HAZEL

The hippogriff, who Hazel had informed them was named Eugene, returned as the sun was burning red against the sea.

"Hazel Levesque," he said, dropping silently to the ground and successfully causing eight demigods and a goddess to drop their dragon-broiled hotdogs.

Percy pulled Riptide from his pocket, Frank put a hand on his bow, and Calypso made a face like she'd just been poked in the eye and wanted to know who'd done it.

Hazel stood and took a few steps forward, trying to look more confident than she felt. "You're back," she said, the words sounding childish and chunky on her tongue. She was starting to get that there was no easy way of sounding intelligent around a hippogriff.

He nodded once and pawed the ground, observing the other demigods, his omniscient gaze lingering for a second longer on Calypso who, Hazel was horrified to see, returned it steadily. "You are not leaving," the deep, resonant voice said, not a question but a statement of fact. He already knew, and Hazel had the impression it was not because of their casual eating of hotdogs.

"N-No," Hazel stammered. "Apparently there is more for us to learn here."

The beast nodded thoughtfully. "Indeed, it would seem so." He paused, again setting his gaze on Calypso where she sat beside the others with her hotdog, the firelight making her eyes glint like a wild cat's. "I will return, when the sun again is low." But instead of turning to leave, Eugene stepped lightly closer to the group, all of whom were still sitting in awkward tension as they were stared down by the wickedly sharp beak and shifting eyes.

"What is that?" he said, a strange purr having crept into his voice as he stood directly over Frank, staring at what he was struggling to keep a grip on in his hand. The other half of the hotdog had fallen away and the soft and sandy bun was now thoroughly squished under a taloned foot. The red of the ketchup glistened under a claw and Hazel tried (and failed) to avoid thinking about what it resembled.

"U-uh," Frank swallowed and averted his eyes as not to meet the hippogriff's. "It's a - a hotdog?"

The others watched in horror at the bizarre scene unfolding before them as the hippogriff cocked its' head and sniffed curiously at the unfortunate son of Mars' dinner before snatching it out of the demigods' hand altogether and swallowing it whole.

He shook his head contentedly and nodded in satisfaction.

"Hot dog indeed, as I believe they say." And with another nod to Hazel, he spread his golden wings and disappeared into the descending night.

"What just happened?" Piper whispered.

"It ate my hotdog," Frank said.

"I saw the hippogriff," Leo murmured.


No one kept watch that night. They filed into their tents and fell promptly, and surprisingly, soundly, asleep.

All that is, save for Calypso.

The goddess could not, for all her immortality, get the image of those awful eyes out of her head. The hippogriff had known, she knew it. He'd recognized her. She'd be lucky if he didn't go back to Olympus right now and report her escape.

But that was the problem.

She'd been too lucky already. And it was about to run out.

Leo was still refusing to speak to her. He'd been uncommonly cold ever since she'd told him what she'd heard Zeus say in her dream the night before, a dream she'd shared with no one else and one she'd made him promise not to mention.

Why did she even say anything? It wasn't his fault, after all, though now she knew he'd think of it that way. But she'd been sick of carrying it around all by herself. She didn't want the truth to be only weighing down her shoulders.

Selfish, she knew. And worse still, telling him had yet to make her feel any better. If anything, she now had an extra weight that made it difficult to breath, compacting her chest and waiting for her to choke.

She could hear him breathing on the other side of the tent, easily distinguished from the shallower, almost nonexistent inhalations of Nico di Angelo who quietly divided the space between them. She knew without being able to see him that Leo had his back to her, and it hurt her. She'd hurt him too, she knew, but had no hint as to how to fix it.

Sleep. Yes, sleep was always a good remedy to any problem. She would sleep and this would be resolved in the morning. It would be fine. And what did she know? Maybe her luck would hold after all.

It would be fine.

It would be fine.


Hazel was the last to leave the warmth of the tent the next day, and as she did finally emerge, she realized it must have been much later than she thought.

The sun was high and all the other companions were milling around the campsite, hurriedly taking apart and stowing the remaining supplies.

"How did we sleep this long?" Annabeth was saying to a extremely flustered Percy.

"I don't know but I'm glad we woke up when we did," Frank said as he clambered around a rather large rock that had somehow managed to become lodged beside one of the tents. "I for one do not want to wait around for Mr. crazy, hotdog eating hippogriff. Sorry Hazel," he added, realizing she'd joined them.

She shrugged, giving him a small, reassuring smile. She couldn't blame him, but she did know they'd have to wait for him to come back. He didn't seem bent on their destruction to her, unless they counted the hotdog incident, and she had the feeling they'd need him to move on.

Leo had managed to scrounge up a little fry pan and was currently holding it precariously over the fire, a few eggs scrambling inside.

They popped around the edges as the heat got too hot for them and Hazel was surprised to see that Leo's tired expression hardly changed.

Not even a smile?

Calypso was sitting on a rock a little ways removed from the fire, huddled up and staring distantly over at the flames. Hazel took a seat beside her and the goddess looked up and smiled slightly.

Gods, why is everyone so grim this morning? Did I miss something?

"Did you sleep well?" Calypso said quietly, catching Hazel a little off guard.

"Actually, yes," she said. "I don't think I even had a good dream, let alone a normal dream - strange, isn't it?"

