Home Is Where The Heart(h) Is

Chapter 3: Two Sides

Chapter 3: Two Sides

Percy couldn't sleep.

Under normal circumstances, he would have been able to snore off soundly listening to the waves splashing next to the cabin, but with all that had happened, he just couldn't. He lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying today's events over and over in his head.

~

"Your name is Aelia, correct?" Dionysus asked.

Aelia nodded.

"Well then, Aelia, I am Dionysus, the-"

"The god of wine, I know." Aelia abruptly interrupted. "Let's skip the formalities, shall we?"

Dionysus' face glowed red with anger at the disrespectful girl, while Percy bit his tongue to stifle his laughter. Aelia reminded Percy of himself.

"Could you tell me everything? From your birth to your childhood to how you got here?" Dionysus said stiffly.

Aelia looked at Dionysus directly in the eye, before looking at Percy, making Percy feel slightly uncomfortable. Aelia bothered him more than Annabeth when he first met her. She seemed more intimidating, or maybe that was just the tense atmosphere. Either way, Percy didn't feel like meeting her gaze.

"I was born in New York. My parents...I never knew them. They left me at an orphanage. I ran away when I was around fourteen. I lived on the streets for about a year, and then I came here."

Dionysus' expression was skeptical. He knew the girl could have been filled with memories from the Mist, assuming if the girl was Hestia.

"Interesting..." Dionysus muttered. He probed the girl's mind and found that it was extremely vulnerable. It was most certainly not a goddess' mind, and he had yet to hear of swapping an immortal's mind with that of a mortal's. In other words, the girl was just another demigod. The memories were all there, and she was telling the truth. Those memories could have been created by the Mist, but if that was so, it would mean the girl was indeed Hestia. However, she wasn't...

The god of wine growled inwardly. This was leading him nowhere.

He stood up. "Thank you, Aelia. For now, Percy will show you around."

"What? Why me?" Percy said, slightly startled.

Dionysus didn't reply, instead disappearing in a flash of light. Percy sighed and looked back at Aelia, who was staring back at him with an exasperated look.

"If you don't want to show me around, I'm fine." She said.

"No...I'd rather not get transformed into a dolphin." Percy sighed again. "Come on."

Percy frowned at Aelia as she smiled at all the campers with an almost flirtatious side, something she was not demonstrating in the infirmary. Her smile left some of the campers whispering that Aelia may be a daughter of Aphrodite.

He watched her flirt shamelessly with some of the Hermes and Apollo boys, including the twins Connor and Travis Stoll. They later came and talked to Percy, when Aelia went to the restroom.

"Dude, can I show her around?" Travis practically begged him.

"Shove off!" Connor pushed him aside and grinned. "I'll take over your responsibility, Perce."

Percy shook his head, which was met with glares from the two of them. They started complaining, until Percy said, "I don't want to be turned into a bottle of wine, thank you very much. He told me to show her, not the two of you. Plus, I don't see what all the fuss is about. She wasn't like this..." Percy's voice trailed off."