"Officially, the report claimed it was gang activity," uncle Joe said with a pronounced frown. "But I know a cyclops attack when I see one."

"Wait, what?" I sputtered, almost shooting off the bed before gasping at the sharp pain in my ribs. My muscles tensed and I fell backward, turning to stare at him in wide-eyed shock. Adding insult to injury - quite literally! - He actually had the nerve to chuckle at me flopping around like a fish.

"Be still, nipote," he said, the darkness in his eyes from moments before now replaced with amusement. "You keep going like that, and we'll be calling Doctor Phoebe for a house visit." That got me to go still. "I thought so. To answer your question, yes. I know about the gods and monsters. After all, I'm a demigod too. Just like you."

I felt dizzy, as if the world was spinning the wrong way.

"I recognized you for what you were the minute I laid eyes on you," he said. "Well, maybe the minute after. For the first minute, I was sure a raccoon had somehow learned to dress in people clothes."

He chuckled at the pout on my face. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"I didn't want to scare you off," he admitted. "Even in my time, perhaps especially in my time, the life of demigods wasn't easy. The world was still recovering from 'the war to end war'... only to head right into another. Of course, we had troubles closer to home as well. It wasn't just the monsters running the streets or the angry immortals making things hard.

"It seems a common thread in our lives that our mortal parents can't handle the unique challenges our upbringing might require. For the most part, the gods don't look beyond superficial attraction when it comes to potential partners. They have their 'types' and that's it."

He shook his head, frowning slightly, "When I saw you and realized you weren't just another stray runaway, I wanted to take you in right then."

"Why didn't you?"

"You weren't ready for it," he answered. I thought about that for a moment, and realized he was right. I was scared and slow to trust back then. I still was, if I was being honest with myself. But over time, he'd broken down some of the barriers I had erected, earning both a measure of respect and trust.

"And now?" I asked.

"And now," he said, "we will have to see. It's not safe on the streets for you. Not just because you're a demigod and there are monsters, but also because you are a little girl. Sometimes people can be just as much of a threat to each other as you recently discovered. I would prefer if you went to the camp during the Summer, it's the safest place for children like you, but that is not for me to decide. Obviously, with your injury, it would be best to give that a miss this year regardless. Term has already started, and you wouldn't recover properly until it was almost over.

"Don't mistake me, nipote, I have every faith in the healers' abilities. Children of the sun god are very gifted, and Doctor Phoebe unsurprisingly speaks very highly of them, but nectar and ambrosia are no shortcut. As long as I monitor your intake, you'll get right around the same treatment here as you would in the healer cabin at camp. As for what comes after that...

"I want to officially extend my offer to take you in. You don't have to answer yet, just think about ...-"

"Yes!" I said quickly, cutting him off. "I... I mean, yes, I accept."

He smiled, then. Perhaps the first genuine smile I had seen in a long time. In that moment, the years seemed to recede from his face showing traces of the handsome man he surely must have been in his youth. We lapsed into silence, the only sound in the room came from the traffic passing on the street below.

Finally, he spoke up; "I understand you were beat up by some wannabe thugs, but what happened to your hair? It looks like someone took a knife to it."

"Um.. I took a knife to it," I admitted, blushing a little. He laughed at that, a deep, belly shaking laugh. Didn't even bother trying to hold back. And to think I had been proud of my hack job. I sighed, wincing as I reached to run my fingers through the choppy locks. It wasn't that bad, was it?

Just then, gentle breeze blew in through the open window carrying with it the sound of a girl's laughter.

"Ah, there you are," uncle Joe said, still chuckling as he turned to face the window. "Good timing. I trust you got all of her things?"

I blinked, looking around confused. Before I could speak, however, I saw my backpack float through the window and land at the foot of the bed. "Whoa, what the...?"

Suddenly, a giggling girl with pale skin, grey eyes and curly silver hair had appeared out of thin air next to the backpack. She looked a little younger than me, maybe nine years old at most, and openly regarded me with fascinated curiosity.

"Were ya lookin'?" She asked. "What'd I look like? Was I all... Swooosh! Or maybe I was like... Swiiiish?" She waved her arms, spinning in place.

I turned to look at uncle Joe, very confused. "Who...?"

"Ari, you're overwhelming her," he chided gently. To me, he said; "Nipote, this is Ari. She's an Aurae. A wind spirit nymph."

"Uh, hi?" I managed, trying not to sound rude.

"Knee Poe Tay?" the girl, now named Ari, asked haltingly.

"It's, uh... It's just Penny," I said. I could feel myself getting a little overwhelmed, but the excitable girl either didn't notice or didn't mind.

"Pleased t'meetcha!" she chirped, then leaned in to examine my face more closely. "Yer eyes aren' glowin' anymore. Issit why ya weren' seein' me?"

"I don't... What?" I was so lost by now. "My eyes don't glow?"

"Sure they do," she said. "Saw 'em do it yesterday at th' park. They were glowin' as I blew past an' ya were lookin' right at me."

"The park?" I blinked. The whole park adventure was one giant blur right now. "Wait, were you the green mist that led me to finding Pinkerbelle?"

"Green mist? No way, I can't be green," She shook her head. "Aurae like me are of th' sky an' air, not the cloddin' dirt. Nah, I'm silvery like th' moon I'm told. Wha' yer describin' must've been th' Trav'ler tryin' t' guide ya away from tha' nasty hound." She turned to uncle Joe with a grin. "See? I tol' ya She had th' sight, Gio."

