"In Latin my name, Aurelia, basically means 'the golden one.' My mother literally named me her golden light through the storm that was her life. That is my job. To be everyone's light at the end of the tunnel. And I got stuck worrying so much about...
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Aurelia hated feeling helpless.
Her entire childhood, she forced herself to be a beacon of hope and stability for everyone around her—Martina specifically. She suffered through the pain of shouldering the fear, and taught herself to never externalize it. There were many times when her mother would wake up screaming from flashbacks of Iraq, and Aurelia would be the one to calm her down.
Aurelia's whole life was just a never ending cycle of traumatic events. She had built up a wall around herself to keep herself in control of her emotions, and the emotions around her. It was a wall that not even Reyna and Jason were completely able to climb.
But as Aurelia and Hazel supported the weight of a shivering, shell-shocked Percy, Aurelia truly felt like that little girl in Puerto Rico who got awoken at night by her mother incessantly screaming and pleading for her life to end. That was a time where all she could do was take away the fear, and even then it didn't truly help. And now she could influence Percy's emotions to try and calm him down, yet there was no memory to latch onto or remove. Aurelia felt helpless.
And it didn't help that Frank was feeling a similar feeling of uselessness and Hazel's emotions were a nervous wreck as well.
As they got closer to the convenience store, Aurelia realized there was a chance that the rainbow light may return and vaporize them. Now that would be a pathetic way to go. Death by rainbow. Hylla would laugh at her.
Thankfully, the building stayed dark. The snakes Polybotes had dropped seemed to have vanished. They were twenty yards from the porch when something hissed in the green grass behind them.
"Go!" Frank yelled.
Percy stumbled and Aurelia tugged at his arm just to keep him from falling to his knees. Frank knocked an arrow behind her, as Hazel tried to keep Percy standing as well.
Frank blindly shot an arrow. A flare arrow, of all things, which illuminated the monster. Sitting in a patch of withered yellow grass was a lime-colored snake. Its head was ringed with a mane of spiky white fins. The creature stared at Frank's arrow as it zipped past.
Then it fixed its large yellow eyes on Frank. Aurelia forced herself to look away, and to keep climbing up the hill to the convenience store. A new shadow crept onto Aurelia's neck as she felt Frank's fear.
"Frank!" Hazel yelled. "Come on!"
Aurelia turned just in time to see Frank swing his bow at the incoming serpent. He smacked the monster down the hill, and it spun out of sight with a wail. The wood of Frank's bow crumbled to dust.
"We'll never get out here," Frank said, miserably as he climbed up to join them.
"Then, we'd better go in." Hazel pointed to the hand painted sign over the door: RAINBOW ORGANIC FOOD & LIFESTYLES. It was weird, but it was better than poisonous snakes, so they went inside.
