A/N: Sorry this took so long to put up, but my schedule never fit with my friend's, so we almost never had time to write. Hopefully that will change with the summer coming up and we'll be able to get chapters out more quickly.
Disclaimer: Any recognizable characters and plots are owned by their respective owners. I own any and all original characters and plots.
During our lunch break, I swore I had never seen anyone eat a salad faster than Laila. She was offered a BLT but had to politely decline, due to the fact that she was a vegetarian. But when she got that salad, she ate faster than anyone else in our group.
"I think you ate faster than the wolves," I pointed out as she pushed aside the empty salad bowl that she had licked clean-literally.
"It's not my fault the wolves are slow eaters," she huffed.
"Laila, stop talking to Grace, we need to hurry, and she's only taken like one-point-five bites out of her sandwich." I smirked at Laila and took a bite out of my sandwich. We had made a couple of friends on the way here, but most of them kept to themselves as we ate our food. I looked over at Laila, who and folded her hands in front of her chest and leaned irritated against a tree. Without the distraction of talking, we were on the road again in no time.
"Are we there yet?" I whined petulantly while leaning against Laila, who had fallen asleep. The lunch break we had taken was more like a dinner break, and above us the sky had turned purple with twilight and the stars had started to poke holes of light in the otherwise dark sky.
"Soon, and if you ask that one more time, I promise I will turn this chariot around. Do you understand?" I frowned and closed my eyes as I wondered what this camp would look like. Thalia had tried to describe it, but what she had said didn't make very much sense. Apparently, there was this tree that she used to be, whatever that means. And behind that, there was a camp with twelve houses, though more were in construction. I tried to picture it in my mind, but I couldn't figure anything out about that place, which was weird, since I could usually picture stuff really well, being dyslexic and all.
I guessed that we had been a lot closer than I had expected, because, I felt sick to my stomach and wanted to throw up all the food that I had eaten just a few hours ago, which was a sure sign that we were landing. I often got sick during landings.
We landed somewhere with a small bump, resulting in me flying up just enough to make me scream.
"We're safe now Grace. Welcome to your new home!" Thalia said.
My scream, surprisingly, had not woken Laila. But she stirred in her sleep as I flicked her right in the middle of the forehead to try to wake her up.
"Five more minutes, bua," she mumbled. I noticed then that she had a slight British accent. It was a really cool accent, because it was part Indian, part English.
"Laila, it's Grace. We're there. I mean here." She bolted up, almost hitting Thalia while doing it.
"Careful, Laila. You don't want to hurt anyone, do you?" Thalia murmured. "Anyways, we're here now! Welcome to your new home!" she said in a cheerier voice.
"Thalia!" a voice rang out accompanied by the sound of horse hooves. I looked up, and there was a Man. Who. Was. Half. Horse.
"Whoa! A real life centaur!" Laila exclaimed, while I inwardly freaked out. His arm reached out to shake mine, and I noticed my arm shake as it reached out to clasp his. Laila, on the other hand, couldn't contain her excitement at meeting this man, I mean centaur, and started asking him a whole bunch of random questions.
"What's it like being a centaur? Do you eat horse food or human food? Wait are you Chiron? Like the trainer of the heroes? Oh my god, I can't believe I'm actually meeting Chiron!" She started fangirling, which was jumping up and down and squealing at a pitch that I'm sure would have any dog running here any moment now. His eyebrows arched as he looked at her jumping up and down like a crazy person.
"So many questions? We'll have time for those in the morning." He regarded her coolly as if he heard these questions on a regular basis, and not just from crazy girls like Laila. "Thalia, do you know who their parents are?"
"Well, my dad's name is George Winters," I supplied helpfully. "My mom died when I was younger."
"And my dad's name is Rahul Kapoor, and my mom died too when I was younger," Laila told Chiron, still looking at him like he was a movie star or something.
Ignoring us completely, Thalia said, "No, they're still undetermined, Chiron." I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, and I didn't think Laila did either, so I tuned their conversation out as I looked around.
We had landed by a road and in front of us was a hill. On the hill was a large evergreen tree, with a golden piece of what looked like cloth hanging over one of the branches.
