Bottled Up | PJO

⇝οκτώ(VIII)⇜

'When tides change and new revelations come, it's your choice to swim with or against the waves'

Estelle had developed a steady enmity with Skylar preceding the encounter in the woods. More devastatingly, she also became estranged from Nakoa who insisted on not ratting Skylar out. He reasoned that despite everything, he knew Skylar better than Estelle ever would because he'd been at camp longer but Estelle had a nagging feeling that everything Nakoa said wasn't powered by logic. This led her to making an ever so smart decision of telling Chiron who flat out refused to believe her. Why? because, at the end of the day, she was just a 'new kid.'. That and because majority of the campers vouched for Skylar's innocence. All in all, Estelle could only plant a seed of doubt and become public enemy number one to the Aphrodite Cabin. Once, they'd gone as far as to give her a bad hair day in the truest sense. Estelle had to take cover in her cabin for a week because every time she stepped out either some bird shits on her, someone accidentally spills their food on her or, the more dangerous of all, a stray throwing knife had barely missed her neck to cut through her hair so now she sported a choppy, unkempt and major raccoon vibe hairstyle. Fun.

Even still, she could have endured it all hadn't Nakoa basically distanced himself from her. He was slowly chipping at whatever weak link of friendship they had. Estelle's sleeping bag had magically disappeared from under his bed to now be situated near the Stoll twins. This was a whole other headache in multiple ways. She no longer had the sense of comfort of her friend, dare she say her best friend. Laxmi had gone up and away to college and the twins were out to make her life a personal hell. Okay, it wasn't that bad, but it sure felt worse because for the first time since she got to camp she felt alone. In her pursuit of befriending Nakoa, they'd become so tightknit to the point they both only had eachother to count on as friends. Sure, Jae was there but now she was getting excessively busy with Pollux, which basically meant that anytime she was with them she felt like the child of a family of three. Not so much fun when they acted like newly weds even if they were still in the talking stage.

With uneasy glances from both herself and Nakoa, she floated through the first couple of months before, surprisingly enough, getting close to Connor, thankfully the lesser evil of the twins. It also had something to do with the fact that she was getting pretty good at archery which meant she was basically waiting around at every turn while Connor set up bags of flour and whatever other concoction he could get his hands on, suspended over every doorway for Estelle to pop. Gambling, the child friendly kind where you bet snacks, also happened to be something she was getting exceedingly good at. Funnily enough, her friendship with Nakoa failing basically made her feel like she was going through a breakup arc, the platonic kind.

Similarly, Nakoa has expanded his friend group to Skylar. Estelle wasn't sure how that happened but within the week that followed the two became frequent hangout buddies which left her feeling more jealous than she wished to explain. After weeks of pretending not to care, she found herself dragged into the Stoll twins' orbit. Mostly because Connor needed someone with sharp aim, and she needed a distraction. A year into the incident, she sat with the twins shaking up a bottle of stewed herbs to spike the punch bowl at that night's dinner.

"I was thinking," Connor started wisely, "that we should definitely dump this in Mr. D's coke"

Estelle didn't offer much to the conversation as she genuinely wondered about the mental health of these two for the hundredth time since she got to know them. With Luke's betrayal their pranks didn't cease and they only got worse. Now.. seeing it from the front lines made her wonder if they were using it as a poorly veiled coping mechanism. Or maybe justification for why the other campers keep stink eyeing the Hermes Cabin every so often.

Travis grinned widely, "he's so gonna kill us"

"Or turn you into dolphins," Estelle quipped as she opened the bottle and took a whiff of the herbs. Eugh. "Oh yeah, this is either giving you diarrhoea or herpes"