It wasn't like Percy was bored. No, it was more like…idle. Annabeth was training new demigods, Grover was showing around some visitor with Mr. D that Percy wasn't allowed to know about…everyone else was busy, it seemed. So he'd made up his mind to just sit on the steps in front of Poseidon's cabin silently, his-okay, boredom-sinking in further as time went on. Had an hour passed already since he'd last seen any of his friends? Had more than an hour passed? It certainly felt like days had gone on without him. Yet at the same time, time had slowed like molasses inching out of a bottle. Percy decided to get a watch at some point.

Of course, if Percy hadn't been completely bored out of his mind, he wouldn't have heard the quiet, hesitant voice whisper, "Hey! Over here!" Blinking multiple times, Percy glanced around in confusion. Had he heard what he heard? His mind might just be playing tricks on him. After a minute or two, Percy let it go and sunk his chin back in his palm tiredly.

"Hey, idiot, I'm right here!" the whisper was harsher now, and easier to pinpoint, so Percy craned his neck around to see a rustle in the bushes that grew at the side of the cabin.

Standing up, he announced suspiciously, "I'm coming, but you have to show yourself first." His hand was already slowly closing around Anaklusmos. To his surprise, the source of the whispering was a girl a year or two younger than him, who rose slowly out of the bushes with a gentle smile on her face. She was definitely beautiful, with caramel skin, long, dark brown hair in waves, and the most incredible blue eyes he'd ever seen that reminded him of his own and his father's.

"Hello, Percy Jackson," she said softly, with a gleam in her kind blue eyes.

"Okay, I don't know you…how do you know my name?"

"Everyone's heard of you, silly," she laughed, releasing a sound that reminded Percy of a bubbling brook. "After all, you did slay Kronos and the mighty Titans."

It was true that a lot of people thought they knew Percy and recognized him, idolizing his decisions in the Titan War even though they had never actually met him beforehand. He was getting a little tired of it, but was good at pretending to be the person people thought him to be.

Pulling a smile, Percy thanked her politely for saying so (though it was true) and the girl just smiled back. It almost got awkward, but suddenly the girl looked into his eyes, unnerving him with how striking hers were. He supposed that was how others felt looking into his eyes.

"Do you want to practice?" she asked, catching Percy off-guard.

"Wh—what do you mean?" Percy replied with a question. "Who are you, anyway?"

The girl looked down at that, blushing a bit. The wind softly played with her dark hair as she told him, "My name's Katara. I'm what's called a waterbender."

"Sorry—what? Is that, like….some kind of nymph or dryad?"

Katara smiled. "It's complicated, but what matters is that I can do…this." To Percy's confusion, she executed a strange sort of martial arts-like movement that didn't seem to achieve anything until he felt a brush of cold water on his cheek and saw the tentacle of water hovering in the air. Percy surprised himself by laughing.

"Wait, how are you doing that? Are you..." Percy became serious as he considered a possibility. "Are you a daughter of Poseidon? Are you a demigod?"

"Nope. But I do have some demigod friends."

He found himself smiling again. "You're a strange girl, you know that?"

Katara's eyes slid over to him though the tentacle of water stayed aloft, and she narrowed them as she said, "You'd be surprised. We're not that different, Percy."

"Yeah, I got that. We can both do stuff with water."

Letting the water drop lifelessly to the ground, her smile turned into a smirk and she told him with a hint of amusement in her voice, "You can go on thinking that. But there's so much in the world besides your little bubble; so much beyond what you know. You always were an adventurer." There was a bittersweet edge to her last sentence, as if she really knew Percy. If she did, he didn't know how.

"I always….? What do you-"

"Percy! Where were you?!" Annabeth's voice startled him and he looked behind him, turning his attention completely away from Katara. The Athena camper was hiking through tall grass to get to his cabin now, with a wide grin on her face.

Percy shrugged, mumbling, "Oh, you know, talking with this girl. Um, Katara, I think?" He turned around to affirm this…..but saw no one there. The bushes were empty, with no sign they'd even been stepped on or rustled through. Percy's eyebrows furrowed as he scanned the area to no avail, his concentration hardly broken by Annabeth speaking up.

"Are you okay, Percy?" Already her stormy gray eyes had that look in them that told Percy she was already diagnosing him; analyzing his every reaction in her ever-knowledgeable way.

Percy just sighed, looking around more but having no luck in sighting the strange girl who'd left such a hollow, longing feeling inside him. Not romantically, of course. He had Annabeth for such feelings. But Katara…it was as if she'd known worlds more than she'd let on, and what she'd known was what Percy needed to find out.

"There's no one there, Percy," Annabeth said matter-of-factly. Percy bit his lip, looking down and shivering in the early autumn breeze that'd come out of nowhere.

"I know."