"But... but I don't tan!"

The blonde girl next to Luke facepalmed.

"Mason, if you could please take Marion over to cabin seven to get settled in, I'll inform Mr. D that another camper has been claimed. Hopefully he won't be too upset about the paperwork on his day off..." Chiron said. Mari wondered if every day for Mr. D was a day off, or if he was just lazy. Probably the latter, but she wasn't about to say that to his face. Even if he used that face to mostly glare at campers.

Mason led her to the Apollo cabin, which was still glowing faintly in the early evening light. There were yellow flowers at the windows, and a mat in front of the door, with tiny gold suns around the rim and something written in Ancient Greek. She didn't realise at first, but she could read it perfectly.

Welcome.

"Hopefully Chiron will have told the others, but there should be a bed for you anyway. We have seve-eight people now, including you," Mason told her as they walked inside.

The inside of the cabin did not glow. Thank fuck. She probably wouldn't survive for very long as a ten year old demigod with retinal damage. The walls were smooth white plaster, with light wooden beams holding up the ceiling. There was a faint sun pattern on the head of each bed, and all the sheets were a bright, happy yellow. It smelled vaguely of sage.

"So... I think Chiron sent someone, probably Sammy, to get your stuff from cabin eleven. They should be here soon." Mason was scuffing his shoe against the corner of one of the beds and looking around the room.

"Mason? Are you okay?"

Her... brother shrugged, and sat down on the bed, twiddling his thumbs. "Sorry. I'm just not that great at talking to kids who have just been claimed." There was something unreadable in his expression as he spoke that made Mari feel slightly uneasy, like she had a spider on her ankle. She nearly shuddered. Spiders just under snakes on her list of DO NOT COME NEAR ME animals. Why did she have to imagine that? She really hated her own brain sometimes.

The door opened and Sammy waltzed in, swinging the flag from the game under their arm. "Hey! Chiron gave me this to store until next time. And Marion! Has Mason shown you where you're sleeping yet?" they asked, throwing the flag over the back of a chair.

Mason shook his head, his face going red. "No. Sorry. We just got here."

Sammy shrugged. "S'okay. Well, you're in that bed over there, closest to the door. I'm cabin counsellor, so if you have any problems, you come to me. Unless those problems are antagonising the Ares cabin. Then don't come to me. Just don't get caught."

Mason snickered at Sammy's words.

The rest of the Apollo campers arrived a couple minutes later, only a few seeming surprised at the general existence of Mari. She guessed word travelled fast. The final one to get to the cabin was Lee, carrying her backpack in one arm and Oak under the other. "Hey, Marion! Good to have you here."

He handed her stuff over and she gently set the Pithos containing Oak's poppy in the centre of her desk, careful not to squish the leaves. She wondered if it would die in the winter. She hoped not. Maybe she could ask around to see if anybody could preserve it. Probably a child of Demeter. She was the plant goddess, right?

"Thanks." She smiled at Lee, who nodded in return. Her new siblings introduced themselves one by one as they all got ready for bed.

There was Sammy, Lee, and Mason, who she already knew.

Amber Fray was the second oldest, a few months younger than Sammy, and was nice enough to lend Mari a shirt and shorts to sleep in.

There was Viti Datta, a girl with dark hair and pajamas patterned with constellations.

Michael Yew was a little younger than her, but if she hadn't known, she would have thought the opposite. And not because of his height. The first thing he did was cross his arms and tell her to keep her dirty shoes at the entrance to the cabin.

The youngest in their cabin was a little boy called Sean Butler, who couldn't have been more than three. He kept sucking his thumb and slept on a smaller bed, tucked into the corner of the cabin.

The whole 'Hi, we're related, I promise I'm not part bush' thing didn't last much longer than an hour or two. Mari didn't know if that was because she was boring or because her cabin was tired. She didn't mind either way.

The beds in cabin seven were slightly bigger than a single bed, but still smaller than a double. She wondered if a one-and-a-half bed was a thing, because that was what this was. It was also really, really soft. She could get used to this.

She thought about the kids still stuck in the cramped Hermes cabin, and her good mood evaporated.

Her dreams were even weirder. Which was saying a lot.

She couldn't focus on one part all at once. It was kind of like a huge swirl of noise all around her, interspersed with glimpses of different things at different times.

First, she saw a blonde woman crying at the back of an alley. She had her hair in a ponytail, a few strands escaping through the green hair band, and Mari could almost hear the honking of cars in the background. Her head was in her knees, but Mari knew she was crying because of the way her back was shaking.

