BLAIRE SULLIVAN KNEW SHE WAS only dreaming. Or at least, the more rational half of her subconscious being knew she was only dreaming. However, she couldn't stop herself from wallowing in the absolute joy that her supposed current situation brought forth.

  She was trapped in the past—in the reminder of what she once was fortunate enough to call reality. A reminder of the life pretaining normalcy that had managed to slip between the crevices of her youthful fingers before she had the sense to properly grasp it with all of the might her girlish body could withstand.

  Blaire Sullivan was merely six years old. She was six years old and unharmed by the treacherous veracity that was life. She was six years old and she was happy.

Her most prominent worry wasn't death. Nor was it the cryptic promise of her prophetic downfall. Instead, it was the impending threat of her bedtime, the upcoming absence of cartoons.

  "Daddy," Blaire whined, the flushed apples of her cheeks turning upward into a toothy grin. Her wayward hair was falling free from the pigtails she'd previously sported, for the complex knot of her pink ribbons were coming undone. "Ten more minutes, please."

  The aforementioned elder man peered down at his young daughter. The edges of her wide grin were stained from the remenants of dinner, spaghettios— without meatballs. Blaire never liked the meatballs.

  "You've got school tommorow, B," Ben Sullivan reminded the small child with a playful shake of his head, "You need your beauty sleep."

Blaire pouted, jutting her bottom lip out dramatically. She clung to the denim leg of his trousers, her rosey cheek pressed flush against the rough fabric. "Daddy, pretty please?"

The racket of some outdated VHS tape playing on a boxy television located mere feet away from the small family rang above the girl's pleas, dialing back the sincerity of her requests. A static cartoon occupied the scarce area of the television.

"Tell you what," Ben began, kneeling until he was eye level with his daughter. His Blaire. "I'll read to you. If you agree to sleep now, I'll read to you."

Blaire thought for a moment, her large-doe eyes wide with silent question. "Can you do the funny voices?"

"I can do the funny voices," Ben confirmed, eliciting a shrill-joyous giggle from young Blaire. The sound ricocheted off the bare walls, gracing Ben's emotions with such jubilation, he couldn't help but chuckle.

  Without having to be told, Blaire Sullivan hurried to the flimsy pull-out bed she became acquainted to resting in, flopping backwards onto the matress with a yawn. Meanwhile, Ben fingered through the small stack of storybooks piled on a nearby shelve with great focus.

"How's Humpty-Dumpty sound?" He quiered, glancing over his shoulder at Blaire, who watched him with a coltish smile.

"Good," Blaire told him, holding a purple-painted thumb up in comformation.

  He made his way back over to his daughter, perching himself atop the arm rest of the furniture, beside Blaire, who was awaiting him eagerly. The man lay the book in his lap and reached down to pull the colorful sheets over his child, covering the floral pattern of her nightgown and protecting her from the low temperatures prevading the stale air of the small apartment. He'd not been able to pay the most recent bill required to keep the rustic heater running, therefore the November chill had begun to seep past the walls of their home.

  "Are you cold?" Ben asked her, wiping the tad of sauce residing on the corner of her mouth away using his thumb. "Need another blanket, Bug?"

   Blaire shook her head rapidly in denial, furrowinf herself further into the sheets. "No. Please read with the funny voices now, daddy!"

  So he did. Ben Sullivan read from the ancient book of child's nursery rhymes in the funniest voice he could muster, all to watch his little girl's face light up in temporary glee.

  Seeing her smile was the greatest blessing anyone could dare to wish for, he thought. Watching her giggle in absolute joy was something that provided him with an immense amount of peace. For only a moment he wasn't thinking of the 9/5 job he'd toil away at the next day. And he wasn't thinking about how unfairly life had been treating him.

   "Night," Blaire yawned when he'd finished with her favorite tale, "Love you."

  "Nighty-night, B," Ben echoed, leaning down to press a kiss to his daughter's forehead. "I love you, too."

   And he did. He loved Blaire more than anything. In fact, he loved her so much, he'd soon give his own life to gaurentee her safety.

