The Forbidden Children- A Heroes of Olympus/ Percy Jackson Fanfiction

That Darn Love Goddess Strikes Again!

Ainsley absentmindedly pushed her scrambled eggs around her plate. It wasn't that she didn't like scrambled eggs, on the contrary, she actually really liked them, but only when they were doused in hot sauce. Enough hot sauce to make your eyes sting if you got too close to the plate. The hot sauce was where the problem lay. It was sitting right there on the buffet table, but next to it, putting some maple syrup on her pancakes, was Skylar.

Since the quest had returned a month and a half ago, Skylar had been making Ainsley feel like, well, what comes out the back of a Pegasus. There were withering looks given at every opportunity and rumours were spread around the camp. Ainsley wished that she could ignore it, but she couldn't. She believed everything that Skylar was saying about her. The guilt of Tanya's death was crushing her like the weight of the sky (which, rumour has it, doesn't feel that great).

The only upside to trying to avoid the rumours (which were known and believed by pretty much everyone) was that Ainsley had been able to spend a lot of time working on more advanced spells, which she would then show to Claire and Eli. Ainsley rarely spent time with both of them together, but rather split her time between them. Regardless of all of the stuff that was happening around her, Ainsley really enjoyed their company as well as the company of some of the campers who had arrived during the summer and hadn't heard that Ainsley was basically a murderer. 

"Campers," Chiron's voice from the head table interrupted Ainsley's train of thoughts and instantly silenced the rest of the diners. "I trust  that you all know that it is the last day of our summer session at Camp Half-Blood."

Everyone groaned, but Chiron held up his hand for silence and begun speaking again.

"For those who will not be staying for the rest of the year, I would advise you to pack of your belongings in order to have time to prepare with your partners for the final Team Monster Hunting of the season, which will begin promptly at seven o'clock this evening. Carry on."

Ainsley sighed and gave up on eating her non-spicy eggs and wandered over to the bronze braizier to scrape in her leftovers. Chiron had recently decided that campers might as well scrape in their leftovers to the gods as well after Apollo began writing awful haikus dedicated to his desire and longing for slightly cold pizza. As she began scraping her plate, Eli wandered up to her. 

"Are we just going to wing it again?" He asked while dumping some soggy Fruit Loops and a half-eaten bran muffin into the fire.

Earlier in the summer, the camp leaders had decided that it would just be easier for everyone to assign permanent partners for monster hunting, an event started not too long ago by Quintus, or rather Daedalus. There had been such an influx of new campers lately that it was difficult to assign partners randomly because of several issues that arose when campers that didn't necessarily get along very well were paired up to run through the forest with dangerous weapons together. Several partnerships ended in lost limbs, severe burns, curses that made the person speak only in lines from Shakespeare for weeks, and atrocious haircuts. Eli had been assigned as Ainsley's permanent partner because she was considered to be one of the few people that would not seriously harm him. 

"Yeah," she said as her eggs went up in flames, but unfortunately not the spicy kind. 

"Cool," Eli grinned at her and elbowed her in the ribs. "We've done pretty well just by winging it."

Ainsley nodded. Throughout the course of their partnership, they had actually won several times. With the combined force of Ainsely's magic and Eli's enchanted sword that she had helped him make earlier in the summer, they were a tough team to beat. 

"I can't wait for tonight," he said as they put stacked their dishes and walked out of the amphitheatre into the late August sunshine.

"I'm sure it's going to be the best one yet, it would be depressing if the summer didn't end with a bang," Ainsley did a dramatic explosion gesture.