Then there was the same man with the weird green jacket, more green mist swirling around him. His hand wasn't outstretched this time, but Mari could tell he had also been crying. He tried to say something, but no words came out. The door to the same house he's been in before slammed shut, sealing him in just as a big black shadow appeared behind him.

The next few flashes were even more incoherent. There was a bleeding foot, and some kind of contraption against a wall...

Then she was treated to one more scene.

A girl was running through the undergrowth. It was dark, so Mari couldn't see the girl's face, but she looked like she was hurt. Hurt or tired. Or both.

She couldn't be older than eight, which was being generous.

She was stumbling over her own feet and one of her arms was twisted the wrong way around. Somehow she still managed to be pretty fast. Her dark hair flew out behind her as she ran. Mari wasn't entirely sure how she was able to keep up, since she wasn't running (not that she could run that fast anyway - that was embarrassing) but she was following the girl as she ran. Somehow.

The girl stumbled over a tree root and cursed in another language. "Stay away from me!" She flexed her right middle finger and a knife appeared in her hand.

Had Mari not been 77% sure she was dreaming, she probably would have ran away screaming at the monster that ran into the clearing next. It was a hellhound. Just like the one that killed Oak.

The girl was the one who growled at it. She threw the knife and Mari watched as it landed in the shoulder of the dog. The thing howled in anger, spitting at the girl.

She made a beckoning motion with her hand, and the knife flew out of the hellhound's shoulder and back into her waiting palm. Blood spurted from the wound and stained the girl's face red.

"Don't come near me!" the girl hissed, raising the knife again. Mari tried to get a closer look at it, but whatever had let her follow the girl when she was running had suddenly decided to stop being helpful and was holding her back.

The girl threw the knife again, and this time it landed in the neck of the hellhound, killing it instantly. Well, that was certainly simpler than playing fetch with it.

Mari tried to look at the girl again, but the scene was disappearing. She remembered the long dark hair and the twisted arm, but nothing else, it had been too dark...

The man in the weird green clothes was back. This time he was out of the house, but she wasn't sure that was such a good thing. They were both in some kind of void, surrounded by the same green mist...

He reached his hand out to her again, and this time she reached back. They were too far away to touch.

Mari could make out his mouth moving, trying to say something, but she couldn't hear it over a high pitched hissing sound which, if she'd been awake, would have made her freeze in fear. She tried to read his lips and could make out two words, amongst others.

'I'm sorry...'

The mist around them started to thin until it was completely gone, apart from a small amount, swirling at the feet of the man. It had changed colour to a pale grey, and she watched as it slowly rose to surround him.

No! Run! she wanted to yell but her mouth stayed closed. His eyes widened and his expression changed. He didn't look apologetic anymore. He looked scared. Of her.

The freaky grey mist started to wrap around his ankles and wrists, then his neck. Her started gurgling, his eyes bulging out of his head like they were being pulled.

She wanted to beg him to run, if he could, to do something, but he didn't fight as the mist enveloped him. His body convulsed once, twice and again before he was entirely covered. The last part of his she saw was his eyes, still bulging out of his head in shock and fear.

The mist dissipated, revealing nothing under it. He was gone.

Her hand was still raised at him.

Marion squeaked as she woke up and frowned. She usually didn't make a sound.

She thought back to her dream. There wasn't much that stuck out. She remembered a few flashes, but mostly the girl and the old man.

There was something strange about seeing the girl... Mari didn't know why she was so worried about somebody she'd never met. Maybe it was the hellhounds. She didn't want another person to die because of those things.

And the man. She felt a stronger connection to him. Like she actually did know him, somehow. But she hadn't ever met the guy in her life. Had she? What if she'd run into him and forgotten? But then why would she dream about him?

She looked at her hand, then looked away. She was overthinking this.

She opened the little curtain by her bed and looked out at the sun as the light hit her face. She'd never needed sunglasses on trips with her various foster homes or care homes, so she had usually collected them and painted on them with stolen nail polish from the other kids. Maybe being able to look at the sun was a child of Apollo thing. But it had never bothered her. Well, she'd gotten into a lot of trouble for the nail polish thing, but that was entirely her problem.

Mari showered and changed into another orange shirt and jeans, but avoided going outside until breakfast. She didn't want to run into Luke Castellan again.

"Hey! You're awake too!" That was Sammy. Mari put a finger to her lips and made a little shushing motion.

Sammy laughed and rolled their eyes, gesturing to the other unconscious occupants of cabin seven. "Don't you think I've tried to wake them up? They're dead to the world before eight, the lucky things."

