Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.
Author's Notes: There are quite a few changes here! Maybe not that much, but more than I was expecting to make. Seriously, what was previous me thinking with Percy listing off the constellations? I'm an astronomy nerd, I should know better than to list constellations that aren't anywhere close to each other in the night sky. The shame, I tell you, the shame!
Anyways, hope y'all enjoy, and I'll see you next week,
~TGWSI/Selene Borealis
~The Finding Home Saga~
~Finding Home~
~Chapter 7: I Sacrifice Brisket For The Gods~
A few hours later, Luke rounded up the entire cabin and we headed outside for dinner. We lined up in seniority, which, of course, meant that I was all the way in the back. Campers came out from the other cabins, too, except for the three cabins at the end, and Cabin Eight, which was starting to glow in the moonlight.
We started to march up the hill and into the mess pavilion, when, all of the sudden, the guy in front of me – Alabaster, the son of Hecate – groaned. "Great. You just had to attract her, didn't you?" he mumbled towards me.
I looked to see what, or rather who, he was talking about. A girl about our age was walking towards us, with a trail of four other campers walking behind her. She had long, loosely-curled black hair and a face that could've probably rivaled Helen of Troy's in terms of beauty. And her eyes were ever-changing, like a kaleidoscope's, which were somehow complimented by the orange T-shirt and denim shorts she was wearing.
In fact, if I wasn't one-hundred-percent gay, I'm pretty sure I would've fallen in love with her right the and there.
"Hello! Percy, isn't it?" she said as a greeting, an easy smile lighting up her face. "My name is Silena, Silena Beauregard. I'm the head of Cabin 10, or Aphrodite's Cabin. And these are my half-siblings: Drew, Laurel, Mitchell, and Lacy."
Silena's half-siblings said hello. I said hi back.
"What do you want, Silena?" Alabaster asked as we trudged along, a scowl on his face and a very noticeable pink tinge to his cheeks. "Trying to play matchmaker again, are you?"
"Please, Ally," Silena scoffed, sounding both offended and playful at the same time. "You know me better than that! I just wanted to get to know our newest camper!"
"Yeah, so you can set him up," Alabaster mumbled.
Silena ignored him. "Are you settling in just fine with Cabin Eleven?" she asked me with a playful batting of her eyes. I could definitely tell that she was a daughter of Aphrodite, that was for sure. "I know finding out you're a demigod can be quite a shock and all."
"Uh, yeah," I said lamely. "Cabin Eleven's great."
As soon as I said that, her smile widened. "Excellent!" she exclaimed. "Well, if you ever need anything, just know that Cabin Ten's door is always open for you! Right, guys?"
"Right," her half-siblings repeated, although the black-haired girl, Drew, didn't really sound all that enthused about it.
"Uh, okay," I said.
"Ta-ta, now!" Silena replied, before she and her somewhat-merry troop of half-siblings walked away.
I turned back to look at Alabaster and asked, "What was that about?"
"I'll tell you later," he said, his voice irritated and his scowl deepening.
Strangely, or perhaps not that strangely at all, I had a feeling he had no intentions of doing so.
At the pavilion, torches blazed around the marble columns. A central fire burned in a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. Each cabin had its own table, which may not have been a problem for some cabins, but certainly was for ours. Not knowing what else to do, I moved to sit at the edge of the bench, but before I could the seat was taken.
"Can't find a seat?" Luke asked with a caring smile as he spontaneously appeared behind me. When I nodded, he said, "Well...can't say that we won't get in trouble for it, but I have an idea."
I opened my mouth to ask just what exactly he meant by that, but before I could even get a word out, he grabbed me by the waist. Immediately, I flinched, and he faltered, and for a millisecond we just stood like that.
Shit, I thought, my face quickly turning redder than a tomato. Dammit, Percy, you know he's not going to –
"Sorry," Luke whispered in my ear as he let me go and sat down, before he pushed Connor, who was sitting right next to him, into Travis to make room for me. Connor squawked, but a glance at me had him shutting up in an instant.
I shook my head. "It's fine," I said, and then sat down in between them before I could do something even more incredibly stupid.
Anxiously, I looked around, trying to see if anyone had noticed my fuck up. Katie was sitting at table four all by herself, looking rather bored – she must've been the only person in her cabin, I realized. That must suck. Mr. D and the two boys from the strawberry fields, Pollux and Castor, sat at table twelve with Chiron standing off to the side, and I didn't know whether to be amused at the fact that the twins were Mr. D's kids or at the fact that the picnic tables were obviously way too small for a centaur.
Both, I decided before I could think about it for too long. Both is good.
Annabeth sat at table six with a bunch of serious-looking athletic kids, all with the same stormy grey eyes and golden-blonde hair as hers. Idly, I wondered what god or goddess was their godly parent. They reminded me of Apollo, but I was pretty sure that the dozen or so kids sitting at table seven were. I mean, most of them were blonde, and a few of them had quivers and bows strapped to their shoulders. And I didn't know of any other Olympian besides Apollo and Artemis who was a god of archery, and it wasn't like Artemis would have any kids of her own.
