I had gotten my newfound friend Brian to help wake me up. Unluckily for him, he hadn't been able to sleep well for the past week, though he was glad his bad luck could actually be useful for once. So with a few small shakes Brian roused me from my sleep. I grabbed the few things I had (Chiron had allowed me to keep the bow) and quietly left cabin eleven, careful not to creak the door on the way out. The sun hadn't risen yet and the moon, almost full, hung high in the sky. I couldn't wait for tomorrow night. For some reason I always felt more at ease under a full moon.

I took my time with the walk. It was far enough to tire me out if I jogged there, but close enough that I could easily enjoy moving at a brisk pace. Apparently I had to wait for Artemis at a brazier that sat about twenty or thirty feet from the mess hall. It was basically a Greek bonfire, with a large marble dish of burning wood and a few white stone benches surrounding it.

On one of the benches was a little girl wearing a brown dress. She had straight auburn hair and her little feet were covered by checkered flats. She was holding a metal stick in her hands, poking the fire to keep it alive. I was glad she was tending to it. Even though it was summer, I was near the shore and all the way up in the Long Island sound so I was still pretty cold that cold that night. Still though it was way past curfew and aside from some of the senior campers on patrol, Chiron, and myself no one else had to permission to be outside. So I decided to do the right thing and walked over to her with the intention of telling her to go to bed. "Um excuse me little girl, uh, I think you need to go back to your cabin. It's late and if you get caught out here you probably get in trouble."

She just kept stoking the fire as though I wasn't there. I got a little closer and leaned down thinking she might have bad hearing or something. After all, being the child of a god doesn't mean you have a perfect body. We can get birth defects just like anybody else. As if our lives weren't hard enough already.

Before I could say anything she ended up speaking first. "Your kind for one so young. You're a little hard to understand and a bit hasty. You can be rather random, but you stand firm in what you believe, when you know what it is. You definitely take some getting used to but… yes I think you'll do fine. You'll be good for her I'm sure of it. Now I just need to have a word with Aphrodite."

"Um… excuse me?"

"Hm?"

"I'm sorry were you talking to me?" This little girl was a bit weird.

"Yes and no. I was talking more about you than to you, but the statement was technically directed to you. So to put it simply, yes I was talking to you."

"Oh alright." For a kid she was talking like an adult. So I said the what came naturally. "So I guess you're a daughter of Athena then?"

The girl finally turned her face towards me and when I looked into her eyes I stumbled backwards a bit. Her eyes were, filled with something… fire I think, but not the hot painful kind. No it was warm, if a person's eyes' being warm makes any sense, and had a sort of soft kindness to it, like it was protecting me, taking care of me. I felt like I could sit with her at any time and always feel at ease.

It filled me with memories of my mother. Of her food and the silly animal sounds she made. They were always so realistic. I couldn't believe how many she could do. I tried to learn some but it never went anywhere. I noticed a tear rolling down my face and quickly wiped it, trying to hide the truth. Little did I know…

"Miss your home, do you? Or at least the idea you consider home to be."

"How did you-"

"I may not look it but I'm actually a Goddess. My name is Hestia, goddess of the hearth and more importantly of home. I sit here every day but few ever bother to talk to me. Probably just because I look like a little girl."

Whoa, big shock. This little girl was a goddess. And I had accidentally called her a child of Athena, and told her to go back to bed. I was suddenly very scared that I had insulted her. The other campers had told me stories of people being incinerated by gods and goddesses that pressed the wrong buttons. I had just gotten to camp I didn't want to die just yet. I hadn't even seen the lava falling climbing walls Brian had told me about. I guess all of that shown on my face because she made a remark about it. "Don't worry," she said. I gave out a big sigh of relief to hear that. "I'm not offended by what you said. You were concerned for my wellbeing, and although that concern was unnecessary, it was out of the kindness of your own heart and goodwill. There is nothing wrong in this world with having a kind heart. Just remember Arc, that the rest of this world is not as kind."

I nodded my head. This was advice coming from a goddess, normally I wouldn't care but coming from her everything she says holds serious weight. After thanking her for the advice I sat my things down and relaxed myself on one of the stone benches.

"I take it you're waiting for Artemis?" She asked me. It felt a little weird talking to an eight year old goddess. I wasn't whether I could talk casually or not. But I've never been the one for manners so I figured I talk the same to everybody else. Might as well talk to her like casually too.

"Yeah I uh…won that competition thing for a hunting trip with her."

"You do know you're the second person to win that competition and the first in three thousand years?"

