You Can't Choose Your Family (On Hold)

Chapter 2: Camp Half-Blood

Chapter Two: Camp Half-Blood

Julie came running outside. When she spotted me she ran awkwardly. Almost like she was galloping. I looked at her legs. She had changed her pants into something furry. When I looked closer, her legs were the furry things. And she was galloping, if that’s what you would call it.

“You’re a-a… sheep?” I asked.

“No! For the love of the gods! Why can’t anyone ever just get it right? No. I’m a satyr. And I’m half goat. Blah-ha-ha!” She bellied.

I looked at her in horror. “But… you… I…” I couldn’t finish a complete sentence no matter how hard I tried.

“Okay, come on. We have to get you to camp. But that’s quit a ways away. I don’t want to call the Gray Sisters. That would just freak you out even more than necessary. Um… how would you feel about taking a ride on a Pegasus?”

“A Pegasus?” I asked. I got a strange vision in my head of what I thought that one would look like. I wasn’t too keen on the idea.

“A flying horse.” That changed my perspective a little.

“Why not? I guess it’s better than the Gray Sisters.” I laughed jokingly. I had heard about them a lot.

“Trust me, just about anything is better than that.” she said seriously. “What time is it?” She checked her watch. “Ugh, it’s too late to catch Apollo.” She seemed truly sad about that, which made me wonder if Julie liked Apollo, whoever he was. It never occurred to her who he might actually be.

“Alright. Two Pegasus coming up.” She took out a phone. “Um, I really shouldn’t use one of these with you so close, but… yeah. I need to. Keep your sword out incase any other monsters decide to show up. Be ready.” She called someone and asked to speak to someone named Chiron. What an odd name. “Okay. They should be here any second.” “How far away are they?” I asked.

“They stay in Long Island Sound.”

“Long Island! That’s three hours away! By car!”

“So. Oh. Oops! I forgot, that you’ve never been to camp.” she laughed. “Pegasus travel, like, really fast. You’ll see. You might want to close your eyes while flying though. The first time is always the worst.” I took a mental note of this while I watched for anymore monsters.

It didn’t take the Pegasus very long to arrive. Maybe, five minutes. They were the size of a regular horse with a large wingspan. One horse was jet black, while the other was snowy white.

“This one is Blackjack. You can ride him. He is very friendly, don’t worry. Black Jack, please don’t stop for anything on our way there.” The horse, Pegasus, whinnied a complaint. “I don’t care how hungry you are! There’s food back at camp.” Another whiney. “No! No donuts either!”

I looked at Julie incredulously. “So you can to talk to animals now too?”

Julie blushed, “Yeah. That’s part of being a satyr.” I, for some reason, wasn’t all that surprised.

I got on the Pegasus with a little difficulty. I told Black Jack to take me to Camp, and immediately he jumped into the air and started flying at an imposable speed. In five minutes they landed. Which was hard for me to tell since my eyes was shut as tight as they would go. Julie had to nudge her shoulder to let her know. When I opened my eyes I got the worst feeling of being absolutely alone. I also felt like some kind of outcast. A man on a horse rode up. Or that’s what it looked like. When I looked closer, I saw that it was half man-half horse. He was in his late thirties perhaps.