3 Amelia
Introducing the E/N, a comment unrelated to the story made by one of my editors. Caution, some are inappropriate.
Turns out, after a year of kitchen knife fighting, I was still terrible at hand-to-hand combat.
I mean, I guess one advantage that I had was that I made fighting awkward for both of us because I was left handed. So really, it was almost always a fair fight.
I still sucked.
"Work on your technique, Avery!" Chiron instructed. "Bend your knees, keep your sword up!"
I feel like the guy I was sparring with, David, a tall guy with dark hair wearing (what else) an orange T-Shirt and sweatpants, spent more time listening to Chiron yell at me instead of actually sparring me. Not to mention, dang, this guy was good. He was probably one of the best people at hand-to-hand combat at camp.
"Nonono Avery, you're going to hurt yourself!" Chiron said as he came over. He took my sword and rightened the position.
Suffice to say, I was not a good student.
Archery was pretty good though. I somehow managed to not completely fail and even hit the bullseye once.
"You're a natural, Avery," the leader of the Acapella cabin said. "Are you sure you haven't been claimed yet? You're getting this way faster than even some of the Apollo kids."
The who kids?
"Huh. I don't know. We'll see eventually," I replied.
And then, ah yes, the famous death lava rock wall climb. I've been anticipating this since the tour.
A/N: 3 days ago
Apparently, the walls slowly close in, and if you don't climb it fast enough, the lava pours on you and the walls crush you.
Very fun.
When it was my turn, I donned my helmet. Like a cheap plastic biker's helmet was gonna save me from falling or being crushed.
I took a good look at the wall. It was pretty dang tall, maybe about 4 stories high, and the rocks seemed to be spread out just enough so I couldn't skip any of them.
Well, I better get started.
As soon as I touched the bottom rock, I felt the vibrations and the walls starting to close in.
I started to scale the wall as fast as I could, which was not fast. The rocks were just out of my reach, so I had to do a little jump-thing to make it to the next rock. Imagine doing that 100 times in a row with the threat of being turned into a lunch product looming over your head if you're not fast enough, and that's probably what it felt like.
After an eternity of climbing and jumping, climbing and jumping, with my limbs on fire, I was on the last 3 rocks.
You're almost there, I muttered to myself.
Naturally, that's when things started to go wrong.
A boulder fell down, narrowly missing me, which I later found out that the operator did "just for funsies." But that wasn't all.
Droplets of lava were pouring down from the top. After I had made the 3rd last jump, the droplets increased in size tenfold. I heard a plop and a sizzle and realized why they gave me a helmet.
With a helmet that was probably a donut at this point, I made the 2nd last jump.
And the walls started to close in faster.
The vibrations of the wall moving caught me off guard and I almost fell. Well, how was I supposed to make this jump with the walls shaking harder than (insert metaphor here)?
Bracing myself, I made the last jump. I pulled myself onto the top of the wall.
And there was lava everywhere.
Standing on a small platform marked as the goal, there was just lava everywhere. Looking behind me, I saw that the wall was about to close in. When it did, I saw that the impact pushed the lava down the wall, ready to make a deep-fried demigod if any climber was unlucky enough to not have made it. But on top of that (literally) there were boulders that rained down if you somehow managed to survive/dodge the lava phase.
Once again, I questioned if camp was for protecting half-bloods or killing them.
Well, now I was just stuck up here.
"How do I get down?" I yelled.
"Jump! I'll catch you!" David, the operator yelled back.
I did not have faith in them to catch a person jumping off a 4 story-tall wall.
Well, I guess I had to climb back down.
Very slowly and painfully, I started to inch my way back down. It did not help that the operator was narrating my progress.
"One year later…"
"Five years later…"
"So long that the old narrator got tired of waiting and they had to hire a new one."
"Shut up," I hissed, out of breath.
After another 20 minutes, I finally made it back down and, for the second time, vomited on David's shoes. Karma.
After David changed to his last pair of sneakers, I watched as the next person in line started to climb. She was no older than 11, with long brown hair wearing (:O) an orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt.
When she started, I saw how agile she was. She was jumping from rock to rock gracefully, unlike me who had to throw themselves up to get to the next rock.
TL;DR, she decimated my time.
Well, the next class was Latin. Latin didn't really come to me naturally. As a person with severe dyslexia, I was never really good at anything writing related. I could understand some bits and pieces of Latin, but most of the time, the words danced around the paper.
This class, we had a group project, where we had to describe the 12 Olympians in Latin. Given that I didn't really know anyone in the class, I decided to ask the girl I saw from the rock climbing wall.
"Hey," I said, as I approached her. "Wanna partner up?"
She seemed surprised that someone offered to partner with her. "Oh! Sure, that'll be great."
Turns out, every demigod had dyslexia as well as ADHD. I always thought Leo managed to sneak in 10 cups of coffee everyday.
After learning that Cabin Eleven represents Hermes and not Hermit, and the god of music and poetry is Apollo, I managed to somehow escape from the room of living torture.
"It's over!" I said dramatically.
The girl, who's name I learned was Amelia, walked over to me with genuine concern on her face. "Are you ok?"
"No, I think the god Hermit stole my brain cells," I responded.
She chuckled nervously.
The bell rang for dinner. Thankfully, cause I was starving right now.
However, dinner wasn't so happy. Chiron told us to get our food and gather around the pavilion and eat while he spoke.
