Raven
October 22 (about seven months ago)
Raven's hands felt cold. She stuffed them into the pockets of her thin blue sweatshirt but nothing seemed to help warm them. She curled herself into a ball, tucking her legs into her sweatshirt and sank down. The wind howled over head and pricked at her ears which stung painfully. Night had fallen hours ago. The leaves on the trees had already fallen and it felt more like winter than autumn. Still she ignored the cold, sitting outside in the frozen dirt.
It was the twenty-second of October. Her birthday...
She hadn't bothered to mention it to anyone. She figured it wasn't important. It hadn't even crossed her mind. Now she regretted it. It would have lessened the ache she felt now.
Years before she made her wish, Raven spent her birthday with her sister. Just her and Kelly. It was the day she looked forward to all year and now it was gone. She couldn't even find Kelly. Raven was starting to think she never would. Would her sister even know who she was when she found her? Would she ever get her back?
Raven buried her head in her knees and cried. Even when you're Bringer of Hope, there are times when you feel like there is nothing left to hope for...
Raven had spent the day wandering around her hometown in Connecticut. She'd visited her old high school and the library where she used to read after school, asking anyone for any information they had about her sister. Nobody seemed to know anything about anyone named Kelly Blouse.
She finally found herself at the place where her old house should have stood.
Before the wish it had been a white and black Victorian style house that stood at the end of the road. There was a thick wood in the backyard with a swing set made of wood and plastic. There were exactly four bedrooms and two bathrooms. There had been a kitchen with black and white tiled floors and a living room painted the color of peaches. There was an office where Colby would play Xbox and a bookcase full of all Ravens' favorite books. The house had been littered with Kelly's artwork, which their father had hung up in frames whenever he was home from work. There was a cupboard full of wine bottles. It was the only cupboard in the house with a steal lock on it and the only person with a key was Raven's mother. There was a cement basement where Colby would disappear into for hours. There was a little bedroom in the attic with pink curtains and fairy lights and a warm bed with a flashlight next to it for late night reading. There was a desk in the corner of the room for homework that went largely untouched. In the downstairs hallway the last door on the right lead to a study where Raven's father would lock himself up while he did his work. It served as a private escape made just for him.
In the front entryway there was a beautiful picture, hung in an oak frame. It was of Raven and her family. The picture depicted a loyal and caring husband with his arm around his beautiful wife's waist. The loving parents stood behind their three amazing children. In the middle, sat the oldest son. He smiled at the camera with his arms playfully wrapped around his two little sisters, who both grinned with joy. On the brother's left was the oldest girl, a beautiful brown haired girl. The only one in the family with light hair. To the brother's right sat the younger sister. Her arm was wrapped around her brother and she looked at the camera lens with a huge grin painted on her face. The picture captured them as if they were at the pinnacle of happiness.
The perfect family.
Raven's mother had hung it there so that when people walked inside that first impression they got of her family. It was the first thing Raven saw everyday walking home from school. As if her mother thought hanging up some pretty picture in a frame could mask the bittersweet memories echoing through the halls. That house was like candy coated poison.
But still... it was home.
No, correction: It was ash.
That's all that was left, anyway. Char and ash. Raven had tried to ask the neighbors what had happened but they all said the same thing. The house had always been like that. They'd complained to the city, they'd tried to get the remains of the house cleared away, maybe get something built there but nothing was ever done. From what they'd heard the family had gotten out safely and ended up moving away. No one knew where though...
After a long day of disappointment and heartache Raven curled up at the closest place she had to a home. The edge of the creek by Jimmy's World Famous Ice Cream where she and Kelly used to play. The ground was wet and cold and she could feel the muddy water soaking into her socks. Her toes curled and began to go numb.
Raven played with her flashlight keychain wiping away tears from her cheeks. She squeezed the button on the duck's back and a beam of light came shining out of its bill. She clicked it on and off again, trying to focus on anything else, besides the cold.
You could go back to camp, Her mind offered, you could always go back to camp...
But what would they think of her there? After she left like that... Especially Luke. There would be so many questions that she didn't have the heart to answer. Besides she had a mission to fulfill. She needed to find her sister. If she went back to camp she wouldn't want to leave and then she might as well kiss any hope of finding Kelly goodbye. She just had to focus. She was fine...
But you're not fine... Her mind argued.
Yes she was...
No. You're not.
Her flashlight's beam flickered about the water. A rock in the middle of the stream's path caused the water to spray into the air like mist. The flashlight's beam caught on it making a rainbow. A faint one, but a rainbow none the less. Raven paused staring at the rainbow flickering in the dark. It was so faint and she was surprised to see it in the dark like this... She stuck her hand in her bag. The first thing her hand touched was a golden drachma.
She swallowed her pride and tossed the coin into the rainbow.
"Goddess, accept my offering... Show me Luke Castellan at Camp Half-Blood."