    Blaire awoke with a heavy heart. A heart that wasn't made to supply blood to the stretch of her body, but instead a heart that was made to remind her how much greif really weighed, how big of a burden loss truly was even years after she'd expirenced the brunt of it.

    Blaire was not six years old. She wasn't back in her childhood-home in Maryland, tucked safely beneath the light weight of her colorful princess bed clothing. And her sweet, caring father was dead. He'd never read her another bed time story in a funny voice ever again. He'd never tuck her in or kiss her forehead again.

   Blaire wasn't atop her cheap pull-out bed. Instead, she sat on Festus' hide. He was soaring over a city-scape, housing Blaire and her fellow quest-mates.

Leo and Piper were both awake, making small talk whilst Jason snored rather obnoxiously. Blaire was sandwhiched between Leo and Jason this time, while Piper sat behind the latter, holding his waist to keep him balanced.

  Blaire must have made a noise or something, because both Leo and Piper's attention were now trained upon her. Their pointless conversation had come to an abrupt halt.

"Morning, Mrs. Magic," Leo greeted, peering back at her, taking in her disheveled hair and still sleep-weary eyes. "How'd you sleep?"

Blaire shrugged meekly, struggiling to move her own body against the immense force of greif. "Fine."

  Before anyone was able to say anything else, to call her bluff, Jason jolted awake with a startling yelp. "Cyclops!"

"Woah, Sleepyhead," Piper laughed fondly.

"D-Detroit," Jason stammered, his wild eyes darting around the trio. "Didn't we crash-land? I thought—"

"It's okay," Leo assured him. "We got away, but you got a nasty concussion. How you feeling?"

Blaire guessed— from the look adorning his pale face— that he wasn't feeling well at all.

"How did you—the Cyclops—"

"Leo ripped them apart," Piper boasted proudly, recalling his heroic antics. "He was amazing. He can summon fire—"

"It was nothing," Leo quickly cut the girl off, though he was obviously flustered.

"That was nothing?" Blaire quipped with a tilt of he head, thinking back on the boy's previous feat. She'd truly never seen anything like it. And she'd been a demi-god for nine years.

"Yeah," Piper agreed. "Shut up, Valdez. I'm going to tell him. Get over it."

  And she did—how Leo single-handedly defeated the Cyclopes family; how they freed Jason, then noticed the Cyclopes starting to re-form; how Leo had replaced the dragon's wiring ( all while being encouraged to 'hurry up' by Blaire and her daunting curses) and gotten them back in the air just as they'd started to hear the Cyclopes roaring for vengeance inside the factory.

  Then, when Piper told him about the other kid the Cyclopes claimed to have eaten, the one in the purple shirt who spoke Latin, Leo's victorious reign was over. Jason looked like he could fall backwards off the dragon— if only Piper wasn't holding him.

  Blaire could only imagine what must have been goin on in his evidently hollow head.

"I'm not alone, then," he gasped as if coming to the conclusion on his lonesome. "There are others like me."

"Jason," Piper said gently, her voice raw. "you were never alone. You've got us."

"I—I know ... but something Hera said. I was having a dream..."

  He told them what he'd seen, and what the goddess had said inside her cage. Blaire felt helpless— while the rest of them were dreaming of things that were undeniably of great value to them and the trajectory of their quest, Blaire was selfishly dreaming of her father. Her father whom had no possible way of helping them.

Dreaming about him and his nightly rituals was incredibly selfish admist all the chaos.

But Blaire was nothing if not selfish.

"An exchange?" Piper asked, a dark, perfectly-shapen eyebrow perked. "What does that mean?"

  Jason shook his head. "But Hera's gamble is me. Just by sending me to Camp Half-Blood, I have a feeling she broke some kind of rule, something that could blow up in a big way—"

"Or save us," Piper added hopefully. "That bit about the sleeping enemy—that sounds like the lady Leo told us about."

  Leo cleared his throat sheepishly. "About that ... she kind of appeared to me and Blaire back in Detroit, in a pool of Porta-Potty sludge."

