Due to many reasons, I am forced to ask that if you are viewing this, please finish this first chapter. It may seem long, but other chapters are shorter and I promise you will not be disappointed. Thankeths for your time! Much love to everyone and peace! 3

Chapter One

No one knew what to do with me. I had just come in a taxi and said that my mommy, Tristan, said I was supposed to be here. Later I would be told that my arrival was not only the easiest anybody had ever reached this camp, but it was also the strangest. I was informed that all of the children at the camp had had problems getting here, although I wasn't sure quite how it could be difficult. Maybe their parents were color blind… or mentally retarded. But no--me? I just showed up with nothing but my packed messenger bag after pulling up in a taxi to this place. I wasn't able to pay attention to the actual look of the camp— a buttload of the camper kids' stares made me too wonderfully self-conscious to sightsee. I suppose they were all shocked to see someone new, but thankfully one of them steered me to what they called "The Big House" to talk to their activities director.

At first I had thought everything was fine; Mommy was sending me to camp to learn how to make friends like she always did (as I never had); this camp just had a funny name, that's all. I've heard worse ones. Camp Daggit. Camp Hoochiha. Camp Enchanted.

Camp Enchanted was the worst and it was all girls. All they taught us was how to eat soup correctly and how to sit down in a dress, how to dance and how to say hello to boys, how to put on lipstick and how to curl your hair. Which basically translates to they taught us didly-squat. The only knowledge I came back with happened to be that the majority of the girls there only knew how to count to 98, because that's how much they all weighed. Not to mention they were all horrified if they ever had to learn a new number due to any recent weight gain.

Camp Half-Blood. No biggie. Everything was still rad. Until the man who had been informing me stood up out of his wheelchair.

But… but not onto his feet. In fact, his feet fell off the footrests of the wheelchair. Just plopped onto the floor. Just like that.

My eyes got huge.

Out of the wheelchair seat, out stepped a body of a huge white horse, which softly kicked over the wheelchair it had been imprisoned in, toppling onto the two fake feet.

I nearly screamed at first sight, and nearly shit myself on the second, but eventually he told me in a voice much like a therapist's (and trust me, I know a thing or two about how a therapist's voice sounds) that "No, no, everything is alright. You're not crazy; half my body really is a horse."

Me? Not Crazy? Well. I'll be damned.

"Did your…" he hesitated, "…'Mommy' say why you should come here?"

I couldn't speak. The dude informing me was the lovechild of Mr. Rogers and Seabiscuit. I just shook my head. Mr. Centaur then shook his own head and sighed.

"They're always dumping me with this responsibility…" I heard him mutter.

But I pursued the idea of him being a centaur and disregarded his murmurings. "You're… you're a…you…"

"A Centaur, yes," He finished for me in a nonchalant voice. "But that's beside the point, my child."

There he was, standing some two feet above me, rubbing his scruffy beard, perhaps thinking of how his oats hadn't digested very well this morning. One of his hooves counted on the floor as he pondered; making a tup-tup-tup on the floor of the room we were in. Mr. Centaur perked up, looking down at me with raised eyebrows.

He saw that I was still in shock, and kindly suggested I sit down. My mind was too overwhelmed to tell my legs to journey to a chair, so my body just fell onto my bottom in a heap. Sitting cross-legged now, I stared off into a crack in the floor, but my ears kept attentive. They seemed to be the only part of me still working. Mr. Centaur's voice softened.

"My child," He began. I looked up at him, now understanding that all of this was somehow happening when I had been told all my life that it never could. "You mother may not have told you, but you are here for a very specific reason."

"I'm listening," I confirmed.

"Yes. You see, you, my dear, are in fact, a demigod."

Oh. A demigod. Mmmmmm hm.

"Well," he chuckled. "A demigoddess."

"Hyeah," I scoffed.

Mr. Centaur furrowed his graying eyebrows, now looking concerned. His hoof stopped counting as his posture somehow managed to straighten even more so than it was before.

