Well, this is my first actual story...the other was a one-shot. Yay! I was inspired to write this by Xed Alpha's Broken Bow series: I found the whole concieved-from-essence thing a really good idea, but there are just too many child-of-Artemis fics out there, ya know? So I decided to make my protagonist a daughter of...WTF you'll find out. Please R&R-there is an important A/N regarding reviews at the bottom.

Here goes nuthin...


Hestia is standing next to the burnt laurel tree, crying quietly.

"I never knew that this would happen, that leaving some of my essence in the fire would cause this. I'm supposed to help, not harm!" she says. Then she notices a small bundle lying on the ground. Hestia picks it up and looks inside. She sees a small baby who is crying quietly.

"I name you Daphnê, after the tree you were created under. But I cannot take care of you, so who will?" she says. Then her mind clears. "Percy and Annabeth. I can ask them to take care of my daughter." The couple was living in California now, near Annabeth's parents. Rumor said that they had decided to raise their children as normal people, not demigods.

A few minutes later, Hestia was at Percy and Annabeth's house. Percy opens the door.

"Hestia? What are you doing here?" he says.

"Can you and Annabeth take care of her?" she says, holding Daphnê out. "I understand that you're busy with the twins and all..." Percy lifts up Daphnê and cradles her in his arms. "Hey Wise Girl, come over here for a second," he says. Annabeth walks over to where Percy and Hestia are standing. She sees Daphnê and places her hand over her mouth.

"Hestia needs us to take care of her," Percy says. Annabeth begins crying silently. "Did you know, Hestia?"

"Know what?" Hestia asks.

"That I just had a miscarriage," Annabeth whispers. Percy puts his free arm around Annabeth. Hestia is staring at them in shock for a few seconds, but recovered quickly.

"Then take Daphne, and raise her as your own," she said. Before Percy and Annabeth could say anything, she added, "and you will forget my identity, knowing nothing but her name and that she is a half-blood." Hestia waved her hand, and Percy and Annabeth's faces went blank. She turned and started walking away. When she was halfway down the driveway, she turned around.

"Stay safe, my daughter," whispered Hestia, goddess of the home and hearth.


~Thirteen Years and Seven Months Later, Daphnê's POV~

I woke up to the sweet, sweet, sound of my siblings fighting over something. "Luke! Give me the damn TV. remote!" Theodora, known as Theo to all who wish to keep their sanity, said.

"I don't want to watch Glee! It's retarded!" That was the aforementioned Luke, Theo's twin brother.

"Oh, like Food Network is better?" And so the Saturday morning battle for the TV remote begins. What a great start to summer break.

"It's too early to be fighting!" my dad said. Would you believe me if I told you that this is essentially a script by now? Besides, it's nine o'clock in the morning, which is positively mid-afternoon if you're on school time like me.

"Percy, it's not early at all. Besides, Theo and Luke fight no matter what time it is," my mom said. Ah, the wonders of a semi-dysfunctional family.


I finished getting dressed and started to head downstairs. As I walked out of my bedroom, I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. Ugh. Well, I'm not, like super ugly or anything like that, I just look nothing like the rest of the family. Dad has black hair and sea-green eyes. Mom has curly blond hair and gray eyes. Theo has black hair and gray eyes, and Luke has blond hair and sea-green eyes. On the topic of family resemblance... What do I look like, you ask? Well, to start, my skin is a shade paler than theirs. I have hair the color of flames. No, seriously, it's Little-Mermaid red with orange and gold highlights. You would not believe how out of place I look in family pictures. Oh, don't worry, my plight gets worse: I have brown eyes.

Okay, that came out wrong. What I'm trying to get at there is that I'm the only one in the whole family with brown eyes. Sometimes random people go up to me and ask how old I am because I look like a nine-year-old with a figure but apparently my eyes look 'wise'. What the hell is that supposed to mean anyways?
And as if that wasn't bad enough, I'm fourteen years old (turning fifteen in a couple of months) and exactly 5'0"! I'm one of the shortest people in the school. But, on the upside, I have two things in common with the rest of the family: all five of us are ADHD and dyslexic. As if my grades weren't bad enough...


"Morning, Daphnê," Mom said. Dad grunted something-he's not completely awake until he's had coffee. Theo and Luke were still fighting over the TV. remote. I sat down and poured myself a bowl of Froot Loops.

"Should we tell them?" Mom said.

"Wise Girl, we should've told them years ago," Dad said. Mom nodded.

"Theo, Luke, stop fighting over the TV. and come over here," Dad said. To Mom, he added, "Should you start or should I?"

"I'll start—the beginning's always easier than the end," Mom said. Theo and Luke sat down next to me—one on each side.

"Before we start, your mother and I want to remind you—all three of you—that we love you very much," Dad said. Luke, Theo and I exchanged glances. Crap. This is not going to be good. Because, you know, nothing good ever starts out like that. Nothing.

"All three of you know your Greek mythology—we made sure of that," Mom said. It wasn't a question, but the three of us nodded anyways.