"I... I see," he said, slowly. "I'll speak with Signore Herman later about this. I'm sure he'll be by some time this week." He turned back to me and said, "You try to get some rest. Ari will keep an eye on you in case you need anything." Ari grinned and gave a sloppy salute before breaking down into a fit of giggles.

Uncle Joe stood up from the chair and ruffled my hair fondly with another chuckle before helping me with the blanket. With my body heat, it would likely just end up in a pile on the floor at some point, but the gesture was appreciated regardless.

"Maybe when you feel better we can see about getting that fixed up," he said. I was tempted to throw the blanket at him. He realized it too and double-timed it out of the room still chuckling.

I yawned, suddenly realizing how tired I was, then winced again as I tried to stretch wrong. Pain is really hard work, I guess. Ari vanished from sight, a gentle breeze blowing past me before she reappeared in the seat next to the bed.

"What are you...?" I started to ask.

She cut me off; "Keepin' an eye on ya, o'course!"

"I see. You know, that's really not necessary," I said. "Besides, I promise I'm not going anywhere. I can barely get comfortable as it is."

"Would it help if I tol' ya a story?" she asked. "It migh' take yer mind off th' pain an' help ya rest."

"Sure," I agreed, closing my eyes.

And so, she did. She wove a tale about a camp located not far away. A safe haven for the children of the gods where monsters couldn't get in. She spoke of the immortal teacher and trainer of heroes, Chiron, who was half-man and half-horse. She told me about the various other nymphs and nature spirits that resided there as well. How some of the nymphs helped out in the day-to-day running of the camp while others remained in the surrounding wooded area, rarely venturing out or interacting with the camp at all.

She also spoke of the various activities the campers got up to. Normal stuff like arts and crafts, or capture the flag, canoeing on the lake (No thank you!) and even archery. There was even, according to her, a rock wall for climbing that spouted actual lava.

As I drifted to sleep, my mind wandered thinking about how absolutely terrifying and strange the whole idea of Camp Half-Blood sounded. But at the same time, how exciting it would be to one day go.

Over the next few weeks, I fell into a semi-comfortable pattern consisting of plenty of bed rest to recover from my injuries mixed with education packets that almost made me wish I was still on the street. It wasn't all bad, though, if I was being honest. A warm bed, clean clothes and hot meals was a more than fair trade for the boredom of book learning.

Between my extra durability from my semi-divine heritage, and the daily doses of Nectar given by uncle Joe, I was back on my feet much sooner than a normal person would have been in a similar state. Most of my recovery time was spent getting to know uncle Joe and Ari better.

As it turned out, uncle Joe really was a demigod like me. His godly parent was Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty. Despite that, he'd been largely unlucky in love until he'd met Elena - a very goals driven daughter of Athena. There was just something about the grey-eyed girl that made him take notice. That something being a 'soul mate bond' of sorts. The Red Thread of Fate. Two souls - or more, in some rare cases - connected at birth.

Apparently it was a child-of-Aphrodite thing. He explained that he had known at a glance that she was the One for him. Of course, love takes time and work. There are no shortcuts, even with bonded souls. All it meant is that the bonded would be the most romantically compatible with each other.

For him, Elena was his one and only. When she had died, she took a part of his very self with her that he would never get back. He hadn't even considered another romantic partner since that day.

As for Ari; the two of them had met all the way back when he was seventeen. He had been on a quest to recover the bag of winds that Aeolus had once given to Odysseus. Ari had been one of the wind spirits that had escaped, and had helped him find it after he had freed her from a bad situation involving a Scythian Dracaena. The two had formed a close friendship that had lasted decades at this point.

Ari had even helped mask him from monsters by regularly blowing his demigod scent away from the restaurant. A trick she also used to great effect for drawing in customers by filling the air with the smell of his cooking, luring them in by the nose like an old cartoon. She was also a free spirit. Literally. She couldn't be expected to always linger around. Apparently she had been away for a few days which had led to the hellhound sniffing around the back alley that night.

Of course, she had also immediately volunteered to check up on me and make sure I was alright when uncle Joe had realized what had happened. She had tracked me down to the park and had followed me back to my squat spot. She had been trailing me all the next morning when the wannabe gangers had beaten the crap out of me. She had immediately rushed off to get uncle Joe, and then returned to frighten them off by carrying the sounds of police sirens on her wind from an unrelated incident several city blocks away.

Unfortunately, when she had repacked my bag, she had simply gathered everything up and dumped it in. Sodden clothes rolled into a ball with soggy bread and dirty lunch meat was not a great smell. On the other hand, she had also packed the ornate knife right on top of the soggy ball. I was worried I had lost it. Or, I would have been worried when I eventually got around to thinking about it. Either way, I was grateful.

Uncle Joe was impressed with the craftsmanship of the blade, and even more so with the delicate engravings. He was less than impressed when he discovered how it had come to be in my possession, however, and had given me a stern lecture about taking things that weren't mine. I had to swear that I would never do something like that again before he was satisfied.

After that, he promised to teach me how to use a bronze weapon without hurting myself once I was properly healed up. Not that one, however. It was too beautiful to be used for fighting, no matter how well made. I couldn't wait!