Letters Home
Camp Half Blood Campers' Correspondence a Year Later-[Dilan Gathegi to Randal Gathegi]
Dear Dad,
Camp is a bit of a riot.
I share my cabin with a young son of Nemesis, called Darius. He comes up to my shoulder and gets really defensive really easily, but if you don't say anything to him, he's pretty cool. Percy Jackson stopped the second day or so to see if he was comfortable, especially with sharing a cabin. Seems his older, half brother, had quite a roll to play in last years big, crazy war, when I was still in the Hermes cabin.
Speaking of Hermes' Cabin, the massive overflow of kids in there has been fixed. One of the new Zeus kids happened to mention that Zeus is the god of hospitality, and that if anyone wanted to stay in the Zeus cabin, they'd be more than happy to oblige. Of course, dozens of kids instantly requested to stay there, including kids from other cabins that just wanted to try staying the night in that colossal thing.
Meanwhile, Hera's cabin also has inhabitants for the first time. It's turned into something of a nursery, since the gods promised to claim all of their kids last year. Some of those kids, of course, are quite young, and need caring for. I also heard that since some of the families were displaced due to monsters attacking their young ones, an establishment has been constructed outside of the camp where families with divine children that are still too young to be separated from their parents can stay. The Returnee counselors with helmet and shield patches on their arms take shifts guarding the place. The ones who work in the nursery have cornucopia patches, and the ones that are teachers have a laurel crown patch. Yes, some of them wear more than one patch. Our cabin does not have a returnee or a child in the Nursery or under guard, but Nemesis and Aidos are a bit hard to tie down so it's not all that surprising. It's also not all that surprising that no one seems to know who the hell my mom is, since Aidos doesn't really translate well into English. The best I got so far is reverence or shame. It's what keeps people from committing wrongdoings, and it's also the feeling that our lots in life are mostly luck, and we shouldn't look down upon those who have less of it.
Anyway, with the doubled up cabins, the kids have been trying to give them nicknames to simplify, like the Wind Cabin or the War Train Cabin. No one felt like saying 'the Nemesis/Aidos cabin' so for a while we were just called 'the Bitter Cabin,' which doesn't make any sense. Chiron tried to defend us by saying that Aidos and Nemesis were esteemed highest of all feelings in Homer and Hesiod, but now, instead of calling us the 'Bitter cabin' we are now called the 'High Feelings Cabin,' sometimes just: 'High Cabin,' which I'm not sure if I like more. It's probably a bit more flattering to mom, though.
So far Darius and I have no particular strong points among the divine kids, other than no one likes to mess with us, cause usually weird stuff starts to happen if they do. We can hold our own. We don't fall on our faces when we run like most of the Poseidon cabin and we rock on the climbing wall. We don't tan very well and Darius is the palest black kid I've ever seen, but besides that I feel we give off a very average feeling, perhaps a bit above average, along side my superb powers of observation. Darius also can't swim, so we're working on that.
Activities are fine. We get passed around with the other cabins that only have a few kids in them. We can even eat together, unlike the larger cabins. I'm a little worried that now that the minor gods don't have to worry about the well-being of their off-spring, there will suddenly be more of us in the future. I'm perfectly happy with the number we have now.
Free time's over. Time for crafts with the Nike girl, the Justices Cabin and the Athena Cabin. I'll make you a shawl or a sword or something.
Love Dilan
Aidos Cabin