Fake smiles and insincere words were exchanged from one sibling to another, their voices as sharp and crisp as the winter air that bled through the cracks in the wood that led into the cabin. The overall tackiness of the cabin made Lucille gag. She pulled on an Orange T-shirt, covering the rainbow colored tank top that she had worn to bed the night before. She grabbed her jacket, putting it on before walking into the cold air or the early morning. No one was up with the exception of the satyrs who were already searching for something to eat. The daughter of Aphrodite headed for the woods. She dared not go in by herself, but she knew that the wood nymphs would leave her alone if she walked along the outside of the forest.
"Lucille, good morning," an Ares camper said pleasantly, she nodded back to the first normal human that she had seen today. Her brain was pleased by the fact that she had finally seen someone who was not covered in makeup and fussing about how the cold was about to ruin their hair. She nodded back to him and gave a small smile before carrying on her way.
Eventually, she was walking up to the large pine tree that stood at the edge of the small hill. She walked past the big house, and was rather surprised to see that none of the lights were on and there was no one on the front porch. She brushed it off and continued to walk through the fields.
The ground was covered in half-frozen strawberry plants, all of which would have been dead if not for the Demeter and Dionysus cabin. The only living plants in the field were the strawberries. Weeds were scarce in the magically enchanted field, but they never happened in the winter. The daughter of Aphrodite leaned down, picking one of the nearly overripe fruits and popping it into her mouth. When she did so, the noticed something peculiar further up the field. She tilted her head to the side and began to walk cautiously towards the odd form.
When she was close enough to see what it was, she surged forward, placing her hand on the girl's shoulder. "Holy Hera, you're ice cold. How long have you been out here? Hold on while I go and get some help." Before she did so, she took off her jacket, placing it under the girl and wrapping it around her sickly body.
Lucille sprinted down the fields, setting off several off-season butterflies that had been hiding in the plants. She entered the infirmary, letting the flaps swing open and closed behind her. There were only two people in the tent, one of which was holding a mug while the other had his arms wrapped around the other male's waist.
She paused for a moment, regaining her breath before she looked up her words whispered as her lungs gasped for air, "Someone, hurt, help!" With that she turned and began to run up the small hill that held the girl. She could hear the steps of the son of Apollo following after her. They almost fell onto the ground when they found the girl again. Will immediately went to work to make sure that she was alright. Lucille held her breath as she watched. The daughter of Aphrodite was near frozen til someone approached behind the two. "Will?" Nico asked, looking at his boyfriend as he worked.
"Is she gone?" he asked the other male, who simply shook his head. "Thank the gods. Lucille, right? Help me lift her." She nodded and placed her delicate hands on the underside of the freezing body. She lifted up, her rather underused arms straining to carry the weight.
When they were back at the infirmary tent, Lucille was shepherded out of the door with the promise of news later. Solemnly, she returned to her cabin, watching as her breath blew out in front of her.
The day slipped by slowly as the beautiful daughter of love paced nervously around the cabin, glancing out of the window every so often. Her siblings filtered in and out of their cabin, not sparing for a moment to ask if she was alright. Even so, Lucille was happier that way. Her siblings hated the fact that she was so different than the rest of them, refusing date after date.
Lucille stopped on what must have been her thousandth time around the room. She bounced on the heels of her feet before she turned and grabbed her jacket. It fell off of her own shoulders as she hastily threw it onto the near frozen girl's slim shoulders. As soon as one of her booted-feet was out of the door, the conch horn blew. She sighed, her shoulders slumping as she sprinted with the rest of the demigods.
The pavilion was warm and well-lit as the winter sun set behind the frost covered forest. Lucille sashayed over to her table after forking off a bit of her food to Apollo. Normally she prayed to her mother, but today she prayed to the god of healing.
"So. How was your day?" Rosa asked Lucille as she slid into the table. The blond demigod shrugged and picked at her food, her stomach clenched and tight with worry.
"I don't really want to talk about it," she sighed, wrinkling her nose before she stuck her fork into the burger. Rosa just shrugged and turned to one of their younger siblings, acting like the mother that she was soon to be.
Dinner seemed to take longer than normal before she was allowed to slip outside. Rosa carried the youngest, and newest child back to the tent as all of the siblings either funneled back to their cabin or to the crackling campfire. Lucille fell back, waiting for someone to notice her, when no one did she beamed, turning and sprinting to the infirmary tent. When she reached it, she peaked into the tent, seeing that there were several Apollo children working with some of the injured campers from the adventures yesterday in the woods.
She walked around to the back of the tent, pausing every time that she heard rustling. She found a tent flap and snuck through the back, allowing the fabric to close behind her as she snuck through the makeshift hospital. Finally, she found her way to the section where the female that she had rescued earlier inhabited.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, pulling her legs up underneath her. "I don't know what your name is, but I know I have to call you something while I talk to you. Don't ask me why I'm talking to you, it just feels like the right thing to do. You're so beautiful, I think I'll call you Gorgeous for now," her voice came out as a hushed whisper.
"My name is Lucille, I found you in the strawberry fields. You were almost frozen to death. I know you're a demigod since you managed to make it into our camp and all the way to the fields. I'm sorry about the bumpy ride, we are not the strongest demigods. You're at Camp Half-Blood by the way. I wonder who your godly parent is, mine is Aphrodite. You kind of look like a Hephaestus kid, but I don't like to stereotype.
"I guess I'll just talk to you about myself. I'm an orphan, like most demigods. I was put into a lot of group homes. I really loved this one through. My foster mother was so nice and the family that we were staying with was just so accepting of everything that I was. They were demigods too you know, but they got a new one, a mortal, and we had a few spats but other than that we were all pretty dang happy.
