Before It Dies | Tratie

i. the function(s) of the heart

     "KatieeeeEEEEEEE!" It was a sign from the gods that today was going to be a bad day. My sister's voice was normal, but you could hear her calmness lost when her voice grew louder as she said my name. Sighing, I finished treating the cuts on my legs and walked outside. Immediately, a dry wave of heat swarmed over my skin and I fanned myself with my hand continuously.

     Camp Half-Blood, a place I called home, was bustling with demigods in the summer. A camp reserved for children who had one normal parent, and one who was a god. Most of them were children of Apollo or Aphrodite. I was a child of Demeter, so I didn't have many brothers and sisters but I did get along extremely well with them.

     The sister closest to me was Miranda Gardiner, a petite girl who had auburn brown hair and eyes the colour of grass in the summer and the colour of bronze in the fall. We were a year apart and she was two years younger than me experience-wise at Camp Half-Blood. She also happened to be the second-eldest child of Demeter, acting as head counsellor when I was away. 

     Seeing her iconic yellow headband a few feet away, I lightly jogged up to her and knew something was extremely wrong. Her mouth was curved into a straight line and her bottom lip was bitten between her teeth. I could see her hands shaking and I followed her gaze towards the top of the Demeter cabin.

     The garden on the roof was oddly covered in specks of brown and a familiar surge of frustration hit me. The Stoll brothers put chocolate shingles on our roof. It was somewhat impressive that the brothers managed to get so much freaking chocolate. No one was surprised because the only thing that children of Hermes did was prank.

     It was like making people angry was a drug to them. The more you were angry, the more they wanted more. They were literally addicted to it, and the worst part was that you never expected anything other than them to doing something unexpected.

     I tried to hate Connor and Travis Stoll, they were always picking on the Demeter cabin, the cabin that put all they had into plants which were so easily destroyed, yet there was something about their mischievous behaviour that was so...charming.

     But that didn't mean I wasn't mad.

     "You guys!" I yelled "Seriously?"

     I saw Connor and Travis peeking from a tree. They tried not to laugh as my brothers and sisters stared at the chocolate which was melting at the heat of the sun. Connor and Travis did a fist bump and kept watching in amusement. We would never get the chocolate cleaned up in time. If it wasn't so hot, we would have eaten it. That would be a good prank.

     I looked at the brothers again, furious by their actions until I remembered that they were behind a tree.

     "Real mature boys. Real mature! Next time find someone freaking else!" It had been going on for a few years now. These pranks never stopped. We usually braced ourselves for two pranks a week at Camp Half-Blood, one usually for any other cabin, one usually of us. We would count the days they hadn't pranked sometimes, and it usually worried us because that meant the one coming would be a really bad one.

     They loved to prank our cabin. I guess it wasn't too surprising. Mostly it was because of a feud between Travis and I, we kind of hated each other. It was hard to describe.

     They were good people deep down.

     I would never say it out loud to anyone, but it was true because I had seen the sweet side of them. Yet this, this was a little hard to be positive. Eyeing a large tree and scanning the soil around it, I decided it was quite a good tool for revenge.

     "Miranda," I hissed. She must have been much angrier than I was. She was a lot like me, but her emotions were bigger as she was shyer, even scarier when mad. The slightly negative moody teen was my best friend and we had been through so much together. Miranda was almost like the little conscious in my head, telling me something shouldn't happen even though I knew I wanted it.