𝓕𝓲𝓷𝓮 𝓛𝓲𝓷𝓮 // Clarisse La Rue

𝓒𝓱𝓪𝓹𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓣𝔀𝓮𝓵𝓿𝓮

 Mabel's burial shroud was beautiful. Dusty pink silk and an embroidered white dove. It was graceful and pure, just like she had been.

Florence didn't want to admit it but when she woke up in the morning she always glanced at Mabel's bed half expecting her to be asleep, safe and sound. But she never was and in a few days they took the bed away and now the cabin felt emptier than it ever had.

When the summer was over the bunks and trunks had been traded for bigger beds, desks, dressers, dressing tables, and furniture which tended to be a welcome change. But this one wasn't, without Mabel's corner full of stacks and stacks of magazines, nail polish of every shade of pink under the sun and a wide array of sweet perfumes, the cabin just felt hollow. Like she was truly gone.

Florence couldn't stand it, any of it. She could barely tolerate looking over her shoulder and not seeing the blonde. But what was truly unbearable was the pity. Other campers gazed upon the three girls eating in silence, clad in black: Florence, desperately trying to hold herself together, Drew, who's loud persona was now silent and Silena, who seemed perpetually tearful these days.

But worst of all was Clarisse La Rue. When Florence finally made it back to the arena on the morning following the funeral Clarisse looked surprised, but she didn't say anything. That was the worst of all. Clarisse said nothing as they sparred. No snarky comments, no teasing or taunting, no stupid nicknames, nothing. Gods, did Clarisse La Rue pity her? Florence couldn't think of anything worse.

But she would have to deal with Clarisse later, right now all that mattered was training. Eating? Sleeping? Breathing? None of that mattered until she found the killer of her sister and put an end to his miserable existence.

꒰🕊꒱

The thing about grief is that it never really goes away. Florence settled into her usual routine, she spent all of her free time with Silena and Drew, when she wasn't studying for the admissions exam at Yancy Academy. She kept herself busy, training, reading, talking to Chiron who was there whenever she needed a hug or a long discussion to distract her. But still, she thought of jokes only Mabel would find funny and mourned the fact she had no one to laugh at them any more.

But with time it got easier in a way. After coming back from a trip to visit her mom Clarisse went back to making her snarky comments during their morning spar, laughter became more and more frequent at the Aphrodite table and Florence began to feel more alive again. Things went back to normal, as normal as they could be without Mabel.

But then something shifted. One night Florence woke up from one of her usual nightmares to see that this time around people were screaming in real life. She fumbled for her dagger and left the cabin, still dressed in her white nightgown.

"You two stay here, I'll see what this is about." She told her sisters.

She could see them by the volleyball court, making their way downhill. Cyclops. She'd fought plenty before and had the scars to prove it. But how they had gotten inside camp, she didn't know.

She reached the cyclops before anyone else and opened up a wide smile trying to mask her disgust at the creatures.

"Gentlemen, I didn't know you were coming." She said, using her charmspeak. "How did you get in?"

"The border's open." One of them answered gruffly.

"I see..." she replied and saw out of the corner of her eye Clarisse and a few more demigods making their way there. "And to what do we owe the pleasure of your company?"

"We're here to make some demigod soup." Another answered sinisterly as Florence took a step closer to the leader Cyclops, her knife hidden.

"You wouldn't happen to know where we could find a tasty bunch, those children of Demeter barely need any seasoning." Another cyclops said.