After we meet Chiron the centaur, Heamon leads us back to the cabins. He walks over to a low gray building with an owl above the door. The door is propped open to let the cool air in. Inside are three campers, two boys and a girl.

The girl sees us first. "Newcomers," she announces to her siblings, coming over to join us. She looks to be a bit older than me, maybe sixteen or seventeen. She gazes at us with her dark gray eyes. "I'm Shay," she says eventually. "Counselor of the Athena Cabin. From District Three. Can we help you with anything?"

The boys have joined her at the door. They both look about my age, fifteen. Both share the honey blond hair and gray eyes of Shay. And of Adevin. My eyes linger on the taller boy, who stands just to Shay's right. He looks familiar, very familiar, but I cannot imagine where I might have seen him before.

"Hi," Heamon says. "I just got back, as you can see. We have someone who we think may be one of your siblings. We're not positive, and you guys are known for having that kind of sixth sense, so, um..." He glances over at Adevin. "Here he is."

The Athena campers look over at my companion. Heamon begins to talk again, telling them about Adevin's urging us to cross the river, his many other decisions that may very well have saved our lives.

"He is," the shorter boy at Shay's left says. He steps forward, extending his hand. "I'm Thilo. Sorry you don't get the big claiming sign that the other cabins get. Athena tends to expect her children to identify their siblings themselves."

"How can you tell?" I ask, my eyes flicking to the familiar-looking boy and then back to Thilo. "You see him, and you just know he's your brother?"

Thilo shrugs. "I can't explain it. As Heamon said, it's pretty much just a sixth sense. We've never been wrong before."

"I guess that's it, then," Heamon says. "See you at dinner, Adevin. I need to show Katniss to her cabin." He steps away from the door, and I turn to follow him, but turn back.

"What's your name?" I blurt out to the tall boy.

He fixes me in his stare, his lips quirking up. "Evan. Evan Palian."

My eyes widen in surprise as the memories come flooding back. The blonde boy, the tallest in the class, raising his hand to answer a question no one else could figure out. Evan, standing in the section across from mine in the reaping, holding his breath and exhaling along with everyone else. Evan, sitting next to Madge and me at lunch, one of the only two friends I ever had. Evan, staying after school with the science teacher two years ago, and never being seen again.

"Evan," I whisper. "It's you." A part of me does not want to believe it. There is no way that our district's missing child is a son of Athena. There's no way he successfully made it down all those miles of river and monsters. He was the smartest in the class, but he was thirteen, and he was alone. But I stare into his familiar gray eyes, and I know it is truly him.

Evan smiles. "It's been a while, hasn't it."

Shay stares at us. "You two know each other?"

Evan nods. "We were friends back in District Twelve."

"What happened to you?" I ask.

"It's a long story." He leans against the door frame. "I'm sure you remember part of it. Teachers never asked me to stay behind - I'm sure people were talking about it. Anyways, she said she had something urgent to speak to me about. I stayed, and she transformed into what I now know was an empousa. Most males cannot resist the charm of empousai, but my mind remained clear. Because of my mother, I imagine. I ran, ran into the woods. She chased me, and I eventually managed to kill her. I found Half-Blood Creek and decided to follow it. Because it had to lead somewhere, right? It took me a while, but I got here." He gestures to the valley.

"Not bad." The journey from Twelve to camp is long and arduous, but Evan was one of the most resourceful people I knew. If anyone could have made it alone, it was him.

"Come, Katniss, it's almost dinner," Heamon says. "I need to show you your cabin."

"My cabin," I repeat. I mutter a farewell to Adevin's siblings and follow the satyr away from the Athena cabin. "So. Hermes, you said?" Heamon nods, and I frown. "I thought you said you didn't know who my father was."

"We don't," Heamon says. "Hermes is the god of travelers and hospitality, along with about a hundred other things. All the unclaimed campers stay in his cabin."

"Unclaimed?" I say. "How long until we're claimed?"

Heamon shrugs. "Some people are claimed before they get to camp. For some, it takes minutes. Others...others are never claimed at all."

I frown at that. "But...they're gods. They don't realize that they have a kid who got to camp?"

The satyr sighs. "The gods are busy, Katniss. Sometimes they forget about their children. They do have several millennia worth of thoughts in their heads, after all."

"That's no excuse," I insist. "If they're going to have kids, they should pay attention to them."

Heamon just heaves a sigh and stares at the ground.

A cluster of girls walks past us. They are about Prim's height, and their faces are youthful, but something in their eyes, or perhaps in their demeanor, tells me they are not quite human. I stare after them, bewildered.

"Nymphs," Heamon says, smiling slightly. "Dryads. Spirits of the forests. Lovely, aren't they?"

