Confused by Time

Chapter 1

Annabeth narrowed her eyes down at the design before her, spinning a pencil between her fingers as she considered the changes to Apollo's Temple on Olympus that the god had requested. Another statue in the main atrium of the building, as if the god didn't already have enough dotted through his Temple. Still, Annabeth always tried to consider the mercurial opinions of the gods on their Temples on Olympus and if Apollo wanted another naked statue of himself in the main atrium then he would get one.

When Annabeth had accepted the offer to rebuild Olympus after the war against the Titans three-hundred years ago, she hadn't initially anticipated it taking all this time. At first she'd taken to the challenge with a focus that ignored everything else, entrenched in her designs and hunched over Daedalus' laptop for hours at a time until Percy would drag her away from her work with his crooked, troublemaker grin, telling her that she needed to take a break.

Annabeth wished now that she'd spent more time with him. It hadn't been long before December had rolled around and then Hera had stolen Percy and the war against Gaea kicked off – which had taken Percy away from her again, this time without any reunion when he'd been forced to stay behind in Tartarus.

The only information Annabeth received now was the updates from Nico whenever the son of Hades would drop by Camp Half-Blood between the tasks his father set him. And all Nico ever knew was 'He's still alive', which at least relieved Annabeth, but also always left her worried.

Annabeth sighed as she looked at the laptop before her, a new model from Hephaestus that was heavily modified and adapted to allow her to do her designing for Olympus with a 3-D and fully interactive model projected above the laptop itself. It was a marvel of technology, but Annabeth turned the base statue of Apollo in a circle without really seeing it properly, unable to bring herself to start.

A loud crash and screams from outside through the open window gave Annabeth an excuse to close the laptop with a faint frown, the projected image shutting itself down. Annabeth rose and descended down from the third floor of the Athena cabin, which was her workshop for her Olympus designs.

The cabin door opened sharply, a dozen of her young siblings stamping through. Annabeth raised an eyebrow, noting their soaked clothes and the water dripping puddles onto the floor. "Canoeing didn't go well?" She guessed.

One of them turned angry grey eyes towards Annabeth. "Poseidon's kids think they're so funny," she said, anger darkening her tone as she tried to wring lake water out of her hair. "Pulling us down into the lake," she muttered angrily as Annabeth started down the lower stairs onto the ground floor.

One of the younger boys shouted in surprise as he pulled a small fish out of his shorts pockets. Eyes wide, he rushed the little fish out of the door. Two of their siblings hurried after them, hopefully to make sure nothing happened between the young Athena camper and the Poseidon kids who'd no doubt be lingering around the lake still.

Annabeth sighed. She pressed her lips together, nodding slightly. "Make sure you're all dried off before dinner," she said tiredly. "I'll speak to them." And Chiron. But with so many campers around now, it was difficult for Chiron to wrangle them all. Annabeth had no doubt that without her and the other immortal campers that Chiron would have had many more problems with the teens he had to keep under control. Barely a day seemed to pass without one of the cabins antagonising another, it was clearly just now the time for Poseidon's children to bully Athena's.

Following from the defeat of Gaea, the gods of Olympus had granted a form of half-immortality upon each of the Seven and other significant figures at both Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter, for as long as they helped to raise the next generations of half-bloods after the two last wars had heavily reduced both the Greek and Roman demigod populations. At least, that was the official reasoning from Zeus. Annabeth suspected he only wanted to avoid a repeat of the Luke Castellan incident and that Olympus was using the immortal campers to encourage loyalty to the gods in the new generations of demigods. Now three-hundred years of relative peace had lasted and the two demigod camps had seen a rapid population increase, including with children of the Big Three.