I looked through my stuff for probably way longer than the patience of a seven year old with ADHD before finding something and tossing it to Annie. She started to take her shirt off, then looked down on herself. "Right, I have these things now and I heard you're not supposed to show them. I don't really understand the logic behind that, but I'm sure some reason exists" As she said that, she put her pj shirt on. "Okay, now you have to look away" She said with the most authority a seven year old could have. It was a lot more than I had expected, so I quickly turned around.
"Okay, you can look again" I turned around. "Whoa, that was fast" "Well, I'm a child. Adults might take ages to get everything done, but I don't. I'm fast." "You've aged only a few days at most in over nine years. That's not very fast" "Because that's my job" "Alright, now we just have to wait a little bit until people are asleep. We do have to turn off the lights in a few minutes" "I don't really like the dark, but I have my knife here. It'll give off some light" "And if that's not enough…" Instead of finishing my sentence, I grabbed riptide and extended its blade, making sure to do so in a way that wouldn't make Annie feel threatened. After all, she was just a little kid who had been through a lot of scary situations and contributing to that was the last thing I wanted to do. "That should be enough light then" "Then we can turn it off now. There's only like two minutes left until lights out anyways" "Okay, but don't you have to get changed as well" "Right, I forgot about that"
I quickly did that, finishing just seconds before I had to turn off the lights. Once I did, our blades filled the room with a soft, bronze light. "I like this light. It's almost like the box you made for me. It's so cool and it lets me kick Annabeth out of the front." "That wasn't really my intention when I built it. I mostly wanted to make you feel safe" "You did that. It's one of the safest places in this world. Thalia's tree is a bit safer. And of course anywhere that you are" "Aw, thanks. That was so sweet of you" "I'm just telling you the truth" "It's still very sweet" We were quiet for a few seconds.
"Percy?" "Yeah" "Can I sleep in your bed tonight?" "Where else would you sleep? The other bed is way too filled with my stuff anyways" "I'm sure I could find a spot to squeeze in. Or just sleep on the floor" "On the floor?" "It's not even that hard" "Why would you even consider… right, the homeless thing. But no, I will not be allowing that" "Then I guess I have to go in your bed" "I guess so" "Yay" I hadn't really realized it, but Annabeth's love for me had to be insanely strong for it to penetrate the amnesia barriers between alters. I climbed into my bed and Annie followed. The beds were rather small, so we were unfortunately forced to cuddle. Now we just had to pass the time until people would be asleep.
"So, you actually had to sleep on the floor sometimes?" "It's not as bad as it sounds, I swear. When you're traveling, you don't exactly have an air mattress and pump with you. We mostly spent the night wherever there was soft ground: A forest, a public park or on the patch of dirt or mulch surrounding a tree planted on the sidewalk. I almost never had to sleep on asphalt or concrete. Also, I was very small and light, so that probably helped. I remember Luke and Thalia always complained about something hurting most mornings, but I didn't notice a thing" "Being small probably did make it more bearable. Another question, if you don't mind me asking, didn't it get really cold at night? How'd you deal with that" "It actually wasn't a big problem. When I formed it was already May, so not too cold and I did have a good jacket just in case. I was only homeless for a few more weeks, so low temperatures didn't happen. Thalia told me a few stories though. Once, they got caught in a snow storm while they were in a forest. They only survived because they found an old car. If I remember right, they had to burn parts of it to stay warm. Must have smelled really bad" "Burning rubber and seat cushions. Sounds pretty bad" "It was a pretty bad situation. But most of the time, they handled it pretty well. Always being able to make fires helped them" I remembered one evening on my third quest were Thalia had lit a fire using lightning. That was probably what she was talking about. We kept talking for a while until I decided that the others were now probably asleep.
"Okay, we can start." "Finally" Annie stood up and made her way to the door. "Wait" I called out. "If we go through the corridors, someone might see us" "But how else will we leave?" "Maybe we can…" I opened the window and looked down. Almost three stories below us, rain was pouring onto hard asphalt. "Uh, maybe not" "What are you saying" "I was just-" "Not you." Okay, so she was talking to someone inside. "Thalce just told me you've taken much harder falls, like on the Louis something" "Yes, but there was water there that could stop my fall" "Can't you just make water?" "I can try" I looked around the school grounds. Well, looking might not be the right word since that would require more light than there currently was. Water radar describes it better. Like everything else, the rain water management in this school was horrible. An area whose size I couldn't be bothered to calculate drained entirely to one point. At this point was a sewer that didn't really work. Above it were several hundred liters of water. I summoned this water to the spot below our window and made it form a sort of pillow that Annie could safely land on.