  You shall unlock your true potential, only with another great loss. The taunting voice was still audible to Blaire, haunting her.

   Jason furrowed his brows, "Did you say ... Porta-Potty?"

  "Yeah," Blaire confirmed sourly, "He did."

   Leo told them about the big face in the factory yard. "I don't know if she's completely unkillable," he said, "but she cannot be defeated by toilet seats. I can vouch for that. She wanted us to betray you guys, and I was like, 'Pfft, right, I'm gonna listen to a face in the potty sludge."

  "She's trying to divide us." Piper slipped her arms from around Jason's waist. Blaire could sense the immense amount of tension without even turning around to look at the two.

  "What's wrong?" Jason asked.

  "I just ... Why are they toying with us? Who is this lady, and how is she connected to Enceladus?"

   "Enceladus?" Jason repeated, voicing Blaire's thoughts.

  "Who the hell is Enceladus?"

  "I mean ..." Piper's voice quavered. "That's one of the giants. Just one of the names I could remember."

   Piper was lying. Blaire knew it. Something more was bothering her, something of more urgency.

  Leo scratched his head. "Well, I dunno about Enchiladas—"

  "Enceladus," Piper told him.

  "Whatever. But Old Potty Face mentioned another name. Porpoise Fear, or something?"

   Blaire rolled her eyes at his inability to remember anything with any sort of presicion. "Porphyrion, Valdez."

  "He was the giant king, I think," Piper informed the others.

   "I'm going to take wild guess," Jason said. "In the old stories, Porphyrion kidnapped Hera. That was the first shot in the war between the giants and the gods."

"I think so," Piper agreed. "But those myths are really garbled and conflicted. It's almost like nobody wanted that story to survive. I just remember there was a war, and the giants were almost impossible to kill."

  "Heroes and gods had to work together," Jason added. "That's what Hera told me."

  "Kind of hard to do," Leo grumbled, "if the gods won't even talk to us."

  Blaire agreed wholeheartedly. She'd never spoke to her mother. All sixteen years she'd been alive, her mother hadn't uttered as much as a single word to her. Not even in a dream.

  It wasn't fair. And she was glad Leo saw that.

  They flew west, and Blaire became lost in her thoughts —all of them bad. She wasn't sure how much time passed before the dragon dove through a break in the clouds, and below them, glittering in the winter sun, was a city at the edge of a massive lake. A crescent of skyscrapers lined the shore. Behind them, stretching out to the western horizon, was a vast grid of snow-covered neighborhoods and roads.

  "Chicago," Jason muttered.

  "One problem down," Leo sighed. "We got here alive. Now, how do we find the storm spirits?"

    Just then came a flash of movement below them. At first it seemed like a small plane, but it was too small, too dark and fast. The thing spiraled toward the skyscrapers, weaving and changing shape—and, just for a moment it became the smoky figure of a horse.

  "How about we follow that one," Jason suggested, "and see where it goes?"

     The ventus moved so quickly, Blaire figured she might get vertigo from trying to track the thing with her gaze.

  "Speed up," Jason urged.

  "Bro," Leo groaned, "if I get any closer, he'll spot us. Bronze dragon ain't exactly a stealth plane."

  "Slow down!" Piper yelped.

  The storm spirit dove into the grid of downtown streets. Festus tried to follow, but his wingspan was way too wide. His left wing clipped the edge of a building, slicing off a stone gargoyle before Leo pulled up.

  "Get above the buildings," Jason suggested. "We'll track him from there."

  Jason was very bossy, Blaire realized.

   "You want to drive this thing?" Leo grumbled, but he did what Jason asked. She realized then that he was infinitely kinder than her, because she wouldn't have taken well to being bossed around. She wouldn't have obliged no matter the sincerity of the situation.

   After a few minutes, they spotted the storm spirit again, zipping through the streets with no apparent purpose—blowing over pedestrians, ruffling flags, making cars swerve.

  "Oh great," Piper piped in. "There're two."

  She was right. A second ventus blasted around the corner of the Renaissance Hotel and linked up with the first. They wove together in a chaotic dance, shooting to the top of a skyscraper, bending a radio tower, and diving back down toward the street.

