CALLISTA MIKAMI IS DEAD. She remembers doing so, after all dying is something you should remember doing? Especially when you intentionally did it. She remembers slipping underneath the water, drowsy and bleeding out, as everything went black. She remembers waking up to find herself in the middle of a waiting room with people sitting behind her, some complaining about the wait time and others just staring blankly at the pale grey walls. Her body takes her to a podium, heavy because of her wet clothes as she reaches into her pocket and fishes out golden coins that seemed to magically appear. She knows all of that has happened, but she cannot recall for the life of her the conversation they had.
Everything floats around in her memory; she's only able to grasp bits and pieces of what had happened to her but nothing concrete. She can vaguely recall crossing a river and finding herself in a dark room with three old women and a tapestry but that's where her memory ends. Why can't she remember? She thinks all of this is important, it has to be but the more she thinks about it the fuzzier her memories get, and the less she can make out.
So, if she clearly remembers dying and has fuzzy but not quite there memories of what happened after she died, why is she blinking blankly up at blurred whites and browns and oranges. One could assume she was in the hospital, that her mother came home early and found her daughter unconscious in the bathtub and rushed her to the hospital, that despite clearly dying she was brought back to life. Yet, one could also assume with as much accuracy that this was her afterlife, one that her vision keeps swimming in and out of focus on which sucks but she can't pick and choose how her afterlife is.
The thing is she doesn't feel dead. If what she in fact went through before this was death, it doesn't have the same chilling cool that death comes with. She feels solid and very much alive. She's wrapped in a blanket that feels nothing like thin paper-like the blankets a hospital gives and is in a bed that feels eerily similar to the ones she would sleep in during a summer camp. It brings back memories of the two weeks she would spend in the middle of nowhere after spending two whole months cooped up in a classroom every day in a day camp that her parents only paid for to get her out of the house. Those two weeks of the summer were probably the only saving grace for her even if she kept getting bit by bugs.
"Callista!" a voice calls from somewhere nearby, it takes her a minute to realize that the voice was referring to her. She feels too groggy to make sense of anything happening.
"Callista," the voice calls again, this time the blanket being ripped off of her body by whoever was calling her. "It's time to wake up."
She groans, shifts to sit up, and rubs her eyes in hopes that her vision clears. Looking down at her legs she can see that she's in pajamas she hasn't worn since she was twelve, the bright blue and white striped shorts hung loosely against her legs. Wherever she is, it's loud but not uncomfortably so. She can hear voices surrounding her but she feels like it's quieter than it normally is.
When her eyes finally adjust she can see her surroundings. Bunk beds lined the walls and sleeping bags covered the floors. It all feels familiar and that scares her. All of her memories are fuzzy and she can't make sense of anything, but the familiarity this all holds is jarring.
She swings her legs off the bunk bed and stretches as if she was just waking up from sleep, only to get tugged by the arm and pulled onto a line.
"Callista, for once, please don't go wandering off or disappear on us. We have cabin inspections today and we need everyone to contribute and that includes you. We don't want to get stuck with kitchen duty, again."
Her eyebrows furrow as she looks up at the person talking to her. He's taller than her with curly brown hair and blue eyes that have a mischievous glint in them, she instinctively reaches to touch around her neck to see if her necklace was still there.
"Yeah, fine. Just this once Conner," she doesn't realize she's opened her mouth and responds until he shoots her a smile and ruffles her hair.
Her body moves on autopilot just like it did when she died, her body not wanting to catch up with her thoughts. Honestly, she thinks it's for the best because, at this point, she's too overwhelmed to stop and think about what's going on. At least if she moves with the motions, she will eventually be able to sit down and think. She finds herself taking a shower and changing into a bright orange shirt that reminds her of prison and a pair of jean shorts before walking back to the cabin, her mind not really paying any attention to her surroundings until she's sitting on her bunk staring at the mirror she pulls from underneath her pillow.
Her body trembles as she stares at the girl looking back at her. Instead of seeing herself at seventeen, she sees the same face she thought she grew out of years ago. She's the same as she was when she was twelve, straight down to the unruly curly hair that refuses to move shape unless she brushed it to the slight gap in the middle of her two front teeth that only closed when she turned fourteen. Dropping the mirror onto the bed, she looks down at the shirt she threw on and stares at the orange top with the words CAMP HALF-BLOOD written on it. She starts to feel the pit in her stomach grow and expand as she starts to remember everything she's passed by that she deliberately ignored. The cabins, the satyrs, the pegasus. Her mind spins even faster than it did when she first woke up.
She's grateful she was one of the first people to get ready despite being one of the last ones to wake because the words slip out of her mouth before she can catch herself.
"What the actual fuck?"