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“This is not how I pictured my day going,” Percy muttered as he tried to find something resembling a comfortable position on the ancient tree branch.
There was some not-so-light grumbling from the branches below, followed by a clearly perturbed Son of Hades asking, “really?”
Percy resisted the urge to look down, keeping his gaze fixed on the blue winter’s sky above. “Well-” He winced as his words were drowned out by the disturbing (and yet amusing) mixture of a roaring dragon and the crowing of a rooster. “The dragon-rooster was a surprise.”
“Cockatrice,” Nico huffed as branches creaked and claws tore away bark from the trunk of the tree. “It’s a cockatrice. And this is your fault.”
Percy shrugged as he fixated on a puffy white cloud that vaguely looked like snowman if he squinted his eyes, cocked his head slightly to the left, and ignored the fact it looked nothing like a snowman. “Yeah… Can’t argue with you on that.”
The day had started out pretty great. He and Nico had been crashing at Hazel and Frank’s place while Nico was taking care of some of his duties as Ambassador of Pluto (read: Nico wanted to see Hazel and Reyna for the holidays, but the only way he could get some time with the latter was to scare the senate) and every morning started with an absolutely amazing home-cooked breakfast courtesy of his (hopefully) future sister-in-law. While he scarfing down plate-after-plate of cheese grits (he had no idea what a grit was), buttermilk biscuits, and sawmill gravy, and freshly squeezed orange juice, Hazel had mentioned that she and Frank still needed to get a Christmas tree for the apartment.
Thinking it would be a simple task and a way to thank them for the room and board, he volunteered himself and his boyfriend to acquire a tree.
So, after a mid-morning carbohydrate-induced nap, he and Nico went to the nearest Christmas tree lot.
Nico’s bottomless bank account be damned, there was no way in Tartarus they were paying $150.00 for a stick straight out of A Charlie Brown Christmas…
With only a little bit of convincing (because Nico still thought a cup of coffee should cost a dime), he got the Son of Hades to shadow travel them to the forests of Northern California to get the perfect (read: free) Christmas tree.
And for a few hours, they had quite a bit of fun. Each of them picking out what they considered to be the perfect tree while the other pointed out the flaws. It was all in good nature, and some of their critiques were nothing short of absurd. Nico saying one tree was too green, while Percy said one gave him “Kronos vibes.”
At one point they thought they settled on the mother of all Christmas trees, the kind that department stores would kill for, but they slowly realized that the twenty-plus-foot-tall tree would be a bit of a snug fit in the apartment with eight-foot-tall ceilings. Not to mentioned the fact that the base of the tree would occupy over half the living room. They briefly discussed getting it for Reyna’s office, but a chill ran down their spines at the mention of the praetor’s name.
Finally, after another two hours of searching and playful bickering, they found the perfect tree. A rich, verdant thing that was slim enough to be placed comfortably in a corner, and just tall enough that Hazel and Nico could place a star or angel atop it if they stood on their tiptoes. He didn’t say that list bit aloud, but Nico knew what he was thinking and shot him a pointed glare.
And that was when the trouble began…
First off, they didn’t have an axe, hatchet, chainsaw, or really anything suited to cut down a tree. If they were smart, they would have simply left, got an appropriate tool, and then got another tree. But when he and Nico were together, their collective brain cell count tended to go in the negative, so they decided the tree was just too perfect to lose.
Second, they determined that Riptide was the only weapon they had between them that could cut the tree. A quick test swing on another tree determined that Nico’s Stygian Iron sword was just as potent against flora as it was with monsters. The test tree’s needles popping off like a porcupine’s quills as its trunk and branches shriveled up. So, he was left to repeatedly whack the thick tree trunk by himself. The Celestial Bronze blade surprisingly ineffective against the pine.
Third, after his fifteenth’s whack (when he was about a quarter of the way through!) a hissing and cawing something fell out of the tree’s branches. He didn’t get a good look at it, only seeing a mix of rooster feathers and snakeskin, before Nico spun him around and shouted for them to run.
