The next day Sasha and Ryan made their way down to the dining pavilion for breakfast, along with a bunch of the other demigods from cabin 11 that had decided to take Sasha under their wing. Apparently everyone hated Blake, and therefore they'd respected her treatment of him. She loaded her plate with eggs, bacon, and a blueberry muffin, scraping some of her eggs into the brazier for the gods. Please, she prayed, whoever my dad is, show it. She sat down with the rest of cabin 11 and they all joked around, placing bets and spreading gossip.
"10 drachmas says that Drew is going to explode when she sees what we did to her breakfast." Connor bet, and Ryan shook his head.
"No way man, I'm so going to lose if I go against you on that." Ryan snickered.
"Who's Drew?" Sasha asked, biting into a piece of bacon. Travis pointed to a girl with long black hair over at the Aphrodite cabin. "That's Drew. She's a sadistic drama queen who everyone here at camp hates, but a lot of the kids also fear her."
"Why?"
"Her mom's Aphrodite. Some children of Aphrodite have this gift called charmspeak. Their voices are like some toxic poison, they can convince you that whatever they say is right, and you're, like, put under a spell. She's ruined so many people's lives here with that blasted 'gift' of hers." Connor scoffed, stuffing a bite of pancake into his mouth.
"There's another girl who has the gift too, but she's super cool. She actually hates her gift and tries to use it as least as possible, while Drew exploits it to no end. Drew used to be the head of Aphrodite's cabin because she used her charmspeak to make everyone else make it her. Man, that girl was cruel to those poor campers. Then Piper came along and challenged Drew, and she won. So Drew and her are like sworn enemies now." Travis said, and Sasha raised an eyebrow.
"Really? Like, I want to rip your throat out hate? But they're sisters."
Ryan laughed bitterly. "When you're a demigod, your bloodline doesn't always matter."
Half way into breakfast, Ryan asked Sasha to go get him more toast. Sasha rolled her eyes, but went anyways. She was making her way to the buffet they had set up and began stacking food on her brother's plate when Drew walked up.
"Hey hun, that's enough carbs for you, don't you think?" She said with mock kindness. Sasha placed the plate on the table and turned to face the girl.
"Did you just call me fat?"
Drew batted her eyelashes innocently. "indirectly, yes." She said, smiling. Sasha smiled, making her expression identical to Drew's, and eyed her up and down.
"Look who's talking." She said, in a voice strikingly similar to the Daughter of Aphrodite's. She turned to look at Drew's plate and made a disgusted face.
"Oh gods. Please don't tell me you're planning on eating all that, hun, or I might just die." Sasha turned her gaze to Drew's shoes.
"Oh my gods your shoes!" She squealed, pointing, a horrified expression on her face.
"Did you trample through some dung with the rest of your herd? Because those shoes are ugly as sin and you reek."
Drew's face turned the shade of a plum and she shoved Sasha into the table. Sasha stumbled backwards, knocking over the bacon and fruits. She inhaled, and slowly let her hands close around one of the bowls of jam. She turned to smile at Drew, holding the bowl behind her back. She laughed sarcastically and smiled maniacally. She stepped forward and her eyes narrowed, glaring at me cautiously just in time for me to flip the bowl over her head. Drew screamed as the red-purple jam stuck to her hair in glorified glomps of goo. Sasha laughed, doubling over with laughter.
"You stupid undetermined loser! What in the name of Zeus do you think you're doing!? I'll kill you for this!" She yelped, and Sasha wiped tears of laughter from her eyes, catching her breath and taking her brothers plate. She shrugged, smirking.
"Whatever." She said, giggling as she made her way back to the gaping Hermes table and handing her brother his food.
Cabin 11's first activity on Wednesdays was weapon crafting, where they went down to the forge to make their own weapons. When they went, there were a couple of Hephaestus kids down there, crafting and creating. Ryan caught a glimpse of one of the children of Hephaestus and smiled and waved, walking over to go talk to him. Connor and Travis were in mid-explanation to the rest of the Hermes campers, so Sasha shrugged and went to join her brother.
"—that final touchdown? Did you see that?" the boy said, pointing at something on a workbench. Raising an eyebrow, Sasha realized it was a TV.
"You guys are watching football?" She asked, and Ryan and the boy turned to face her. The boy had Latino features; tanned skin and curly brown hair. He had warm brown eyes that seemed to sparkle and an elfish grin.
"No, we weren't watching football." Ryan said.
"Yes we were."
Ryan laughed. "I know."
Sasha rolled her eyes. "This is Leo," Ryan introduced the boy to his sister, "He's from Texas, too. Leo, this is my sister, Sasha."
Leo raised an eyebrow and nodded at Sasha. "Hey." He said, and Sasha smiled.
