the winemaker's daughter [ percy jackson & the olympians ]

chapter thirty-nine

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚆𝙸𝙽𝙴𝙼𝙰𝙺𝙴𝚁'𝚂 𝙳𝙰𝚄𝙶𝙷𝚃𝙴𝚁༉‧₊˚.[𝙿𝙴𝚁𝙲𝚈 𝙹𝙰𝙲𝙺𝚂𝙾𝙽 & 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙾𝙻𝚈𝙼𝙿𝙸𝙰𝙽𝚂]

chapter thirty-nine: the rest of the summer is somewhat odd. btw we found a dragon!

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IT TOOK annabeth to smooth things out a bit for percy and ashanti.

specifically, for a game of capture the flag.

ashanti and percy took turns taking care of mrs. o'leary, but actively avoided each other like the literal plague. of course, the dionysus girl wanted to be around him, and be near him. but it hurt in an odd way. but, when she wasn't seeing him around, when they were actively avoiding one another, that hurt, too.

it was the end of june, and they'd been back from the labyrinth for about two weeks. things were weirdly back to normal. they went back to daily activities; archery, rock climbing, pegasus riding. satyrs were chasing the dryads. monsters howled in the woods. the campers were playing pranks on one another, and ashanti's dad, their camp director, was turning anyone who misbehaved into a shrub. your normal, typical summer camp.

it was after dinner one night, and all the campers were hanging out in the dining pavilion. see, they were all mega-excited as that evening, capture the flag was going to be an absolute blood bath. the night before, the hephaestus cabin had pulled off a huge upset; they'd captured the flag from the ares cabin with the help of percy, of course. it meant the ares cabin would be out for more blood than usual.

on the blue team was the hephaestus cabin, the apollo cabin, and the poseidon cabin, which was just percy since tyson had went to visit the underground forges for a couple days before returning. on the red tea, was athena and ares, two war god cabins, along with aphrodite, dionysus, and demeter. athena's cabin held the other flag, and annabeth was captain.

ashanti was beyond delighted when the athena girl's first stop was to ask for dionysus' allegiance with athena. the demigoddess was more than happy to obliged. though, she quickly changed her mind when annabeth dragged her along to razz percy, and hopefully rattle their team.

the two of them approached percy shoulder-to-shoulder in full battle armor. "hey, seaweed brain," the athenian greeted him with a teasing smile.

"will you stop calling me that?" was the response they received. almost everyone knew how much the poseidon boy hated the name, but only annabeth and ashanti knew it was because he couldn't come up with anything good in return. he sucked when it came to that.

"is 'fish guts' any better?" ashanti asked him, the name sounding almost foreign as she never used it much anymore. he looked up at her, green eyes blown wide in shock. he slowly shook his head. trying to be somewhat casual, she bumped his shoulder, "it's not that bad."

her braids were neatly pulled back into a pony-tail, though percy wondered when she found time to crinkle them. she'd told him before that whenever she was feeling a bit tired of how they looked straight, she'd change it up a bit. all percy could say was despite the battle armor, which he absolutely swore no one could make look attractive, she looked absolutely gorgeous.

"tell you what," annabeth said, as if she were telling a secret. "i was talking to shanti, and we agreed. if you pick a safe position...like right flank, for instance...we'll make sure you don't get pulverized too much."