wouldn't believe. Which is a little… I dunno. It feels like that's the opposite of how it should work. Food is what'll make you feel better, but the nausea makes you reject the food. There's a word for that. I can't think of it. May as well add dysnomia to my list of defects. Were spots supposed to be dancing in front of my eyes? Was that supposed to happen? Was the lighting flickering or was that just me? I mean, the place got trashed recently; it would kind of make sense if the wiring wasn't one hundred percent.

Or maybe I was in serious trouble. When wasn't I? I was about to start laughing hysterically at my own luck when Annabeth came in, lugging two massive industrial-sized buckets filled to the brim with… was that snow? Shaved ice? What the hell?

On the other hand, snow cones sounded amazing right now.

Apollo came in, holding a third bucket as far away from himself as possible. That one looked like it was starting to melt, and I suddenly understood why Annabeth had been stuck carrying the other two.

Apollo looked around the room, frowning. I knew who he was looking for. "Dad went to look for… I think it was a tub or something." Apollo nodded.

Annabeth dumped her burdens on the floor by my bed and took up her old chair, holding my hand in one of hers and feeling my forehead with the other. Her hands were ice cold and I relished every second of it, groaning a little. I was sick; give a break.

Dad was suddenly back (when had that happened? Did I black out for a second there, or…?) with what looked more like one of those kiddie inflatable pools, except it was made of wood, like a short, very wide barrel. I had no idea what it actually was, but if it functioned all right, who cared?

They were exchanging quiet words, and though I couldn't make much of anything out, I imagined Apollo was trying to give Dad crap about taking so long and Dad griping back about how poorly Apollo's hospital was organised and how impossible it was to find anything in this half-collapsed death trap. Judging from the muted and petulant mutters coming from both of them, I wasn't far off.

Annabeth dragged over one of the buckets of ice, shaking its contents out into the… basin? Close enough. She and Dad spread it out with their hands while Apollo nudged another bucket their way. His presence had melted it even further. That bucket's contents were dumped in and spread out, too. Apollo made himself useful by stripping the bed next to me, laying the sheets out over the ice, which had been pushed around to make a long groove in the middle, big enough for someone to lie down in.

Suddenly, it clicked. They wanted me in there. Well, I had said I wanted a cool bath, hadn't I? There were worse things. Once I made a snow angel in my swim trunks. Couldn't feel my butt for the next ten minutes, but that's what you get when you take stupid dares.

Then there were hands on my arm, ever-so-gentle. Annabeth.

"Percy? We need to take your pajamas off. I've got clean ones right here that we're going to change you into, okay? It might hurt your ribs a little, but just bear with me." Her voice sounded far away.

And suddenly hands were lifting my shirt.

No.

Nononononononono.

It was him, he was touching me, he was hurting me, I couldn't do this anymore, I just wanted to go home and for him to stop touching me and just leave me alone pleasepleaseplease-

I could barely see anything from all the spots in front of my eyes, but I could smell him, foul and unwashed, breathing directly into my space and his lips on my neck and no.

My ribs and my wrisk screamed with me as I thrashed on the bed, trying to throw him off of me. I wasn't bound now. I wasn't just going to take it now.

Voices, so very far away, were begging me to calm down, saying that something wasn't real. What wasn't? Because I was damn sure it all had really happened, and I was even surer that I wasn't going to let it happen again.

I couldn't breathe. Why couldn't I breathe? I had managed to push myself halfway off of the bed on adrenaline alone, but it wasn't enough, and my knee buckled beneath me as I crashed into waiting arms, the pressure in my head finally knocking me mercifully unconscious.

سلام وعصر بخیر. سال نو مابارک! نوروز مي ايد! مادره من سرما خورد. ه بد. و شما؟ شما چطور هستین؟ چه خبر؟

(A/N): Anyone who says Chemistry is a fun major that won't have you crying yourself to sleep at night is lying. Punch them. I'm going to go watch cartoons and eat my new year garlic apple cider chicken with rice now. Also, let's try not to set ourselves on fire again this year, okay?

Got tired of my old pen name and decided to change it up a bit. Haurvatat is a goddess of water and is also kind of a metaphor for perfection. It fits in with my newfound love of the Percy Jackson and Supernatural fandoms while retaining a bit of meaning from my old pen name.