"So you're from Texas?" She asked.
"Yeah. Ryan told me you guys moved to New York just a couple years ago?"
"Yeah."
"That's cool. Wanna see what we're working on?" He asked, and Sasha shrugged.
"I don't see anything better to do….." She joked. Leo showed her the screen they had been looking at, which wasn't, in fact, a TV. Instead, it was a celestial bronze screen projecting the latest football game between the Dallas cowboys and another team Sasha didn't know. The projection gave a real life 3D image, and Sasha reached out to touch the screen. Where her finger touched the image, it rippled like water.
"What do you want to see? Anything."
Sasha thought, then her eyes widened and she laughed.
"Ryan as a baby."
Ryan stared at her. "What? No, don't let her-!" He exclaimed, but it was too late. With a smirk, Leo typed the description into a keyboard on the desk, and the image of football players morphed and changed until the screen showed Ryan as a baby in the bathtub. His hair was soaked and sudsy and done into a Mohawk. He was laughing and splashing around, and Sasha and Leo burst into laughter as Ryan's cheeks reddened. He snatched the keyboard from Leo and rapidly typed something. The image changed again, this time to Sasha and Ryan at the beach when they were 5. Sasha was splashing around in the water, and Ryan was building a sandcastle. Filling a bucket with water, Sasha walked over to her brother, who had built a small fort out of sand and was playing with soldier figurines. Smiling evilly, Sasha dumped water onto his fort and Ryan began to cry, then he shoved Sasha into the water. She fell backwards, and her face went from gleeful to shock, then she abruptly began to sob. Laughing, Ryan walked off, and Sasha sat there, continuing to cry.
The 15 year old Ryan turned to look at Sasha, smirking. Sasha just shook her head.
"You were such a mean kid." She said, teasing her brother. He stared at her in disbelief.
"You ruined my fort!" He argued.
"Oh, it was an ugly fort. I was doing you a favor."
"It wasn't an ugly fort! You were just-"
"Guys, shut up. Watch." Leo interrupted, still gazing at the screen. Begrudgingly, the twins turned to look at the projection. It was still Sasha and Ryan on the beach, and they were still arguing. But as Sasha paid more attention to what was going on, her eyes grew wide. She and Ryan were splashing each other in the water, yelling and screaming and laughing and crying, but the water. It looked as if it were at war with itself, and each time Sasha splashed Ryan, it seemed that more water was flying towards him than a five year old could manage to control. The force should have knocked Ryan over, but instead it seemed to swirl around him until he shoved his hands forward, motioning for the water to make his sister topple over, but she actually laughed and made it into a giant wave behind her, sending it crashing onto her brother. They continued to fight like that on the screen for several minutes, before Sasha quickly grabbed the keyboard and sent her hands flying across the keys, rapidly typing in what was on her mind. The image changed to her and her brother watching the little mermaid when they were 7. Ryan had just gotten a pet goldfish and had named it Dorothy (like in Elmo), and they were sitting on their mom's bed with popcorn, watching the movie. Ryan was hugging the fishbowl to his chest as they watched the movie.
"Yes Dorothy, Sebastian is funny." He said to his fish, and Sasha turned to look at him.
"Are you talking to your fishy?" She asked, her small mouth making the 'sh' sound like 'sth'.
"Dorothy talked to me," Ryan said, and Sasha smiled, scooting to sit next to her brother and the fish. She took the bowl from her brother and held it up to her head, so that the glass made her eyes look ten times larger if someone looked from the other side. She gasped dramatically like little kids do and laughed, handing the bowl back to Ryan.
"Your fishy talks!" She exclaimed, eyes wide. For the next couple of minutes Leo, Ryan, and Sasha watched the little children on the screen carry on a conversation with a goldfish. When the image faded, Sasha turned to look at her brother. "I figured all that stuff was just my imagination." She said, and Ryan raised an eyebrow. "You think I didn't?"
"You guys do realize what those mean, right?" Leo asked them, and suddenly the whole room was filled with a shining teal color. The rest of the campers in the forge turned to look at them, all abruptly stopping what they had been doing to look at them. Connor and Travis walked over to them, the twins staring at Sasha and Ryan in disbelief.
"You guys, you're the children of Poseidon." Travis said, and Connor shook his head. "I'm gonna go tell Chiron" He said, making his way to the exit. Travis smiled at them, but it looked forced. "Come on, I'll introduce you guys to your brother."
Introductions didn't take that long since Sasha knew Percy, and apparently so did Ryan. Percy led them to the cabin for Poseidon's kids, closing the door behind them.
"So here's the Poseidon cabin."
