Blue Moon (Percy Jackson Fanfiction)

I Set a Goat on Fire

I don't know my birthday.

Yes, you heard me right. I don't know how old I am. I think I'm sixteen, but I might be seventeen. I don't feel seventeen. I don't even really feel sixteen.

I also don't know my last name.

I don't know where I was born.

I don't know who my dad is.

I barely know anything about myself.

My name is Hunter, and my favorite color is green. That sounds like the beginning to a first grader's essay, but it's the only thing I know for sure about myself. I gave myself the name Hunter, because hey, what kid doesn't want a fierce name like that? Also, green is the best color ever.

I live in New York, at an orphanage. Not that I'm an orphan, but we'll get to that later.

I've lived at the orphanage all my life. There isn't another house for me. Notice, I said house, not home. An orphanage isn't a home, it's an in-between place. Well, it might as well be a home for me, because who'd adopt the freak child?

Maybe Camp Half Blood. But they're waiting an awfully long time.

See, I always knew I was different. It wasn't just the eyes that were so bright a grey it was silver, or the black hair that somehow seemed to glitter in the moonlight. It wasn't the lithe figure, or the obsession with dogs. It was the way danger followed me everywhere.

My earliest memory was when I was about five. I was sitting outside, leaning against the wall, while the other kids played in the school yard. A dog ran up to me, white foam dripping from it's mouth. Being a five year old boy, I loved puppies. The teacher saw me as I reached to pet its nose and shrieked. It's a little fuzzy, but the dog left. I wouldn't learn until years later it wasn't a dog, but a rabid wolf. Go figure.

A had a relatively peaceful few years until a hawk hopped up to me when I was eight. I knew I shouldn't touch the bird, but it was gorgeous. I reached down slowly to stroke it, and it bit me. That's where the scar on my right hand came from.

This happened more times. Wolves, hawks, whatever. Always wild animals, always dangerous, and pretty much I always came away with a lot less injuries than I should have.

Then I met Thalia Grace.

I was twelve(ish).

I was walking outside, with a waning crescent moon in the sky, obscured by gauzy dark grey clouds. Then a girl in punk clothing, looking about sixteen, with spiky black hair and a silver tiara. She looked at me with electric blue eyes. "You're the kid they call Hunter, right?"

Stupidly, I nodded.

She introduced herself as Thalia and then completely tore my perception of the world out from under me. She said she was a daughter of Zeus, yes the Greek gods were real, there was a Camp of their children somewhere on Long Island, and how she was part of this group of immortal teenage single ladies who traveled with the goddess Artemis and killed monsters.

Holy brain hurt.

Thalia told me I was one of these demigods. I was twelve, but Thalia did't seem crazy. She seemed sorta normal.

Thalia very, very carefully explained to me that I should never tell anyone who my mother was. Because she knew who my mom was. Thalia said that the rules explained that a demigod had to be claimed before he or she was thirteen and she was in town so she might as well do it now. That was her only reason, she said.

Then she ruined my world more by telling me my mother was Artemis, eternal maiden, goddess of the Hunt, and the moon.

Thalia disappeared forever after that.