"We have news of a prophecy," Chiron started. "We don't know what the actual prophecy is, but our head counsellor for the Hypnos cabin, Clovis, received a dream about an upcoming quest." Chiron motioned towards a stocky guy who was napping in his chair, unaware of the conversation.
"We have received a message from the god, Apollo, that somebody has taken his sacred bow. We don't know who took it, but it must be found and returned as soon as possible."
I noticed Jerry squeezing through the crowd, who I haven't seen in days since we first arrived at camp.
"Hey Jerry," I whispered.
"Jeremy," he replied.
"Where have you been all this time?" I inquired.
"Another mission of sorts. Listen, I think I know where Apollo's bow is, and who stole it."
"Well, that certainly was fast."
"Actually, Chiron sent me to ask for companions on this quest, because he thinks that I should go with people I can work with well."
Well, that flattered me. I've known him for, what, 4 days? And he trusts me to go on a quest with him?
"Who else is going on the quest?"
"That," he explained, "is dependent on the prophecy. Chiron let me choose one companion because the prophecy mentions a 4 person quest, but only 3 people are specified."
"So we just have to wait and see?" I asked.
I faintly heard Amelia hum "Sincerely Me."
Jeremy nodded.
Well, I really hated waiting for things to happen. It makes me feel just, so powerless. I figured it's nobody's fate to just sit around and wait for something to happen.
"...so the best we can do is patiently wait for more news," Chiron concluded. "That ends the meeting. You may finish your dinner and head back to your cabins. We will not be having a campfire tonight."
Making another prayer to my unknown dad, I finished my food and headed back to the cabin. Despite the food being good, the only freedom you had was the drink, and otherwise, everything else was exactly the same everyday.
Yum.
Amelia and I headed back to Cabin Eleven, seeing as we were both unclaimed, and bidding farewell to her, I crashed into my bed.
Now, I'm aware that demigods have weird dreams, given by the screams of people waking up from nightmares in my cabin almost every night. But I thought that, since I had no weird dreams for 3 days, I'd be one of those demigods without weird dreams.
Haha no.
I found myself in an apartment, my old apartment, the one I used to live in with my brother, sister and mom for 5 years. It was the day of the fire.
Some stupid kid next door decided to stick a paperclip into an electrical outlet with heavily flammable objects next to it, and well, their apartment was burned down. Miraculously, no one in their family was killed, albeit injured. My family, however, wasn't so lucky.
I remember that night clearly, but somehow, I was watching it. I saw 7 year old me vibing with my 11 year old brother and 5 year old sister. We were playing Monopoly when we heard the fire alarm go off. Our mom wasn't home, and back then, I thought my dad moved over to Florida, never to be seen again, but now I knew better. He was probably sitting up in the heavens, completely oblivious that one of his children was about to die.
When the alarm went off, it was so loud that none of us really did anything for a minute or so. Biiiiiiig mistake. Once we came to our senses, we realized that the sprinklers were broken (yipee) and that our only exit, the door, was slowly being engulfed in flames.
We had to get out now. That much was obvious.
We bolted for the door, only to find that most of the metal was melting, leaving only a small opening that was going to be burned away when the top of it melted.
My brother made the executive decision to prioritize us first. After some arguing, he made me help him get our sister through, but the second we managed to get her through, the top of the hole burned and the entrance was gone.
That was when we remembered the window.
Our apartment was on the fourth floor, an almost surely fatal drop, but it was better than simply being burnt away.
We noticed a pile of trash in a dumpster that looked relatively safe to land in, despite it being messy. Well, we had one chance.
The youngest one being me, I jumped first, and I remembered the feeling of soaring through the air for four stories, until I barely managed to land in the pile of trash.
I got out of the dumpster and motioned for my brother to jump. I saw him fumble a little when he jumped, which I thought at that time wasn't going to make a difference.
I realized how dreadfully wrong I was as I saw him soar through the air.
He was going to make it.
He was going to make it.
No…
He wasn't going to make it.
HE WASN'T GOING TO-
I woke up, gasping for air, my eyes filled with tears, as I tried to take in the information. I could faintly recall what happened afterwards. An ambulance and firetruck with their loud sirens coming, the medics and police officers questioning, telling me it was going to be ok, but I knew it wasn't going to be.
It would never be ok.
Putting my head back on my pillow, I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn't. Too many thoughts were swirling around my mind. Eventually, I got out of bed and snuck out of the cabin to try to get some fresh air. Maybe a little fresh air could help clear my mind, I thought to myself.
To my surprise, I wasn't the only one outside. I saw someone sitting on the steps of the porch.
"Amelia," I whispered.
She jumped and turned around.
"You also had a bad night?" I asked.
"Yeah," she said, turning away again to look at the stars. I never really realized how beautiful the stars looked at night. So peaceful and tranquil.
"I'm just," she started, "I'm just wondering who my godly parent is."
I nodded, taking a seat next to her.
"I think you know who yours is, Miss A. Minor."
E/N: Roll credits
"I guess I do."
We stargazed for a while until I asked, "Have you been having nightmares too?"
She didn't answer for a while until she said, "My mom. The day she…" her voice trailed off.
To my surprise, she leaned her head against my arm. "It just feels so lonely without anyone," she said.
"I'm here for you," I told her.
Wow. I never imagined myself playing the older sibling role, but I was more than willing to play it for Amelia.
We sat there, stargazing. For how long, I guess only Zeus knows.
A/N: Sorry for the sudden change in mood.