The girl I am holding in my arms is very small. She wears a skull hoodie and black leggings, showing how skinny she is, and her shoes are cloth boots tied up with thick laces. Her hair intrigues me most of all, it is black on top with green on the bottom. Her eyes are closed now, it is better than when they were open, full of terror at the things I could not see. She looks peaceful now, without the screaming earlier and the kicking, she almost looks like a little toddler girl. I know she is older, though, as the dance was for eighth graders, so she must be about thirteen. Unlike the girls in her class I saw at the party, no makeup covers her face, no jewelry lines her neck and only a plain black watch lies around her wrist. The wind is blowing her shoulder-length hair over her face and the moonlight makes her hands look blue. She is so pale, so frail, I wonder how she did not fall apart in pieces when the invisible things started attacking her, but I know for sure she is the child of a god. Same as me, she is probably the offspring of a greek god and a mortal, but which one, I wonder? I know she is strong, the way she send that wall of terror at the invisible beings, I had felt it too. It must have taken a lot of strength to conjure that and I know she was drained from whatever the things were.
We are flying high over Canada now, the city of Ottawa just lights and flashes below us. Eureka, my pegasus, can fly quite fast, and I know we will arrive at camp in only a few hours. The winter air is cold, and I can feel the girl's cold hands through my sweatshirt, but I am not cold. Her face, her expression of pure horror really gave me an adrenaline rush, but I know that now that she is unconscious, she must be quite cold. I hold her tiny frame closer to my body.
In three hours, we arrive at Long Island and land in front of the giant pine tree that marks the border of camp. No monsters attack; since a few demigods overpowered Gaia the Earth Mother, monsters have been in remission, slowly gaining the strength they had lost during the battle. Many lives were lost, but I had miraculously survived even after getting my ribs impaled by a flying ball of flames. I guess being a son of Apollo helps quite a lot.
I know by the moon that it is three in the morning, and the camp is asleep. With luck, Chiron, the camp director, will be awake to help me get this girl into the sick room.
We land with a soft poof, and snowflakes fly up where Eureka steps on it. She is breathing hard, she has done a very good job. I pull out all the sugar cones from my pocket and feed them to her, and she nods twice, then she is gone. I take the girl's thin frame from the ground and put her in my arms and start trudging to camp.
Everything is silent, eerie, words that do not usually describe camp Half-Blood. Normally, the fire pit is on, the lava climbing wall is shuddering loudly and the naiads are splashing around, but the silence is deafening. I only hope that Chiron will be able to help; the small girl's skin is cold and she looks paler than ever. In the moonlight, her skin looks bright blue and mine a dark prussian blue color, and the snow looks like ice. I finally arrive at the Big House and breathe a sight of relief when I see a single candle lit in the center of the main room.
I kick the door with my foot hoping someone will open it, and surely, he does. Chiron is in wheelchair form now, his eyes sunken and tired. I wonder what he is doing up so late, but I have other matters to attend.
"Hello, Chiron," I say, my voice hoarse from the late hour, "I got her out. I don't know what happened, but I could feel some kind of monster there, although I couldn't see anything. She, amazingly, did something to keep them away," I say so fast I am out of breath. I just now realize that I have to keep her alive and we must get her warm before she becomes too cold.
"Sebastian, it is three in the morning, and you must be very tired. If you wish, you may sleep in the sick room with her, but you must sleep whatsoever. I'll take her," he says to me, and it seems like my whole body suddenly droops from exhaustion. Everything is fine. He'll save her. I could use some sleep.
"Chiron," I say as I follow him into the grey-walled room, "Would you have any idea what the following might be? They were invisible, yet I could feel their fury and horror as if their feelings were mine. They made grotesque noises, and she seemed to see them. They, I think, were taking her energy or something, because she became more and more limp as we were running away,"
"I do not know. I have never encountered such a beast. Were you sure she did something, some magic to keep them at bay?" He asks me back.
"Yes, I could feel it, though it was obvious it was her first time. She fell into unconsciousness right away," I say with worry. I am tired. We arrive to the sick room and he places the girl into a bed to my right, and I take the one to the left. The sheets are crisp, freshly washed, and smell nice. Perfect.
Chiron goes to the wall cabinet and gets a flask of nectar from one of the higher shelves. I notice that other people, all sleeping, are in here as well; a young boy with his arm in a wrap and an older girl with a huge bruise on her forehead. I slip into the bed fully clothed and struggle to keep my eyes open just a bit longer.
