Rogue Demigods Book 1: Daughter of the Earth

Amethyst Greece: Hide-And-Seek in the forest

Everybody seemed to gasp at the same time.

"Gaea.", someone whispered.

"I-I-It's impossible!", Josh said, and I could've sworn that he had tears in his eyes.

I remembered learning about Greek mythology. Gaea was bad, like, big-time. Josh was right. It was impossible.

"It's not impossible.", said Silvia. "It's the truth. I wish it wasn't, but it's the truth."

She definitely had tears in her eyes.

"We should kill her.", a boy said from within the crowd.

That was just too much. Daughter of Gaea or not, Silvia was (and still is) my friend. I was ready to defend her no matter what.

"Silvia's good!", I yelled into the crowd, at the spot where I thought the voice had come from. "She may be a daughter of Gaea, but she's good! She saved all our lives when we were fighting that Lastry- Lystra- Lastrog- Whatever! The point is, she's good! Didn't you see how embarrassed she was when-"

"Just don't.", someone said from behind me, placing a hand on my shoulder.

I whirled around angrily, then relaxed when I saw that it was Silvia.

"He's right.", she said glumly.

"Silvia, don't say that.", I said shakily.

"Don't be mad, Amy. It's just the truth.", Silvia said, a tear trickling down the side of her nose. "I don't belong here. I will never belong."

She turned and ran into the forest. I looked at Josh. He had pretty much the same expression as I: a mix of tears and anger residing in his eyes. The difference was that I actually decided to do something. I took a deep breath, looked at the dark, forbidding woods, and plunged inside.

It was dark, but when I looked down I could make out path. Eventually, my eyes got used to the dark. I almost wished they hadn't. There seemed to be eyes staring at me through every crack in the leaves. I hoped I could find Silvia soon and get it over with. All of a sudden, I saw a fork in the road up ahead.

Drat., I thought to myself. How am I going to find Silvia now? Oh, well. Cross the river when you get to it, right?

Just then, I got to the fork in the road. I groaned and then realized that the new path had a trail of footprints on it.

Good., I thought. Silvia must have gone that way.

I started running on the second path. Suddenly, I stopped short. I looked down. There were the footprints that I suspected Silvia had made. Only. I wasn't making any. In other words, Silvia must have made fake footprints to lead people along the wrong trail, then continued along the main path. Quickly, I turned and ran back in the other direction, then followed along the path she had really taken. Finally, I came to a clearing. Silvia was sitting on a tree stump, her back facing me, sobbing silently.

"Silvia.", I said.

"Amy.", she said. "But how- How- How did you-"

"Not fall for your trick? I almost did, but then I realised that I wasn't making any footprints. You forgot to make the ground soft."

Silvia smiled. "Naturally. So, why'd you come?"

"To get you back to the camp.", I replied.

Silvia's face fell.

"Amy, what I said before was true.", she said. "I don't belong."

"Silvia, you shouldn't be ashamed just because you're a daughter of-"

Silvia smirked. "Gaea? Just because I'm a daughter of Gaea? Shouldn't be ashamed?"

"Okay, okay!", I relented. "Forget what I said."

But as I thought about it, I realised that I was angry at her. Why couldn't she just come?

"Stay here if you want to, then!", I yelled at my friend. "Don't come back to the place where everybody is waiting for you! Why don't you just let your best friend in the world go back alone, hanging her head dejectly as if she just lost her best friend- which, in fact, will be exactly what will have happened to her? Why don't you just let a whole group of people who trust you be let down? Why not?"

I turned to storm away, but Silvia put her hand on my shoulder."Amy, don't be mad. It's not your fault."

Without realising what I was doing, I burst into tears. "It's just that... I don't want you to stay here. You're my best friend, Silvia! And..."

"Go on.", she said soothingly.

"Silvia...", I said. "I think it's cool. You know, your earth powers. I mean, having Gaea as your mum must be horrible. She must be a terrible mother. But your ability to control the earth... That's pretty cool."

Silvia smiled. "You're right about Gaea being a horrible mother."

"Silvia, I really think we should head back now.We might need to get some rest. In the chariot, Chris told me that tomorrow we'd start training for battle."

"Well then," Silvia said "I guess we should go sleep so that tomorrow we can get beaten up."