I was? Seriously? "No actually, I had no idea."

"Yes, the last young hero who won the trip trained relentlessly to get the prize. Somehow he had gotten it into his head that he could make Artemis fall in love with him. As a result Apollo, who had been following them, killed him as he was attempting to rape her."

"Oh… that's… she's not going to be happy about this is she?"

"Not at all."

"Am I gonna die?"

"I can't say you won't."

"Great… thanks for the boost in confidence Hestia."

"If you'd like I can give you a charm. If she does decide to kill you, you can place it on and it will fill you with memories of home. You won't be scared or feel the pain."

"Thanks, but I don't plan on dying just yet."

"As you wish Arc."

A little more silence came, the ticking of seconds passing like minutes, the passing of minutes leaping like hours. Time was slow, and it was nice. It had been a long time since time was this slow. The last time was with my mother, years and years ago. Well, the woman I called my mother.

Eventually Hestia turned to look at me. She kept staring like there was something important she was trying to place her finger on and she couldn't tell what it was. Then her eyes got a little wider as she giggled and asked. "So, you've only been in camp for a little while and already you've attained a magical item, and a rare one at that."

"I'm not sure what you mean miss. Everything I have with me I came into camp with. Well, except for this bow and arrow of course."

She suddenly stopped giggling, backing her body up in surprise. Had I really just surprise a goddess? I had thought they were omniscient. Guess not. "If you did not attain it here at camp then where did you get that enchanted necklace?"

I looked down at my shirt. Around my neck was a silver necklace shaped like an upside down letter "A". The triangle in the middle had glass filled with gold dust and the pointed tip had a little tiny hook. "This? You mean it's an enchanted item? My mother gave this to me as a child. She said that even though we were separated that this would let me find her. She said the warmer it felt the closer I was to her loving arms. I thought it felt warm when I lived in that house, but once I left it's always felt as cold as ice, so I thought I had made the feeling up. You know, out of love. I came to believe it was just something she told me to feel better about leaving."

"Most definitely not." She said. "What you have is a Storge. It is one of two necklace pieces which combine to form a unique shape. They allow the wearers to play a game of hot or cold, the warmer the necklace the closer they are to the other half. They're rare and hard to come by though because of that dust in the middle."

"The dust is special. It's what makes each one unique, aside from the shape. In order for the enchantment to work, you have to melt a golden drachma, then mix it with nectar and the blood of the two people who have each pendant. Now those may be relatively easy ingredients to come by, but the last one is not. In order for the necklace to tell where somebody is anywhere else in the world, it needs an ingredient than can span the entire globe. In other words, something that can see everywhere at once. It needs the blood of a god."

"T-the blood of a god?"

"Yes, a gods blood, or any immortal for that matter, is different from a mortals. It does not run red, but gold. We call this eternal blood of the gods, Ichor."

"Sounds… icky." At the time I thought it was pretty funny (still do) but she just gave me one of those stern looks that can hush up crying babies.

"You have a powerful item there, if you hang on to it, you're bound to find your mother sooner or later."

I didn't know what to say at the time so I just nodded my head. All my dreams were coming true. I had a home, new friends like Percy and Brian, and now I had a way to find my long lost mother. Things were looking up for this son of Apollo.

We sat in silence for a time, watching the braziers flames flicker in the night as its tiny cinders floated into the sky. Slowly the black as pitch night sky started to turn a pale dull gray. Twilight, I thought to myself, the time when the spirits are alive and the living are dead. Before I would have never understood what that meant, but being outside in this camp I had a pretty good idea. See there are these things called tree nymphs or dryads or something fairy sounding, and their spirits reside in their tree. Since their literally trees they get up at exactly sunrise you know, since trees need light and stuff like that.

The dryads were pretty cute, though they enjoyed teasing campers and satyrs alike. The campers and Satyrs constantly tried to catch the dryads but whenever they got within arms-reach, they'd turn into a tree, making catching them impossible. Roger told me that if you could catch a dryad, they'll let you taste their sap whenever you please. It sounded like he was trying to refer to something but I didn't care. I had already decided by that point I was going to catch a dryad. I didn't like the idea of there being something that could outrun me. It bothered me more than it should've that even one could escape me.

A little while later I started hearing this weird ringing noise that reminded me of sleigh bells coming from the sky. I looked up to see the strangest thing. It was a bright white chariot being pulled by flying… reindeer? Yup, it was definitely a flying reindeer. It was just one but it was one nonetheless.

