Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Hi, everyone! Sorry for the late-in-the-day chapter. But, on the bright side, it's another long one, so I hope you'll be happy with that. I've been writing a bunch of those lately. :P

Until next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis


~The Finding Home Saga~

~Finding Home~

~Chapter 42: We Meet The Sheep Of Doom~


"Percy!"

"Silena!"

My best friend and I collided when we were both about waist-deep in the ocean, since obviously it wouldn't be a good idea for the ship my friends were using – which looked like a medium-sized pirate ship straight out of the 1700's, and yes, I had questions about that – to get beached. We hugged each other, and I instantly felt Silena's tears against my skin. And I have to admit, she wasn't the only one crying. We'd only been separated for a few days, and yet it felt like a lifetime had passed. She could've died from how the Symplegades had destroyed our previous ship. We all could've.

"Percy, you can't do that to me again," Silena babbled, keeping her hold tight on me even as we separated. "I thought you were dead until Despoina gave me a dream saying otherwise, and you can't – you can't actually die on me or make me think that you have again, okay? 'Cause I don't think I can live through this a second time, I really don't, and – "

"Silena, Silena, hey," I interrupted her. "Take a deep breath with me." She did as I instructed, with each of us keeping our eyes locked. I don't think it worked too terribly well, but at least it kept her from spiraling completely into a panic attack. "I'm alive, see? I'm standing right in front of you. You're holding me by the arms. If I was dead, this wouldn't be happening, would it?"

She sniffled. "No." Silena looked past me, catching sight of Bianca. Her face became slack with relief, and she pushed me away to hug Bianca next. "Bianca, oh thank the gods you're safe!"

Bianca looked a little bemused at being pulled into a hug by Silena, and gave me a look over her shoulder that I thought was similar to how a cat looked when they were picked up by somebody they didn't like but didn't want to scratch or claw them outright. "Help me" was practically written all over her face.

I did my best not to snicker.

"Jackson!" a voice roared. Looking up, I saw Clarisse standing on the deck of the ship, her hands cupped around her mouth so I could hear her. On either side of her were Annabeth and Alabaster.

With a grin, I half-ran, half-waded through the water to get to them. There was a ladder already down the side of the ship, presumably so Silena would've been able to get down safely, and I used it to get up. "Clarisse! Alabaster! Annabeth!" Even the daughter of Athena, I was relieved to see, as strange as it was to admit.

As soon as I was on the deck, Clarisse pulled me into a bear hug. It made me squawk in surprise, but she didn't let me go from her ribs-crushing hold until she finished speaking. "Don't do that again, Jackson," she warned. "Otherwise, I'll resurrect you from the dead just so I can kill you myself."

I smirked. "Nice to see you too, Clarisse." I nodded to the other two. "Alabaster. Annabeth."

Alabaster's posture, I noticed, wasn't as tense as it had been after we'd escaped the Princess Andromeda, but before we'd been separated. He gave me a tentative smile. Annabeth, meanwhile, looked like a broomstick had been shoved up her ass, and –

Wait.

Were those...tears in her eyes, too.

As if reading my thoughts, she came over to me and held out her hand. "I'm...sorry, Jackson," she said. "For what happened to you. It shouldn't have happened. I was reckless, and stupid, and selfish, and...I'm sorry."

I was surprised. Out of all of the reunions I hadn't thought to expect with Chase, this wouldn't have been one. She was an incredibly prideful person; humility wasn't in her nature, in my opinion.

I was also tempted to not forgive her, because of that. But, I couldn't do that. Even from the bits and pieces Luke had told me about being on the run with her and Thalia, she'd been through some shit. A good percentage of the way she acted was probably the result of that. Besides, I wasn't going to hold this kind of a grudge against a thirteen-year-old. It wasn't worth it.

So, I accepted her hand. "Thanks for the apology, Chase."

"How's your leg?"

"Good as new." I did a little jig. "See?"

"But only because we had help," Bianca said from behind me, as she and Silena used the ladder to climb onboard as well.

Annabeth left me behind in an instant to help Bianca and fret over her. Silena took her place at my side. "So, this is where you've been?" she asked, looking out at the island.