"You do not believe me?" He questioned, his voice going up at the end, as if he were truly astonished. He said he'd always been dumped with 'this' responsibility; I'm sure he's met plenty of kids more retarded than me saying outright in front of him that they still didn't believe him. But I guess I had to at this point, since he was frickin' half horse.

I stammered. "Ah— I love Greek Mythology, sir. I dig everything about it, especially all the magical creature-thingies. A-and I think it's way super awesome that you're a centaur. In fact, I never thought I'd meet one, but I guess I was wrong." I threw up my hands in surrender. "Really wrong." I put them down again. "And now that we both understand that I do believe in you and the entire Greek god thingies, let's also establish that there's no way in hell that I could be a demigod. Demigoddess. Whatever demi-ish-god-ishness-which-I-happen-to-be-but-really-am-not." I took a deep breath, nodding my head and squinting my eyes with confirmation. "Mm, yeah. That's, uh… that's all I got."

He laughed. "Let us make it easier. You're saying you're not a Half-Blood?"

"Half-blood, then. I can't be a half-blood."

I'll admit that I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe him so badly, but… there was nothing great about me. I couldn't find a damn thing, and here he was, telling me I was special. I was the daughter to one of those beautiful beings I loved so much and within that statement I found it to be completely impossible.

"I couldn't belong to any of them, sir," I confessed. "It's just a mistake."

He crossed his arms and smirked confidently.

"Really, then? Have you ever met your Father?"

"Sir, my father lives with me."

Mr. Centaur raised an eyebrow, looking slightly less confidant. "Your real one?"

"Well, as far as I know!" I laughed, although not whole-heartedly. But Mr. Centaur didn't laugh. He looked the side, puzzled. In the meanwhile, I tried to explain. He watched me intently as I did so.

"My daddy's Drake D'Artagnan Blane. Him and mom moved from California with me to New York," I said. "Now he's a part-time librarian at New York Public Library, and the other half of his time he's home schooling me. I mean, it's because of him that I love reading all about Greek mythology. He's pretty cool when he isn't, you know… making raw potatoes into people or dropping ice cream on his shirt. He's… he's really rad."

I was just trying to make it clear that Daddy was alive and present in my life, and since I knew and lived with both of my parents; there was no room for me to be daughter of any God.

I trailed off thinking about my dad. Whenever I got back from any camp, his first question was always if I had made any new friends, and although I always said no, he would just smile and say it was only however many years until I turned sixteen and it would be just me and him who would go to Disneyland and go to the Garlic festival. Although I didn't know why the Garlic festival was so awesome (Daddy would always say something along the line of 'well, they have garlic ice cream. It's preeetty raaad.') I thought that Disneyland sounded great.

Mr. Centaur seemed to be scrutinizing my banana'd checkerboard messenger bag when he finally asked, potato carving and ice cream droppings aside, if there was anything strange about my dad?

I managed to stammer again, struggling to think of anything. "Ah—I dunno. He's sort of weird altogether, so I wouldn't know what to tell you," I laughed, still finding it terribly hard to think of anything noticeably off about Daddy. "He talks like a beatnik even though he grew up during the 90's, he's a rabid Vivaldi fanatic, and he likes to quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail…"

"Anything exceedingly strange?" he persisted.

I finally remembered, now that I had hit my head a few times with my fist. I told Mr. Centaur that even though I saw him everyday, that Daddy would sometimes send me letters. They were usually fairly short, and all of them that I could remember came with a present, and all of them were signed with 'Love, Daddy.' But whenever I went to him to say Thank You, he always looked at me confusedly and said he hadn't gotten me anything. Then he'd just go back to whatever he'd been doing or finish up the lesson he had been teaching me.

After telling Mr. Centaur this, he got this strange glint in his eye and went back to grinning. He said that really was strange of my Father (of course, he attached a lot of those eminent "Indeed, Indeeds") and that he would look into it with the Headmaster of the camp. But until then, this was my Camp and I was fully welcome to it. I pursed my lips, but eventually I shrugged and just said that that was cool with me.

"Yes, it will be very cool," he smiled. "In fact, I'm sure you'll find it to be the coolest place you may have ever seen, although not in the literal sense of the word."