  "Those guys do not need any more caffeine," Leo joked.

  "I guess Chicago's a good place to hang out," Piper said. "Nobody's going to question a couple more evil winds."

  "More than a couple," Jason said. "Look."

   The dragon circled over a wide avenue next to a lake-side park. Storm spirits were converging—at least a dozen of them, whirling around a big public art installation.

  "Which one do you think is Dylan?" Leo asked. "I wanna throw something at him."

   Blaire did not know who Dylan was, but she was not opposed to throwing something at anyone.

    The art installation was a public fountain with two five-story monoliths rising from either end of a long granite reflecting pool. The monoliths seemed to be built of video screens, flashing the combined image of a giant face that spewed water into the pool.

   As they watched, the image on the screens changed to a familiar woman's face with her eyes closed.

  "Guys..." Jason said nervously.

  It was the face of the woman who told Blaire she'd endure yet another great loss.

  "I see her," Leo said. "I don't like her, but I see her."

  Then the screens went dark. The venti swirled together into a single funnel cloud and skittered across the fountain, kicking up a waterspout almost as high as the monoliths. They got to its center, popped off a drain cover, and disappeared underground.

  "Did they just go down a drain?" Piper quiered. "How are we supposed to follow them?"

  "Maybe we shouldn't," Leo proposed. "That fountain thing is giving me seriously bad vibes. And aren't we supposed to, like, beware the earth?

  "Child of Lightning is supposed to beware the Earth," Blaire refrenced, not partial to even uttering Jason's name. "Not us."

   "Yeah, well we're a group," Piper chimed in, her tone defensive. "We're in this together."

    Either way,  It was their only way forward. They had to find Hera, and they now had only two days until the solstice.

   "Put us down in that park," Jason suggested. "We'll check it out on foot."

   Festus landed in an open area between the lake and the skyline. The signs said Grant Park, and Blaire imagined it would've been a nice place in the summer; but now it was a field of ice, snow, and salted walkways. The dragon's hot metal feet hissed as they touched down. Festus flapped his wings unhappily and shot fire into the sky, but there was no one around to notice. The wind coming off the lake was bitter cold. Anyone with sense would be inside. Blaire's eyes stung so badly, she could barely see. She squinted against the frigid winds, tears gathering on her waterline from the harsh breeze.

  They dismounted, and Festus the dragon stomped his feet. One of his ruby eyes flickered, so it looked like he was blinking.

  "Is that normal?" Jason asked.

   Blaire hoped it was. She didn't think she'd fancy breaking her other wrist in yet another fall.

  Leo pulled a rubber mallet from his tool bag. He whacked the dragon's bad eye, and the light went back to normal. "Yes," Leo said. "Festus can't hang around here, though, in the middle of the park. They'll arrest him for loitering. Maybe if I had a dog whistle ..."

  He rummaged in his tool belt, but came up with nothing.

  "Too specialized?" he guessed. "Okay, give me a safety whistle. They got that in lots of machine shops."

  This time, Leo pulled out a big plastic orange whistle. "Coach Hedge would be jealous! Okay, Festus, listen." Leo blew the whistle. The shrill sound probably rolled all the way across Lake Michigan. "You hear that, come find me, okay? Until then, you fly wherever you want. Just try not to barbecue any pedestrians."

  The dragon snorted—hopefully in agreement. Then he spread his wings and launched into the air.

  Piper took one step and winced. "Ah!"

  Blaire knew exactly how the girl felt. Though the pain in her wrist had dulled down to a mere ache that tantalized her joints, it still bothered her. Each movement she made reminded her of why she hated flying dragons and goofy teenage mechanics.

"Your ankle?" Jason sounded very concerned. "That nectar we gave you might be wearing off."

"It's fine." Piper shivered and took a few more steps with only a slight limp but it was obvious she was trying not to grimace.

"Let's get out of the wind," Jason suggested. And for the first time, Blaire agreed with him. She felt the winter air seep through her jacket, chilling her fair skin and creating a trail of goosebumps. She wished then that she had Leo's odd body warmth.

