A/N:

Hey everyone! It's Christmas Eve, so I felt like writing a Christmas story. Something with snow in it, to cope with the fact that we might not get snow again this year because of global warming haha *cries*

Anyway, characters and the world belong to our amazing king Rick Riordan. Except Rosie, Joey, Kevin and Liam, I made them up for the story. The title is a song by John Lennon titled So This Is Christmas, and you should definitely check it out. I just thought it was quite fitting for the story.

The story takes place shortly after the events from The Lost Hero.

So yeah, that's all! Enjoy, and please review :)

So This Is Christmas

'Come on, this seems like a good place to shelter,' Hunter said. She impatiently gestured for her companion to come. The younger girl took a sprint to catch up with her and almost slipped in the snow. Hunter had to stop herself from rolling her eyes; it wouldn't do any good.

She lit her flashlight while they entered the cave together. It wasn't very big, but that was good; this way, they knew for sure there weren't any nasty surprises lurking hidden in some corner.

'Come on, get me some matches, so we can light a fire,' Hunter said, feigning enthusiasm. She was trying to stay positive, or at least come over that way, but it wasn't easy.

'When do you think the storm will be over?' Rosie asked while she started taking stuff out of her backpack, way too slowly for Hunter's liking. She gritted her teeth and started digging through her own bag, looking for some wood to start a fire. One of the perks of having a goddess as your patroness was that your backpack could fit a lot more handy stuff than you'd think.

They found the matches and the wood and Hunter managed to get a fire going. They warmed themselves while they looked outside, where the wind was ripping through the trees at a high speed, yelling at them to come outside, or so it seemed. Every now and then, they could hear thunder booming. It was damn cold, too, even though the entrance of the cave was quite small, so they were shielded from most of the snow.

'Looks like Zeus isn't happy,' Rosie said cheerily. She was a mortal, and although she knew the gods were real, she still seemed to think it was all a big joke sometimes. She sure as Tartarus didn't take it all as serious as she should. It would come when she got more experienced. She'd only been with the Hunters for six months, after all.

They took off their jackets and laid them by the fire to dry. Rosie shivered, suddenly cold.

Hunter took a blanket out of her backpack. Rosie seemed jealous.

'Don't you have a blanket in your bag?' Hunter asked.

'No, I forgot,' Rosie said.

The older girl sighed. She'd explicitly told her to pack a blanket before they left on their mission!

After a while, though, she got over her annoyance and gestured for the girl to come closer. 'Come on.' She wrapped the blanket around Rosie's shoulders too, so the two of them were closely together, huddled up by the fire.

'It's Christmas Eve,' Rosie said.

'It is?' When you had been alive for around a century, you lost track of time, Hunter had found. All the days seemed the same. She knew it must be winter or fall, because of the weather, but nothing more.

'It is.'

'Well, Merry Christmas then, Rosie.'

'Merry Christmas, Hunter.'

It was quite alright, Hunter realized while the younger girl put her head on her shoulder, her cold breath making little clouds in the air. They were safe and sheltered, they were warm and their clothes would soon be dry. They would be able to catch their breath in peace.

Then, she heard a scream outside the cave.

'What was that?' Rosie asked, her eyes big with fright.

'I don't know,' Hunter said. She was going to just ignore it, but then she heard a second sound.

'Help!' someone screamed outside the cave. It couldn't be more than thirty or forty yards away. A girl's voice. Then a howl. A monster.

If there was any news about some of the things going on right now, they'd send someone, Artemis had told them before they'd left. What if this person in need of help was a hunter? They couldn't let their sister die just because they didn't want to leave their warm shelter.

'Come on,' Hunter said while getting up. She grabbed her bow, which magically appeared whenever she needed it. The magic agreed with her, apparently.

The two girls went outside, arrows knocked on their bows, ready for anything. They tried to see through the snow, but it was virtually impossible. They slowly descended the steep path on the side of the mountain, in the direction the screams had come from, ready to fight if they needed to.

There, at the foot of the mountain, were two people fighting a huge hellhound. It was standing over one of them, trying to bite the person while they hid behind a rock and covered their head with their arms. The other person was trying to hit the hellhound with a rock, but the beast ignored it in its attempts to bite the fallen person's head off.

Hunter aimed at the hellhound's neck. A second later, it was lying in the snow, trying to get up while it slowly dissolved into dust. The person with the rock helped their friend get up and then they turned to their saviors, already grabbing weapons, ready to defend themselves if necessary. They were clearly used to dealing with dangers like this.

'Don't worry, we come in peace!' Hunter said, even though they'd just killed a monster. She lowered her bow and walked the last ten yards to the people whose lives she'd saved.

Now, she could see these people weren't hunters of Artemis. One of them was a boy!

'Are you demigods?' Rosie asked.

'Yes, we are,' the girl said. She was the one who had fallen on the ground, and probably the one who had screamed, Hunter thought. 'And you?'

'I am,' Hunter said. 'Rosie here is a mortal. We're hunters of Artemis.'

'Oh, great,' the girl said, sounding sarcastic for some reason.

'Valentina, they just saved our lives,' the boy said.

'That counts for something, yeah, I guess,' she said. 'Do you know what way we should walk to get back to the city? We didn't really look where we were going while we were running from that hellhound.'

Hunter considered just giving them directions and letting them go; she didn't like talking to strangers, and she'd much rather just spend the night alone with Rosie in the cave. But she felt responsible for the two demigods now, maybe because they had over seventy years less life experience than she had.

'We can't let you go through the forest now, not this late in the evening, in the middle of a snow storm. You should seek shelter with us, spend the night here and wait until the weather gets better,' she said.

The two demigods looked at each other, wordlessly communicating. At last, the girl said: 'Well, we'll take your offer, as we don't want to die just yet. Thank you, I guess.'