too close to the e d g e [luke]

[Avery Reynolds]

"Damn it!"

So, yeah, this had been about the twenty-thousandth time that Avery Reynolds had thrown one of her throwing knives at the target... and missed. And it was really beginning to tick her off. The sun was getting ready to set, and dinner would be starting pretty soon, but Ave simply wouldn't give up. Partially because she was just that stubborn, but partially because she didn't want to head back to her cabin any time soon. First of all, she'd been spending too much time there already, and second, if the day was ending, that meant that it would be time to go to sleep. And Avery didn't want to sleep, because she knew that even if she tried, she would get the same result she'd been getting for the past week or so - nightmares or restless tossing and turning all night.

In turn, it had been about a week since Avery Reynolds had gotten back from her quest with Ryan Simons, and the pair of them had been pretty beaten up upon coming back. The rumors spread rather quickly around here. A lot of campers, while they knew that Ryan and Avery had come back beaten and (in Avery's case) concussed, they had no idea about the details of the quest - what had happened, what had caused all the injuries. All they knew was that Ryan and Avery had left with Aria Hale. And they had come back without her. Rumors flew, and some brave campers had actually approached Avery over the past few days to try and get some truth out of her. Every time they were either met with angry glares or being flipped the bird. Whatever information they wanted, they certainly weren't going to get it from her. And since people were still coming up to her asking about it, it was pretty obvious that Ryan probably wasn't saying much either.

And who wouldn't be curious? After all, people weren't used to seeing Avery with her arm strapped to her chest to keep her from moving her healing wrist, or the way she sometimes stumbled when she walked from lack of sleep, though most of the time they didn't bother to help her because she was already being helped. By none other than Azrael Everett, her local savior and newly found companion.

Right now, of course, she was on her own, attempting to teach herself how to throw her beloved throwing knives at the target with the one hand she had left to use. She'd been out here since the early afternoon, and not once had she hit the target, or hit it hard enough to get a knife to stick in it. Which, in all honesty, meant that if the camp was really in trouble like she was pretty convinced it was (considering as the little midget god of terror Deimos had basically informed them that war had been waged on Camp Half-Blood), and her wrist didn't heal pretty soon, she was completely and utterly screwed. Not that many people around here would care if she got a knife thrust into her back because she was incapable of defending herself with only her left hand to use.

Frustrated beyond belief, Avery went over towards where the knife had landed (she hadn't thrown it far enough, and it had skidded to right underneath the target), picked it up, and thrust it with as much force as she could muster into the bullseye. "There," she snapped at the target, as if this was all its fault. "Maybe I can just ask my enemy to stand still for a sec so I can stab his eye out."