Being that Nico always had his best interest at heart, he pumped his legs as fast they would carry him. Pulling the Italian behind him by the hand.
As they ran through the grove, Nico shouted him that no matter what happened, he was not to look back. Before he could argue that he wouldn’t leave Nico behind no matter what, Nico pointed to large, non-pine tree ahead of them and said they needed to climb up it.
That was two hours ago…
“We should have just bought that tree,” Nico sighed as the chicken-sized monster bawked, hissed, and ba-kawed below.
“But we wouldn’t have the memory,” Percy smiled as he searched the clouds for one that actually looked like something. “Soooo… you said that thing is a cock-trike?” He asked after several minutes of fruitless searching; every cloud looking like Ditto from Pokemon. “And looking at it kills you. So how do we beat it?”
“Cockatrice,” Nico corrected with an audible grin. “And, uh, we don’t?”
Percy sat a bit straighter and once more had to resist the urge to look down. “We what?”
Nico sighed as he shifted position on the branch. “There are only two safe ways to slay a cockatrice. The first is the crowing of a rooster. For whatever reason, cockatrices cannot handle the crowing of a rooster.”
“And here’s me without my pet rooster,” Percy snorted. “What’s the other way?”
“Weasels,” the Son of Hades snorted in turn. “Weasels are immune to the sight of a cockatrice. They’re like mongooses to cobras. They fight on sight.”
“Nico, I’ve never seen a weasel in my-” He stopped mid-sentence as a thought suddenly hit him. “Does Hazel still hangout with Gale?”
“Thankfully no. And Gale is a polecat, not a weasel.”
“...Is there a difference?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Nico sighed. “But either way, Hazel doesn’t even know where we are.”
“Sooooo-”
“We’re stuck here until I can shadow travel us out of here. I just need to rest a bit more.”
“Take all the time you need, babe,” Percy said in what he hoped was a reassuring voice. “We got no place to be.”
They settled into a comfortable semi-silence, the furious dragon-rooster still crying out while kicking at the tree preventing it to be a true silence. Despite his best efforts, his imagination refused to see the clouds as anything different than the shape-shifting Pokemon, so he began to search his surroundings for something else to distract and entertain him. Transitioning Riptide from pen-to-sword and back was enthralling for time, but quickly lost its appeal. Picking at the tree bark was little better, but when he tilted his head back, he made a discovery.
Scattered about the tree’s canopy were dozens of pears, ranging in color from bright yellow to brilliant green.
Careful as he could be, Percy stood up on the branch. Keeping one hand on the tree trunk to keep his balance, he reached up and plucked the ripest fruit within reach. Despite being as ginger with it as possible, the tips of his fingers sank into the soft flesh, the sweet juices within leaking out. He carefully sat back down, and passed the fruit to his other hand, and then licked his juice-slick fingers. The sweet delicious nectar forcing him to moan in pleasure.
“Percy, what are you-”
Before his boyfriend could finish the question, Percy lowered his arm, placing the pear in front of the younger teen’s face.
“On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me! Some demigods in a pear tree!” He sang with a laugh. “Try it, Neeks! They’re freak’n amazing!”
“That was terrible,” Nico groaned before taking a bite of the offered fruit. “But this is great!” He cried before hastily and happily taking another bite.
Suddenly, Percy thought of new way to entertain himself. “How about… On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me! A cockatrice chasing me up a pear tree!”
“That’s… a little better?” Nico asked between bites. “But I would have to question if they’re my true love after that.”
“Then how about… On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me! A date in a pear tree!”
“This is worse than the jar,” Nico groaned before it turned into a laugh. “How about: On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me! An errand to pick out a tree!”
“Not bad!” Percy laughed. “But how about: on the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me! A monster living in a tree!”
“Me wishing for a weasel in a tree!”
“A rooster to set me free!”
“Oh! That’s a good one, Neeks!”