"As long as you don't make me learn how to eat soup properly," I muttered. Mr. Centaur looked down at me utterly confused, but I didn't care. I was a little tired of explaining, so I sort of shut up.

And good thing I had.

The Camp was beautiful. Fields of strawberries rolled over each other as their fragrance danced in every breeze of Camp Half-Blood air. In this landscape danced satyrs, playing on their reed pipes or sitting and chatting amongst each other or with Dryads. Occasionally the dryad would look away and the satyr would make a reach for a hug, but she would quickly turn into a tree or a shrub and the poor satyr would be crestfallen.

There were archery fields where dozens of kids were shooting perfect targets. There were only a few that missed, which stabbed a tree, turning out to be a Dryad who would pluck the arrow from her arm and shout a 'yo momma' insult at the dingbat who missed the target, and haughtily revert back into a grumpy tree. Stables lined some of these knolls, where eventually diverged into—not a corral, but a long road resembling the kind airplanes lifted off from. For out of the stables galloped horses with wings—Pegasi, who took to the air with campers on their backs.

The Greeks' mythical creatures were popping right out from all the books I'd ever read with Daddy, flying around and chasing each other, screaming and sneaking strawberries. My eye twitched. Although I was devoutly abstinent, I could've sworn I was high. My taxi driver drugged me with cocaine and I was sitting in the backseat, telling him "Aw, hell naw, I'm no demi-gah-nah-hoosh-nah-haha…" as I cringed and tried to bite my own ear.

But I found that this place was real when I was pelted with a dodgeball.

"Oh crap!" I heard someone say in the distance, as stars and Pegasi circled around my head. I was in a haze and dusting off my glasses (which had fallen off after I'd been nearly killed by the damn ball) when I heard Mr. Centaur telling some kid that I was new, and they should be more careful of where they're throwing something, it's could poke someone's eye out, and that wasn't going to be any fun if that one eye belonged to a Cyclops.

"Aw, I'm sorry," They said, although I had no idea whether it was to me or to Mr. Centaur. But I heard them giggle and run off, yammering with their friends.

"…told you it was a girl," one of the other ones said.

As we continued through the camp, I asked Mr. Centaur where it was that I was going when he replied that he was showing me to my cabin for the night, and that the campers there would happily fill me in about activities and the like.

"If not," he grinned. "They can take it up with Mr. D."

"Who's Mr. D?" I asked stupidly, looking up at Mr. Centaur again as we walked.

"Oh, he's the Headmaster of Camp Half-Blood… respectively," He answered.

This Mr. D is the headmaster. I wondered what he looked like if there were satyrs in the fields and there was a centaur for activities director. Speaking of which…

I jerked my head to Mr. Centaur. "Sir, what do I call you? You know, if I should need you or anything?"

He raised his eyebrows again and smiled.

"Oh, forgive me, then. I've forgotten to introduce myself. You may call me Chiron, if that's alright with you. But if you need me, I'm usually attending to things in the Big House, but that won't keep me from trotting around the camp."

"Okay, I can do that. It's all rad…" I responded, trying to convince myself that everything really was still rad and not scary yet. I had tendency to bawl like a baby when it got scary, but I was trying to keep face.

Then there were the cabins. There were twelve of them, curving around a huge field that had a campfire in the dead center. From here I could see the Big House again and felt the need to ask Chiron why the hell he took me all that long way when we could've just walked down the hill to the cabin area, but then I realized if we had I wouldn't have seen all that countryside with strawberries and grumpy trees. But they were all there, the cabins, although they looked much more like Greek temples. Each was decorated according to its supporting Olympian god or goddess.

On the cabins, there were campers sitting around on the stoops, chatting with their friends, while others were playing tag. Beside another cabin, a boy was playing a golden lyre while the girl next to him sang a song as she read off of some paper. But they were interrupted when the girl was slammed in the face with a water balloon, and screamed angrily as two shadow campers ran off, laughing evilly. One of them was struck to the ground however, when the boy who'd been playing lobbed his lyre at the back of one of the shadow campers' head.