"Yeah," I replied. I followed her gaze. With this different view of the island, even though it wasn't as far out as it could've been, the island was even more beautiful than what I'd initially thought. It made my heart ache. I wish you happiness, Cleisthenes.

"It's very pretty," she breathed.

"It does look nice," grunted Clarisse.

"What even is this place?" Alabaster wondered out loud.

His drastically different statement made me snort. "This is one of islands called the Heliades," I said. "The people who live here are – "

"They're one of the different kinds of humans there are. Diodorus Siculus said they have flexible bones, large-valved ears, and split tongues which allowed them to have two conversations at once," Annabeth pitched in. Her face abruptly reddened, presumably at her realizing what she'd done. It was a response to their intelligence that I wasn't used to from either her or her half-siblings. They tended to pride themselves on their knowledge. "Sorry."

I shrugged. "It's fine. You're mostly right. They've lost the split tongue thing since ancient times, but everything else is spot-on. The family we stayed with was really nice." Understatement of the century, but I figured if I wanted, I could tell Silena and Clarisse about it later. "What about you guys? Where did you go?"

Their reactions confused me. Annabeth didn't have much of one, but Silena had to hide her smile with her hand, Clarisse chuckled, and Alabaster's face became the color of a tomato's, like Annabeth's had just been. "What?"

"We, erm," Silena began to inform me. "We paid a visit to Circe's island."

I blinked. "Circe? You mean the goddess who turns men into pigs?"

"Well, guinea pigs now. But yep, that's her," she answered, starting to giggle. "Alabaster made a very cute one."

Alabaster looked like he was going to combust at any second. "Silly, stop," he whined.

My jaw just about fell down to the floor. "'Silly?'" I repeated.

Silena walked over to Alabaster so she could grab his hand. "Yeah, that's one of the other things: Alabaster's back on our side now, surprise!" She waved her free hand like she was doing jazz hands. "And we're back together now. Hope you don't mind." The last part, she said with a wink.

I...didn't really know what to say to that.

These past few days had felt like a lifetime had happened during them, but how on Earth had Silena – and Clarisse and Annabeth, probably? – convinced Alabaster to return to the side of the gods? And how had that resulted in the two of them getting back together? Were all of us living in a giant soap opera or something?

"We can get into it later," Clarisse reminded us all, her expression pinched. "We need to get going."

Right, I thought. We have a Cyclops to stop, a golden fleece to steal, and my other best friend to rescue.

The gossip could wait until after that.


It only took us about an hour and a half to get to the Cyclops' island, between Alabaster's powers and mine. We made a good team, the two of us; it didn't matter that we'd lost the thermos of the four winds when the Symplegades had crushed our ship. Plus, it helped that the other island actually wasn't all that far away, in the grand scheme of things. Which made me a little mad about it actually being rather close to Bianca and I for all this time, but it was probably better that we'd waited for our other four quest-mates than going off by ourselves. We didn't want to get killed or anything. I especially didn't want Bianca to get killed; I could only imagine what Nico, bright-eyed and innocent Nico, would do if I had his sister's blood on my hands.

But, I digress.

"So, what made you switch sides again?" I asked Alabaster at one point, as quietly as I could over the roar of the wind. It was still pretty loud, but not loud enough to make the others notice us.

His eyes were glowing that misty green as he looked away from me and the ocean, multitasking like was befitting for a person with ADHD. Specifically, he turned his head towards Silena, who had her back facing us. There was no way she could realize we were talking about her.

"...I realized," he shouted back at me after a moment of silence. "There's more than one reason to stick with the gods."

Translation, from what I could gather: he'd rather stay and protect Silena, die for Silena, than see whatever would happen to her if Kronos won.

I could get that. It didn't make me feel any hope for Luke, but then again, that didn't matter. I'd already made my decision, and I was going to lay in the bed that I was going to make, one way or the other.

When we saw a blotch of land appear on the horizon, with it's saddle-like shape, forested hills, white beaches, and green meadows, I instantly knew we'd reached our destination. It was just like how it had appeared in my dreams.