When I looked at table ten, though, I felt myself freeze, just ever-so-slightly. Because while nobody else had seemed to notice what had just happened, Silena Beauregard most certainly had. She was gazing at me, her eyebrows furrowed, but when she noticed I was staring at her she abruptly smiled and winked at me.
Suddenly, I didn't need to ask Alabaster about why he had been throwing such a fuss earlier.
The sound of Chiron pounding one of his hooves against the marble floor of the pavilion snapped me out of my worrying. Everybody fell silent as they turned to look at him. He raised a glass. "To the gods!" he shouted.
We all copied him. "To the gods!"
A bunch of girls with loosely-curled hair and green-tinged pointed ears walked forward then with platters of food: apples, strawberries, cherries, fresh bread, and yes, barbecue! My glass was empty, but as Luke gently leaned over me, he whispered in my ear, "Speak to it. Whatever you want – nonalcoholic, of course."
"Cherry Coke," I said after a moment of thinking about what I wanted.
Immediately, the glass filled with sparkling caramel liquid.
I got an idea. Smiling, I said with a little firmer voice this time, just in case, "Blue Cherry Coke."
The soda turned a violent shade of cobalt.
Nervously, I picked it up and took a sip. Perfect.
I drank a toast to my mother.
She's not gone, I thought to myself, determined. She can't be. People don't just straight-up vanish when they die. There has to be a reasonable explanation for this – even in this world of gods, demigods, and monsters...
"Here you go, Percy," Luke said, stirring me out of my thoughts just like Chiron had.
I blinked.
He had apparently filled up my plate while I had been out of it, and everything on it looked so good. Maybe even better than the cider stuff I had had earlier that day. But before I could dig in, I noticed everybody getting up and carrying their plates towards the fire in the center of the pavilion. I wondered if they were going for dessert or something.
"Come on," Luke told me, gesturing for me to get up and follow him and everybody else.
As I got closer, I saw that everyone was taking a portion of their meal and dropping it into the fire – things like the ripest strawberry, or the juiciest slice of beef, or the warmest, most buttery role.
"Burnt offerings for the gods. They like the smell," Luke murmured to me.
"You're kidding."
His look warned me not to take this lightly, but even so, I couldn't help but wonder why an immortal, all-powerful being would like the smell of burning food.
Luke approached the fire, bowed his head, and tossed in a cluster of red, fat grapes. "Hermes."
I was next.
I wished I knew what god's name to say.
But then, an idea struck me.
As I scraped a big slice of brisket into the flames, I whispered, "Hermes, and Dad."
And when I caught a whiff of the smoke, I didn't gag.
It smelled nothing like burnt food. Instead, it smelled like my mom's chocolate-chip cookies, like hot chocolate and brownies and hamburgers on the grill and wildflowers, and all sorts of other heavenly things. In fact, smelling it, I could almost believe that the gods could live off of it just like they could nectar and ambrosia.
When everybody had gotten back to their seats and finished eating their meals, Chiron pounded his hoof again on the floor for our attention. Then, Mr. D got up with a huge sigh. "Yes, alright," he said grumpily. "I suppose I must say hello to all of you brats. Well, hello. Our activities director, Chiron, says the next Capture the Flag game is this Friday. Cabin Five presently holds the laurels."
A bunch of ugly cheering rose up from table five. I figured they were Ares' kids. They certainly looked the part.
"Personally," Mr. D continued. "I couldn't care less, but congratulations. Also, I should tell you that we have a new camper today. Peter Johnson."
Chiron leaned down to murmur him something.
"Err, Percy Jackson," Mr. D corrected himself. "That's right. Hurrah, and all that. Now, run along to your silly campfire. Go on, off you go."
Everybody cheered. We all headed down towards the amphitheater where Apollo's cabin – the table seven kids, I had been right about that – led a sing-along. We sang camp songs about the gods and ate s'mpres and joked around, and the funny thing was, nobody was staring at me like they had earlier in the day.
It made me feel like I was almost at home.
Later in the evening, when the sparks from the campfire were curling into the sky, a conch horn blew, and we all filed back to our cabins. I didn't realize how exhausted I was until I collapsed onto my sleeping bag.
My fingers curled around the pen-sword, which was now in my shorts' pocket. It was a miracle that the Stolls hadn't stolen it yet.
I thought about my mom, but now I had only good thoughts: I thought about her smile, the bedtime stories she would read to me when I was a kid, and the way she would tell me not to let the bed bugs bite.
With a smile, I closed my eyes and prepared to fall asleep.
What must've been hours later, I opened my eyes with a grimace.
Despite my earlier exhaustion, I couldn't fall asleep. My mind was racing too fast, still in disbelief about everything that I'd experienced over the past couple of days. And I knew from experience that there was no point in me trying to sleep now, because I wouldn't be able to until my brain settled down, at least somewhat.
So, I sat up and looked around. Everybody was sleeping, with the Hermes kids in four of the bunks (Travis and Connor shared a bunk), while everyone else slept in either the two remaining bunks (as was the case with Ethan and Alabaster, along with Lou and an undetermined girl I couldn't remember the name of) or in one of the sleeping bags strewn out across the floor.
