Curse myself for not mentioning this, but the main character's name is Sarah, just if ya'll were wondering. I don't think I mentioned that in the first chapter or not... so just in case, I'll put this little fancy note above that little fancy page break down there *pokes*

Chapter Two

THE MICE GET A MANSION

A blood-curdling scream rang out in our cabin. Naturally, I screeched and tumbled out of bed, landing face-first. I was swiftly joined by Emmy and Chelsea. Elise was awake, but had kept her sanity and not fallen out of her bed. And of course, Travis and Nathan were snoring peacefully away… sometimes I don't understand my half-brothers.

"Light!" I yelled. Being children of Apollo, we didn't really fancy the darkness too much. But of course, when Emmy found the light switch and flicked it on, we were blinking rapidly against the surge of brightness.

"Too much light," Elise groaned.

Then I saw the source of the scream, a figure I sorta recognized.

"Lia?" I growled. It wasn't a smart idea to wake me up at two in the morning. "Oh my gods, why'd you wake us up?" Notice the first question I ask isn't 'Why are you here at 2 A.M.' or 'What do you think of camp, fought any good monsters yet?'

Lia was new in camp. She arrived a week or so ago. I'd seen her around, but never really talked to her. As it turns out, she's also a daughter of Dionysus. We were all careful not to offend her. An angry Mr. D is not someone you want to meet out in the forest alone.

"What is that, that… beast doing here!?" she asked, staring down at the floor as if it was going to come alive and eat her.

I shrugged, still looking for the 'beast'. Soon, Chelsea nudged me and pointed toward Lia's feet. I could tell my sister was trying to keep from snickering.

"You're afraid of a mouse?" I snickered, after reaching over and picking the creature up. Hiya, the little dark gray mouse squeaked in my mind. Me Thorn. Biga person scream. Thorn scared her. Thorn sorrys. Mice may be cute and fun and hyper, but they weren't the best at fourth grade level language arts.

"He says sorry," I translated to Lia. "Not scared of him, are you?"

"Wait, you're talking to that thing?" She asked, bewildered. Then she turned to Thorn, who was still in my palm. "And apology not accepted!" I swore Thorn shrugged.

"Yeah, I'm talking to it. What, can't you talk to grapes?" I grinned.

Lia rolled her eyes, although she had moved away from the mouse.

"Why are you in our cabin?" Nathan asked as he struggled to sit up. Might I add, FINALLY!

"Because there are mice, all in our cabin!" Lia fumed. "And I've seen what you've done to the Ares cabin! You're just as bad as the Hermes kids! You put mice in our cabin!!!"

"Jeez, chill," Emmy said. "Those treats are reserved for those pin-heads only. And we wouldn't put Apollo's symbol animal in your cabin. It would be, like, insulting him." Lia said nothing.

"And so you decided to come to us with your rodent problems?" Chelsea asked after Lia didn't say anything.

"Yes," Lia replied. "Your father's animal is the mouse right?"

I glanced at the furry rodent in my hand. "No, it's actually the badger. You must be mistaken."

Snickers came from my cabin mates, except for Travis; he answered with a loud snort followed by snores. "Look, will you help or not?" Lia pleaded.

"Fine," I growled, "in the morning."

"But-"

"You know," Chelsea wondered out loud. "We do have some of those special 'reserved' arrows left, and some super glue."

Lia was out the door in seconds. She should really consider joining the track team or something, as long as we were running behind, bows at the ready.

"Nighty-night!" Elise called, but I was already asleep.

As usual, I was woken up by the sun, although Emmy and Nathan were already up, and their heads were huddled together in deep conversation.

"Morning," I yawned as I walked over to them. "Whatcha' talking about."

"Well, remember how Lia said they had a slight 'rodent problem' in their cabin?" Nathan said. I nodded. Emmy started up with their idea. "We can get all of them to come over here, and then we get Jonathan or someone to build us a big cage for the mice."

"A MOUSE FARM!" They yelled in unison. A groan floated over from Chelsea's direction, which told me she would be up and moving in about ten minutes.

Sounds good! Thorn's voice popped up in my heads and I could tell Nathan and Emmy heard it too.

"Hey Thorn," I said as the little gray mouse scurried up my arm and perched on top of my shoulder.

"Nathan," I ordered, stepping up to my counselor position, not something I have to do very often, mostly in the mornings, "try and wake Travis up. Emphasis on try. I'll get Elise."

Soon we were all ready to go. We hurried on breakfast, but we all noticed that the Ares cabin still had unicorn horns, although some of the ends were lopped off, as far as they could cut them. They looked like nubs.

After finishing breakfast with record timing, we marched on over to the Dionysus cabin. It was still empty; the members were still at breakfast no doubt.

"Alright, let's split up!" I said. "Chelsea, you and Emmy go down and talk to Jonathan, you know, of the Hephaestus cabin, about the mouse farm cage." Chelsea gave me a confused look, but I shooed both of them off anyway.

"Can I go too?" Nathan pleaded. "It was partly my idea."

I sighed. "Sure."

Nathan gave a whoop of joy and sprinted off towards Chelsea and Emmy. I turned back to Travis and Elise. "Let's get down to business, shall we?"

The first thought that entered my mind when we walked in was, 'Why does it smell like raisins in here?'

I think it may have been the grapes scattered around the cabin, some practically raisins.

"Eww," I said, wrinkling my nose. And trust me, that was a huge understatement. All at once, a wave of squeaky mouse voices washed over me. Mice started to pour out onto the ground in front of us.