This was the island where a monster lived. Sure, it didn't look like it: it didn't have craggy rocks or bones scattered out on the beach, it looked like a place that belonged on a Caribbean postcard. But we readied ourselves as we sailed towards the beach anyways, preparing for the fight that was inevitably going to come. As we did, we all breathed in the sweet air.

"The Golden Fleece," Annabeth said.

I nodded. We couldn't see the Fleece yet, but its power was all-encompassing. Even from here, it seemed to wash over us, making me feel slightly stronger, and the scar from where Luke had almost killed me throb in a good way. I believed it could heal anything, including Thalia's tree.

But...

"If we take it away, will the island die?"

I couldn't help but remember what Euthymia had said about her people, all the pain they had gone through in their islands being physically moved over the ages. If Polyphemus' island was like theirs...

Annabeth took a second to think about it, before shaking her head. "I don't think so. It'll probably fade – go back to what it would be normally, or what it was like before the Fleece, whatever that is."

That made me feel guilty. Here we were, about to ruin this paradise. And yeah, Polyphemus was a Cyclops, he was a murderer and a man-eater in the literal sense, but he didn't deserve the hardships that were possibly coming his way if he had the Fleece for as long as he'd said he had.

Given, this was assuming that we wouldn't wind up killing him during whatever was to come. It was probably a bold assumption; from a monster's perspective, we had quite the terrifying track record in killing them.

Bianca looked as guilty as I did. I did my best to give her a reassuring smile.

In the meadow at the base of the ravine, several dozen sheep were milling around, their wool tinged with those copper and silver hues. They looked peaceful enough, but they were huge: about the size of hippos. Just past them was a path that led up into the hills. At the top of the path, near the edge of the canyon, was the massive oak tree I'd seen in my dreams. Something gold glittered in its branches.

Alabaster frowned. "This is too easy," he said. "We could just hike up there and take it?"

That's when a deer emerged from the bushes. It trotted into the meadow, probably looking for some grass to eat, when the sheep all bleated at once and rushed the animal. It happened so fast that the deer stumbled and was lost in a sea of wool and trampling hooves.

Grass and tufts of fur flew in the air.

A second later the sheep all moved away, back to their peaceful wanderings. Where the deer had been was a pile of clean white bones.

"You just had to say that," I deadpanned.

Alabaster cringed sheepishly. "Sorry."

"They're like piranhas," Annabeth mused out loud.

"Piranhas with wool," I muttered.

Silena had other priorities, her visage worried. "How are we going to get past them?"


We decided there was no way we could get past the man-eating sheep. Annabeth suggested she could take her Yankee's cap charmed with invisibility and go up the path to take the Fleece, but it wasn't a serious one. The sheep would definitely smell her if she tried to do that, if something else didn't go wrong like another guardian appearing or...something. And if that happened, we would be too far away to help.

Besides, our first and main priority was not the Fleece right now, but Katie. Today was the day Polyphemus was going to try and...marry her. We couldn't let that happen. It was still early in the morning, so we had some time left, but we had to rescue her before we could get the Fleece. We just had to.

We moored our ship, which had been revealed to me to be named the Queen Anne's Revenge – meaning it was Blackbeard's ship, holy shit, but this wasn't the time or place to be amazed by that – on the back side of the island where the cliffs rose straight up about a good two hundred feet. We figured the ship was less likely to be seen there.

The cliffs looked climbable, but barely, like the lava wall back at camp. At least it was free of sheep. I hoped that Polyphemus didn't also have carnivorous mountain goats or something.

Clarisse, Annabeth, Silena, and I rowed a lifeboat to the edge of the rocks. We'd decided that it would be good for Alabaster and Bianca to hang back, in case of monsters attacking the ship or some other sort of problem. Bianca was happy to oblige us, Alabaster...not so much.

"I can help," he'd said, his misty green eyes flaring.

"You can help here," Clarisse had grunted.

He'd whirled on her. "What? You don't trust me?"

That was not the response he should've made. "You're damn right I don't trust you," she'd snapped back. "I know you're on our side right now, Torrington, but how long is that going to be for? The next time you get turned into a guinea pig, are you gonna switch sides again? Go back and join Kronos as one of his minions?"