I was dazzled by it. It was amazing watching it sail through the skies, "Wow," I said "A living legend staring me in the face. Getting closer and closer and closer and… oh crap." It took me a second to realize the chariot was headed straight at me. I picked up my things and started running, anywhere was better than here.

I'm not a slow guy by any means. When I run there's almost no one who can catch me. But even at my speed I couldn't shake that thing. It didn't matter where I ran or how fast I was, the chariot stayed locked on like a heat seeking missile. Everywhere I went it just kept following me.

Finally my time was at an end. It was seconds from me and I was running out of steam. I took a moment to reflect on my life, since the Greek myths were real I guessed I would be going to wherever hades sent me. There were three plains of death. One was like hell, the other was like heaven, and the last was just the big field thing I had heard about called the fields of Asphodel. At the time I was pretty sure that was where I was going.

As I said my final goodbyes to this world I felt the massive build of a reindeer slam into my back, launching my feet off the ground. It felt as though I had been tossed into the air so I decided, why not? I'll open my eyes. Man was I in for a shock.

I wasn't dead that much was for sure. In fact, I was alive. Alive and very very scared. I was dangling hundreds of feet in the air, suspended by the reindeer, my new orange Half-Blood camp shirt in between his mouth. At first I was flailing around, who wouldn't panic when they're being carried through the sky by a reindeer, but then I thought better of it. After all, a fall from this height would kill me even if I hit water.

As I watched the scenery pass me by I could feel the reindeer moving its head a bit. I started to notice that it was swinging me back and forth, I noticed a bit too late however, as before I could freak he threw his head up and tossed me into the air so I would somersault into the chariot seat.

After being picked up by a reindeer and tossed into Santa's sleigh, I realized there was no way out. If I tried to leave I'd just be walking into mid-air and plummeting towards my death. I always wanted to go skydiving, but it was out of a plane with a parachute, not out of a reindeer drawn chariot with a bow and arrow.

So I just sighed and slumped back in my seat. After all, if you can't beat em' join em, so I just went along with this magical reindeers ride through the sky. It was nice honestly. Watching the scenery change underneath me, and so quickly too. I was certainly going faster than any manmade craft. After all I don't know any other plane that can cross the Atlantic in half an hour.

The trip took awhile and seemed to span the entire globe. Eventually I grew tired and fell off to sleep. I was had a nice dream too. I was with Percy on his adventure to recover the master bolt. We were fighting medusa, Percy hacking and slashing with the help of his crystal ball, keeping her busy while I searched for a cure to heal Grover and Annabeth who had somehow turned to stone. I eventually found it and was rushing over to help Percy when the ground shook and suddenly erupted into the underworld. I started falling into the Abyss, I could see the fields of punishment right below me. I couldn't believe I had been that bad of a person. I was falling… falling into the fields of punishment… faster and faster I fell… endlessly falling…

Falling?

I suddenly woke up realizing I really WAS falling. Well, the chariot was going into a dive so it FELT like I was falling. I looked around to see where we were. The moon was high in the sky and it was still night time but my digital watch said it was eight in the morning. I looked around but all I could see was trees, trees we'd soon be crashing into. I placed my stuff on my back and carefully got up to crouch. If I stayed in this chariot when it hit the ground I'd be toast. I had no other choice. I had to jump, if I didn't jump I'd be dead for sure and if I did, well, there was less chance of it. All I had to do was land in the trees. That's it. If I did that I could at least walk away, with a few broken bones but still.

So I quickly scanned around trying to locate the right spot to jump off. I found my target and studied it close. It was a group of trees that were perfect to jump off at. If I jumped there the jump wouldn't be very far and the way the trees were clumped together made the softer ones at top able to reduce my force and speed while thicker lower branches were spaced so they could fully break my fall. If I jumped there not only would I survive but I might even walk away with nothing but a few cuts and bruises. After that I could figure out where I was and make my way back to camp. I was sure Artemis would understand… I hoped.

I crouched low as the chariot continued at just the course I thought it would. I inched towards the edge, feet ready to spring, paying attention to everything around me just in case we changed course. Right as I was about to jump though I noticed something out of the corner of my eye, it was run down, covered in vines, and looked like no one had stepped in there since, but it was unmistakable. That was the house mother and I lived in. That was the only other place I had ever called HOME.

I froze, stared at the old rundown building, and missed my chance to jump. The chariot kept hurdling towards the ground, but I didn't know. I had already sat back down. Of all the places for it to bring me why did it bring me there? I clutched my necklace. Right before I crashed into my old yard I noticed one other thing. For the first time since I left this place, my necklace was warm.

My mother was nearby.