"Grace...Grace?" Laila called. I focused back on Thalia and Chiron to see they were walking away towards the tree. We followed them hastily, running up the hill. "Wait!" Laila shouted. They turned around startled, like they had forgotten all about us.
"Come along now, you'll be in the Hermes cabin for the night."
"Hermes, as in the god of messengers, trade, thieves, and travel? This day is just getting better and better!" Laila exclaimed. I looked at her like she was crazy. How was she so accepting of the fact that we were at a camp for kids of the Greek gods? I didn't think I would ever understand it.
As we walked past the pine, we got a full view of the camp. It was a collection of pretty much every type of building imaginable, from a really big farm house on our left right after we passed the pine to a collection of about 20 cabins on our right, some of which were still in construction, but mostly finished. You could see Long Island Sound on the other side of a Greek Columned building, and a fire in the middle of an Amphitheater, where you could hear a lot of voices singing. There were also stables, an armory, and an arena by a large forest.
"You two will be staying in this cabin for the night," Thalia told us when we got to the cabins. She pointed towards a cabin with a winged staff entwined by two snakes hanging above the door. This cabin was easily the most worn of them all, probably because it was the most crowded. It had chipped paint, and didn't feel as 'magical' as the other cabins did.
"Are you sure this is the Hermes cabin?" Laila questioned. "I was expecting something a little more...I don't know...nice? For one he is a god, and second, he's the god of doctors. Aren't doctors supposed to earn a lot?"
"It was nice once, but because he is also the god of travelers, anyone who is unclaimed stays here. Which is a not so often occurrence nowadays," Chiron explained patiently.
"I guess that's true too," Laila admitted. I blinked, and then looked up at Chiron.
"Can we go in?" I asked. "I'm kinda exhausted."
"Let me bring Luke out so he can give you an introduction to camp," Thalia said. She went into the cabin and when she came out, she was with a guy. A hot guy.
"Hey, I'm Luke. You must be Grace? And Laila?" I noticed that Laila wasn't really listening. She seemed to be distracted looking somewhere in the dark.
"Yeah, I'm Grace, and she's Laila," I told him.
"Nice to meet you. I'm the counselor of Cabin Eleven, which is where you'll be staying tonight. Most likely, we'll figure out who your parent is tomorrow, and you'll be relocated. Unless you're a child of Hermes or a minor god or goddess that doesn't have a cabin yet, in which case, you'll stay here. Any questions?" We remained silent, and Luke chuckled. "I'll take that as a no. In that case come on in, and make yourselves at home. Light out is in half an hour, so be sure to be ready for bed by then."
"You mean we are sleeping in the same room as a bunch of guys?" I asked.
Luke chuckled. "Well, we don't really have enough cabins to separate the campers by parent andgender, so, I guess that's a yes."
"Well, okay then," I replied.
"If you're uncomfortable then..."
"Oh no, we're fine," Laila interrupted.
"Okay. If you need anything, just tell me, and I'll be sure to help out in whatever way that I can," Luke told us.
"Thanks, a lot," I said. Laila and I went into the cabin while Luke stayed outside with Thalia and Chiron to discuss something, probably us. After we claimed a spot, I asked Laila, "What had you so distracted before, when Luke was talking?"
She looked around to see if anyone was eavesdropping, then said, "Okay, there was this guy. And he was like, SOhot! He had dark hair, and was wearing black, and had dark eyes. There was something really mysterious about him. OH MY GOD, HE WAS SO HOT!" she whisper-yelled.
"Well, maybe we'll get introduced to him tomorrow. You'd better hope he's not a son of Ares or Hades. That would be a disaster," I answered smiling. Laila was really something else.
"I wouldn't care. Unless he was like... married or something. Then I would just stalk him until he had me arrested." We both laughed.
"Lights out, everyone!" I heard a voice call out. Everyone outside slowly trudged into their respective cabins and turned their lights out.
I didn't know how this would turn out, but I had a feeling that it wouldn't be boring.
A/N: I hope that wasn't horrible, and that it lived up to your expectations. If you liked it, please review. If you didn't, please still review so that we'll know what to fix next time.
P.S. I messed up last time. The page on Facebook isn't called Percy Jackson's Girls, but Grace and Laila's Nook of Awesomeness. My bad! If you want updates on when we're writing and when we're updating, go and like it on Facebook.