"...Okay," I'd said, and wedged myself in between them before they could come to a fight. Apparently, Clarisse and Alabaster still had some beef with each other. Understandable. Up until this quest, I'd assumed that most people did with her. "Let's not fight each other when we're about to face off a Cyclops and his murderous sheep, please."

Alabaster had scoffed. "I'm not the one trying to turn this into a fight."

"Please, Ally," Silena had replied.

That had shut him up quickly.

Because Annabeth was the best climber out of all of us, she went up first, followed by Silena, followed by me. Clarisse took up the rear.

We only came close to dying six or seven times, which I thought was pretty good. Once, I lost my grip and I found myself dangling by one hand from a ledge fifty feet above the rocky surf. "Percy!" Clarisse shouted at me.

"It's okay!" I assured her. I swung my body a little to give myself momentum to find another hold for my hand. An incredibly dangerous move, but it paid off well. "I'm fine!"

A minute after that, Silena hit a slippery patch of moss and her foot slipped. Fortunately, she found something else to put it against.

Unfortunately, that something was my face.

"Oh, Percy!" she cried. "I'm so – "

"Don' worry about it," I said, though I'd never really wanted to know what the bottom of her shoe tasted like.

Finally, when my fingers felt like molten lead and my arm muscles were shaking from exhaustion, we all hauled ourselves over the top of the cliff and collapsed.

"Ugh," I said.

"Ouch," moaned Annabeth.

"Let's...never do that...again," Silena breathed.

Before Clarisse could add to the collective cries of misery, a fifth voice went, "Garr!"

If I hadn't been so tired, I would've leapt another two hundred feet. As it was, I scrambled to my feet, looking around for who had spoken. I couldn't see anybody.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Annabeth raised a finger to her lips. She pointed.

The ledge we were all laying/sitting on was narrower than I'd realized. It dropped off on the opposite side, and that was where the voice was coming from – right below us.

"You want to post – postpone the marriage?" the deep voice bellowed.

"Just – just until evening!" a familiar voice cried out. "I've always wanted to get married at sunset."

Katie.

Annabeth and I crept over to the edge, Silena and Clarisse right behind us. We were right above the entrance of the Cyclops' cave. Below us stood Polyphemus and kneeling at his feet was Katie, still in her wedding dress. There were tears running down her cheeks. She was obviously getting desperate, waiting for us to come.

The Cyclops was an even more horrible sight than he'd been in my dreams. His rancid stench was a complete contrast to the sweet air, courtesy of the Fleece. He was wearing another chiton, but this one was only marginally better than his first: it was still greyed and ripped in some places, but there were no specks of dirt on it and it looked like it had been recently washed. I had to give him that.

"'Sunset?'" Polyphemus repeated dubiously.

"Yes, please," Katie begged. Her voice cracked genuinely, even if it wasn't for the same reasons she was giving off. I felt so bad for her. Don't worry, Katie, we're here now. "Sunset is the perfect time for a wedding, don't you think? Such a pretty view. Please, Polyphemus. Please."

Polyphemus visibly chewed his inner cheek, debating his answer. "Fine," he grunted. "Sunset wedding, to make wifey happy. But tonight, there will be wedding. No more delays."

He picked Katie up then as she sobbed out a "thank you" and dragged her deeper into the cave, where we couldn't see. Then he whistled, and a flock of sheep and goats, smaller than the man-eating ones, flooded out of the cave and past their master. As they went to pasture, he patted some of them on the back and called them by name: Beltbuster, Tammany, Lockhart, and etcetera.

When the last sheep had waddled out, Polyphemus rolled a boulder in front of the doorway just as easily I would a refrigerator door, shutting off the sounds of Katie crying wetly inside.

"Sunset wedding," Polyphemus grumbled to himself. He shook his head. "If it means that much to wifey..."

He strolled off down the mountain in his chiton, leaving us alone with the six-ton boulder.


We tried for what seemed like hours, but it was no good. The boulder wouldn't move, even with the help of Clarisse's enhanced strength as a daughter of Ares. We yelled into the cracks, tapped on the rocks, and did everything we could to try and let Katie know we were there. If she heard us, we couldn't tell.

