Golden Green

Ch. 7

Percy Jackson and the Olympians belong to Rick Riordan. All credit to him.

The next several days were perfect and routine. New foods were tasted, one morning there were doughnuts again, I was polishing my fighting skills up and even got down some strategies and swordplay moves I wanted to use during the capture the flag. I had a few lessons with Percy like javelin throwing which I scared him at when I blew a hole in an armored dummy at the furthest distance on the field and arena time where I had never seen him in the arena fighting well.

The counselors and Katie were watching Percy with interest for a while trying to figure out who his father could be but they had no luck. Katie was stumped and ranted to me about how Percy wasn't as strong as the Ares kids, good in archery like the Apollo kids, couldn't metal work like a Hephestus kid, or had the ability to work with vine plants like Dionysus.

I decided to talk to Percy about it one day while I had some free time in the common square while sitting down after he showed me how to play basketball through trial by fire on the court.

"I don't get it man. I'm not fast like a Hermes kid should be and the wood nymph instructor dusted me in a foot race, but then again Luke says I might be because Hermes kids are sometimes a master of all trades and masters of none. Every time I was up to wrestle Clarisse flattened me. I couldn't guess who my father could be if I was Stephen Hawking," Percy groaned, throwing the basketball for Fidi to chase down.

"I don't have any idea who that is but I don't think any god took basketball as one of their areas of control. We can try wrestling again to see if Clarisse was just playing dirty," I offered, to try to pin down who his father was while I sprouted some branches for my tree to catch some of the nice sun that's shining.

"If you're stronger than Clarisse I don't think it'll matter if she was playing dirty or not when you snap me like a twig." Percy sighed.

"I take offense to that. My spear is basically a twig of a tree and hasn't snapped. And why can't it be Poseidon if you're so good at canoeing?" I wondered, spinning my tree.

"Stop using names so loosely," Annabeth called, walking up to us from across the court. "And he and his two brothers, who you know for being king and running the underworld, swore off having kids after World War II," Annabeth said, scooping up the basketball Fidi was playing with and began dribbling it.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Luke asked if I could find Percy for him while he's setting up the Arena because he was sword training." Annabeth turned around and immediately shot the basketball, making the shot with the flick of the metal net and turned back with a smirk. "It's all about the trajectory."

"I don't even know what that word means," I sneered, squinting at her. "I'm going. See you later, Percy. Good luck."

While at the arts and crafts station I was trying leather work for a collar for Fidi. After half a hour of cutting, forgetting to measure, nailing, sewing, glueing, and starting over anyway I had made one I was proud of. I had to ask a Hephestus kid walking by how I would make the collar magically expand and shrink when Fidi grew and shrank from dog to snake and he showed me just a way to fold it and incorporate a stretchy piece of bungee cord in the middle.

I had cut out a bronze metal tag and tapped in the words "Beware of Serpent" on one end and Fidi's name on the other. The brown and bronze collar looked natural on Fidi as a dog and humorous on him as a giant snake with the colors matching him nicely.

Friday afternoon Percy, Grover, and I were sitting over by the lake while a smoldering Percy recovered from a rough time at the climbing walls while Fidi swam. I was snacking on celery and Grover was chewing on the plastic bag it came in. Percy eventually asked how his talk went with Mr. D.