"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 the cold.
She grew up in the sheltered heat of her hacienda in Puerto Rico before living on the beaches of the Bermuda near the Sea of Monsters and her most current home was sunny California. She wasn't used to the cold winds of Alaska and she hated the chunky Polartec she had to wear, especially because her white one had yellowish-brown stains from the mud.
Aurelia didn't even want to try and salvage the mess that was her beanie—she left it in Hazel's old abandoned house. So now, her ears were freezing and turning pink from the cold as Frank led them to a shopping plaza near the wharf.
While Frank and Percy ordered, Hazel and Aurelia wandered down to the docks and asked some questions. When they came back to the diner, they were in need of cheering up.
"We're in trouble," Hazel said as she picked at her cheeseburger and fries. "We tried to get a boat. But I ... miscalculated."
"No boats?" Frank asked,
"No, we can get a boat," Aurelia murmured munching on her caesar salad. "But the glacier is farther than Hazel thought. Even at top speed, he said we could not make it until tomorrow morning."
Percy turned pale. "Maybe I could make the boat go faster?"
"Even if you could," Hazel said, "from what the captains tell us, it's treacherous—icebergs, mazes of channels to navigate. You'd have to know where you were going."
"Which we do not," Aurelia muttered.
"A plane?" Frank asked.
Both girls shook their heads. "We asked the boat captains about that. They said we could try, but it's a tiny airfield. You have to charter a plane two, three weeks in advance."
They ate in silence after that. Aurelia focused on her meal. Or tried to. Percy had ordered her onion rings and a strawberry milkshake beside her salad but the emotions around their table were so depressing. Then to add to it, an annoying raven settled on a nearby telephone pole and started to croak at them.
She managed to drown it out, but it got worse.
Her arm started to hurt and the annoying cawing turned into a strangled yelp.
Aurelia's necklace was yanked off and Ferrum Temoris was in her hand. Frank got up so fast he almost toppled the picnic table. Percy drew Riptide.