Even if by some miracle we managed to kill Polyphemus with no other advantage to our side, it wouldn't do us any good. Katie would die in that sealed cave, as I doubted Alabaster's powers were strong enough to move it, either. The only way to move the rock was to have the Cyclops do it.

In total frustration, I stabbed Riptide against the boulder while cussing something magnificently. Sparks flew, but nothing else happened. A large rock is not the kind of enemy you can fight with a sword.

The four of us sat on the ridge in despair and watched Polyphemus tend to his flocks. Wisely, he had divided his regular animals from his man-eating sheep, putting each group on either side of the huge crevice that divided the island. The only way across was the rope bridge, and the planks were much too far apart for sheep hooves.

We watched as Polyphemus visited his carnivorous flock on the other side. Unfortunately, they didn't eat him. They didn't seem to be bothered by him at all, as he fed them chunks of mystery meat from a giant wicker basket.

"Trickery," Annabeth decided. It might seem weird that we were giving her such leeway with this, given how she'd acted before and that she wasn't an original member of the quest, but she was a daughter of Athena. Being strategic was her nature. "We can't beat him by force, so we'll have to use trickery."

"Okay," I said. "What trick?"

"Polyphemus will have to move the rock to go inside. I think...I can be invisible, with my cap."

"At sunset."

"Right."

"What about the rest of us?" Clarisse grunted.

Annabeth gave us all a sly look. "The sheep," she mused out loud. "How much do you guys like sheep?"


"Just don't let go!" Annabeth called out to us, standing invisibly somewhere to my right. That was easy for her to say. She wasn't hanging upside down from the belly of a sheep.

Now, I'll admit this wasn't as hard as I'd expected it to be. I'd crawled under my mom's car to help her change the oil before, since although cars weren't really my thing it was something she'd wanted me to know how to do, and this wasn't too different. The sheep didn't care. Even three of the smallest of Polyphemus' sheep were enough to support the weight of me, Clarisse, and Silena, and they had thick wool. In my case, I just twirled the stuff into handles for my hands, hooked my feet against the sheep's thigh bones, and presto! I felt like a baby wallaby, riding around against the sheep's chest, trying to keep the wool out of my mouth and nose.

Clarisse and Silena were of a similar mindset. Although, Silena wasn't scared enough to say, "You're lucky you don't have to smell this, Chase. I'm never going to get this out of my clothes."

...Yeah, she had a point. The underside of a sheep doesn't smell that great. Imagine a winter sweater that's been dragged through the mud and left in the laundry hamper for a week. Something like that.

"Quiet, Beauregard," Annabeth said.

The sun was going down.

No sooner had she said that that the Cyclops said, "Oy! Sheepies! Goaties!"

The flock dutifully began trudging up the slopes back towards the cave.

"I'll be close by," Annabeth told us. "Don't worry."

I gritted my teeth, but said nothing.

My sheep taxi started plodding up the hill. After around a hundred yards, my hands and feet started to hurt from holding on. I gripped the sheep's wool more tightly, and the animal made a grumbling sound. I couldn't blame it. I wouldn't want anybody rock climbing in my hair, either. But if I didn't hold on, I was sure I'd fall off right there in front of the monster.

"Hasenpfeffer!" Polyphemus said, patting one of the sheep in front of mine. "Einstein! Widget! Ah, hey there, Widget!"

Polyphemus patted my sheep and nearly knocked me to the ground. "Putting on some extra mutton there?"

Uh oh, I thought. Here it comes.

But he just laughed and swatted the sheep's rear end, propelling us forward. "Go on, fatty. Soon, Polyphemus and wifey will eat you for breakfast!"

I had no idea if Clarisse and Silena had gone in front of me or were behind me. I was assuming behind, since my sheep was the only one Polyphemus had reacted to in that way.

Which meant I was the first one in the cave.

Sure enough, as the last of the sheep began to come inside, I heard him say something similar as he had to Widget twice more. But this also made me worried. If Annabeth didn't pull off her distraction soon enough...

I needn't have worried, however. The Cyclops was just about to roll the stone back into place when Annabeth shouted from somewhere outside, "Hello, ugly!"


Word Count: 4,214

Next Chapter Title: Nobody Gets the Fleece