soft spot

chapter ten: a win for the Ares cabin

Silena

By the time they reached the big house where two Apollo campers were, presumably acting as the camp's medics for this game, Chiron had already blown the whistle, signalling an end to the game. "AND THE ARES CABIN WINS ALONG WITH IT'S ALLIES, CABIN FOUR, CABIN TWELVE AND CABIN NINE!" Chiron announced which just made Silena roll her eyes, as she was guided inside with the help of the two boys and the Apollo campers. She felt so useless right now, I mean she'd barely done anything except stand there and look like some stupid bimbo who was just there on her first day. She knew that she was still new, but she'd been there for at least two weeks now and she still felt like she barely knew anything, in fact every time Lizzie tried to get her to try out something at camp she'd fail miserably.

She'd tried archery first and almost shot someone in the eye, luckily they'd managed to duck before the arrow had hit them, so it just lodged into a nearby tree. Then she attempted to make something in the forges, although she nearly burnt her hand off, fortunately some nice kid had helped her, though she never caught his name, he looked kind. Then she'd tried sword fighting which went a bit better, but every single sword she used was too heavy for her, she needed one that was thinner and longer. She'd also tried strawberry picking but ended up eating most of them, which caused Lola-rose to scold her a lot. However, all of these feeble attempts at trying to figure out who her godly parent was weren't working, and honestly she'd never felt like such a failure before.

If she couldn't even figure out who her own mother was then how was she supposed to fit into this camp? She sighed, lying down on the bed while one of the Apollo campers fed her some nectar which tasted like her dad's chocolate and the other Apollo camper bandages her poor, twisted ankle up. Something else pissed her off though about how poorly she'd performed in that game, and that was how Clarisse had seemed disappointed in her, she'd expected the girl to taunt her, to laugh at her, instead she'd just been serious and had actually been disappointed in her like she expected more of her, which she wasn't sure why Clarisse would ever expect more of her, considering she was still fairly new, but maybe it was how she'd acted like she could defend herself before when she'd just been talking and using her words in a way that she could easily manipulate people into believing she was something that she wasn't.

"So...did Clarisse push you over?" One of the boys from before asked, this time the slightly taller one, and now she could tell in this lighting that they had dark brown curly hair not black. She decided to shake her head and tell them the embarrassing truth, after all she wasn't going to get anything out of lying apart from maybe Clarisse having a go at her for lying and maybe a few more sympathy points. "No, I fell over a tree root" she told them with a smile, trying not to laugh, although that was broken when they both started laughing too, covering their mouths, though their contagious grins were too large to hide, going from ear to ear. "How did you fall over a tree root?" The other one, who was shorter, asked her, as she giggled, shrugging before she replied, "honestly I don't know, I think i just couldn't see it and Clarisse was coming towards me with her spear so I was a bit scared" she wasn't sure if it was a good idea admitting that she'd been scared as fuck off Clarisse in that moment, but she decided these two boys didn't seem like they liked Clarisse so it was surely safe to admit that to them. Nodding, the other one, the taller one, replied empathetically, "yeah, Clarisse can be a bit scary sometimes" she smiled, feeling a bit better now that she'd got conformation that they also thought Clarisse could be scary.

"You know I remember when we first arrived last summer, Clarisse was trying to get claimed or whatever and trying to prove herself so she thought she could target us as the new kids" the other one, the shorter one, started explaining as his twin, she presumed, added, "so she tried pranking us by sticking slime all over our stuff, but we figured it out and-" the other one, the shorter one, cut in, adding to the story, "and we stole the slime and put it all over her stuff instead, we even put in-"the taller one interrupted, finishing off the thrilling story, "in her hair too!" All three of them burst into loud, contagious laughter instantly after the story. She couldn't believe that one, they'd actually pranked Clarisse and two, that Clarisse had fallen for it, I mean in her opinion Clarisse seemed a bit arrogant but definitely not stupid, although perhaps that arrogance had lead to her getting pranked.