Mari frowned. "Do you have sleeping problems or something?"

Sammy shrugged. "Kind of? I mean, technically we both do. At least according to Mason. He said your hands glowed when you were claimed."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Mari asked. Sammy raised their eyebrow. "I was just getting to that. Some of us have small power over light. Not anything big, since only our Dad can fully control light, but we can make parts of our bodies glow. For you, it's apparently the hands. For me..."

They paused and grinned at Mari, before lines under their skin lit up the room. It took her a second to figure out that Sammy's veins were glowing.

"Wow..."

Sammy glowed a little brighter at the praise before taking a couple deep breaths. The glow stopped and they continued, "Since we can glow, we have a kind of connection to the sun. It causes something in our systems to wake us up when it rises. Or, that's what Chiron told me when I lit up during dinner nine years ago. Personally, I think it's Dad, showing off."

Mari nodded, her head slightly spinning. "So... I'm glowy." She looked at her hands again and scrunched up her eyebrows.

Um... glow, please.

Nothing happened.

Sammy burst out laughing. "Marion, it doesn't work that way!" They patted her shoulder. "It's okay. I'll teach you. It took me a couple months to figure it out on my own, you should do it sooner with help."

Mari nodded, looking at her knees. That was pretty stupid of her. And she spoke from experience. She did a lot of stupid things.

The kids around her woke up one by one, starting with Sean Butler, who fell out of bed and had to be scooped back up and calmed down by Sammy. Finally, after Lee was woken up by Viti hitting him in the face with a yellow pillow, they headed down to breakfast.

Sammy led them into the pavilion, followed by the rest of them in decreasing order of age. Mari was just before Lee, being nine months older.

She took a few slices of toast and walked up to the burning brazier in the middle of the dining pavilion, before chucking the least burnt piece into the fire, even though that was probably counterproductive. She hoped her Dad shared her toast preferences. Wait, did gods eat toast?

"Apollo," she said, copying Michael, who had made his offering before her. The flames seemed to burn slightly brighter for a second.

A thought struck her as she sat down. Did she have to offer something to Athena, too? Chiron had called her a legacy of Athena, right? She didn't know what exactly that meant, but if she ended up being turned into a spider then she would launch herself into the first cup of juice she saw.

"Do I have to offer something to Athena? I didn't offer anything to Athena! What does Legacy even mean, anyway?" she asked Michael.

Before her brother could answer, he was interrupted by a younger voice.

"A Legacy is a descendant of a god or goddess. They don't usually have powers after a few generations, especially if the other parent is a mortal, but they can see through the mist, which is what gets a god's attention more than anything else. So a lot of demigods are also Legacies. About 2/10. You don't have to make an offering to your godly ancestor unless you want help with something."

It was the same girl with the scary grey eyes who'd facepalmed at her the day before, when she was claimed. "Uh... thanks." Mari smiled politely.

The girl nodded. "You're welcome." Then she walked over to the Athena table.

"Well, you heard her," Michael said, taking her by the arm and leading her over to table seven. It was probably weird to see somebody being dragged around by someone younger than them, but Michael was bossy.

She noticed Drew on the way there, and waved briefly. The other girl grinned and waved back, before gesturing to the collar of her orange shirt. Mari looked at her own, and realised there was a huge clump of ash from the brazier.

Her face heated up, probably resembling the colour of a tomato, and she brushed it off as quickly as possible. Thanks, she mouthed. Drew nodded.

"Why didn't you tell me about my shirt?" she asked Michael, who snickered. "Because. It was funny." Mari elbowed him in the ribs, and he stuck his tongue out at her.

"Hey, leave her alone. She's new," Amber said. She hadn't talked to Amber much, outside of an awkward introduction. But her heart warmed at the older girl for defending her, even if she wasn't that upset.

"Yeah, Michael. Leave me alone."

Michael stole one of her toast pieces in retaliation.

After breakfast, they had their first archery session. Mari was given a pale wooden longbow and a quiver of arrows. Chiron led the class, and attempted to teach them they proper preparation and use of flaming arrows, but Mari stayed away from anything incendiary after a child of Demeter burned his eyebrows off and Sammy had to lead him to the infirmary.

She managed to get within two inches of bullseye on her first try, which was apparently very, very good by normal camper standards and average to bad for child of Apollo standards. She wasn't sure if that was because they were archers or overachievers, but when she witnessed Michael and Viti spend twenty minutes shooting acorns off a nearby tree, she figured it was probably both.

