EVARA // wtm (DISCONTINUED)

7.5

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ᴍʏ ᴅɪɴɴᴇʀ ɢᴏᴇꜱ ᴜᴘ ɪɴ ꜱᴍᴏᴋᴇ (ᴘᴛ.2)

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Back at cabin eleven, everybody was talking and horsing around, waiting for dinner. For the first time, I noticed that a lot of the campers had similar features: sharp noses, upturned eyebrows, mischievous smiles. They were the kind of kids that teachers would peg as troublemakers.

Thankfully, nobody paid much attention to me as I walked over to my spot on the floor and plopped down with my minotaur horn.

The counsellor, Luke, came over. He had the Hermes family resemblance, too. It was marred by that scar on his right cheek, but his smile was intact.

"Found you a sleeping bag," he said. "And here, I got the twins to steal you some toiletries from the camp store."

I couldn't tell if he was kidding about the stealing part.

"He wasn't" chorused the Weasley twins as they grinned at each other

I said, "Thanks."

"No prob." Luke sat next to me, pushed his back against the wall. "Tough first day?"

"I don't belong here," I said. "I don't even believe in gods."

"Yeah," he said. "That's how we all started. Once you start believing in them? It doesn't get any easier."

"That much is true"

The bitterness in his voice surprised me, because Luke seemed like a pretty easygoing guy. He looked like he could handle just about anything.

"So your dad is Hermes?" I asked.

He pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket, and for a second I thought he was going to gut me, but he just scraped the mud off the sole of his sandal. "Yeah. Hermes."

"The wing-footed messenger guy."

"That's him. Messengers. Medicine. Travelers, mer-chants, thieves. Anybody who uses the roads. That's why you're here, enjoying cabin eleven's hospitality. Hermes isn't picky about who he sponsors."

I figured Luke didn't mean to call me a nobody. He just had a lot on his mind.

"Yeah" scoffed Astrea, "clearly he had a lot going on."

"You ever meet your dad?" I asked.

"Once."

I waited, thinking that if he wanted to tell me, he'd tell me. Apparently, he didn't. I wondered if the story had any-thing to do with how he got his scar.

Luke looked up and managed a smile. "Don't worry about it, Percy. The campers here, they're mostly good people. After all, we're extended family, right? We take care of each other."

With another scoff, Astrea got off her seat and stormed out the hall. Apollo followed after her with an apologetic smile at the others.

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The halls were quiet as the Black heiress moved through the corridors making her wince slightly as she heard her own breathing and the pattering of her footsteps.