These drabbles were written for: Percy Jackson Fanfiction Challenges - kitty132383: The 100 Prompts/100 Drabbles Challenge
T1nyDanc3r: You are right, but it is harder for Thalia to accept that :) Everyone doubts themselves sometimes, just some might not show it... Thanks :) It means a lot to me!
Disclaimer: I don't own the Percy Jackson and the Olympians or the Heroes of Olympus series, all rights go to Rick Riordan.
14. Pet
Words: 526
Thalia always knew that pledging yourself to the goddess Artemis and becoming a Hunter wasn't a game. You couldn't just say that it was enough for you and you want to quit.
She knew that she could never break her pledge (not that she ever wanted to. Who needed a boyfriend, anyway?)
However, she only truly realized it on a particular day. She was walking around the campsite, checking on her fellow Huntresses. She stopped when she reached Emily Mellington, daughter of Demeter.
She was the best with their hunting companions probably, with the wolves and with their hunting birds. As usual she was assigned to care about the animals.
She was humming a tune and she was training the wolves and a hawk was on her left shoulder.
"Hey, Mily, how is it going?" Thalia asked the kind daughter of the harvest goddess.
"Oh, pretty well. However Cat is very moody today," Emily said with a smile on her pretty face. Thalia raised her eyebrows.
"Since when do we have a cat?" she asked curiously and the daughter of Demeter looked at her as she was crazy and then her expression changed.
"Oh... Of course, you are pretty new still. You don't know," she said suddenly.
"I don't know what, Em?" the daughter of Zeus asked.
"I'm not talking about cats, Thals. I meant Cat with capital C as in a nickname for Catherine," Emily stated.
"We don't have any Catherine," the Lieutenant said suspiciously. She was new, surely. However, she already knew the name of her Hunters. She should tell Artemis, that maybe Emily should see Mr. D.
"I meant the sharp-shinned hawk on my shoulder," Emily said and Thalia raised her eyebrows even higher if the was possible.
"Since when do we name our hunting birds?" she asked curiously and the daughter of Demeter sighed.
"It's a long story, Thalia. Cat was originally a human, a demigod more precisely," Em started and Thalia had an idea where this was going.
"She was a daughter of Aphrodite. Many were against even accepting her, but she was a maiden and Artemis let her join the Hunt. However, she broke her oath, she fell in love with a son of Apollo and Artemis was furious. She believed in her when no one else did, so she changed her into a hawk and she became one of our hunting pets. However, Cat even as a bird partly immortal. She has been in this form for nearly two hundred years," Emily told Thalia who fixed her electrical blue eyes on the bird who was watching her too.
"All of our pets are ex-Hunters?" Thalia asked suddenly and looked at all the animals around Emily who laughed.
"No, of course not," she said with a smile and the daughter of Zeus relaxed. She liked to be a partly immortal Huntress, but to be honest she didn't want to be a partly immortal bird.
Thalia knew even before that particular day that she wasn't going to break her vow.
However, she was even more determined now.
She wasn't going to get on her patron's bad side.
Artemis could be scary.