"Sleep," says Chiron as he attends the girl. Her hair looks greener than before in my blurry vision. I lay my glasses on the desk beside the bed and her forest green hair is all I see before falling into deep sleep.
It takes me a minute to remember where I am when I wake up. I instinctively reach to the desk at my side for my glasses and put them on, and as I see the canvas walls of the sick room, all the action from yesterday comes rushing back to me. I look over to my side, where I see a small clock marking it eleven a.m. Was I really asleep for that long? I look under the clock and see the girl, her eyes still closed, her body still limp, and I start to panic as I think she is dead. I reach over and touch her arm, and her skin is warm. I breathe a sigh of relief and doze for a few minutes, reflection on yesterday's events, or was it this morning? Then, I sit up and kick my feet out of bed. I realize I slept with my shoes on, but that's for the better, as now I don't have to put them on again. I get up and walk outside.
I pass the strawberry fields to my cabin, the Demeter one with the vines hanging from the top, and open the door loudly than intended, waking the two sleeping campers inside. Joah, one of the newer kids here, and Elizabeth, a girl about fifteen, both groan at the same time and start laughing. I laugh with them; they have been a couple for barely a month and already they do everything the same. They are cute together, Joah, just a young teen with light brown hair covering his eyebrows and Elizabeth with her long black hair tied in a messy braid at her side.
They both look at me, and their smiles fade. Demeter kids have a way of knowing when something is wrong, and just the looks they give me ask the questions they mean to ask.
"New camper," I say with a shrug, "I was on duty last night and strange things happened. She's okay now, she's in the sick room," I say and walk over to my bunk to grab my clothes.
"Who's her parent?" asks Joah, and I respond with another shrug. "We'll find out tonight at the latest."
I grab some sweatpants and an orage Camp Half-Blood shirt and rush into the bathrooms to get changed; I have cleaning duty in my cabin today and the campers coming around to check today are quite the fussy Aphrodite bunch. Since there are only five people in my cabin, we have to clean the room more often than some others. I vaguely wonder how Nico from the Hades cabin does it, as doing it once a week already frustrates me. Maybe he doesn't even make a mess; he doesn't seem like the kind of kid to like clutter.
I walk out of the bathroom stall and start making beds, as Joah and Elizabeth are both taking showers and everyone else is out. I put all the clothes on the floor into the big magical laundry bucket; in five minutes, everything will be clean and will flow over to its owner's bedside. It is a new addition to the cabins and I pretty much worship those things. Next, I take the broom from the side of the room and sweep the oak floor, then take a wipe from the sink and scrub the windows clean. When I am satisfied with my work, I put the cleaning supplies away in their cupboard and walk towards the sword fighting area.
Today I have archery class at two, right after lunch. On wednesdays I don't have any classes in the morning, so waking up late was not a nuisance to any of the teachers. I slightly skip to the center of the grassy sword arena and wave at my friend Brian from Hermes cabin. He jogs over to me and we fist bump, I then grab a sword and practice my moves freely.
"So, we got a new girl," he says as he too swings at the air.
"Yep, how'd you know?" I ask, already starting to go out of breath.
"I had nurse thing duty this morning. She's the one with the fancy green hair?" He asks as he takes a dive swing.
"Yes. Isn't she tiny?" I point out as I take a swipe at an imaginary enemy and dive roll away.
"She's cute," he declares as he dives toward his imaginary enemy and slices him in half. He stands proudly with a food up as to imitate it being on the head of his decapitated nothingness, and I burst out laughing at the proud expression on his face. He is a year-rounder and has never been in a fight. He would probably throw a party if he were to survive a battle and come out winner.
"She's probably not going to be into you, Brian," I say as I finish off my invisible opponent. "She was hiding in the corner during the party I went to to find her, and all the boys seemed to stay away from her as if they'd gotten the message. She doesn't seem like she's into boys," I say as I put my sword back onto the stand.
"Hmph. Why do Joah and Liz and so many others date and I still can't seem to find anyone?" He asks to the sky.
"probably because you're four feet eleven, fourteen and still wearing SpongeBob t-shirts, and the last time you tried to kiss a girl at a party your braces got stuck to her lip and you were standing there trying to gently get it unstuck from your teeth while she got more and more aggravated," I state jokingly.
"That never happened! I never kissed anybody!" he says, defensively.
"Well it will, you know," I say matter-of-factly as we walk over to the dining hall. He punches my arm and I punch him back. Friendship is strange.