"Strange," Calypso repeated, looking at Hazel foggily.

"Yes, I mean, supposedly there were things we still had to learn here, but no dreams? I wonder if anyone else had some," Hazel said.

"I - "

"Food!" Leo called, setting down a ceramic bowl of steaming scrambled eggs and pulling some paper Zoo-Pals plates from his tool belt. They were obviously not what he'd intended, but he smiled sheepishly and handed out the strange assortment of animals.

Hazel looked back to Calypso, wondering what she had been going to say, but the girl seemed to have forgotten, because she was digging happily into her eggs and smiling as she uncovered the little horns of her plate, a pudgy faced, red bull.

"So, who has a story?" Nico said hesitantly as he picked at the corner of his Cyclopes plate. The others just continued eating as if they hadn't heard him, but then it slowly dawned on Hazel. None of them had had dreams either. Did that mean their remaining had been a waste of time?

She felt Calypso shift beside her and saw her look back up at the fire, no, at Leo, who didn't seem to even know she was there.

"I had an - uh- dream," she said, earning seven shocked expressions and one averted gaze. "But it wasn't exactly as telling as you'd all like it to be."

"It's worth something, at least," Piper said encouragingly.

Calypso nodded and continued. "So, as everyone probably knows, I was never meant to leave the island."

"Ogygia, you mean," Frank said.

"The same. That obviously didn't happen, as I'm here with all of you."

"So?" Percy said. "Leo rescued you and you made it out. What does it matter if you did? Nothing's happened so far. No mighty wrath of Zeus has come raining down on us."

"No, indeed. Nothing like that has happened, which also has been bothering me."

"The hippogriff," Hazel said suddenly. "I thought it was looking at you strangely."

"Yes, as did I, but that doesn't matter now. The dream I had has only increased my belief that someone's wrath, be it Zeus' or not, will be raining down on us soon enough." She looked pointedly at Percy. "And it may not be exactly who you're thinking."

"So the rest of the dream," Hazel said. "What happened?"

"Not much. Not much that I'd personally call extraordinarily helpful, at least. There was great power from the sea," she said, adding, "and no, it wasn't from Oceanus," when Percy looked at her oddly. "There were mer, and they weren't fighting with us, I can tell you that. The sky was dark and I lost sight of everyone. I could make out the titans and suddenly there was lighting. I heard a strange voice and then I woke up."

"What did it say?"

But Calypso shook her head. "I don't know. I don't remember, at least. To be honest, the whole thing is kind of blurry. Like I said, I don't find it particularly helpful, at least to our purposes."

"It isn't necessarily unhelpful though," Annabeth said. "We just don't know what it means yet." She set down her plate, a centaur, Hazel saw, with little egg pieces obscuring the cartoon eyes and tiny bow-and-arrow.

Leo still hadn't looked at Calypso, though Hazel could've sworn he'd looked a little unnerved when she'd mentioned lightning. He pretended not to have heard anything at all of her story and continued to move his eggs distractedly around the scaly, smiling face of his Cetus plate.


They put out the fire and set back to work, all a little more on edge after Story Time With Calypso. By the time the pegasi were finally loaded, the sun was far too low on the horizon than it should have been. They'd finished just in time for their friend the hippogriff to arrive.

Hazel, and all the others it seemed, had come to the awful conclusion that time was not what it appeared, and soon enough, the beast touched down gracefully beside Hazel.

"You are prepared," he said.

"We're ready to leave, yes," Hazel said, nodding to the pegasi who were milling uncertainly in a cluster with the demigods.

"Very well, we must leave then, and you must take care." With this last bit the hippogriff looked directly at Calypso who had inserted herself in the center of the group as not to be noticed.

"Take care to what?" she said.

The hippogriff shook his head and rolled his eyes like she'd just asked the stupidest question imaginable. "We must depart."

He stooped to allow Hazel to climb on his back and once she was secure, he wasted no time in taking off from the beach, much to the confusion of the other demigods.

"Cool," Frank said. "Now he's graduated from hotdogs to people." They scrambled onto their mounts and the eight hurried to catch up to the Hazel-napping, hotdog eating, rhyming hippogriff.


They hadn't flown for long before Eugene suddenly changed course, tilting dramatically to the east as if something was barring his way.

That something, evidently, was a whirlpool much like the one they'd encountered at Cetus Outpost No. 1, though something about this one felt less malicious and more - observant, Hazel decided. The thing, or whatever was making it perhaps, seemed to be watching them, waiting to see what they would do next.

Eugene eyed it warily, but not nervously. In fact, he seemed to be having a stare down with it. Then, suddenly, he began to descend towards it.

Hazel had to restrain herself from pulling his feathers and instead resolved to asking what he was doing.

"The goddess wishes to speak to the Poseidon boy," was the response. Needless to say, not helpful in the slightest.

The others followed grudgingly until they were just feet from the ocean's surface which had grown black in the darkness. The whirlpool subsided and something shimmered beneath the surface.

Hazel squinted to make out what it was that was rising through the water when a woman broke the surface and found Percy with brilliantly blue eyes. Aside from the little crab claws that poked out from her black hair, she was undeniably beautiful.

"Perseus Jackson," she spoke, seeming to grimace at the sound of his name. "I must warn you."