As quietly as I could, I slipped out of my sleeping bag and walked across the floor. I'd learned a few tricks from living with Gabe over the years, so I moved pretty damn quietly – quietly enough, even, that I was able to slip out the door with not even one person stirring.
Earlier that day, while on the tour with Chiron, I had noticed a tree at the back of the cabin which looked relatively close to the wall, so I went to go and check it out. True to my calculations, it was pretty darn close, with branches that made for easy climbing. Within a matter of minutes, I had climbed up the tree and onto the roof, which I quietly tip-toed on before finding a nice place to sit down near the front of the cabin.
Silently, I looked up at the stars and did my best to pick out the constellations, because if there was one thing my mom had made sure I knew, it was them. Without fail, I picked out Perseus – my namesake, and gods didn't the reason for that make sense now – and then Cassiopeia and Cepheus. Cygnus was up, too, along with Lyra and Aquila and Pegasus.
I was so lost in my stargazing, that I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard Luke say from behind me, with his now-familiar deep voice, "You do know that sneaking out of your cabin isn't allowed here, right?"
Turning around, I glared at him. "And you do know that it isn't nice to sneak up on people, right?" I accused.
He snorted, before he walked across the roof and sat down next to me, making sure to keep a good few inches between the two of us. I was grateful for it, even if it wasn't necessary, and even as a painstakingly familiar feeling of shame twisted up inside my stomach. "Just like it's not nice to give your counselor a heart attack by slipping out of the cabin?" he asked, before he paused. "I'm sorry, I really should be complimenting you. It's not often that somebody who isn't a child of Hermes manages to sneak out without me instantly knowing. And I'm sorry about earlier, too. I didn't want to make you uncomfortable."
Deciding to ignore the last part of what he said, I frowned. "How do you know that I'm not a child of Hermes?"
He hummed. "Well, for one, you don't have the sneakiness for it, no offense. I'm pretty sure you successfully sneaking out tonight was nothing but a fluke. And you don't really have the coloring of a child of Hermes, either. Most of the ones that I've met, save for Chris, have some sort of blonde or brown hair and blue eyes. You don't."
"And I'm important," I added when he stopped talking, thinking back on first that conversation I had overheard Chiron and Katie having back at Yancy and then what Mr. D had told me earlier. Then, realizing how that probably sounded, I blushed something awful." "I...I'm sorry. That was probably uncalled for. It's just...I don't understand. Why me? What's so important about me that Katie's mom sent her to find me and bring me to camp? I'm just a – "
"Hey," Luke said warningly. Startled, I looked up. His face was twisted up into an angry – but not at me, I didn't think – and determined expression, and his icy blue eyes were flashing dangerously. Or, at least, so I thought I could tell through the darkness of the night. "Don't you dare say that you're 'just a nobody.' No one is 'just a nobody,' regardless of who their parents are. Or how important they are. Although," he continued, his voice softening quite a bit here as he did so, "You are right about one thing. Children of Hermes...we aren't seen as particularly important. At least, not when compared to others."
"Like who?" I couldn't help but question.
He hesitated, as if he wanted to tell me something that he knew he probably shouldn't. "Like children of Demeter," he said finally, but I could tell it wasn't the answer he really wanted to tell me. He, too, seemed to know something I didn't about myself, like Chiron and maybe Katie. It was kind of annoying. "I know she probably doesn't seem like it, but Katie is...powerful. It comes with being a child of one of the original gods. In fact, I'm pretty sure she could probably whoop everybody's ass in this entire camp if she really wanted to, without even trying."
I snorted at the imagery that brought. "Even yours?"
"Even mine," he agreed with a chuckle. "To be honest, I rue the day that I get on her nerves. Travis did once, though. It wasn't pretty. He had flowers growing out of his ears for a week."
I started to actually laugh then, not even thinking once about how Luke had probably just given me a nudge towards figuring out who my dad was, or about how the first part of the speech he had told me was obviously rehearsed, or at least said many times over. It seemed like there were a lot of kids in Cabin Eleven who had thought they, too, were "just nobodies" at some point in time.
After a few minutes, Luke and I both finally calmed down to the point where he obviously felt good about us going back inside. "Better?" he asked me as he stood up, before he reached down and gently offered me his hand.
I stared at it for a moment, then accepted it without another flinch, allowing him to pull me to my feet.
"Better," I said honestly.
"That's good," he replied, his scar twitching as he smiled. "That's good. We should probably be heading back inside, anyways. Wouldn't want the harpies to eat us."
I cracked another grin, even though I knew he most likely wasn't joking. After all, since the Greek myths existed and the harpies were a part of those myths, why wouldn't they as well? Though the idea of them, admittedly, having something to do with a summer camp for demigods did seem a little ridiculous. Whatever, I was sure I would get used to it.
...So, yeah, that was how my first day at Camp Half-Blood went.
I only wish that I'd known just how briefly I was going to be able to enjoy it all.
Word Count: 3,098
Next Chapter Title: We Capture A Flag
