T a l e s F r o m U n d e r T h e W i l l o w T r e e

The story of three special demigods, their escape from the past, their new adventures, and their new lives.

That one year they spent in bliss, running around, defeating monsters, and learning about themselves before it all got so complicated.

Luke, Thalia, and Annabeth.

This is how it all began.

C h a p t e r T w o - S o m e t h i n g A L i t t l e S t r a n g e

The sun was beating down. It seemed to be purposely shining directly onto Luke; its rays practically frying his skin. He wiped the back of his hand across his left brow and then on his pants to get rid of the perspiration that had formed above his brow. He had been standing in line for all of eternity! If only the chubby man behind the counter would call –

"NEXT!" the man with a body resembling a lumpy tomato bellowed. Luke cringed, his senses were extremely delicate today an account of the…the attack yesterday.

It was an attack. Wasn't it? Luke's head is pounding; although whether he's to blame the sun or the weird situation that he and Thalia found themselves in just yesterday, he's not sure.

All he knows for sure is that yesterday, as he and Thalia had walked into a local grocery store, the minute they stepped foot in the cereal aisle, there was a loud hiss and the shopper beside them had suddenly grown fangs and extremely sharp claws and –

I'm going crazy, Luke thinks, as he notices the woman behind him in line at the bakery shuffling just a bit too close to him. He stepped up to the counter to the man and ordered four bagels, six muffins, and two large chocolate chip cookies. As the plump man turned around to get his order all in a brown bakery bag, Luke though some more about what happened.

The shopper yesterday…he couldn't…no, no, NO! People don't just randomly sprout claws and fangs…but then again they don't start cursing in some weird language too.

Luke touches two fingers to his throbbing temple. Yesterday, he was just tired and hungry and hot…yes! Yes, the hot weather was causing him to hallucinate! The shopper yesterday was probably just giving him and Thalia a glare, and instead he saw it as –

"HEY! Boy, here is your order! Take it and LEAVE! You're holding up the line!" the man hollers probably damaging Luke's hearing for good.

"Oh, um, yeah, okay," Luke stumbles forward and takes the brown paper bag filled with bakery goods from the man's hands. He turns around ready to leave the line when he suddenly comes face to face with the lady behind him.

Up close, Luke can see all sorts of little scars on her face resembling moon crescents. Her eyes seem very large for her face and so dark as though you were staring into the black midnight sky.

And when she smiles (more like snarls), it gives Luke the chills.

Suddenly, Thalia is right next to Luke.

"Hey, let's go. I'm starving," she replies, but as Luke looks over at her, he realizes that her eyes are sizing up the lady.

So it wasn't just Luke who felt as though something was out of place with the lady, and if Thalia felt it too, then maybe he wasn't going crazy and what happened yesterday, wasn't a hallucination after all!

Luke follows after Thalia. Once they are a good distance from the bakery, Thalia leads them through the public park and sits down at one of the wooden benches. She takes the bakery bag from Luke and looks inside at what he's bought. But something was off. Like the way her hands trembled as she broke a piece off a blueberry muffin and tossed it in her mouth.

"You noticed it too, didn't you?" Luke realized how he suddenly sounded like a scared little kid, so he took a breath and started over. "That lady in the bakery- she wasn't…she wasn't human."

Thalia was now staring up at him intently with an unreadable expression. "No, I don't think so."

"And the guy yesterday at the grocery store…h-he attacked us, didn't he?"

"Yeah, I think."

"Does this kind of stuff always happen to you?" Luke asks, lowering his voice as a pair of ladies jogged by. "Stuff that-that isn't normal and shouldn't happen?"

She looks like she's about to punch him in his face. But he ignores it. He knows, almost better than she does, that it's just a mask – a mask to shield the world from ever truly getting to know the real person inside.

"Yeah, weird stuff like this has always happened to me," Thalia admits She brushes some of her hair out of her eyes and sighs, thinking about the past was not something she liked to do. "I've switched schools a lot. I got kicked out of so many because of stuff I didn't even do, let alone could explain."

Luke shuffled his feet around. This all seemed too familiar. "Like what?"

Thalia stole a glance at him and his reassuring blue eyes helped her keep going.

"Teachers vaporizing before me, growing sharp teeth, sprouting horns. Kids breathing fire or having super-strength. And it kept getting worse and worse, like no one would believe me and-" Thalia slowed down a bit; she had never opened up like this to anyone before and even though she trusted Luke, she wouldn't allow herself to all of a sudden let everything pour out. "And – and yeah, so I just transferred around a lot."

So she left out a bunch of things like how the principal at Primrose Private School had jumped on top of her desk and growled and hissed and how everyone around her seemed to never, ever notice and the more she brought these weird incidents up, the more people would want her tested for insanity. Whatever, Luke didn't need to know that.

Luke, at this moment, felt like jumping up and hugging Thalia to death. Everything she had recalled seemed like she was summarizing his life, not hers.

"Yeah, I know exactly what you mean." A silence followed. Thalia looked up into the sky, shielding her eyes from the sun, and Luke reached into the bakery bag and pulled out a cinnamon bagel, taking a huge bite out of it – he'd forgotten how hungry he was.

Luke ran his free hand through his hair, messing it up even more. Taking another bite of his bagel, he said, "We gotta figure this crap out. It's just like this piece of us that we still don't even know about."

Thalia didn't say anything. It's not like she didn't agree; she did. She wanted to know more about herself and why stuff like this always seemed to happen to her. But at the same time, she didn't want to dwell on it – so she wasn't like every other normal kid, she already knew that. Now, she just wanted to run, and run, and run until finally she found a place she could call home.

"Hey," Luke said suddenly, waking her up from her thoughts.

His head was bent down towards her, his eyes were pouring into hers, and he was holding the rest of his cinnamon bagel in one hand. Thalia looked up at him. She took in the view of his unforgettable bright eyes, wide and innocent, the few freckles sprawled across his nose only visible in sunlight, the way the ends of some of his gold locks curled up in different ways. She leaned in closer to him -

-and snatched the bagel out of his hands.

"Hey, yourself," she smirked, shooting up to her feet and running across the street.

Luke rolled his eyes and grabbed their stuff, ready to chase after her.

Thalia looked back and saw the boy with blonde hair and blue eyes chasing after her – and in that moment, she knew that she'd never have to taste the bitter flavor of solitude again.

Because he would be there.

Author's Note: Ahhhh! I'm back. And I'm sorry for not updating earlier! I've really been so busy and now that I'm on winter break(yay!), I'm trying to update all my stories because...well, school is a pain, as you all know.

But, anyway, on a much happier note, thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter! I'm glad you're enjoying the story. Up next for TalesUnderTheWillowTree: We get a little taste of Annabeth as a young girl and Luke and Thalia continue their adventure!

Review! Please? ~insert puppy dog eyes here~

Haha, thanks again!