he is half of my soul, as the poet says.
Aether doesn't think he's capable of love. Worse, he can't discern the feelings he harbors for Percy Jackson. Some days, the feeling is nice and other days the feeling resonates with confusion. Though, Aether...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
chapter forty-two.
✷
THEY'VE GOT A DAM PROBLEM... SERIOUSLY
At the edge of the dump, they found a truck but it ended up having gas in the end. Thalia drove, she didn't seem as stunned as Aether, Grover, Zoe, and Percy. Aether's breaths came out uneven and his eyes were slightly red, his body was trembling and his mouth stood slightly agaped. "The skeletons are still out there," she recalled. "We need to keep moving."
She navigated through the desert. Zoe sat up front with Thalia. Meanwhile, Aether was stuck between Grover and Percy in the pickup bed. The air was cool and dry and Aether couldn't help but feel like it was an insult to Bianca's death.
Percy held the figurine in his hand. Aether couldn't bare holding the figurine and felt sad. Nico. Oh Nico. What would they tell him? What would they ever tell him? The promise they made, it was surely broken off now.
"It should've been me," Percy spoke up and Aether tensed. "I should've gone into the giant."
"Perce." Aether's tone was hit with blandness. His voice sounded strained and his eyes were slightly red from the tears. "It's bad enough now that Bianca is gone but you don't have to think of that. We lost Annabeth, then Bianca. Me and Grover..."
Grover sniffled, wiping away his tears with an oily cloth that gave him a mark like he was at war paint. "I'm... I'm okay." Aether frowned and hugged Grover from the side, rubbing his shoulder comfortably as the Satyr sniffled and sobbed. Although, Aether knew Grover wasn't as okay as he said he was. Ever since the trip to New Mexico - Grover seemed more fragile, more emotional, scared.
Aether wiped away at his eyes, feeling tears wanting to come out but he bit them back. He wasn't going to cry. He had to move on like how Thalia was doing. He cared for Bianca even if they had the littlest time with each other but that didn't matter. Aether still cared for Bianca no matter what, even if she joined the hunters of Artemis, she was still trying her best to look out for Nico and the others...
Eventually the tow truck ran out of gas and they were stuck at the road with a dead end. Brilliant, Aether thought.
Thalia got out of the car and slammed the door which made one of the tires blow out. "Great. What now?" Aether searched their surroundings and there honestly wasn't a lot of stuff out there (as he thought so). "There's a path," Grover said. "We should get to the river." Aether squinted his eyes and noticed a tiny ledge winding down. "If I'm wrong, that's a goat path, isn't it?" Aether clicked his tongue, tapping his foot against the ground below. "Yes."
"Grover the rest of us aren't goats," Percy said, stating the obvious.
"We can make it." Grover was pretty insistent on going down the path. "I think."