O*O*O*O
Raven waited two and a half hours on the front steps of the library. It was 3 in the morning by time Luke pulled up in the Camp Half-Blood van. The son of Hermes had been taking driving lessons from Chiron since he was 17. How a centaur had taught a teenage boy to drive was beyond Raven but it wasn't like Dionysus was going to do it. Chiron had stepped up; after all, Luke needed to learn. It wasn't like he was planning on staying at Camp Half-Blood forever.
Luke leaned over and opened the passenger side door, "Come on, get in."
Raven climbed into the van and they started the long drive home in the dark. The headlights cut through the otherwise peaceful night as the two demigods sat in silence. Luke kept glancing at Raven like he wanted to say something but didn't for a long time.
Luke looked the same as he had when she'd left. Tall, blond, with a thick, pale scar running from the bottom of his eye down to his chin. Raven knew she had changed though. She'd grown nearly an inch taller. She still had about an inch to go before she was back to her old height which was 5'6" but 5'5" was pretty good for now. She had a couple new scars along her arms and legs marking the battles she'd won against more than a couple monsters.
Luke broke the silence after thirty minutes of driving in the dark.
"So, where have you been?"
Raven shrugged, "Here... There... Everywhere."
There was another minute of silence.
"You didn't call camp," Luke said, "We were worried."
"Yea..."
"I was worried"
"Mmm..."
The conversation ended there for the rest of the drive. Raven curled up into a ball again, sinking back into the soft leather of the passenger's seat. The heater whirred softly creating fog on the windows. Luke stared at the road without a word. Raven could tell he was tired; his eyes stared off into the distance like he had just woken up. Raven wasn't sure if he was angry or relieved to see her. When she'd called he hadn't said much. She'd asked him to come and get her and he simply asked where. There was no other dialogue between them. Whatever it was he was feeling at least he'd come to get her...
A couple miles passed and Raven fell asleep.
O*O*O*O
When Luke woke Raven up, it was light outside. The sun had just begun to work its way over the horizon, poking through the pine tree branches. Luke had parked the van and leaned back in the driver's seat. Raven read the clock. It was 6:30 in the morning... Luke finally looked over at her with a serious look in his eyes.
"You don't get to do that, you know." Luke said, "You're not allowed to run away every time something happens and leave me here wondering what went wrong. If you leave, you tell and you let me know why."
"I'm sorry..." Raven frowned.
"Because that's what you do for family," Luke continued, "You don't make your family worry about you. That's what you told me, wasn't it? That you don't put your family in that kind of distress."
"...Family..." Raven repeated.
"That's right," Luke said, looking at her, "We're family. We're all your family, and this is your home. You can go running around the country as much as you want, Raven, but we all know you belong here..."
Raven swallowed, she belonged here. She belonged here. Raven had never belonged anywhere. She'd always loved camp half-blood. She'd made it her mission to make it better for the people who lived there. She wanted to protect it from all the sadness and suffering that it would be subject to. She'd gone as far as to call it home before but she had never really thought about it before.
Camp Half-Blood was her home. The other campers here were her family.
She remembered the halls of her high school and how in every class she'd chosen to sit in the very back where no one would bother her. She remembered eating Lunch alone in the computer lab every day. She remembered the hours she'd spent alone in the corner of the library after school. She remembered the Victorian house at the end of the road and the picture hanging in the entryway depicting the perfect family.
No... Not perfect.
Raven could see what the picture of a perfect family would look like and it looked nothing like the photograph hanging in her old home. Instead she saw a tall boy with sandy hair and a scar with his arm around a girl with blond hair curled like a princess's. Standing with her was a dark haired boy with green eyes. With them there was a boy with goat legs and horns and a girl with a spear dressed in camouflage. There was a man who was half horse. A pair of boys who looked like they could be twins. A girl who was so pretty she was almost as beautiful as her mother. A boy with big hands and dirt on his face leftover from the forge.
And finally in the middle of it all, on the sandy haired boy's other side, with his arm wrapped around her shoulders stood a small black haired girl with blue eyes and a green backpack. A silver circlet was woven into her hair and she proudly sported an orange Camp Half-Blood tee-shirt. And when she smiled at the camera lens, it was genuine.
It looked so right. It felt so right. When she thought about that picture, it didn't give her that empty feeling in her chest like she had something to hide. It was just her and her family, right there smiling for the sake of smiling. Not because they were covering up everything that went on behind closed doors. No one had on any false smiles and no one was faking love. It was unlike anything she'd ever felt before.
"Luke," Raven said after a long moment of silence. A smile crept onto her face and she wipe away tears as her voice cracked, "I think... I think I want to go home..."
Luke smiled at her leaning over to hug her tightly.
Raven had never belonged anywhere. She had never belonged to anything. She had nothing and now there was this. This was everything she had ever dreamt about. She'd never thought it was possible but now she had it. This was the genuine love and acceptance she'd always craved. She finally felt like she belonged...
And she would protect that...