"I would talk to him every night before we went to sleep, I was only twelve, he was almost seventeen. I trusted him, he became one of my older brothers, he was close to a father figure to me. But one night, I had gotten teased so badly that I didn't come home. I just sat behind the school and cried the entire night. They all came looking for me and he found me first.
"He came and he told me that everything was going to be okay, that I was going to be okay and then he forced himself on me," her voice had gone to a mere breath, if you weren't listening hard enough you would not have been able to hear. "I have been cautious when it comes to loving anyone in any shape or form ever since then. My siblings hate me for it." She rose and took in a shaky breath, wiping at tears that licked her cheeks. Lucille walked out of the tent, careless with her steps until she realized that she had spoken so long that the harpies were out patrolling already.
The next day, Lucille returned, planting herself down next to the girl. She took her hair within her fingers and began to tug through it, raking through the curls with her long delicate fingers, "Your hair is so lovely, Gorgeous. I should tell you about the camp today shouldn't I? You deserve to know about everything here. After all, it's what we do for the rest of the new demigods. So there are twelve main gods, but there are three that we call the big three. The one that rules the sky is Zeus, and the one that rules the ocean is Poseidon, the last one, he rules the underworld, is named Hades, though you already know that, huh? I guess I don't really have to explain the other gods to you."
She giggled and continued to play with the unconscious girl's hair, stringing it through her long delicate fingers. "We have cabins that represent those gods, plus a lot of them that aren't main gods. If you're a Hephaestus kid then you get your own room in the bottom of your cabin and you can to all sorts of things without getting caught, before she passed away, that's a story for another time, Selina, my deceased half-sister used to talk about all the things that she and her boyfriend did when they were down in his room. It was gross but kind of romantic. In the Aphrodite cabin, you have to share a room but you get your own cabin bathroom, mostly because we all have to do our makeup, well almost all of us. That's really all I know about a lot of the cabins, they're all almost the same except for the fact that they are decorated different and the Hermes cabin is always really full.
"I have to go now, but I promise to come back tomorrow and talk some more, I can tell you some of my favorite myths, or some of the camp stories," Lucille smiled and walked out of the tent, going back to her cabin where her siblings demanded her to be as they tried to hook her up with someone.
As she promised, she walked back into the infirmary, taking the girl's head and placing it in her Indian style crossed legs. Her fingers threaded through her curly red hair, "I suppose today I'll tell you about the camp hero, who saved us during the Second Titan's War. Though the true hero's name was Luke Castellan, even though he did start it all. Percy Jackson came to camp a year before the war, he went on a quest to make sure that Zeus didn't become enraged and kill anyone. It was two years before I came to camp so I don't really know what happened, but I do know that when he came back Luke poisoned him and he stayed here over for the rest of the year.
"The second year he went on a quest to save Camp Half-Blood, Thalia's tree the only large pine tree on top of the tree. It protects this camp. She was once Zeus's daughter and he turned her into a tree when she died, making sure that no other demigod would have to face the same fate. I'm glad it's there, or else you wouldn't be here. Anyways, her tree was dying, everyone was pretty sure that Luke had done it, and so Annabeth and Percy had to go on the quest, but they were turned down. And Clarisse la Rue went instead, she was trying to make her dad be proud of her, they followed after even though they weren't supposed to. Percy's half brother, Tyson, who's a cyclops, went with them.
"They sailed across the Sea of Monsters which is what the mortals call the Bermuda Triangle, and they fought an awful cyclops who had been holding on of the satyr's hostage. Clarisse met up with them on the way back and Percy gave her the fleece so that she could fly back to camp, seeing as the camp was about to die. And Percy can't fly because Zeus decided that he took his lightning bolt and he still doesn't believe Percy that he didn't take it. Back to the story, Clarisse came back and saved the camp. Tyson went to work in the forges with his dad and then I came to camp.
"Thalia came out of the tree after the fleece was placed on it, that's how strong that sheep skin was. Things were as quiet as they ever are around here for a little bit before Percy Jackson came back, he always makes things just a little bit louder. He had been out getting some demigods on his way to camp, he brought back Nico and Bianca di Angelo, both were very pretty, though not as pretty as you. Annabeth didn't come back with them though."
She was silent for a moment as footsteps walked past the part of the infirmary that they were both in, when they passed, she began to speak again, though she was quieter than before. "The goddess Artemis had been captured along with Annabeth, and the Hunters of Artemis wanted them to go on a quest to find her, and they did. Zoe Nightshade and Bianca di Angelo didn't make it back though, they made it all the way to where they were hiding the two people and both Percy and Annabeth held up the sky. When Nico heard about his sister's death, he opened up the ground and released a bunch of skeletons all over the place.
"My second year at camp, the labyrinth opened up and they spent the entire time just running around in it. I don't really remember what happened that year, everything went so fast. The fifth year we had a gruesome battle. So many people died. I was in the battle, I tried to help as many people as possible, but I felt so small and insignificant. We had to bury a lot of demigods, my sister led the Ares kids into battle because they had refused to help earlier because of a petty grudge. Do you remember Luke? He had become a vessel for the Titan that ate the gods. I'm still a little too scared to say his name, but he killed himself to save all of us, so in the end, he was the hero."
Lucille laughed and leaned down to kiss the sleeping girl's cheek, she reached over and pulled a bottle of water out of her bag, taking a large gulp of it and then kissing her other cheek before she left the room.
She continued to come and talk to the girl for hours on end until one day when she snuck in, the girl was awake, she was sitting up in bed and looking at the tent flap, as though she was waiting for the Lucille to come in.
