EVARA // wtm (DISCONTINUED)

8

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ᴡᴇ ᴄᴀᴘᴛᴜʀᴇ ᴀ ꜰʟᴀɢ (ᴘᴛ.1)

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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.

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

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 de-snag a stray arrow out of his tail.

"It's okay, at least you managed to hit the arrow somewhere in front?" Poseidon tried to talk to him

"He was standing behind me." deadpanned Percy

Foot racing? No good either. The wood-nymph instruc-tors 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. And wrestling? Forget it. Every time I got on the mat, Clarisse would pulverise me.

"There's more where that came from, punk," she'd mumble in my 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 counsellors 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 metalwork or—gods forbid— Dionysus's way with vine plants. 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.

"Hey! What do you mean gods forbid!" Castor and Pollux yelled out at Percy who smiled apologetically at them

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....

I started to understand Luke's bitterness and how he seemed to resent his father, Hermes. So okay, maybe gods had important things to do. But couldn't they call once in a while, or thunder, or something?

All the gods turned to Zeus and glared as the said immortal pushed himself back in the chair to hide himself.

Dionysus could make Diet Coke appear out of thin air. Why couldn't my dad, who-ever he was, make a phone appear?