She got several very good shots throughout the session, which Chiron assured her would definitely kill most monsters, but she never got a bullseye. Lee patted her on the back and told her she'd improve, but she was still a little disappointed.

So far she'd gotten freaky instincts that only helped in getting her friend killed, and glowy hands she had no idea how to use. Neither of those seemed very helpful in avoiding or fending off any enemies of the monstrous variety. A small part of her had been hoping for something like the ability to shoot lasers from her eyeballs or something equally useful. But that probably wasn't an Apollo power. She was fairly sure they didn't have lasers in Ancient Greece.

She ran into Drew after Archery, on the way to the arts and crafts pavilion.

"So... you got claimed," Drew said. There wasn't any rise or fall to her voice, and Mari couldn't tell if she was happy for her or not.

"Yeah?" Mari's answer came out as more of a question than an affirmation.

Drew smiled. "What's cabin seven like? Is it true that they randomly burst into song at 3 am?" she asked.

Mari frowned. If she had to wake up with the sun every day, she bloody hoped not. "Not that I've noticed," she answered.

"Huh. Well, it sucks it wasn't Aphrodite. It would have been nice to have another sister to share the responsibility of stealing 'Lena's stuff." Drew reached into her sparkly pink purse and brought out a small bottle of French perfume, before spraying Mari in the face.

"Ack! Drew!" Mari half-coughed, half-laughed.

Drew smirked.

"Are you sure you're not related to Hermes?" Mari asked.

Drew rolled her eyes. "I'm not a legacy like you. But my cabin has a crap ton of really expensive stuff. At some point we have to learn to either hide it or steal it back. Here." Drew grabbed her wrist and actually applied the perfume correctly this time.

"Thanks," Mari said, sniffing herself.

Drew grinned again, and this time her smile was a little ferocious. "Oh, I only did that because my sister is really good at smelling her own scent on other people. So she'll go after you instead of me."

Mari glanced at the showers. "Okay. Thanks," she deadpanned.

They arrived at the arts and crafts pavilion, and Drew dragged her over to a sewing machine in the corner. "It took my siblings a year and a half to convince Chiron to get this." She touched the machine like she was greeting her own child, reached back into her bag and pulled out a cut-up looking orange shirt with thread hanging from a sleeve. "This is what I'm doing for the rest of the day." She sighed, before sitting at the the table and beginning to work on... whatever she was working on.

Mari wondered over to a set of sketchbooks and grabbed one before returning to Drew. She used to doodle all over her books at school, since the teachers either ignored her completely or expected her to fail. It calmed her down whenever she got overwhelmed. She never really doodled anything important, usually either dark gloves or a sword which was two different colours. And those weird S shapes which everyone drew.

She wasn't really paying attention to what she doodled as she sat next to Drew, who was already dead to the world as she worked on her shirt. It was kind of like she was in some weird artistic trance as her pencil moved across the paper. She usually got like that when listening to music, but her headphones were probably still in Jean's car, on the other side of the world. And apparently she couldn't use technology now, or she would essentially be sending every monster within a hundred mile radius a free invitation to an all-you-can-eat Mari buffet.

Drew kicked her foot.

"What?" Mari asked.

"You've been humming for the last ten minutes. I tried to get your attention but you were in your own world."

Mari ducked her head. "Sorry, I didn't realise."

Drew shrugged. "I don't care. We all have ADHD." Then she went back to her sewing.

Mari swallowed. Normally when she did something like that, she got annoyed looks from other people, even though she didn't know she was doing it. But it felt really, genuinely nice for Drew to not make a big deal out of it.

Mari went back to her drawing, and got lost in her thoughts again pretty quickly. She wondered if it was strange that the only friend she had was a seven-year-old. Then again, Jean had always said she was immature. And Drew was funny and smart, in a mildly scary way.

"Ooohh, that's freaky. Like, good, but freaky." Drew gestured to the sketchbook.

Mari hadn't been focusing on what she was actually drawing, instead breaking everything up into shapes and shading. But when she actually looked at the picture as a whole, she had to agree with Drew.

It was the ocean.

Not the Long Island sound, which, despite her still not knowing why it was called the long island sound, was actually quite beautiful. The ocean filled up the entire page, and at the centre was a huge mouth-like whirlpool, sucking in the ocean around it. Dangling high above it was the bottom of someone's leg, with grape juice dripping down the foot. She hoped her shading was a little off and it was actually grape juice.

"Yeah... it is creepy," she muttered, dropping the pen onto the table.

"Are you okay?" Drew asked her.

Mari nodded, even though she could feel her palms start sweating and her heart was beating fast enough to make her chest hurt. "Yeah. Yeah. Oh, is the shirt done?"

