"Just write a book" they said. "It'll be easy," they said, "Everyone gets published these days." Yeah, well, it's a little harder when your editors are gods that will turn you into a gecko and use you as a ping pong ball if you don't write them exac...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
PERCY WOKE UP TWO DAYS LATER. Once I knew he was okay, it was easier to settle into a new kind of normal. Admittedly one where I was being trained in weaponry and ancient myths by satyrs, nymphs, and a centaur, but that's what the "new" part was for.
In the morning, Annabeth would help us catch up on Ancient Greek. She explained that our attention and reading issues were because of our demigod heritage. We couldn't sit still because we were always prepared to be attacked. We struggled with English because our brains were hardwired for Ancient Greek, not any of the languages our modern one was based off of.
Personally I wasn't convinced – I mean, a lot of kids have ADHD and dyslexia without being magic – but I will admit that I found the Ancient Greek lessons easy. It was slightly easer than English, and definitely easier than the Latin we had been learning in school.
The rest of the day was entirely in Luke's hands, since he was the councilor for Cabin eleven. We were rotated through outdoor activities. They didn't say it out right, but I suspected our activities were so varied because everyone was trying to figure out what us unclaimed kids were good at. Maybe they could sniff out our heritage if we showed some amazing skill.
I found myself stumbling through most of our activities.
Foot racing was a pain in the butt. The wood-nymphs that were teaching us said not to feel bad, since they had been running away from lovesick gods for centuries, but that just made me sad for them instead of myself. I didn't even know what god being good at running in would be a sign of.
Hermes? Yeah, probably Hermes. I wouldn't know, because my cabin mates were too busy goofy off to actually show off any super speed they might have.
We got stuck with the Ares cabin for wrestling, which sucked. Aside from them already being mad about that "Big Three" thing they were muttering about that first dinner, Percy had doused one of them – Clarisse, the girl who had shouldered me – in toilet water. Which meant they went from hating us to extra hating us.
Eventually I ended up sitting off to the side because one of Clarisse's sisters almost ripped my arm off.
"You need to lower your center of gravity," the girl sitting next to me said.
I blinked at her. "Lower my what?"
"Center of gravity," she repeated. "Crouch more, basically. It makes you harder to move."
I gave the girl a disbelieving look. There wasn't anything inherently suspicious about her. She was twelve, like me, with brown skin and dark hair that she had braided back so it stayed out of her eyes without a ponytail. She wore a leather vest over her camp t-shirt, which had a fist with B.A.C.A across the knuckles printed on the back. It reminded me of Mrs. Dodds, except a lot less intimidating.
