Hi! This is yet another story written in the hopes of writing a story for every character in the PJO archives, which means that maybe it focuses on characters that you may care little about. Nevertheless, I hope that you enjoy the story!

Disclaimer: I don't own the PJO universe.


Star Struck


"Grover!" Oliver cried, dashing in between the trees into the Underwood family's tavern. "The council is going by."

"The council," Grover gasped. He looked over at his mother and she sighed. She was a really beautiful wind nymph, with an ageless face and graceful movements like leaves in a breeze and a voice just as soft.

"Alright," she sighed. "I suppose that you can go see them. But not a word to your father, yes? When you're grounded, you're grounded- so he thinks."

"Thank you Mama," he said before getting to his feet and running out with Oliver. They sprinted through the trees and Oliver dragged Grover to where a small crowd had already formed near one of the paths that the demigods used to get to Zeus' fist. The forest was slowly claiming the terrain back as wilderness.

"Even Dionysus is there," their school friend Clarence whispered.

"Leneus too," Grover whispered, spotting the old satyr amongst the crowd. He was an Elder on the council, and he was the one that always prepared outings to go plant or heal trees after forest fires or pick up trash. He came to talk to the kids at school once; it was glorious. Grover had hung on his every word.

"Do you think that we could talk to him after the meeting?" Grover whispered to Oliver.

"What could you say that could be interesting in any way to someone like him?" Oliver whispered back.

Grover had no answer; only awe.


"We must exile the traitor!" Silenius said. Grover's energy deflated. He hadn't felt quite the same since watching Pan die, the battle of the labyrinth had been exhausting, and telling the story over and over to a crowd of dissaproving faces had been even more so. Grover was losing the energy to focus on whatever it was that the council and Dionysus was voting on now, and his thoughts wandered.

Every time that Grover had oppened his mouth about Pan in the last year, Leneus, Silenius and the entirety of the council of Cloven Elders had been the first to roll his eyes and wave Grover off. Leneus had always been the first to call Grover crazy, an imposter, a disgrace. It had hurt at first. Hearing the man you'd admired while your father went off as a searcher (the one you'd admired after he had died as a searcher) shun you. Every word that he said had been a knife in Grover for a long time.

But one day after a council meeting in which Grover had thought he'd humiliated himself, Juniper had looped her arms around Grover's waist and snuggled her cheek against his spine. Her tree must have been getting plenty of sunshine because she was warm.

"I'm proud of you," she'd said.

Juniper was proud of him. And that night when he went home for supper, his sickly old mother had made his favourite mushroom stew for him because it was 'her big boy's favourite'. That night, Annabeth and Grover snuck into Percy's empty cabin and ate candy and read sappy joke books and laughed and nearly fell asleep there.

The people who loved Grover didn't think he was a liar and a disgrace. Only these grumpy old satyrs whose exploits as searchers and seekers and questers were either forgotten, irrelevant or unexistant. What did they know? Why did they matter?

So although Leneus had mattered a whole lot to Grover when he was a kid, a grown-up Grover made a very important decision.

They didn't.

"Don't worry," Grover said to the nature spirits around him who were still meeting his eyes. "We don't need a council to tell us what to do. We can figure it out ourselves."