I nod, my eyes widening in astonishment when a girl breaks from the pack and melts into a tree by the path. Dryads - the messengers of the forest, Heamon had said. The main middlemen between Camp and New Greece, the districts and the woods. The guardians of the Southern Path.

"They almost died out a couple hundred years ago," Heamon says. "The wars, you know? There was more deforestation than you can possibly imagine. And then there was the poison from the biological warfare and the environment's retaliation, and the bombs demolished so many of the few patches of wildlife humanity hadn't already destroyed. It was a bloodbath. There are a few patches of them living past Panem's borders, we think, but their numbers are greatly concentrated here."

I laugh. "There's nothing past Panem's borders, Heamon, everyone knows that. It was all destroyed in World War Three. We were the only survivors."

Heamon shakes his head. "Don't believe everything you're told, Katniss. The Capitol knows that if people knew there were other survivors out there, many of them would rather run into the unknown than stay in Panem. Not that they would have an easy time getting anywhere - there's a loose state way up north and we think there are a few settlements on the South American Island, but as far as we know, there's nothing any closer."

I want to ask more, to hear more about the world the Capitol hid from us, but just then we arrive at a cabin slightly larger than those that surround it, with a large brass '11' above the doorway.

"Here we are," Heamon announces, pushing open the door to reveal maybe a dozen boys and girls from maybe eight years old to about my age. They look up when we enter, and I find myself self-conscious.

It is a little girl who can't be older than eight or nine who finally breaks the silence. "Heamon!" she shrieks, running up to him and throwing her arms around his middle. "You're back you're back you're back!"

"Hey, Quire," Heamon says fondly. "Been good while I was away?" She nods excitedly. "Is Fidelia around? We have a newcomer. Two, actually."

"She is around, as it happens," one of the older girls says, stepping forward from her bunk and reaching for my hand. "Fidelia Melgen, Cabin Eleven counselor."

"Katniss."

Fidelia turns to Heamon. "You said there was a second?"

"Yeah. Primrose. She's in the infirmary. Got a bit scratched up coming down here."

"I could hear. Are they regular or undetermined?"

I look between them, rather annoyed that they were talking about me right in front of my face, as if I wasn't there at all. Heamon catches my eye and smiles apologetically. "Undetermined," he says.

"Fifteen years and no word," I say, irritated. "You'd think he didn't care at all. Surely there's some sort of age limit? Hasn't someone bothered to say, 'Hey, claim your kids before they go to the mines, or else'?"

Fidelia sighs. "They tried, a few years before the big war. All half-bloods are supposed to be claimed before the age of thirteen. And they were, for a few years. But then the wars started, and Panem was created, and...well, most half-bloods don't even make it to camp. It's unrealistic, to hold the gods to such a promise in a place like this."

I don't bother to hide the disgust in my face. "It's not unrealistic at all. They're gods, aren't they? They're supposed to be powerful, right?"

Thunder booms overhead. My hand goes to my bow, and I look nervously at Heamon.

"You shouldn't have said that," the satyr says. "The gods don't take kindly to insults." I want to say that if the gods have the time to listen for and react to insults they should have more than enough time to check if one of their kids might have crossed the border into camp, but Heamon cuts me off. "Apologize. Now."

I glance reluctantly to the sky. Why should I? I want to ask. I said nothing wrong. But thunder booms again, storm clouds appearing overhead as if from nowhere. "Sorry," I say.

For a moment, nothing happens. And then the sky clears, and I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

Fidelia ushers me into the cabin and sections off a small section of floor for me. "This is for you," she says graciously. "There are twenty of us now, including you and Primrose. Only seven us are claimed: myself, Angie - she's the second in command, Teo, Harlem, Maia, Quire...ah yes, and Sable."

"Thanks," a boy a few years younger than me grumbles from the back of the cabin.

Fidelia ignores him. "Perhaps you should get yourself cleaned up, Katniss. Dinner is in half an hour, and frankly, I don't think I could bear sitting near you smelling like this."

"The Ares kids drown out any other smell," another boy insists. "They're only a couple cabins down, and I can smell 'em right now."

"A bit of sweat could make you faint, Valet," a third kid sneers. "You go into battle against him sweaty, you don't even need a sword; you've already won."

"Shut up, Damien..."

I back away from the bickering campers and their infuriating counselor, returning to Heamon, who still stands by the door. "You're just going to leave me here with these people?" I mutter to him.

"What do you want me to do?" Heamon asks. "You could be out of here any second. There's just no telling when." He smiles at me. "It'll be fine, Katniss. You'll love it here, just you wait."

Not my finest writing, but it will have to do.