Drew grinned, forgetting her previous question. She held up the shirt for Mari to admire.

Mari had to admit that for a seven year old, Drew Tanaka was bloody good at sewing. She'd finished the sleeve, making it go to the elbow, and made the shirt form-fitting. "That's really pretty!" Mari said.

Drew nodded. "I know. Gods, it would be so much better if only Chiron didn't insist on making the shirts bright orange. It's like he looked in a catalogue of colours and deliberately picked the ugliest one." She shuddered.

Mari giggled. "Yeah, well, try having only those shirts to wear, all the time," she agreed.

Drew gasped. "That's horrifying! Oh my gods, I'm so sorry." From her reaction, you'd think a relative had just died. "I guess you didn't get to take anything to camp, huh?" she asked softly.

Mari shook her head. She didn't have many clothes she liked, since a lot of it was hand-me-downs, but she'd had this one blue jumper she loved...

Drew folded up her shirt, stuffing it in the sparkly pink side bag again. "You done?" she asked, gesturing to Mari's drawing.

Mari nodded and stood up, putting the sketchpad under her arm. "Yeah."

"Good. Lunch is pizza today. I'm starving." Drew dragged Mari out of the arts and crafts pavilion to eat.

Mason Ray was a godsend. Or was is godssend? She didn't know, but he was a lifesaver. He handed her a binbag full of something squishy as soon as she got back to cabin seven that night.

"What's this?" she asked, setting it on the bed.

Mason grinned. "I'm sorry about the bag. We tried to find something else to put the clothes in, but there was nothing." Mari sat down next to the bag, and Mason handed her some scissors to open it.

Inside was a huge mass of fabric, which spilled out over Mari's knees and onto the floor. "Mason, what is this?" she asked.

He sat beside her and picked up a blue shirt. "Clothes. I can't take credit for the idea, your little friend, Drew was it? She came to me and asked me if I knew anybody was missing anything, but at that point the bag was already half-full. I think some of it's designer, but then again I also think that most of what the Aphrodite cabin owns is designer."

A flash of a very familiar orange caught Mari's eye, and she picked up the shirt. It was the same one Drew had been working on earlier. Pinned to one of the sleeves was a note in Ancient Greek, which smelled like French perfume.

Orange is so not my colour. Enjoy!

Mari didn't know how to feel. Nobody had ever done something like this for her. A few people at her primary school had clothes swaps occasionally, but they never left with more clothes than they came with. And she didn't go to school anymore, anyway. But to have somebody give her something, when they had no reason to, without expecting anything in return? That hadn't happened since...

Since she didn't even remember. Her last birthday had been with Jean, who either forgot or didn't care. This was much better than a birthday. She didn't realise she was crying until Mason hugged her.

"Hey, they're just clothes. It's not a big deal." He smiled, and she shook her head into his shoulder.

"T-Thankyou," she murmured, smiling even though nobody else could see it.

"What's going o-" Sammy entered the cabin with a few footsteps behind them, and pinched the bridge of their nose. "Mason, I told you to wait till we all got here. Ugh, whatever. Do you like them, Marion?"

Mari nodded up and down. "Yeah. I really like them."

Amber brightened from behind Sammy. "Oh, good. We didn't know what to give you, and Sean wanted to add several of his princess dresses to the collection until we pointed out that none of them would fit, so we just thought we'd go with out most generic items."

"Thankyou. Thankyou, thankyou..."

Michael snorted. "I think you all broke her," he muttered.

"Well, a least we didn't try and give her someone else's clothes!" Viti teased, gesturing to the silver shirt she was wearing.

"Do I need to pay you guys for this?" Mari asked.

Sammy shook their head. "Absolutely not! We didn't even wear most of this stuff anyway, and even if we did, the expensive stuff is from your friend. You should probably thank her tomorrow, though."

Mari nodded. "Yeah, Yeah I will. I promise. Can I thank her now?"

She scrambled up, only for Lee to shake his head. "I don't think she would appreciate you being eaten alive by the cleaning harpies as a very good thank you."

Mari stuck her tongue out at him.

Maybe having siblings wouldn't be as bad as the few foster siblings she'd had over the years. Aside from the fact that none of them were plant-god hybrids (from the stories she'd heard about her Dad, she was beginning to think the guy had some serious issues), they were nice to her. And nobody had judged her for anything yet. And they were funny to be around. Sammy had even promised to teach her the glowy hand thing.

She burned her drawing with one of the lighters Michael kept for flaming arrows before going to bed.