"Uh…" was all any of us could say. Finally, after scanning the hundred or so mice, I turned to Travis. "Go find Chelsea and them. Tell them we might need a slightly larger cage." Travis nodded blankly and turned out the door.

"Where the heck did they get these many mice?" Elise exclaimed after awhile.

"Well, um, hello." I said bleakly while looking over the swarm of mice. "You guys wanna' come back to our cabin.

Once again, we were pummeled by answers, varying from Yippee! To Follow the Apollo children! The most random I heard was Do you have duct tape there?

Elise spun around and exited the cabin. Most of the mice followed her, except for the ones already latched onto my pants and hair. They swung from the little strands like they were swings. It was a bit weird.

I managed to make it back to our cabin without stepping on any of them. When I got there I was greeted by my whole cabin and Jonathan, a son of Hephaestus. Jonathan's pretty good with the metal and stuff (which Hephaestus kid isn't???) so I figured he would build the cage for us.

As it turns out, it was already finished, which I didn't get. Chelsea, Emmy, and Nathan had been gone for about 30 minutes… this Hephaestus kid was either really amazing or just happened to build a ginormo cage in his spare time.

"I finished the cage," Jonathan called out. That cuts it; he's amazing with the metals.

"And it's awesome!" Nathan said before bolting into the cabin, leaving me wondering just how awesome a mouse cage could be.

When I saw it, the first image that popped into my mind was one of those five star hotels in Vegas. The 'cage' was about five feet tall and had a bunch of different floors and tunnels and whatnot. You name it, it was in there. Built-in shelves? Yup. An elevator. Yup. A check in counter? Yup. A luggage compartment? Yuppers. Trust me, I could go on for a loooooong time.

"And where exactly did you find the time to make this?" I asked, dumbfounded, wishing our own cabin was half as nice.

"Well, I was already working on a model of a really awesome hotel," He admitted. Well, that explains the whole 'five star hotel in Vegas' thing. "Basically, I just had to add bars, and that was easy because I didn't get to the outer covering."

"Well, it's awesome," I summed this whole thing up. "And to repay you, how's this proposition: the Hephaestus cabin can be on our team for Capture the Flag."

"Sounds good to me," Jonathan said. "But I've got to go. Something about helping the Demeter cabin with forging." Boy, did he have his work cut out for him. I mean, for a child of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, being around flames is pretty terrifying.

I glanced at the mice scrambling all over me. "Okay guys, time to go to your new home!" I did in my best imitation of their squeaky voices. One of them must have noticed, because before he climbed down from my shoulder, he said, Apollo girl not a mouse!

Well, sorry! I thought sarcastically.

I looked over and saw Emmy shouldering her bow. "Where're you going?" I asked.

"To the archery range," she said simply. "We're supposed to be teaching the newbies in the Hermes cabin how to shoot a bow."

Great… newbies…

So I found myself showing some new kid named Austin how to string a short simple bow. I was talking about the dynamics of the bow, and, surprisingly, he was listening. Most newbies ignored my rambling and talked about random things.

This kid had just gotten here too, like Lia, but he was still undetermined.

"There," I said as a test drew the bow to its full length. "You try."

He ended up drawing it back to ½ its full drawback, then his fingers slipped off the string and it lashed his arm. I shook my head. "Hey Travis!" I called.

My half-brother came bounding up with an arrow notched to his string. "What?" he asked.

"Work with Austin here," I sighed, and then whispered in his ear. "He needs some work." Travis nodded then proceeded to show the new kid how to draw fully back.

I spend the rest of the time trying to find out how many arrows could fit in the bulls-eye. So far, I was up to 19, but that's all that could fit, even with my slender arrows.

"Dinner time!" Chelsea called from the other end of the targets. A clang of bows hitting the grass, all from the newbies, sounded and the ran toward dinner. I huffed and collected all the Camp's bows before we went to dinner.

Well, the Ares cabins finally removed their horn/arrow stubs. Don't ask how; I don't know. But they looked like they were up to something, and we weren't too keen to find out what exactly it was right then.

"Hey you know that Austin kid, the newbie?" Travis asked as we were eating.

"Duh," I mumbled as I chewed on a large piece of steak.

"He really improved. Maybe he's even better than Chelsea now."

I smiled. "Maybe, but I'm willing to bet that Chelsea would beat him at anything involving Pegasi any day of the week."

Chelsea grinned. "And don't ever forget it, any of you!" She exclaimed.

Soon, dinner ended and we were about to leave for our cabins when Nathan said, "Wait, bonfire tonight!" This perked our spirits. This was one of our "talents" I guess you could say. We're cheery and friendly people, expect when woken at 2 A.M. in the morning; we weren't night people.

The fire blazed high as we led a camp fire sing-a-long. It's lotsa fun, even when the Ares cabin don't join in; now, they're not what we call cheery and friendly people. The fire burned a happy blue, sometimes flickering gold. It reflected our emotions, I guess.

By the time this was over, we were covered in soot, grinning from ear to ear, and on the verge of falling over asleep. Somehow, we all managed to get back to our cabin without collapsing. But we did, and it was the usual: snoring, pillow-hitting, silence, deep sleep, happy.

You know how half-bloods never have 'normal' dreams, they always mean something? I think I just broke that statement because I dreamed of clouds, the sun, puff balls, and the mouse mansion in our cabin.