Cabin 3 was amazing. The walls were made of rough gray stone with bits of seashell. The windows all gave a beautiful view of a shimmering blue-green ocean with pure white sea foam. From the ceiling hung little bronze figurines of sea horses. Like, literal sea horses, with the head, mane, and first two legs of a horse, but from the torso down they had a tail like a mermaid. There was also some sort of illusion on the ceiling, because the roof looked like rippling water above them. Off in one of the corners stood a grey stone fountain with seashells embedded in its body. A fish spewed out salt water (she didn't know how she knew, she just did) into the little pool, spraying mist so that it made a rainbow. She walked towards it, and at the bottom of the fountain gold coins glittered under the water. She reached in to pull one out, surprised when her arm came back out dry. She'd completely submerged her hand in water, and it was utterly dry, not one drop of water on her. The coin was dry, too.
"It's a power of the children of Poseidon" Percy said from behind her, and she whirled. He was watching her, a bemused expression on his face. He walked toward her and she held out the coins.
"Those're Greek drachma. They're the currency on Mount Olympus, so sometimes demigods use them too. That fountain, Poseidon put that there so we could make IM's."
Ryan stared at them from across the room. "Demigods use instant messaging?"
Percy sighed. "No, Iris messaging. With a rainbow. Watch." Percy took the coin from Sasha and tossed it into the mist. Sasha expected it to clatter to the floor on the opposite side of the fountain, but instead it disappeared into the rainbow.
"Oh Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow, accept my offering. Annabeth Chase, Camp Half Blood." Percy said. At first, nothing happened. Percy's eyebrows furrowed, and he stared at the mist, confused. Ryan raised an eyebrow.
"What was that supposed to—" He cut himself off when the image in the rainbow changed so that we were watching Annabeth, sword fighting against one of her siblings in the Athena cabin. She really was an amazing fighter. Her hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail and she had dirt all over her face, but she didn't seem to notice, or care. She jabbed, parried, and struck at her opponent until they were on the ground, her sword's tip at her brother's throat. She smiled and pulled her weapon back away from him, turning to face Percy and Sasha, and Ryan, who had come to stand next to them in front of the rainbow.
"Hey guys. Seaweed Brain's showed you what an IM is, I see." She observed.
"Alright, well, I'll see you guys later. I gotta go for now. Bye guys!" She said, and she swept her hand through the connection, her image fading.
Most of the rest of the morning they spent hanging out in the cabin, trying to just settle in. At one point Jonathan and Leo came over, just to hang out and goof off. Then the conch sounded and the five of them made their way to lunch, splitting way to go to their respective parent's table. Ryan, Sasha, and Percy all sat together, but mostly they talked about little things, nothing necessarily important. Everyone kept looking over at their table and whispering, and it made Sasha uncomfortable. She acted like she couldn't notice, but she was wary of every little thing she did, knowing several people would see.
"So you guys came to camp with Nico?" Percy asked.
"Yeah. He's kind of weird, isn't he? I mean, he's a nice person, but why is he so…dark?" Ryan asked, and Percy raised an eyebrow.
"He's the son of Hades." He told the younger boy, and Ryan shrugged.
"He could be more friendly."
"I understood that he was super nice to you, which you should be grateful for. Son of Hades or no, you don't want that kid as an enemy." Percy advised.
"Are you guys good friends?" Sasha asked, and both Percy and Ryan turned to look at her; she'd kept quiet this whole time.
"Yeah, we're pretty close. A couple near-death experiences, betrayals, and life-saving moments do that." He said after some silence. Sasha nodded, taking a bite of her turkey and cheese sandwich.
"I heard some of the Hermes kids talking earlier. They said he was dating?" Ryan asked Percy, and Sasha froze, hoping the boys didn't notice it. She assumed they didn't, because neither boy turned to look at her. Percy's face scrunched up into a sour expression.
"Ugh, don't get me started on that." Percy muttered.
"So it's true?" Ryan asked, and Sasha wasn't sure if she imagined it or not, but she thought she saw Ryan's eyes dart to her as he said it. It happened so quickly she wasn't sure.
"Yes it's true, and he couldn't have a more horrible taste in girls!" The older boy exclaimed, and Sasha looked down at her plate, pretending not to be paying any attention, but listening intently.
"So then who is it?" Ryan asked.
"You wouldn't believe it."
"Who is it?"
Percy turned to Sasha, and she looked up. "Do you want to know?" He asked her, and she smiled weakly, shaking her head. "No."
Ryan rolled his eyes. "Who cares? I want to know! Who is it?"
Percy shrugged, biting into his steak.
Ryan glared at his sister. "Tell him you want to know."
"But I don't care to know." She lied.
"Tell him you want to know so he'll tell me."
Sasha sighed. "Fine. Who?"
Percy narrowed his eyes at her, then shrugged. "Drew."