"Down a drain?" Piper shuddered. "Sounds cozy."

Blaire zipped her windbreaker all the way up to her neck and followed the others towards the fountian.

According to the plaque, it was called Crown Fountain. All the water had emptied out except for a few patches that were starting to freeze. It didn't seem right that the fountain would have water in it in the winter anyway. Then again, those big monitors had flashed the face of their mysterious enemy Dirt Woman. Nothing about this place was right.

They stepped to the center of the pool. No spirits tried to stop them. The giant monitor walls stayed dark. The drain hole was easily big enough for a person, and a maintenance ladder led down into the gloom.

Jason went first, Piper next, then Leo— then Blaire. Apparently, on her way down, she stepped on the Valdez boy's hand which was wrapped firmly around the latter to stabilize himself, because he let out a pained yelp.

"Ouch, Blaire, my finger!"

"Oops," Was her response.

The ladder dropped into a brickwork tunnel running north to south. The air was warm and dry, with only a trickle of water on the floor.

"Are all sewers this nice?" Piper wondered aloud.

"No," Leo said. "Trust me."

Blaire rose an eyebrow. Leo was really full of suprises. What in the world could possibly have led him to being so acquainted with sewers and the likeness of their quality.

Jason frowned. "How do you know—"

"Hey, man, I ran away six times. I've slept in some weird places, okay? Now, which way do we go?"

It only made sense that Leo would have endured something as odd as that.

Jason tilted his head, listening, then pointed south. "That way."

"How can you be sure?" Piper asked.

  "There's a draft blowing south," Jason assured her. "Maybe the venti went with the flow."

  It wasn't much of a lead, but nobody offered anything better.

They began following the sway of the breeze but before they could make it far, Piper stumbled into Jason, wearing a pained expression.

"Stupid ankle," she cursed.

"Let's rest," Jason decided. "We could all use it. We've been going nonstop for over a day. Leo, can you pull any food from that tool belt besides breath mints?"

"Thought you'd never ask. Chef Leo is on it!"

Blaire was not entirely fond on the idea of eating anything Leo Valdez cooked.

While Piper and Jason sat on a brick ledge, and Leo shuffled through his pack, Blaire sat across from the three, adamant on keeping her distance when possible. Especially from Piper and Jason.

Their words still sounded in her mind. And sure, maybe they were right. Maybe all she did was complain and wait for them to save the day, to do all the work. But she didn't think she was capable of doing anything else without completely butchering things. And she didn't want to anyways.

Everything always ended the same. With a great amount of mental turmoil, and she doubted this time would be any different.

Jason and Piper seemed to be having some sort of heated discussion of great importance on the opposite side of the sewer. Piper fiddled with the braids in her hair, and Jason watched, taking in her every move as if it were his lifeline.

Leo was knelt over a sizzling fire, shouting encouragements, willing the flame higher. He, like always, was grinning like a madman. As if there were anything to grin about. Blaire really didn't understand him. How did he manage to stay (too) positive despite everything he'd endured and would continue to endure?

And Blaire sat alone. Sulking, as always. Her knees were pulled to her chest, the intensity of her gaze tracing the ridges of her worn jeans, trying to find solace within the denim pattern. To find an escape within the miniscule tears.

"And bingo!" Leo yelped with a sense of finality, demanding his friend's attention.

He stood between the three, in the middle of the sewer, balancing four plates, like a waiter. Pepper and beef tacos with chips and salsa layed atop the platters. Blaire had no idea where he'd even got the food or how he composed it so quickly.

He approached Jason and Piper first, Blaire couldn't quite hear what they were saying, but she could tell from the way their faces lit up that they were impressed by Leo's cooking skills.

Blaire went back to studying her clothing, or at least pretending to study it while her mind was preoccupied by other more treacherous things.

She couldn't seem to stop thinking about her dad. Her loving father. She pondered on the way he kissed her forehead, wishing her a goodnight. On the way his aroma, watermelon body wash that he'd agreed to buy per Blaire's request, enveloped her as he read— in his funny voice.

