Camp Half-Blood

We Become Art Critics

We left Asclepius' office after he'd told us that the elements we were searching for were the symbols of the gods and then asked us if he could perform an open heart surgery on one of us with his eyes closed after telling us that we had about 2 weeks before Bram died and that we needed to bring the elements to him.

"What the heck is this supposed to mean?" John asked Brock pointing to a brown and black thing and some kind of bird drawn on the paper as we reached the bottom floor again.

Brock was eating an apple he'd gotten from an apple tree nymph.  "Well, Let's see..." *Bite of apple.*  He grabbed the paper and squinted at the crude crayon drawings.  His rectangular pupils got wide all of a sudden and he gasped.  "No way!  You are looking for a brown and black smudge and a bird!"  He shrugged and said, "Not sure what any of that means."  *Bite of apple.*  "Well good luck." *Bite of apple.*  "I'm headed back to camp." *Bite of apple.*  He jumped into the bus and it shimmered and changed into a taxi.  He turned a full 540 degrees before driving out through the hole in the wall and shouted, "SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

"Well that was helpful..." I muttered.

"Give me that." Kaire ordered taking the sheet of paper away from me. "It looks like.... an eagle."

"Then what's this blob here?" Joanna asked her pointing at it.

"A feather?" Dale asked studying the page.

"This guy sucks at drawing." Skye said seriously, getting a little too close to Kaire's face.

I burst out laughing. I couldn't help it.

"Let's not talk so loud about his .... drawings... if that's what they are. He may overhear us." John said timidly.

"Dude. He's on the 600th floor. We're on the BOTTOM floor. He can't hear us." Skye pointed out as Kaire shoved him away from her.

"So what... we go look for an eagle feather? That's easy enough." Dale said shrugging.

"Don't you think it has to be a special eagle feather?" Joanna asked.

"Don't make it HARDER!" Skye whined.

Kaire gave him a disgusted look and then looked over at me.

"I think she's right." She said.

"So where do we look?" John asked taking the sheet of paper.

"Why don't we first try to decipher what all these are and write them down THEN try to figure out where we're supposed to find them." I asked.

"Good point." Kaire agreed sticking an ear bud in her ear and blasting some kind of music I could only just make out.

"How are you not deaf?" Joanna asked her shocked.

"Trust me. It has to be a ton louder to make me go deaf." She answered laughing.

"Hey, Mister. Could we borrow a pen and a sheet of paper?" Dale asked the man at the counter.

He grunted and handed her what she wanted, never taking his eyes off the book he was reading.

"Ok, so the first one is an eagle feather.... that's Zeus' symbol I think." I said writing down our first element.

"Maybe they're in the order of the gods and goddesses? " John offered.

"Hera would be next." I said and looked at the paper.

"Oh look. It's a blue and green blob and a bird." Skye said sarcastically. "I know just what this is."

"Shut up, Skye." Dale snapped. "We can assume it's a peacock feather since a peacock is her animal... Or it could be an Ostrich. It's neck is sort of long." 

"Let's go with Peacock." Joanna said laughing. 

"What is this?" Skye asked looking at a very uneven drawing of a triangle and something that looked like a deformed whale.

"A whale fin?" Dale asked and Joanna cringed.

"No... maybe a shark tooth... the deformed whale looks mean so maybe it's a deformed shark." I suggested.

"I'm with Rex. The drawing looks like a tooth. And whales don't have fins like this." John said pointing at part of the deformed whale.

"3 down 11 to go." Kaire said and took the paper. "That would be Poseidon's. So now we look for Demeter's."

"It's a line." Dale said.

"A WHAT?" I asked.

"It's a line. Only it's a line with these other little lines sticking out of it."

"Oh look it's yellow. That's real helpful." Skye said sounding annoyed.

Kaire slapped him in the back of the head... not softly I might add, and looked over Dale's shoulder.

"Maybe it has to do with a plant?" John asked.

"It IS Demeter we're talking about here. So maybe it does." Joanna agreed.

"A head of wheat maybe?" I asked.

"That would make sense."  Dale said. "So then what would this be?" 

It looked like a brown line with little green lines sticking out of it and little green circles on it as well.

"This guy draws like a 4 year old." Skye complained.

"Would you shut up and stop complaining. Use your brain. It would be more helpful." Dale growled. It was obvious he was starting to get on her nerves.

We continued on with the translation of the crayon drawings and finally we had a small list of items:

1. An eagle feather

2. A peacock feather

3. A shark tooth

4. A head of wheat

5. An olive branch

6. A laurel wreath

7. A deer pelt (This one took nearly an hour to figure out.)

8. A hammer

9. A bronze spear tip

10. A scallop shell

11. A ram's horn

12. A grape vine

13. a key

14. A kettle

"So where are we supossed to GET these things?" I wondered aloud.

I looked down at the sheet of paper and watched in awe as it started to change. Written in some kind of code there were 14 places all with the name of a god or goddess next to it. I was going to kill Asclepius.