a story as endless as the ocean . pjo / allie jackson

2.1 the beginning of the end

2.1 The Completed Prophecy Brings Forth a New Set of Challenges and Stress

We were the first heroes to return alive to Half-Blood Hill since Luke's own quest, so of course, everybody treated us as if we'd won some reality-TV contest. According to camp tradition, we wore laurel wreaths to a big feast prepared in our honor, then led a procession down to the bonfire, where we got to burn the burial shrouds our cabins had made for us in our absence.

Luke's shroud was metallic white and emerald green, with a pair of winged sneakers on the front. It gave off a weird reptilian scent while it burned.

Being the daughter of Poseidon, I didn't have any cabin mates, so my friends had all volunteered to work together to make my shroud. It was absolutely beautiful, made of long sea green silk and embroidered with a golden trident. Silena cried in dismay when we burned it, though for the rest of us it was fun to burn them, in a very morbid kind of way. Like I was sticking up my finger at everyone who thought I would fail in quest, including myself.

As Apollo's cabin led the sing-along and passed out s'mores, I was surrounded by all of my friends and Grover's satyr buddies, who were admiring the brand-new searcher's license he'd received from the Council of Cloven Elders. The council had called Grover's performance on the quest "Brave to the point of indigestion. Horns-and-whiskers above anything we have seen in the past."

Even Dionysus's welcome-home speech wasn't enough to dampen my spirits. "Yes, yes, so the little brat didn't get herself killed and now she'll have an even bigger head. Well, huzzah for that. In other announcements, there will be no canoe races this Saturday..."

I moved all of my stuff from home into cabin three, but it didn't feel so lonely anymore. My car was parked right on the road near Camp Half-Blood. At first, Chiron didn't want it out there, just in case a monster or something got to it, but I convinced him I didn't care if it got damaged and if it was inside camp borders the Stoll Brothers would probably do much more damage than a monster.

I had my friends to hang with during the day, and Luke regularly snuck into my room to sleep in my bed with me. Though, I would be shocked if Chiron didn't know he'd been doing it since we got back. At first, it wasn't every night, but every so often one of us would get a nightmare and he'd be knocking at my door. When he realized that he couldn't always just guess whenever I'd have a nightmare and also couldn't just sneak into the Hermes cabin, we'd silently decided to make it an every night thing. We'd gotten used to being together during our quest, so being apart was weird. I got up at five every morning, anyway, so it's not like anyone ever caught us.

I spoke with Chiron, and agreed to stay year-round, but I would have permission to go on little trips outside. Apparently, it was an allowance given to children of Poseidon, as otherwise, we tended to go stir-crazy and run away after destroying something. So, while I would live mostly at camp, I would be able to leave and go to Columbia on the days I had to and I'd get to visit my East Hampton beach house whenever I wanted since it was only half an hour away.

As much as I loved Camp, it was still a huge relief to have that safety net available. I don't think I could cope with being in one place constantly, even this place.

On the Fourth of July, the whole camp gathered at the beach for a fireworks display by cabin nine. Being Hephaestus's kids, they weren't going to settle for a few lame red-white-and-blue explosions. They'd anchored a barge offshore and loaded it with rockets the size of Patriot missiles.

According to Luke, who'd seen the show several times before, the blasts would be sequenced so tightly they'd look like frames of animation across the sky. The finale was supposed to be a couple of hundred-foot-tall Spartan warriors who would crackle to life above the ocean, fight a battle, then explode into a million colors.