Blaire hadn't realized how great her father really was until she lost him. When he was no longer around to sheild her from the harshness that was reality, she realized that life wasn't as great as she made it out to be. It was her father that was great.

"Hi," Leo's voice, the one that had always agitated Blaire, snapped her from her nostalgic daze of sadness. "You hungry?"

She averted her gaze from the rips in her jeans, up to Leo Valdez, who was grinning down at her, holding two plates loaded with tofu tacos.

Blaire shrugged, "Not really."

Leo seemed taken aback by her response. "How aren't you hungry? We've not eaten since yesterday morning— even then you wouldn't take the sandwhich I offered you."

It wasn't necessarily that she wasn't hungry. It was that she didn't want to be hungry. The thought of food was very unappealing, at least to her mind it was. However, her stomach protested, growling loudly and alerting Leo.

  "Fine," Blaire huffed, "Give me the tacos."

  She didn't know if she'd be able to keep the food down. Her stomach was already full of dread, there was hardly any room for anything else. Let alone Tofu Tacos made by the nosy boy who made it his life's mission to taunt her.

    Leo dropped down beside her, passing one of the plates off to her, keeping the second for himself.

"Let me know what you think," Leo told her, the grin on his face rather obnoxious. "Give my Yelp an honest review."

  Blaire, though she really didn't want to, begrudgingly took a bite of one of the tacos. She chewed the food slowly, the texture sticking to her tounge and making her stomach churn. To her it tasted the same as everything else.

"It's disgusting," Blaire poked, her voice monotone. "Zero Stars."

Leo laughed, scooping salsa onto a chip. "Zero?"

"Zero."

Leo turned to look at the girl. The girl who seemed to be careless about anything but herself. But Leo knew she was more than what others precieved her as. More than a selfish jerk who was too preoccupied with herself to pay any mind to others.

Something about her hard exterior, that Leo had begun to realize was merely a facade, tempted him. The constant downward slope of her mouth beckoned him forward, called him to solve the mystery that was Blaire.

He knew she couldn't be all bad. No one was all bad. Especially not someone like Blaire.

The dim light of the sewer barely illuminated the hollow surroundings. But it provided just enough visibility for him to study her.

Leo could hardly see the small splatter of freckles adorning Blaire's pale cheeks, however he still managed to connect the small specks of perfection, tracing the minuscule constellations. He figured each freckle told a story. A story he was determined to learn no matter what it took.

And her eyes— they undoubtedly held a billion tales of both tragedy and fortune. The events were woven within the dialated surface of her milky pupils. Her emotions were hiden within the dark honey coloring her irises.

Blaire was a complex person, he'd known from the second he layed eyes upon her shivering frame. But he was determined to become acquainted with her complexities.

"You're cool, Blaire," Leo blurted without thinking, his voice light and airy. "Really cool."

    Blaire furrowed her dark brows, eyeing the shell of her taco. Leo called her cool— despite her closed-off, snobish nature. Leo called her cool though she'd been an absolute jerk to him and everyone else who dare speak to her. Leo called her cool though he didn't even know who she really was.

  "How can you say that?" Blaire murmured, "You hardly know me."

"Then let me. Let me know you."

  Leo wanted to know her. Leo wanted to know her despite how cold she'd been. Leo wanted to know her despite her deadly reputation. Leo wanted to know her despite everything.

  LYNN SAYS: Let me know you 😭😭😭😭😭 Yeah Im so cooked I love them. I updated this soo quickly as a gift and apology for what is to come. Also Blaire's little dream made me tear up :( she's so pookie....... and she's quite literally a baby in it.

LIKE 😭😭😭😭😭😭 this would be her.
neways why I was at the hotel pool with my Cousins and brother and a bunch of people (who en in the room across from us) came to the pool SO WE LEFT and went back to our room and went back to the pool a whole ass hour later after getting dinner and they came back?? THEN they were playing football and threw a ball at my back (my spine is MADE OF METAL) and they were talking about us??? ANYWAYS we are going back to the pool WISH ME LUCK