Battle Of Hearts

Chapter 7: Blame the fire, not me.

"Both parents?" Chiron asks

"Uh, yeah. Military father, stay at home mother. 4 siblings." I told him. why the fuck am i explaining my family story to this man! i mentally scold myself for my stupidity till he snaps me out of it

"Sorry for my brashness, but could either be lying? Because last time I checked, all the gods are on Olympus." There is a hint of distrust in his voice but i don't mention it

"If I had to doubt either of my parents, I would say to my dad" he wasn't the best lead, but I looked more like him than I did my mom.

"A lead is a lead" he mutters "great, thank you. You can leave now" before I even leave he starts pacing the floor.

I walk out to find Yeri sitting on the ledge of the porch with a blue pillow in their lap. They were watching the group of kids playing volleyball in the sand, the sun had gone down hours ago but people were still out. The air was cold, reminding me of Illinois. Freshman year had only just started a few weeks ago, and the early fall weather was starting.

"I guess we weren't getting any head starts this year" I tell them sitting myself next to them grabbing a red pillow.

"Definitely not." They said leaning their head back, before jolting straight up hearing a middle aged man in beach clothes yelling "CAMPFIRE" was all the yelled and the kids came running up, and the bonfire lit itself

Mace's new cabin, Apollo cabin, led the camp songs. It was weird seeing him there, even weirder was that I could see a resemblance between him and those kids. Same grin, same energy, and suprise suprise. Most of them were blonde. Something I couldn't get over was their eyes though. Everyone else had the same, almost to a tee light blue eyes.  Jeez Apollos genes were strong. Maybe the red campfire was playing tricks on me, but I swear his were different.

Yeri and I didn't have a cabin yet. So we sat together in the front. No one bothered to come up to us beside Mace to tell us how much fun he was having in his new cabin, and how much more he liked camp than school.

"I dare you to touch the fire" I told Yeri who had been staring into the colorful fire for about 5 minutes now. They snapped out of it real quick.

"Mika, we shouldn't touch the fire"

"C'mon, please. It would be so funny." I tried to do the "pretty privilege" thing that I did at the airport again, I sounded stupid. I had the thought of charmspeak a while ago but thought the this whole thing was fake and let it go. That combined with the idea of having my friend walk into fire. In my head made me seem like a nutcase. But I wanted to see if the fancy fire would hurt. Before I could finish my thought, as if possessed or something, they stood up and walked towards the fire in a trance.

"Holy shit! Yeri!" Instead of putting their hand near it, they decided to try to walk straight in. They were already 1 leg in when I attempted to tackle them out.

We were on the floor when lights started flashing like we were stuck in a disco ball, along with a hologram above their head. Yeri seemed to be stuck in the middle between one side of them having the light sucked out of the air, and the other side glowing bright orange, the only way to explain it was like a halloween display on steroids. I got far enough to see the hologram more clearly, a skull, and a forgery were swirling around in a tight circle.

"Mikayla!" They yelled and pointed above my head and well, around me.

I was glowing in swirls of pink and blue as if I got stuck in a cotton candy machine of something, and above me was a mix of a dove and a caduceus. Fuck. That's not good. And that still hasn't answered who cheated.

Chiron interpreted my thoughts when he ran from one side of the campfire to the other where me and Yeri were lying collapsed on the grass. The campfire had shifted from orange to purple and the entirety of the camp had gotten up from their log seats to surround us.

"That's impossible! You can't be claimed twice" he said from the front of our crowd

"Mace, Yeri, Mika. To the big house after the campfire is done" I knew we weren't in trouble, but this felt awfully familiar to when we would hang out last year.

"I was right!" Made yelled jumping up and down from the back, laughing maniacally. Clearly not too concerned about Yeri's, would be, near death experience. We tried our best to stay calm and enjoy the rest of our first campfire, but it was hard. During some part of my little colorful claiming, I had gone from a black skirt and tank top to a traditional Greek dress, my hair was put up with flowers, and the worst part was that my grown out bleach was completely gone. I didn't mind the look, it was beautiful, but it felt out of place in comparison to the rest of the kids there. To be fair, the glances and whispers didn't help. it felt like school all over again, I couldn't tell if anything they were saying was good or absolutely horrible. All I could do was smile and hope what they were saying was nice. We really don't need a repeat of last year.