SO, I JUST PUT IN A BUNCH OF PLOTLESS STUFF SO I COULD SAY I WROTE A CHAPTER.

IM SORRY.

I'LL WRITE ANOTHER CHAPTER, PROMISE.

Mira absentmindedly tossed a small ball of fire between her hands in the middle of the night.

Eventually, she had gotten the hang of it.

Mira squinted her eyes hard and tried to make her hand light on fire.

3 minutes of staring later, a tiny spark appeared in the center of her hand, promptly extinguishing itself.

"Cool!

Mira tried again, this time igniting a steady flame, though it was no bigger than a small marble.

She flicked her wrist to see what would happen...

...and the tiny flame slammed into the wall as if it was shot from a cannon.

Mira ran up to the wall and put her hands in the fire, "Nope! NopeNopeNopeNope! Bad idea!"

The flames eventually went away.

"Okay, that was scary."

Now that it was late at night and everyone was asleep (she estimated that it was around 1 am) she continued to practice.

Oops.

She lost concentration, and the little flame died.

Focus, she thought.

She tried again, throwing a little flame between her hands.

Then, she added two more, juggling them.

Lauren, bored out of her mind, looked at her necklace, a simple thin chain with three small crystals.

She didn't really pay attention to it, until the center one suddenly heated up and glowed bright red, until the light faded and the once clear crystal was red.

No, she thought, it was too early! Mira couldn't have found the forest so quickly!

"They found Mira!"

"What did you say?!"

She wasn't safe there anymore.

"Guys! Wanna go explore more?"

"I dunno."

"Do you think they have a room that isn't affected by time?"

"I dunno."

"Do you think we're living in a story and we only exist inside a person's imagination? Do you think that there's an audience reading/watching our every move? Do you think-"

"STOP ASKING THESE HARD QUESTIONS!"

Later, Mira remembered the book.

She quickly reread the first page and realized that there was a small part she missed.

Ice Elves have sharp ears and usually have short hair. Their hair usually is white, their eyes are usually light gray, and in some rare cases, their hair might have icicles in it.

"Guysss, I'm boredd..."

"NOT my problem!"

"But it IS your problem."

"No it isn't!"

"Yes it-"

"Shut up, please."

Mira sighed, flipping over on the couch.

Mira sighed again, louder this time.

Mira sighed again, but this time it was REALLY loud, and opened up the book she had been reading earlier.

Fairies

Like Elves, Fairies have pointed ears, but are much shorter than humans (though not as small as the ones seen in cartoons.) Adult female fairies can be 3 feet 6 inches to 4 feet 6 inches tall, while males range from 4 feet to 5 feet tall. Fairies usually have a 6 inch to one-foot growth spurt when they become adults.

Tree Fairies look like tree elves, except that tree fairies are much shorter, and have wings. Wood fairies don't exist.

Flower Fairies look like dolls and are shorter than all other types of fairies. Flower Fairies can have any color of hair, though many have blond. Their eyes can be any color. Their wings are large and shaped kind of like a butterfly's wings, but theirs are translucent; see-through, but with a slight tint. Their ears are more rounded.

Mira was still bored, but she forced herself to continue reading, for the sake of knowledge.

Water Fairies can have varying hair colors and lengths. Usually, adult water fairies have dark blue hair, females have long hair and males have short hair. However, when water fairies are children, they usually have lighter colored hair and eyes. Their wings are completely clear.

Fire Fairies can have long or short hair. Their hair can be any shade or combination of black, gray/dark gray, red, orange, or yellow. They're taller than most fairies in adulthood, but only because the extremely short fire fairy children have huge growth spurts. Their wings are either translucent orange, red, or gray, but in certain cases their wings may be made up of pure fire.

Air Fairies have any shade/combination of white, gray, dark gray, black, or even some very light blue. These fairies have sharper-looking wings. Their ears are much pointier than the rest.

Ice Fairies look like ice elves, with short white hair and gray eyes. Their wings are sharper-looking than an air fairy's, and can sometimes be made of ice.

...

Mira threw the book at the wall.

"Poke." Mira said, poking Alex's sleeping face.

"Poke," she said again, "poke, poke, poke."

Alex whacked her hands away.

She poked him again anyway.

"I JUST WANT TO SLEEP!"

"No. I'm bored."

"It's STILL not my problem."

"I'll MAKE it your problem."

"Guys, wanna play Go Fish?"

"Harry, any twos?" Mira asked, looking up from her cards.

"Yeah," Harry said, passing over the card, "Alex, any threes?"

"Nope. Go Fish."

Harry picked a card from the stack in the center of their circle/triangle.

Alex looked at Mira, "Any fives?"

"Yeah."

"Any other games?"

"Nah."

Mira opened up Percy Jackson... again.

Chapter 11

We Visit the Garden Gnome Emporium

In a way, it's nice to know there are Greek gods out there, because you have somebody to blame when things go wrong. For instance, when you're walking away from a bus that's just been attacked by monster hags and blown up by lightning, and it's raining on top of everything else, most people might think that's just really bad luck; when you're a half-blood, you understand that some divine force really is trying to mess up your day.

Mira flipped upside down and curled into a ball on the couch.

So there we were, Annabeth and Grover and I, walking through the woods along the New Jersey riverbank, the glow of New York City making the night sky yellow behind us, and the smell of the Hudson reeking in our noses.
Grover was shivering and braying, his big goat eyes turned slit-pupiled and full of terror. "Three Kindly Ones. All three at once."
I was pretty much in shock myself. The explosion of bus windows still rang in my ears. But Annabeth kept pulling us along, saying: "Come on! The farther away we get, the better."
"All our money was back there," I reminded her. "Our food and clothes. Everything."
"Well, maybe if you hadn't decided to jump into the fight-"
"What did you want me to do? Let you get killed?"
"You didn't need to protect me, Percy. I would've been fine."
"Sliced like sandwich bread," Grover put in, "but fine."
"Shut up, goat boy," said Annabeth.
Grover brayed mournfully. "Tin cans ... a perfectly good bag of tin cans."

Mira laughed, tin cans?

We sloshed across mushy ground, through nasty twisted trees that smelled like sour laundry.
After a few minutes, Annabeth fell into line next to me. "Look, I..." Her voice faltered. "I appreciate your coming back for us, okay? That was really brave."
"We're a team, right?"

She was silent for a few more steps. "It's just that if you died ... aside from the fact that it would really suck for you, it would mean the quest was over. This may be my only chance to see the real world."
The thunderstorm had finally let up. The city glow faded behind us, leaving us in almost total darkness. I couldn't see anything of Annabeth except a glint of her blond hair.
"You haven't left Camp Half-Blood since you were seven?" I asked her.
"No ... only short field trips. My dad-"
"The history professor."
"Yeah. It didn't work out for me living at home. I mean, Camp Half-Blood is my home." She was rushing her words out now, as if she were afraid somebody might try to stop her. "At camp you train and train. And that's all cool and everything, but the real world is where the monsters are. That's where you learn whether you're any good or not."
If I didn't know better, I could've sworn I heard doubt in her voice.
"You're pretty good with that knife," I said.
"You think so?"

The paged finished, but her heart wasn't in it.

She just didn't feel like reading more.