Can't Pretend ─── Heroes of Olympus

ix. i didn't get the memo that dragons were real

chapter nine

─── i didn't get the memo that dragons were real

          𝔗hose words had barely left Butch's lips and I was rushing out of the cabin. I was so fast that I almost tripped over my untied shoelaces, but I didn't care too much about that. 

Outside, sure enough, a large, bronze dragon, glittering in the early morning sunlight, was rearing its head to the sky and shooting a column of fire upwards. It was a real dragon, well a real metal dragon, but a real dragon! I wasn't sure whether that was cool or completely terrifying.

"People of Earth, I come in peace!" I heard Leo's voice call over the crowd. "Festus is just saying hello!"

"That thing is dangerous!" The Ares camper from the campfire last night shouted, now brandishing a spear that crackled with electricity, making me slightly drawn to it. Like calls to like, and I had to stop myself from crackling with electricity. "Kill it now!"

"Stand down!" I called, thundering over the clamour. I shocked myself with the shout, not knowing when I had ever been so authoritative, or when I had the need to be. Maybe I had been in my previous life, though I guess I wouldn't know until I got my memories back once more. Those around me began to put down their weapons, backing off. Pushing through the crowd, I tried to shake off the astonished look plastered on my face. "Leo, what have you done?"

"Found a ride!" Leo beamed. "You said I could go on the quest if I got you a ride. Well, I got you a class-A metallic flying bad boy! Festus can take us anywhere!"

"It—has wings," Nyssa stammered, having appeared next to me. Her jaw looked like it might drop off her face.

"Yeah!" Leo said. "I found them and reattached them."

"But it never had wings. Where did you find them?"

Leo hesitated, almost like he was hiding something.

"In...the woods," he said. "Repaired his circuits, too, mostly, so no more problems with him going haywire."

"Mostly?" Nyssa asked.

The dragon's head twitched. It tilted to one side and a stream of black liquid - maybe oil, hopefully just oil—poured out of its ear, all over Leo. I winced, pulling a face. I couldn't imagine trying to get that out of my hair, and I doubted it washed out easily.

"Just a few kinks to work out," Leo said as I finally managed to get my jaw to close.

"But how did you survive...?" Nyssa was still staring at the creature in awe. "I mean, the fire breath..."

"I'm quick," Leo said, causing my eyes to narrow. He was hiding something. His posture had changed. "And lucky. Now, am I on this quest, or what?"

"You named him Festus?" I scratched my head, tilting it as I watched the dragon. The translation came to mind. "You know that in Latin 'festus' means happy? You want us to ride off to save the world on Happy the Dragon?"

I thought that if you were going to go on a quest, then your animal companion had to have some majestic name. Happy the Dragon didn't sound very fear inducing. It sounded like a cuddly toys name.

The dragon twitched and shuddered and flapped his wings.

"That's a yes!" Leo said. "Now, um, I'd really suggest we get going, guys. I already picked up some supplies in the—um, in the woods. And all these people with weapons are making Festus nervous."

That caused me to shake my head.

"But we haven't planned anything yet. We can't just—"

"Go," I turned, meeting Luke's eyes as he nodded. Annabeth had joined his side, neither of them looking too nervous about any of this, which I thought was a bad idea. They should definitely be nervous about all of this. It was only when I met Luke's eyes that I dropped my confident expression and showed him how worried I actually was. 

What if I failed?

"Cressida, you've got three days until the solstice and you should never keep a nervous dragon waiting. That's common knowledge." It really wasn't, and my eyebrows furrowed at Luke's words. "This is a good omen, promise. Go!" 

I nodded, before turning to grin sheepishly at Piper. "You ready, partner?"

Piper took a look at the dragon, before nodding. "You bet."

It took a moment to work out how to clamber onto the dragon's back, but once we were up and situated then it was amazing. I felt like I always liked flying, but this was a different type of that, and I was actually starting to enjoy it in a weird sense.

The dragon generated so much heat that it felt like we were sitting by a warm fire in a room, and it kept up protected from the cold, December air. I had thought that it was going to be uncomfortable, but the grooves on Festus' back were like saddles, meaning that they weren't painful in the slightest. We were all in safety harnesses, which I think the others appreciated, though I didn't mind it. 

I did have the added reassurance that I could fly anyway so falling wasn't gonna scare me all that much.

Piper sat ahead of me, looking around in shock. The Aphrodite blessing hadn't truly worn off, but she'd been able to change clothes into jeans and a thick, woolly jumper with a puffy coat on top of that. Leo was ahead of her, and occasionally turned around to send both of us grins as if to say 'look, isn't it great! Didn't I do a good job?'. It was sweet.

Leo used the reins to steer the dragon, looking so at ease you'd be mistaken to think that he'd been doing this all his life. The metal wings worked perfectly, and soon the coast of Long Island was just a hazy line behind them. They shot over Connecticut and climbed into the grey winter clouds.

Leo turned around again, a wide grin on his face as he caught my eyes. "Cool, right?"

"What if we get spotted?" Piper asked. I shook my head, before shrugging.

"The Mist," I said simply. "It keeps mortals from seeing magic things. If they spot us, they'll probably mistake us for a small plane or something."

Piper glanced over her shoulder, cocking her eyebrows. "You sure about that?"

"Yeah, pretty sure. But I do have amnesia so don't trust me," I admitted, clutching the picture of Thalia tighter in my hands. Piper looked at it, before shooting me a quizzical look. I blushed, putting the photo into the pocket with the stuffed toy, zipping it up securely so that neither could fall out. "We're making good time. Probably get there by tonight."

Piper looked like she wanted to say something, a question on her lips and I waited for her to speak. She tripped over her words a few time, before finally settling on; "Where are we heading?"

"To find the god of the North Wind," I replied, nodding to reassure myself. North Wind god, storm spirits then onto California where Juno, no Hera, would be waiting. "And chase some storm spirits."

We could do all that in three days. Easy. So easy. Who could be nervous about that? Definitely not me.

∘☽༓☾∘

Hiya,

Cress is having fun and I'm so excited to get more into this now. Yeah, a little bit of a shorter chapter, but it is what it is!

Let me know what you think,

Love Li xx