I wrote this ages ago when I had just finished rereading The Last Olympian and was wondering about the lives of all the unclaimed demigods.
Unclaimed
She doesn't know her mother.
It's just her and her dad, in a small apartment with small windows and a suspicious stain on the bathroom wall. The pipes in the bathroom leak sometimes, and the mildew smell is overpowering on hot days. The couple next door's arguments filter through the doors at night. Their insults lull her to sleep on the nights her dad's gone.
And she's fine with it.
Because really, her dad loves her, even if he isn't home a lot. Even if sometimes he lurches in at three in the morning with beer on his breath, muttering about monsters and how they're coming, one day they'll come, and then we can't stay here anymore sweetheart how about moving? Because he loves her and that's all that matters.
Really.
Then one day she's in math class and a dog bursts in, except it's not really a dog, it's more oh-god-what-is-that-thing-it's-bigger-than-my-bathroom, and it's coming towards her and its teeth are so sharp and she really doesn't want to die—
But that boy who sits in the back of the room that she catches staring sometimes jumps up and saves her. She tries to thank him, but he grabs her and then they're running.
The next few days are a blur of explanations. The boy's not a boy, he's a satyr, and yes he has goat legs but she tries not to stare. And then they're at camp, Camp Half-Blood, a camp for demigods, and she's a demigod.
So now she's found a place that fits, and it feels right, and comfortable, and safe, but who's her mother?
No one knows, but she's okay.
Because she has a home, a place to stay, and she can make friends and relate. And the years pass, and she sees people get claimed, and now they have parents, they have identities, they know who they are—
But she's fine.
And she trains and trains, and she knows that one day she'll be acknowledged, and then she can move to a bed of her own and really fit.
It'll happen one day.
But until then, she's all right.
(Not really.)
