The Tide (Pjo/Hp)

Chapter 8

"What does she mean by briefly?" Sirius asked, a nervous smile on his face. From what he had watched, the girl seemed to have one bad thing after another happen to her. So what occurred that made her enjoyment brief.

The screen opened up to the sun shining over the Apollo cabin.

The next few days I settled into a routine that felt almost normal, if you don't count the fact that I was getting lessons from satyrs, nymphs, and a centaur.

"It is pretty awkward to get lessons from mythical creatures," Marlene mumbled, she turned to her friends, "Remember divinations?"

It changed to show Percy and Annabeth sitting on a grassy area filled with chairs and desks. Books were littered around them and Annabeth seemed to be pointing something out.

Each morning I took Ancient Greek from Annabeth, and we talked about the gods and goddesses in the present tense, which was kind of weird. I discovered that she was right about my dyslexia: Ancient Greek wasn't that hard for me to read. At least, no harder than English. After a couple of mornings, I could stumble through a few lines of Homer without too much headache. 

The scene changed to show her walking with Chiron.

The rest of the day, I'd rotate through outdoor activities, looking for something I was good at.

The scene once again changed to show Percy holding a wobbling bow that she tried to hold upright.

Chiron tried to teach me archery, but we found out pretty quick I wasn't any good with a bow and arrow. He didn't complain, even when he had to desnag a stray arrow out of his tail.

The scene changed to show her running while nymph after nymph ran past her until she eventually came to a stop, taking in large gulps of air before eventually collapsing.

Foot racing? No good either. The wood-nymph instructors left me in the dust. They told me not to worry about it. They'd had centuries of practice running away from lovesick gods. But still, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a tree.

"You know what?" Leo had a mischievous smirk on his face, "I'm glad that for whatever brought me here," he let out a sinister giggle, "There is so much blackmail material right here."

And wrestling? Forget it. Every time I got on the mat, Clarisse would pulverize me.

The scene changed to show her being flipped over Clarisse's shoulder, landing with a thump before being put into a headlock, "There's more where that came from, punk," she mumbled into a heaving Percy's ear.

The only thing I really excelled at was canoeing, and that wasn't the kind of heroic skill people expected to see from the kid who had beaten the Minotaur.

I knew the senior campers and counselors were watching me, trying to decide who my dad was, but they weren't having an easy time of it. I wasn't as strong as the Ares kids, or as good at archery as the Apollo kids. I didn't have Hephaestus's skill with metal work or-gods forbid- Dionysus's way with vine plants or even Demeter's way with gardening. Luke told me I might be a child of Hermes, a kind of jack-of-all-trades, master of none. But I got the feeling he was just trying to make me feel better. He really didn't know what to make of me either.

The camera swept over the valley. Campers, satyrs and nymphs alike could be seen milling about.

Despite all that, I liked camp. I got used to the morning fog over the beach, the smell of hot strawberry fields in the afternoon, even the weird noises of monsters in the woods at night. I would eat dinner with cabin eleven, scrape part of my meal into the fire, and try to feel some connection to my real dad. Nothing came. Just that warm feeling I'd always had, like the memory of his smile. I tried not to think too much about my mom, but I kept wondering: if gods and monsters were real, if all this magical stuff was possible, surely there was some way to save her, to bring her back....