"Well, the Greek gods are real. And so are their children. I'm a daughter of Athena and Seaweed Brain over there is a son of Poseidon," Mom said. Okay…that's not weird. Luke shrugged. Theo raised an eyebrow, like she was thinking, Okay, I know my parents are weird but not that weird. Me? Oh, I simply stared in disbelief.

"Theo—you take after your dad. You have his powers over water. Luke takes after me. He has a brain, unlike some people in this family." Dad raised his eyebrows but didn't say anything.

"What about me? Who do I take after?" I asked. I think I know the answer… Dad spoke this time. "About a year after the twins were born, their mother had a miscarriage. Both of us were saddened beyond belief. Theo and Luke, you were sensing that, somehow. Your health was failing.

"Then, one evening in November, Daphnê's mother appeared at our door. She told us that she needed someone to take care of her, because she couldn't. We readily agreed. She's been ours since that day." Luke and Theo put their arms around me. I started crying silently. It's hard finding out that your parents aren't really your parents, that your siblings aren't really your siblings. The whole Greek gods thing was easier to accept than that.

"Who was she?" I asked. "Who was my mother?"

"We don't know…she erased our memories of her identity. But think about it—you might be able to figure it out," Mom said—yes, I'll still call them Mom and Dad. That much hasn't—and won't—change. She was crying, too.
Let's see…I don't like leaving home at all. It's the worst thing in the world for me. I seem to have an affinity of sorts for fire. I don't get cold easily, but when I do, I get really, really cold. Like frostbite cold. Usually it happens when we leave home to visit Disneyland or something like that, not so much when we visit Aunt Juniper and Uncle Grover, Aunt Katie and Uncle Travis, or Grandma Sally and Grandpa Paul. Umm...I look young and old for my age. Yep, cant forget about my stalkers.

"You're right, I do know," I said. Hestia. My mother is Hestia, goddess of the home and hearth.

"Then we'll head to Camp Half-Blood tomorrow," Dad said. "It's a training camp for demigods, and where your mom and I met." They looked at each other, remembering other time and places.

"Do I have to go?" Luke said. "Because, you know, it just seems so-"

"Angelique will be there," Mom said. She had stopped crying. But anyways, Angelique 'Kiki' Stoll is the daughter of Aunt Katie and Uncle Travis, who happen to be Luke's godparents. Luke has had a crush on Kiki since they were…I think three years old, maybe younger.

"Why can't we leave today?" Luke said. See what I mean?

"Because we have gods, people, and a centaur to notify, packing to do, and we need to make sure that Zeus doesn't blast us out of the sky," Dad said. This should be interesting…


That night, I had a dream. I'm pretty sure it was my first demigod dream. But anyways, Hestia was standing in front of me.

"Hello, milady," I said. What? It's not like I have anything better to call her. She frowned, ruining her looks for the moment. "Don't call me milady—I am your mother, after all."

"Well, what else am I supposed to call you?" I asked. "Not Mom, because that's Annabeth. Not Hestia, because you are my mother, after all. So milady it is." Mimicking Hestia felt good, in a way, but in another, it didn't. It's hard to explain, like part of me is saying take that, while the somewhat prissy side of me (Don't worry, I deny its existence.) says that's not right, you shouldn't do that, she's your mother. Then a totally random thought occurred to me.

"Wait, aren't you a maiden goddess?" I asked. Because, you know, it would be weird if I was born Athena-style of whatever.

"Crap. This is sooo not what I wanted to talk about," Hestia muttered. I'm pretty sure that I wasn't supposed to hear that.

"Yes. You were born from my essence and that of a mortal man's," she said, almost too patiently. Well, no duh. I said as much aloud.

"Well, if you must know, then, fourteen years ago, I met a man. He had spent the last three weeks at a campsite under a laurel tree. He had a kept a campfire going for those nights.

"At the start of the fourth month, I visited him. He didn't seem at all bothered by the fact that an eight-year old girl had randomly shown up at his campfire. We talked for a while, and as a parting gift, I left some of my essence in the fire."

"That night, a forest fire ravaged the forest, completely destroying the camp. There was no way for your father to have survived. When I visited the site, there was a small bundle under the laurel tree—you. That's how you got your name, by the way—Laurel is Daphnê in Greek.

"Because it would be impossible for me to raise you on my own, I took you to Percy and Annabeth's house. I'm fairly certain that you can guess the rest." She was right; I could guess. Mom and Dad had raised me as their own for the next fourteen, almost fifteen, years. Then I found out about my lineage, and here I am.

"Sooooo…what now?" I asked. Hestia sighed. "Now it's time for you to wake up. See you at Camp Half-Blood." As I started waking up, I heard her say, "Being a mother is going to be harder than I thought." Poor thing has no idea…


If you decide to review...please be anonymous if you're gonna flame cuz then i cant pm u w/ a hate message...yes, i may do that. Oh, and if you review i will review one of your stories that are in a fandom that i know well. (PJO, Hunger Games, Harry Potter, maybe Max Ride depending on whether ive read the 2nd book or not by then). Oh and if u need another incentive...if the review is signed i will PM u w/ a sneak peek of Ch. 2 (Theo's first meeting with Apollo).

BIBI!