Annabeth met Thalia Grace the same night she met Luke.
She was seven, and it was cold, and she had just run away from her father's and stepmother's house. She had a knife in her hand — that she stole from their kitchen —, a way too packed backpack on her back and a thundering heart that feared everything and only wanted to settle down to a normal, non-aching pace.
She was seven, and both Luke and Thalia offered her a gentle hand, a kind smile, a word of advice. And Thalia offered her, too, a jacket to cover Annabeth's trembling shoulders. A bit bigger than her, because Annabeth had always been frail — there was only so much she could take from her stepmother's fridge before she noticed and freaked out about it — and the hunching of her back made her seem smaller.
She was seven, and they were kind, and Annabeth didn't quite know what to do with that. They were kind, and they didn't yell when talking to her. They were kind, and their eyes never seemed to search for reasons to criticize, to tell her off, to judge the person they saw. They were kind, and they laced her arms with theirs as they walked slowly so she could match their pace. They were kind when they offered her a place to stay, somewhere she would be safe until she needed to go back home.
'Home', one of them had said, and Annabeth had swallowed the pitiful cry that lodged on her throat at the thought. She didn't want to go back, and desperately thought that she would much rather live behind the dumpster where she was hiding than go back to her father's place and realize they wouldn't have noticed she was even gone.
It was the night she first got to camp, arm-in-arm with Luke and Thalia and listening to a new person, Grover, who had found them half-way there and introduced himself, playfully, as their bodyguard. At the time, she didn't think much about the interaction — looking back, though, she realized he had, somehow, sensed her distress and tried to make sure she knew that she was somewhat safe, then, with them, at camp.
A place she had never been to, but the safest she had ever felt in her life.
They were greeted by a tall, black man with white hair and beard and a kind, knowing smile. Chiron, Thalia introduced, was the headmaster at camp Half-Blood, and he looked at her with curiosity, if not empathy glistening in his eyes. He didn't ask more than her name, and didn't question the reasons she was there, where had she come from, whether or not she was planning to stay. Instead, he greeted Thalia, and Luke, and Grover — and Annabeth, I hope you feel welcome here — and told them to meet at the dining hall in half an hour.
"And you might choose a cabin for the night, Ms. Chase," he told Annabeth, his manners and voice and tone so oddly familiar and eerie old-fashioned that it showed some resemblance of comfort to her nerves and racing thoughts.
Grover and Luke walked to the main house, and left Annabeth and Thalia behind. Probably because Grover had sensed the sudden overwhelming of her mind and Luke wouldn't debate Thalia's pointed look, but she was thankful that suddenly there was only a pair of blue eyes watching her intently.
She was seven, and Thalia was the first friend she had ever truly had in her life.
The girl showed Annabeth around camp, walking slowly, and talking slowly and gesturing softly as to not spook her as she showed all the places and parts of the large, large territory of Camp Half-Blood. The strawberry fields, the Big House, the climbing walls, the beach, the training grounds — what for they trained was still a mystery in Annabeth's head — and all twelve cabins that imposed themselves with grace and force.
It was a bit strange, the scene, to say the least. The cabins were nothing like she had expected, the common camping ones, made out of wood and of quite simple architecture, no; instead, they were grand and imponent and each their own way — all twelve ones had a huge symbol in front, and they all oddly reminded her of Greek stories and tales and myths.