"Okay, do you want to jump first?" "But it's so high" "Okay, we'll jump together" I climbed out through the window and sat down on the windowsill. Then I helped Annie come out as well. "Are you ready?" "I'm scared" "There's no need to be scared. The water will catch us" "I still can't do it" "I'm gonna do something now that won't be bad for you or me. Is that okay?" "Okay" I pushed myself off the wall and fell down, taking Annie with me. I know this sounds a bit mean, but she had agreed to it. As expected, we splashed down in the water unharmed just a second later. "Are you hurt?" I asked, just in case. "No, but it's cold" I gave her a hug, which made all the water disappear. Of course, a simple tap on the shoulder would have sufficed here, but a hug was better. Once she was dry, we made our way to the east river, since it wasn't too far away. I walked down to the shore and stuck my hand into the water, then began collecting sand, making sure not to remove more than the top few centimeters. When I had enough sand, I tried to lift it using the water inside, but the sand mostly stayed where it was. I then tried to move it up more quickly, which ended up working for about two seconds, then the sand fell back down. If I wanted to lift this sand, I'd need the water to constantly go up. I spent a while trying to find a solution together with Annie (she might have been seven, but she was still an Athena kid). Eventually, we came up with a solution. I pulled up sand and water in a large sphere, then made the water up top flow down on the outside and shoot back up on the inside. This created a constant updraft that prevented the sand from falling down. It worked perfectly, but I quickly realized I wouldn't be able to keep it up for the several minutes that it would take to get back to the school, so I dropped everything again. I knew I wouldn't be able to carry the sand myself, but hey, I didn't have a hellhound for nothing. "Okay, I'm gonna call Mrs. O'Leary now. She's a hellhound and pretty big, so don't get scared" "I'll try my best"
When Mrs. O'Leary arrived, it became obvious that Annie's best wasn't enough, but I've never been bothered by having to comfort my girlfriend. Once she was (somewhat) stable again, we climbed onto the hellhound's back. Now, I had to act quickly, but I was used to that. I pulled up the necessary amount of sand for the final time, then made Mrs. O'Leary jump through the shadows to the former sandbox. Luckily, the water I controlled was also part of the shadow travel and arrived at the school as well. When I stopped the water's movement, all the sand I had collected dropped down to where it belonged. It was still in a big heap rather than being evenly spread out, but that wasn't my problem. Maybe I'd fix it tomorrow. "Here you go Annie. One restored sandbox. Why did I do this?" "Because you love me?" "Probably. Any more plans for today?" Have I ever mentioned how cute it sounded when Annabeth or anyone else in the system yawned? Probably yes. "How about sleeping?" she suggested. "That's a great idea" We went back to my window and I pushed us up. We both went into my bed and quickly fell asleep.
Annabeth
Can I come out then? Annie asked me. I thought about it. We were not in danger, Percy was there (which means a 10× safety boost) and there were no strangers around, so I didn't see why she couldn't. It was a good chance to enter the inner world, like I had planned. No problem I thought back to her. Now I just had to find a way to actually make the switch happen. I heard myself asking for my dagger. Percy reached for my knife and took it. This subconsciously scared me a bit since not having the knife was often correlated with severely traumatic things happening. Luckily, he gave it back right away. As soon as we took it, I felt that the switch was beginning. Apparently, being given the dagger was a pretty strong trigger for Annie since she pretty much rushed to the front. I didn't know why, maybe it had to do with how Annie had received this knife pretty much as soon as she existed, so it triggered her. As I was pulled back, I pictured the little shed with the cockpit, hoping to end up there now.
It worked and a few seconds later, I ended up in the aforementioned shed. I watched Annie talk to Percy for a few minutes (she confirmed my suspicions regarding the dagger), then made my way out of the shed and into the inner world. (Yes, I know I technically already was in the inner world, but this was only like the welcome mat. The welcome mat to a different world. This sentence was a bit triggering for reasons I did not and didn't want to understand) Once I was outside, I realized I didn't really have any idea on what to do apart from just looking around. Maybe I should just start with that. I realized that the weird fog had once again decreased, or maybe that was just because I had done some exploring last time. I decided that I should try to get an overview of the world, and I already had an idea from where. I made my way to the house, then went around it to the garden. From there, I followed the power transferring shaft to the cliff face where the water came out. Over the decade (Fine, nine years and a few months) I had been at camp, I had gotten quite good at climbing the lava wall, so this shouldn't be too hard and even if I fell, I wouldn't get hurt. I began to climb.
After just one hundred meters, I reached a spot where I could sit comfortably. When I looked down, I noticed that climbing up here hadn't done anything about the fog, so I decided to keep climbing. Apparently, your muscles getting tired wasn't a thing that happened here because under normal circumstances, I would not have been able to climb up three hundred meters without any breaks. I looked down and while I wasn't scared of heights, the knowledge that in theory, I contained enough potential energy to break my bones ten times over didn't exactly make me happy either. A few meters above me, I saw another good spot to sit down, so I climbed there and looked around. Still not much, just fog covering the landscape. I decided to keep going, not even to get a good view of the area, just to see if I could.
I kept climbing higher and higher and before I knew it, I had reached the top. I didn't have a watch with me, but I estimated that getting up here had taken me just under an hour. Looking down, I saw even less than before. From three hundred meters up, I had seen fog covering the ground a few meters high, but now, I had apparently reached another layer of fog that prevented me from seeing that. However, I could somewhat see the top of the cliff. It was a rather flat area without much vegetation, mostly grass and mosses. A river cut through the landscape, ending very suddenly in a lake too deep to see the bottom. I assumed that it led to the water wheel at the bottom of the cliff. The water looked very clear plus bacteria probably didn't exist here, so I decided to try it. I obviously didn't have a cup or bottle with me, so I had to drink with my hands. It was very cold, but otherwise good. Only now did I notice how thirsty I was. The feeling was so realistic that I forgot this world only existed in my head. Even the timing made sense. I had just done almost an hour of climbing, so I'd probably need water, but I hadn't realized it until I started drinking, which also sometimes happened to me.