Hello my faithful followers! I promise I am not dead, but still alive. I have to apologize for my extremely long absence. I just recently gained access to a computer again, and worked through my writers block. So I'm back! I hope to update regularly, but I no promises.

Huge thank you to all of you wonderful people who reviewed! You all make my day!

Lydia pov:

The rest of the day went pretty quickly. Percy and I went canoeing and ended up having a water version of a snowball fight. The nymphs and I ganged up on Percy and ended up knocking him out of the canoe. I was laughing so hard; I didn't have time to react when he sent a wave to knock me out of the canoe as well. Of course neither of us got wet, and he ended up teaching me about the things we can do with water. He taught me how to create an air bubble and we ended up sitting in it and talking for who knows how long. We eventually swam to the surface to see some first year campers looking on with alarm. They apparently thought we both had drowned. Percy and I had a good laugh about that.

We returned the canoe to the dock and we headed to the sword-fighting arena. I was pretty good at sword fighting thanks to my stepdad, and I ended up teaching Percy just as much as he taught me. After we cleaned up and ate lunch, Percy took me down to the beach and showed me the best places to hide for pranks and he told me about some he had pulled over the years. I laughed as he told me about some of the more ridiculous ones. One particular one really made me laugh.

Percy spent his whole morning earlier this summer scouring the bottom of the bay collecting seaweed. He tied it all up in a ball and hid it in a tide pool further down the beach. He lured Annabeth down the beach and told her he had a surprise for her. He told her to close her eyes and wait. We went to the tide pool and made a huge ball of water around the seaweed and carried it all up to the top of a sand dune behind Annabeth. He dropped it right on her head, entirely soaking her and leaving a giant pile of seaweed on her head. When she turned around he said something along the lines of, "who's a seaweed brain now?" He ended up high tailing it around camp while Annabeth chased after him shouting threats with her knife.

By the end of the story I was rolling on the sand laughing with Percy next to me doing the same thing. After awhile, I see Annabeth coming down the beach toward us. We compose ourselves and wait for her to join us. She smiles when she sees us sitting together.

"Why do I get the feeling that there's a little more than sibling bonding going on here? Percy you aren't corrupting her already are you?"

"Who me?" Percy put on the most ridiculous innocent face I've ever seen, and Annabeth laughs before sitting next to him and kissing him on the cheek. We all sat and talked for a while. It was nice. It felt like I hadn't had a normal conversation in forever. I guess I really hadn't.

Despite loving the normalcy, I knew I needed to talk to Annabeth alone, and now was the perfect time. I worked up the courage to say the words that needed to be said.

"Hey Percy, would you mind if I had a talk with Annabeth alone for awhile? About, you know, that stuff I told you?" I immediately understood and nodded. He stood up and stretched.

"How about I come get you ladies when it gets close to dinner time?"

"Sounds perfect." I smiled at him gratefully. He bowed to us before making his grand departure down the beach, before tripping over a piece of driftwood. Annabeth and I had a good laugh about that before Percy was out of sight.

Annabeth turned to me expectantly. I felt very nervous and shy.

"Did you know I had a sister? Her name was Marcella. She was actually only my half-sister. She was my step-dad's daughter. We got along well enough for siblings."

"Why are you telling me about your sister?"

"Because you need to understand that I'm not saying this out of some weird sense of spite, but because it was true and I genuinely believe it."

"What are you trying to tell me?"

I took a deep breath and let it all out in a rush.

"I think Marcella was a daughter of Athena."