This is our first story together, hope you like it!


"Woo-hoo!" shrieked Tessa, my little sister, as we plowed down the hill on a Stoll brother's mattress. We slowed to a stop at the bottom of the hill, and she rolled off laughing as we lay in the snow.

"Why hasn't anyone ever done this before?" she asked, still laughing.

Maybe because if we venture outside the campgrounds there is a good possibility we'll get attacked by monsters. But I don't say that out loud. Tessa is only six, after all.

"Maybe because nobody thought to cling-wrap a mattress to use as a sled."

That is true. No one has ever thought of wrapping a mattress in cling wrap to use as a sled. No one has ever thought about sledding down Half-Blood Hill, either. Tessa is truly unique in that respect. Ever since she came to Camp Half-Blood, a little over a year and a half ago, Tessa has had many… interesting ideas, to say the least. Some good, like teaching the Pegasi to communicate like Clever Hans did, but others, not so much. There was that one time she gave an entire camp of ADHD half-bloods scissors, and made them sit for hours making paper snowflakes to decorate the Big House. Needless to say, that didn't turn out well.

I was usually the one to go along with her crazy schemes, the rest of our cabin politely declined participating in any of her future ideas after the incident with the tap-dancing spider.

"Let's go again!" she begged me. I dragged the kidnapped mattress back up the hill, to where Peleus was wrapped around Thalia's tree. He'd been pushing us down the hill for extra speed.

We were climbing onto the mattress when we heard a shout from behind us.

"Hey! Annabeth, you stole my mattress!" we heard Travis say, running up behind us with the rest of his cabin. It looked like he had brought backup.

Uh-oh. Busted. "Consider this payback for the mechanical spiders!" I shouted back teasingly.

"We're going sledding! Do you want to come?" Tessa asked joyfully, unaware of the impending danger. Angering a Stoll resulted in at least a week's worth of pranks on the entire cabin.

That was just adding insult to injury, though Tessa didn't know that.

"That's it! It's on!" They bent down and started packing snowballs. We were going to need help.

"Athena cabin! Report!" They piled out of the Athena cabin, looking frantically around for signs of trouble. They spotted me holding snowballs on top of the hill, and immediately came to my aid with big grins plastered on their faces.

A couple kids shouted about going to get the other cabins, and had soon disappeared into various cabins. By the time they returned with the rest of the camp, the snowballs were flying fast and furious.

"Boys against girls!" someone, most likely Clarisse, shouted into the din.

"Fine, the girls get Peleus!"

"Hey, not fair! You can melt all the snowballs!"

"You have Leo!"

"Oh, yeah! I knew that."

Chaos erupted. Snowballs were flying everywhere, and people were in danger of not only getting hit by a snowball, but by a fireball or getting splashed by water as well.

This went on for quite some time, before we saw the door of the Big House open and Mr. D walk out.

We all dropped our ammo and did our best to look innocent, though we were all grinning inside, exhilarated.

"Do this again and I'll trap you all in a bottle of Chardonnay." He then turned, and slammed the door behind him.

We were silent for a bit, before Tessa turned and exclaimed, "Does anybody want to go sledding?"