Chaos Rising |BOOK 2| Harry Potter x PJO |Alexandra Marine|

BONUS: THE FIRST DINNER

Just as Tess and I had finished rolling up the spare pieces of scrolls and paper on the floors, half an hour after Lee and Adam had left, a horn blew in the distance.

"About time," Tess muttered. "Dinner. Let's go, Ari."

He was clearly nervous about the games. As we exited, he muttered something about 'crushing the Ares' and other stuff.

We walked to the mess hall pavilion. Satyrs joined us from the meadow. Naiads emerged from the canoeing lake. A few other girls came out of the woods— and when I say out of the woods, I mean straight out of the woods. I saw one girl, about nine or ten years old, melt from the side of a maple tree and come skipping up the hill. In all, there were around thirty campers, a dozen satyrs, dozen wood nymphs and naiads each.

At the pavilion, torches blazed around the marble columns. A central fire burned in a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. Each cabin had its own table, covered in white cloth trimmed in purple. Five of the tables were empty.

At table twelve with Mr. D sat with a few satyrs. Chiron stood to one side, the picnic table being way too small for a centaur.

"Usually the Hermes table is so full people have to half sit on the benches," Tess told me.

"I'm glad I didn't have to wait for mom to claim me," I said, smiling.

People were chatting loudly, murmuring rumors, chanting scenes from dramas, singing in harmony and making fun of each other.

"You should've seen Adam last month," Tess joked, "he had to sit on that corner with half his butt hanging off."

Finally, Chiron pounded his hoof against the marble floor of the pavilion, and everybody fell silent. He raised a glass. "To the gods!"

Everybody else raised their glasses. "To the gods!"

Wood nymphs came forward with platters of food: grapes, apples, strawberries, cheese, fresh bread, and yes, barbecue! My glass was empty, but Tess said, "Speak to it. Whatever you want—nonalcoholic, of course."

I said, "Wild Cherry Pepsi."

The glass filled with sparkling caramel liquid. I raised the glass to my lips. "Awesome."

"Good choice," Tess said. "Pepsi over Coke any day."

We clinked our glasses. "To Pepsi," Tess whispered.

We loaded our plates with brisket, cheese and fruits. Everybody began carrying their plates toward the fire at the center of the pavilion. Everyone was taking a portion of their meal and dropping it into the fire, the ripest strawberry, the juiciest slice of beef, the warmest, most buttery roll.

Tess approached the fire, bowed his head, and tossed in a cluster of fat red grapes and a small piece of brisket. "To the gods."

I was next. I followed Tess, bowed my head, and scraped in some cheese and a large portion of brisket. "To the gods."

It smelled nothing like burning food. It smelled of hot chocolate and fresh-baked brownies, hamburgers on the grill and wildflowers, and a hundred other good things that shouldn't have gone well together, but did. I could almost believe the gods could live off that smoke.

When everybody had returned to their seats and finished eating their meals, Chiron pounded his hoof again for our attention.

Mr. D got up with a huge sigh. "Yes, I suppose I'd better say hello to all you brats. Well, hello. Our activities director, Chiron, says the next capture the flag is today. Cabin five presently holds the laurels."

A bunch of ugly cheering rose from the Ares table.

"Personally," Mr. D continued, "I couldn't care less, but congratulations. Also, I should tell you that we have a new camper today." He turned to me, and for a moment, his usually indifferent face seemed to show some emotion. "Ariana Adler."

Everyone was in shock. They seemed to murmur about something so furiously that whispers turned into a waterfall of noise.

Chiron pounded his hoof against the table, although even he looked shocked.

Mr. D sighed again. "That's right. Hurrah, and all that. Now run along to your silly campfire. Go on."

"What happened?" I asked Tess as we walked to the amphitheater.

"Well," Tess shrugged, "most of the time Mr. D can't even remember his own name. He calls everyone differently all the time. For example, he called me Teddy Yates one time and then at the very end of his sentence, he called me Terrance York."

I laughed.

"So it was kind of a shock he remembered your name," Tess said, smiling. "Must be special."

"Or just a lucky guess," I shrugged.

"Could be both."

"No it couldn't."

Apollo's cabin led the sing-along. We sang camp songs about the gods and ate s'mores and joked around. Later in the evening, when the sparks from the campfire were curling into a starry sky, the conch horn blew again, and we all filed back to our cabins. I didn't realize how exhausted I was until I collapsed on my bed.

"First class tomorrow, Revise Capture the Flag," Tess said, falling on the bed. "Lights off. Goodnight."

"Night," were the last words I remember saying that night.

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