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Waiting for a god to claim his child, to take responsibility for the fruit of his labor, was no unusual circumstance for the children in Camp Half-Blood. The waiting, Althea knows, too shall pass. But she has been idly expecting even just a hint of recognition for far too long—as the days turn to weeks and weeks turn to months, which turn to years, so weary does Althea's heart grow as her faith flickers out: a candle to the wind. A faceless girl, a fatherless daughter, an abandoned child, the labels stick to Althea like little stickers, superglued marks of shame. Her toughened skin and fearless demeanor are testaments to the trials the gods have put her through. She has lived to tell the tale, something she considers quite remarkable (she gives herself a pat on the back because no one else will). She was the prodigal daughter, the illegitimate child in a centuries-old succession, and had no choice but to watch miserably as the wicked winds of the north terrorized the faith she held close to her heart as her life, the tragedy, played out in front of her. She was raised on three key fundamentals: follow the gods and they will reward you, keep your head down and your chin up, and most importantly, family first. The messages were beaten into her head until they stuck without the consent of Althea, filling every fiber of her being with the repeated mantras of the Lim household.
And this is the biology of Althea Lim.
Follow the gods and they will reward you. This one, Althea thought to herself rather snarkily, had been proven time and time again to be an empty promise of false hope. In all her years of existence, Althea had followed this rule to a tee: she gave her best offerings at meal times, revered the gods in her every action, and prayed desperately that maybe her father would claim her someday. It was all she asked of such great deities—a sense of belonging. A sense of being wanted, of being home. Alas, perhaps the entire crux of Althea's existence was to be the hero of a tragedy: miserable, lost, desolate. It seemed that she was not in the favor of the Fates, ever so cruel in their mysterious ways that Althea hated so. There were no rewards to be reaped as a loyal follower of the Ancient Greek gods. Try as she might, she was not built for the life of loving them (or anyone, for that matter)—namely because her pushing and shoving and yelling and screaming and begging for love was largely ignored by the one she needed it most desperately from.
