Bottled Up | PJO

⇝επτά(VII)⇜

"To each their own. Specially in terms of loyalty"

"Demigod's out of bed! Snacks for the harpies!" A few harpies raced around the camp borders chuckling gleefully before they morphed into a one eyed being, a cyclops, clutching a tattered dress. The cyclops was growling, the words lost in the sheer sound of waves. Soon she was waist deep in water before a wave dragged her under the sea. When she regained proper thought she was inside a hamster wheel desperately running away from a glowing golden eye.

Estelle gasped awake, her heart beating wildly in her chest. "Gods!" she hissed to herself, the dream far more realistic than she'd like to see. What with the disappearance of Percy Jackson and co happening no earlier than a day before, the dream felt more like a premonition and less like a figment of her imagination. Dawn was just creeping in based off how Paulina, the daughter of Hemera who slept next to her, had already gotten out of her sleeping bag and tidied herself up.

The spectacled girl cast her a look, "you alright?"

"Sí, sólo tuve un mal- I mean," she shook her head trying to mask her words, "just had a weird dream about flying unicorns"

Paulina gave a light chuckle and ruffled Estelle's hair like she was still a toddler with a wild imagination. The moment was awkward but comforting and soon Paulina had left Estelle in the Hermes cabin staring at the wall while the sunlight barely filtered in through the curtains. It took some contemplation before Estelle dragged herself off the bed, eager to be anywhere but in the cabin, in her sleeping bag right next to Gideon as his button eyes glared at her. Gideon was a stuffed toy Pollux had given to her when he'd first become obsessed with crocheting and surprisingly his last because the creation of the dragon had drained him of all his creative juices. Shoving the purple dragon into her sleeping bag and ungracefully wrapping it up to shove in yet another corner under Nakoa's bed she left the cabin.

Outside the sky was a faint shade of grey with pink streaks just starting to make its mark. It was too early but suddenly she felt motivated to train. Picking up her pace she jogged to the training grounds, noticing how some of the campers were also there by then. Tantalus was thankfully not there, watching them in sadistic pleasure. She hated the man and his orange prison jumper. Mostly though, she was just haunted by the way he was perfectly fine with campers being attacked during the Stymphalian bird incident seeing as she'd been one of them.

She grabbed a set of throwing knives, the only kind of weapon with a blade she could handle for the moment. Most of the time you couldn't train without a trainer or a chaperone but she decided that if worse came to worst she'd just say hi to Michael at the infirmary.

She stepped a bit further into the woods, reminiscent of the trail that led her to an unconscious Percy Jackson an year ago. She'd been exploring the newfound home when she stumbled upon the conversation between Luke and Percy. Luke probably heard her since he didn't wait to finish the job and fled which helped the son of Poseidon to return unscathed. For better or for worse she'd returned back the same trail a few months later to search for a place to practice throwing. Estelle found a fairly rotting tree trunk from which the nature spirit had escaped or abandoned and had ended up hanging up a few sacks for the first months of practice. Now that she'd perfected her throw, not without a few trips to the infirmary with her toes constantly on the verge of falling off, she'd moved to a stiffer target, a relatively hardy tree. The dryad agreed to give her the tree after she offered them some of Connor's secret brew of coffee beans which she hadn't managed to replicate yet.

Gripping her Faka like she would to a hammer she tested her grip, adjusting if she found necessary based off her previous failed or successful attempts. Aiming for a half turn she threw the knife hearing the satisfying thump as it hit the rotting tree. It was like a warmup as she practiced the relatively easier techniques before attempting to do a full turn to a normal tree bark. This one would be somewhat harder seeing as she was yet to nail the force behind a throw. Occasionally the leather grip would bug her and she'd spend a good amount of time trying to pry it off before giving up and reclaiming her only two steel knives. Whenever a knife failed to hit the mark and fell into the dewy grass she'd pick it up immediately, not willing to risk having to search for it for hours on end. Not after the time she searched the premise for an entire day before finding the knife.