Chapter Sixteen
Disclaimer: I do not own the PJO or HoO series by Rick Riodan, nor do I own Star Holder Commander's character Walker. I do, however, own all of the other OCs mentioned.
Nico's POV
We ran. We ran so fast and so hard, that when we stopped, neither of us could breathe. The gargantuan skyscraper had left our sight at least ten minutes ago.
Kyra stops, bending over and bracing her hands on her knees. She was wheezing, and I could sense her heart beating incredibly fast.
"Do you think," she says, still trying to catch her breath, "That we're safe now?"
I look around to see we had stumbled upon a smallish grove of large red oak trees. Not the giant ones like in California, just really old red oaks. They looked climbable.
"I think so. How about we climb one of these and sleep here for the night. We'll figure out what to do in the morning,"
She looks up at them, carefully inspecting each one to see which would be the easiest to scale but would also conceal us. She walks over to the one directly across from us and looks up.
"This one looks all right,"
I walk over as she starts climbing up. She's in the main crook of it when I'm about half-way up. When I get up there, I find her perched on one of the larger, sturdier branches, her bow out and in hand and her quiver full of arrows slung behind her.
"Go on and get some sleep, I'll take first watch," she says.
"But Ky,"
"I'm not going to sleep. I've been resting for the whole day and you've stayed up pretty much the whole time since we got to that place. Get some rest,"
I look at her for a beat, and she doesn't break the gaze. Finally I sigh and throw up my hands in defeat. "Fine, fine. You take first watch. But wake me up if anything happens, promise?"
She nods. "Promise."
I get as comfortable as you possibly can in a tree's branches and close my eyes. Before I know it, I've drifted off.
A chirping awakes me. I squint open my eyes to find Kyra gone and the sun out, just beginning to peek through the tree's leaves. There was a bird perched on a small branch farther ahead of me in one of the other trees.
I sit up, growing slightly dizzy. "Ky," I whisper.
Nothing responds. I carefully stand up and grip onto one of the large branches. I scale it and make it to the very top of the tree, sticking my head out to see if I could spot her anywhere. As anticipated, I couldn't see anything. We were in one giant forest of sorts, and all I could see was other treetops.
I try not to panic too much as I clamber back down the branch and down the trunk itself and onto the grassy floor. My mind was trying to go to worst case scenario when I look around and see there were a lot of muddy patches in the ground, it must have rained yesterday sometime. In the mud though, there were footprints around the size of Kyra's foot.
A ray of hope bursts to life inside of me as I begin to follow them. I walk for about thirty minutes, grabbing a large club-like stick on the way for protection. I passed several bushes full of strange looking berries and flowers, most I had never seen before. I didn't touch any of them. Eventually the tracks stop as the mud is overcome by grass and moss and tree roots.
"Kyra," I call again.
I listen for a second, then hear a rustling in the shrubbery farther ahead. I raise my branch in defense, uncertain about what could be behind those bushes. A hand emerges, and soon a whole body. I sigh with relief when I realize it's Kyra. She was using an old and torn plastic shopping bag to carry some things, I assume food.
We walk towards each other and meet in the middle. "You scared the Hades out if me when I didn't find you in the tree earlier, where did you go?"
She opens the bag up and smiles. "See for yourself,"
I look down inside the bag to see at least a quart of blackberries and blueberries filling up the bottom portion of the bag. I look back up at her with wide eyes.
"Where did you find these?"
"There were a bunch of bushes a little farther back. I figured we needed to eat something, and it's probably not wise to shoot a rabbit or something and start a fire to cook it. If they're looking for us, and they probably are, they'd be looking for smoke if we were dumb enough to make a fire,"
"True. C'mon, let's eat here," I point to a small clearing with some boulders scattered around. One was just the right size to sit on and use as a table.
We sit down and Kyra rolls the top of the bag down enough so we could easily reach in and grab berries. I bite into a blackberry and an explosion of sweet and sour juices explodes over my taste buds.
"Mmmm," I moan, rolling my eyes back.
Kyra laughs and pops a blueberry into her mouth. "They are pretty good, aren't they?"
"Hell yea. After practically nothing for weeks, this is the best thing to ever grace my tongue,"
"Agreed."
We munch away for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of nature. Finally, Kyra speaks up. "So how are we going to contact the others? We don't have any drachma left, and we have no clue where civilization is,"
I sit there for a second, trying to think up a plan of some sort. "I would try shadow traveling us, but I don't think I have strength to travel myself, much less the two of us,"
"No, I don't want you to do that. There's no telling what would happen if you tried,"
"Then how about we scale some trees until we see some ounce of civilization,"
"Sounds as good as anything else we have, which is nothing. Let's finish up these and then we can start,"
I nod and we begin stuffing our mouths with the remaining berries. By the time we were finished, I was stuffed and my hands were stained purple and red. I didn't know I could fill up on fruit, but then again, I hadn't had much food at all in weeks, and when I did, it wasn't very decent food. If I were to eat a giant steak or a hamburger right now, I'd probably get sick.
We wipe our juice stained hands on our dirty jeans and stand up. Kyra folds up the bag and sticks it in her back pocket. When I give her a questioning look she says, "We might need it later for collecting food again or to carry something else."
We stand up and head deeper into the woods, trying to find climbable trees. I really hoped we could get out of here soon, I felt trapped in this maze of trees.
A/N:
Kinda sorta a filler chapter, but I like it. I think we needed a bit of a filler after the slight suspense at the end of the last chapter and after what happened in 14.
This past week was short yet really long, if that makes any sense. Short but draining, that makes more sense. I can't really remember what all I did at work on Tuesday, besides clean the floors because they were disgusting. But on Wednesday I made 45 fucking plates, 15 of three different sizes. That was exhausting, but Thursday was even worse. We were glazing everything we had made last week, and that was awful. I came home pretty much sick of anything and everything. Thursday was not a good day.
Then I was off the whole weekend, and that gave me time to catch up on some school work, since I missed a couple of days working.
This week I should probably only be working one day, but it'll be another long fucking day of glazing. We would usually spread it out, but we have summer camps going on until four all this week, and my boss doesn't want me to do everything myself. And we can't do it over the weekend because we have a huge BBQ bash going on downtown and there will be about 10,000 people milling around. We use a big air compressor with an air gun thing and fill up this cup attached to it with glaze, and my boss is outside spraying everything, so she doesn't want to be doing that when we'll probably be having a lot of people coming to the studio.
So yea, that's pretty much been my week. Kinda boring, but oh well. I swear, July can not get here fast enough. Everything will just cool down (not temperature wise, it'll just get hotter in July) and I'll actually be able to breathe again for the first time in months.
M/A:
"'The night is beckoning although I have nowhere to go but home
Feels good to be alone
With every turn comes a new frame of mind if I could frame my mind where would it hang'"
Open Road Song by Eve 6
XOXO,
Mrs-diAngelo25
