The Little Lightning Girl

52- My Secrets Were Kept Too Well

I stayed in Maya's room that night. Percy led me to Maya's room after dinner, even went so far as to carry my bag for me. The room was exactly what I would have expected of my friend. The walls were a soft seafoam blue, the bedding white and the pillowcases deep blue. The only furniture in the room was a white dresser by the window and a corner bookshelf filled with alphabetized selections. Percy put my bag on the foot of the bed, "There's a bathroom across the hall, please make yourself at home. In the morning I'll take you and Adrian to camp."

Exhaustion weighed heavily on my bones, but I mustered a smile, "Thank you, very much. I'm sorry for intruding like this-"

The man waved away my apologies, his green eyes sparkling, "It's our pleasure, Alana. You're welcome anytime, and I mean that."

The door shut with a soft click behind him. I'd have loved nothing more than to collapse into bed, but I opened my bag and began rummaging instead. With the extension charm I'd cast on the backpack, rummaging took too long so I ended up summoning things out of the bag with an Accio charm. A tanktop and spandex shorts to sleep in, my wand, and my sword disguised as a pen. I wandered across the hall to brush my teeth, and nearly fell asleep standing up while I did the routine task. Needless to say, I didn't stay awake long after I crawled into Maya's bed.

................

I woke at dawn. The white curtains on Maya's bedroom windows didn't do much to block out the sun as it rose, but I'd have gotten up soon enough anyway. I didn't bother to summon a hairbrush out of my bag, wrestling my tangled hair into a braid would be fine for now. Shoving my legs into jeans and a black tank over my head, I made the bed behind me before shouldering my backpack and heading down the stairs. I hadn't expected anyone else to be awake, but Annabeth was already in the kitchen making eggs for breakfast.

"Good morning, Alana," her smile transformed otherwise steely grey eyes into something... softer.

"G'morning," I acknowledged her smile and dropped myself at the dining table, my bag at my feet.

I didn't usually have someone making breakfast for me, so it was a bit of an embarrassing moment when Annabeth placed an egg sandwich in front of me and I jumped a few inches out of my chair. I winced and prepared to apologize, but her laugh cleared the air and I simply began eating. Much to my surprise and delight, I watched as she marked the scars on my shoulders that my tanktop failed to conceal. I watched her dismiss them just as fast. She'd likely seen far worse scars in her life, maybe even had a few herself. Just like that, my heart warmed a little bit more to Adrian's mother.

Adrian wandered down the stairs after I'd taken a few bites and I felt my breath catch. It was a familiar enough sensation that ignoring it was second nature, I'd done the same every time I heard his voice over the phone in the past months. Somehow though, my attention snagged on him when I beheld his dark hair, tousled from sleep, his eyes were bright as he wandered into the kitchen to give his mother a kiss on the cheek before settling at the table next to me.

Soon enough, his parents sat down as well and we all ate together like we had the night before. Conversation was casual and lighthearted. Percy and Annabeth ended up talking about their time at Camp, and about their adventures outside of it. It seemed I wasn't the only demigod with an unfortunate tendency for getting in troublesome situations. Adrian and Maya had already told their parents about me, though not the full story. Percy and Annabeth didn't know that I was also part witch, so I couldn't reciprocate and share my tales for fear of accidentally revealing that. Other than that, breakfast was easy, and when they asked me questions about myself, I stuck as close to the truth as possible.

"So, the kids tell us that you aren't just a demigod, that your grandfather was also a god. How on earth does that work?" Percy asked, his fork having paused halfway to his mouth.

I snorted, "Well, I'm still called a demigod but if you actually want to know about my heritage, my mother would probably be the better person to ask."

This elicited a mixture of laughter and eye-rolling, but Annabeth eventually shook her head, "He only meant to ask what sort of abilities you got from your father and your grandfather."

I finished chewing before setting down my utensils, "Oh, well most of my... abilities come from Zeus's side, but-"

"Zeus!" Percy exclaimed, his eyes wide.

Annabeth tilted her head, "You're a Big Three demigod?"

I leveled a glare on Adrian, who winced enough that I rolled my eyes. He clearly was only trying to protect my secrets, those that he could. But I really didn't care if his parents, both demigods, knew who had fathered me. I'd assumed that they'd known this whole time. Maya and the twins hadn't told them either, I realized. I'd ask about it later.

I rubbed my hands on my jeans and took a breath, "Well, seeing as you don't know as much as I thought, I'll start from earlier on. Apollo and my grandmother, Kalani, had my mother. My mother, years later, got in a relationship with Zeus that produced me. Most of my abilities are sky and weather related, but I do get a bit from Apollo that comes in handy often enough."

"She can't cook and her bedside manner as a nurse sucks," Adrian interrupted but ended up with me elbowing his side, "but you should hear her sing."

I rolled my eyes at his boasting and tried to ignore the curious gazes of his parents. I certainly wasn't going to burst out in song at the breakfast table.

Thankfully, the rest of breakfast passed uneventfully and soon enough, Adrian, Percy and I were rolling down the road towards Camp.

...................

The familiarity of being at Camp Half Blood was wonderful. Singing along with a hundred other voices by a mood-reactive campfire, sprinting through the woods during Capture the Flag, and training underneath that lone leafy tree... the constant activity almost made me forget about that stupid prophecy. But at night when I lay in bed, staring through the skylights, my thoughts wandered back to the dooming prophecy that had haunted me for months now.

The stars became my solace, as they had at Hogwarts. The constellations looked different in New York, but I could still pick out the ones I recognized. It became a habit to get changed into pajamas, then to fly up to the roof of my cabin and lay there. Tonight, I'd summoned a small rain cloud to shower around me, but I only let the drops hit me occasionally, staying mostly dry. I'd also summoned a ball of golden light that, when I let it hover in the middle of my miniature rain storm, reflected beams of sunshine through the raindrops.

I was so lost in the beauty of the rain, and of the stars, that I didn't hear the approaching footsteps until they stopped in front of my cabin.