"When we discover who you're parent is," Chiron said at last, once we reached the center of the field at the fire site, "you'll be put into their cabin."

I freaked. "So— wait, wait, wait! I only get a cabin when you find out which God is my mom or dad? But I just told you, my parents—"

"Shhh. All will be fine," he interrupted. He concluded this with such finality that I decided I should just be quiet and stop protesting. I suppose I should be grateful. Chiron was going to let me stay here, although I probably didn't belong. Then again, I didn't belong anywhere, so it wasn't as if I wasn't already used to it by now.

On the upside, I was engulfed by the mystical—the magical. I was surrounded by unmistaken magnificence, breathing and living… existing when the rest of the human world denounced the very idea as nonsense. I was among the children of the Gods, sons and daughters of the most powerful entities that ruled the very Heavens above me. Everything was suddenly surreal; I had to hold the sides of my head for a second until I felt my mind shift back into place; everything sank in.

Camp Half-Blood was the land of the Godlings.

It was a sanctuary especially for the children of the deities that held the fate of Mortals in their grasp, children born of Ambrosia and Nectar, and human blood.

And I… I just didn't belong.

--

The cabin looked like something my closet threw up. Everywhere I looked there was another mess of clothes and CDs, another kid with a sleeping bag, and the sleeping bag was accompanied with a ruddy backpack, and the ruddy backpack was accompanied with bouncing fleas. Oh wait. Those were just jellybeans. Never mind.

This was the Hermes cabin, or Cabin Number Eleven, or in my mind, the Pillsbury Biscuit Tube Cabin, because if a door opened, all these suffocating kids looked like they'd just spew out with that signature pop, and then proceed flooding out of the cabin in a bulge with a sluggish pffff sound. Besides, it was brown like a biscuit tube anyway. Chiron had explained to me that all new members of Camp Half-Blood were put into Hermes Cabin until the camp faculty could determine who your Olympian parent was. He went on to say that Hermes was totally cool with strange kids lodging in his cabin because he was the patron god of travelers, so he wouldn't mind my staying there at all.

There were only four sets of bunk beds, so everyone else was forced to cram onto the floor. I estimated that there were about thirty or forty kids in this cabin, and all of them had stopped whatever they'd been doing to shoot a look at me. Blood rushed to my face in embarrassment as Chiron pushed himself into the cabin and moved me smoothly to his side where I ground my gaze into the ground, pretending all those eyes weren't burning holes in my clothes. I felt like I was back in kindergarten when my teacher decided to introduce me to the class, starting with the whole This Is Our New Student Everyone Be Nice speech, which, in kindergarten speak, meant 'Everyone, please shoot spit wads and pelt this new brat with gum.' I cursed under my breath as I squeezed my eyes shut.

"Everyone," Chiron began.

Oh no. Please, don't…

"I would like to inform you that this young lady beside me is your new cabin mate. I should hope that all of you will make her feel very welcome for the duration of her stay here among you all."

No one said anything.

"Good, then. I'd also like to add that she will be getting to sleep in one of the bunk beds, since this is her first night with us."

No one said anything. But I could feel their glaring at me resentfully.

"Wonderful. Now that there are no objections, I'll leave her with you all," Chiron bade, turning to leave while simultaneously nudging me with his horsey behind toward the bloodthirsty kids in the cabin. I nearly tripped with my eyes still clenched shut, but I managed somehow to keep standing there, clutching the strap of my messenger bag.

"Hey, Chiron, what's 'er name?" I heard one of them call from way in the back of the cabin. He turned back around to see if I would say anything, but I was too busy trying to find a sliver of dignity in advance for when these kids would eat me alive, most likely with a rusty eggbeater and a blunt spork. I'm sure Chiron realized I didn't have the guts to say my own name, so he took the burden upon himself, turning confidently to face the Campers once again. I could just see that genteel smile on his face as I felt his hand pat my head as he dared speak the words that would soon be apart of my epitaph:

"Oh yes. How could I forget? This, campers—"

Goodbye, cruel world.

"—is Jakobin Blane."