Percy Jackson and the lightning thief

We capture a flag [Percy]

The next few days, we settled into a routine that felt almost normal, if you don't count the fact that we were getting lessons from satyrs, nymphs, and a centaur.

Each morning I took Ancient Greek from Annabeth and Jade, and we talked about the gods and goddesses in the present tense, which was kind of weird. I discovered they 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, and considering that I was trained by the goddess and god of archery I was really good. The Chiron tried to teach Harry archery, but we found out pretty quick he wasn't any good with a bow and arrow. It was that bad he has a rule now he's not allowed anywhere near archery range. Chiron didn't complain, even when he had to desnag a stray arrow out of his tail.

Foot racing? We were both good at. The wood-nymph instructors were quite the competition. They told us they'd had centuries of practice running away from lovesick gods. But still, we weren't slower than a tree.

And wrestling? Forget it (not for me for Harry) Every time I got on the mat, I would beat almost everyone. I mean I have 7 years of karate so kinda no surprise there. But when it got to Clarisse she would pulverize me. In my defence she's older and an ares kid. 

You beat everyone else and aren't we the youngest ones here? 

"There's more where that came from, punk," she'd mumble in my ear.

Harry on the other hand was just shit. That's why I told him he should do martial arts with me.

The only thing we really really really 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 counselors were watching me, trying to decide who our 'dad' was, but they weren't having an easy time of it. I was almost as strong as the Ares kids, and really good at archery as the Apollo kids. Except Harry wasn't good at any of those. Unless we had different godly parents despite being being twins. Which kinda makes sense since we're blessing demigods not biological demigods. We sorta have Hephaestus 's skill with metalwork. And thank gods we didn't
Dionysus 's way with vine plants. Luke told me we might be children 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. And I heard most of the older kids whispering about how they were sure of my parents till archery. Something about Athena's archery curse on Poseidon children.

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 fake dad. Nothing came. I tried not to think too much about my aunt, 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 most of the gods, 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 our fake dad, who-ever he was, make a phone appear? It might be a bit early to say that if there was a resistance I would totally join.

Thursday afternoon, three days after I'd arrived at Camp Half-Blood, we had our first (actual camp) sword-fighting lesson. Everybody from cabin eleven gathered in the big circular arena, where Luke would be our instructor.
We started with basic stabbing and slashing, using some straw-stuffed dummies in Greek armor. At least, we understood what the basics, what we were supposed to do and my reflexes were good.