DAISY || P. Jackson x Fem O/C

1.2 | 𝐈𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬? 𝐖𝐚𝐢𝐭, 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝 - 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐲 𝐠𝐨𝐭 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐝.

 ~⚡~{[CHAPTER TWO]}~⚡~

[Isn't Maiming Against the Rules? Wait, Never mind - Percy got claimed.]

THE NEXT FEW days Percy settled into a routine that felt almost normal, if you don't count the fact that he was getting lessons from satyrs, nymphs and a centaur. Each morning he took Ancient Greek from Annabeth, and they talked about the gods and goddesses in the present tense, which was kind of weird.

He discovered Annabeth was right about his dyslexia: Ancient Greek wasn't that hard for him to read. At least, no harder than English. After a couple of mornings, he could stumble through a few lines of Homer without too much headache. The rest of the day, he'd rotate through outdoor activities, looking for something he was good at. Chiron tried to teach him archery, but they found out pretty quick he 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.

Foot racing? No good either. The wood-nymph instructors left him in the dust. They told him 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 he got on the mat, Clarisse or Daisy - who was surprisingly strong for her size - would pulverize him.

"There's more where that came from, punk," Clarisse would mumble in his ear. The only thing he 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.

He knew the senior campers and counsellors were watching him, trying to decide who his dad was, but they weren't having an easy time of it. He wasn't as strong as the Ares kids, or as good at archery as the Apollo kids. He didn't have Hephaestus's skill with metalwork or – gods forbid Dionysus's way with vine plants, like Daisy did. Luke told him he might be a child of Hermes, a kind of jack-of-all-trades, master of none. But he got the feeling the older boy was just trying to make him feel better. He really didn't know what to make of him either.

Despite all that, he liked camp. He 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. He would eat dinner with cabin eleven, scrape part of his meal into the fire, and try to feel some connection to his real dad. Nothing came. Just that warm feeling he'd always had, like the memory of his smile. He tried not to think too much about his mom, but he 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...

He 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? Dionysus could make Diet Coke appear out of thin air. Why couldn't Percy's dad, whoever he was, make a phone appear?

Thursday afternoon, three days after he'd arrived at Camp Half-Blood, Percy had my first sword-fighting lesson.

Everybody from cabin eleven gathered in the big circular arena, where Luke would be their instructor. They started with basic stabbing and slashing, using some straw-stuffed dummies in Greek armour. He guessed he did okay. At least, he understood what he was supposed to do and his reflexes were good. The problem was, he couldn't find a blade that felt right in his hands. Either they were too heavy, or too light, or too long. Luke tried his best to fix him up, but he agreed that none of the practice blades seemed to work for him.