𝓕𝓲𝓷𝓮 𝓛𝓲𝓷𝓮 // Clarisse La Rue

𝓒𝓱𝓪𝓹𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓔𝓵𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓷

It got colder, Florence got angrier. She took all of her exams. She woke up earlier than usual. She studied more, learning more about every myth and every monster.

She trained harder than ever before. Annabeth used to be her usual sparring partner but with her gone that left her to face Clarisse every morning. And she did, it was hard and challenging, Clarisse had started to try harder, but after a while Flo started to win quite regularly. Anything to keep her from thinking about the fact that Luke was out there, plotting against them.

The first time she truly allowed herself a break since the end of summer was at thanksgiving. She slept in. Stretched and did some morning yoga with her sisters. It was fun, but she felt an itch for the arena. She found Clarisse there, training with a dummy. They didn't say anything. Florence only threw a few knives at a line of dummies. Knife to the ribs. To the chest. To the heart. To the heart. To the heart.

"Not that bad, for a daughter of Aphrodite." Clarisse commented.

"Not that stupid, for a daughter of Ares." Florence replied.

"Ugh, I hate you." Clarisse put forth, slicing through her dummy with her new electric spear. Clarisse called it "Maimer" and Florence very publicly nicknamed it "Lamer.", not one of her cleverest insults but it got under Clarisse's skin.

"The feeling's mutual, sweetheart." Florence acknowledged.

꒰🕊꒱

"I come bearing gifts!" Carrie announces when she walks into cabin 10.

She barely has any time to set the four pink boxes on the floor before Mabel, Silena and Florence launch themselves at her. They wrap her in a hug as Drew watches.

"Oh I've missed you so much, meus amores!" Carrie says. "Saudade doesn't even begin to cover how I felt."

"We missed you too." Mabel says.

"Summer wasn't the same without you!" Florence adds.

"I'm so glad you're here." Silena is smiling from ear to ear.

"I'm so glad to be here." Carrie says before turning to Drew. "Hello, you're Drew right?"

Drew nods. "I'm Carrie. Your big sister. I brought you a little something, I didn't know what you liked but I tried."

Carrie picks up a big pink box and hands it to Drew. When Drew opens she sees there are colorful pens, a set of makeup brushes, a pink journal, a pink headband (perfect for when she was playing volleyball), some tinted lip balm, tinted sunscreen and mascara.

"Thanks." Drew's face is red. "You didn't have to."

"Of course I did, if I'm not going to spoil my little sisters who will?" Carrie says, handing Mabel, Silena and Florence each a pink box.

Florence opened hers to see two brand new romance books, a lot of makeup and some new clothes. They see Mabel pulling out a small prada handbag out of her box.

"How did you get this?"

"I know a guy." Carrie says. "Well actually a girl, she was head counselor when I first got to camp."

"I mean, Carrie, this is amazing." Mabel says. "But it's too expensive, I can't-"

"Yeah, yeah, don't worry about it, loser." Carrie says fondly. "Now, I bought something for everyone to share." She said, pulling out a stack of vogue magazines.

The girls started distributing the magazines between them and started flipping through.

"This one is coming out tomorrow, it has an article by me on it." She says, handing it to Florence as the other girls. "It talks about your dad. Page 10."
"Oh." Florence says, turning to page ten. She swallowed thickly as she saw it.