Daughter of Poseidon

Training and Capture the Flag

The next few days I felt almost normal and at home, but I had a lot of training to catch up on. Each morning I took Ancient Greek from Annabeth, which wasn't as much of a headache as English had been, though still a major one. Dyslexic is as dyslexic does. The rest of the day, I'd usually go through outdoor activities, looking for something I was good at.

The first day I had swimming, rock climbing, wrestling and running. Unfortunately, I was totally useless at all of them apart from swimming and running; Clarisse would totally kill me every time I went on the wrestling mat, and rock climbing was a total nightmare. Grover had nimbly scaled the heights like a mountain goat, but the lava had come close to getting me. I would have suffered horrific burns, had Luke not come back down for me and pulled me up. Swimming and running I was good at, but apparently they were only taught so that we could learn how to run away from a fight as quickly as possible. Not exactly very heroic. That night as I lay in my sleeping bag, contemplating how much I failed at everything, Luke came up to me with a mischievous glint in his eye and told me what we had tomorrow.

"I'm sure these are way more your speed." Said Luke with a wink. "After all, I've seen you with spears, swords and arrows when we were travelling together. I would hate to be on the receiving end."

We had javelin throwing, archery, pegasi-riding and swordplay the next day, Thursday. I was pretty good at javelin throwing - I actually managed to hit the target. At archery we were with the Poseidon cabin, basically Percy, and our instructor was Chiron. We started off with some close targets to warm up, nothing hard, just ten and fifteen metre ones, and non-moving as well. We started to get into the flow of things and then moved onto ones further away. I was pretty good and got loads of bull's eyes, but Percy was slightly hopeless. I had the misfortune to be next to him and one of his arrows nearly caught me in the arm, with another sticking in my leg with a thump.

I was pretty annoyed at that point, "Look where you're shooting next time!" I shouted angrily, "Pull the string up to your cheek and position your face."

He took my advice and hit himself in the cheek with the string.

I gave up.

About halfway through, Chiron asked if anyone wanted to attempt that target that was crazily far away. I volunteered along with another undetermined girl from our cabin, Essie, who was absolutely amazing at archery. Essie went first, drawing the string back firmly and letting go with equal confidence. The arrow actually struck the target, on an outer ring, but that thing was miles away and moved. I was shocked along with the rest of cabin eleven. Only the kids of Apollo had aim that good. Sure enough, a hologram of a sun and bow appeared above Essie's head; she had been claimed.

We all kneeled as Chiron bellowed, "Apollo. Healer, musician, rider of the sun chariot. Hail, Essie Barton, daughter of the Sun God." We rose and I saw Essie beside herself with joy, she had been in the Hermes for two years, since she was eleven, and now she had finally been claimed. In all the excitement I had forgotten that it was my turn to shoot at the target but Chiron hadn't.

"Anya, your turn."

I nervously stepped forward and strung an arrow. The other kids had stopped celebrating momentarily to watch me. Most of them were probably waiting for me to make a fool of myself. I pulled the string and let go. The resounding 'thwack' hung in the air for a few minutes as we waited for the arrow to stop. When it did I heard a few gasps from other people and averted my eyes from the floor to stare at the target. Bull's eye. I was shocked beyond words; then people started to stare at my head. I was bemused for a few seconds, then I realised that they were waiting for a sign. It didn't come and the surrounding people broke into hushed conversations around me. I caught snippets of what they were saying: