House of Hades

XIV-- Hazel

 Don't own PJO or HOO, or any Percy Jackson characters. Rick Riordan does.

This chapter is dedicated to NOTKKNNOWN for adding my story to her reading list. Thank you, NOTKKNNOWN! 

XIV-- Hazel

Hazel couldn't believe what she and Rachel had just witnessed.

Octavian dating Drew? No way!

She couldn't get the image of the augur and the daughter of Aphrodite kissing out of her head. And that disturbed her. It was just so unimaginable for Octavian to get a girlfriend, out of all the people who could get a girlfriend. And he chose a daughter of Aphrodite. Even if Octavian was capable of 'dating,' Hazel would have expected him to get a daughter of Mercury/Hermes, or some other freaky stuffed-animal murderer like him. But a self-absorbed, snobby daughter of Aphrodite was definitely not like Octavian at all... Well, maybe the self-absorbed, snobby part...

A shiver ran down her spine. Woah, this was all getting too weird...

She had arrived at the Mess Hall, where all the other campers had already gone to eat dinner. After quickly bidding Hazel, "See you later," Rachel ran off to join Chiron at a separate table.

Torches blazed around the marble columns of the pavilion. A central fire burned in a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. There were around twenty long tables, covered in white cloth trimmed in purple.

Hazel quickly joined the line of campers trooping towards their tables. She squeezed in between two sons of Apollo, who were vividly arguing over who had won the archery contest that they had competed in earlier that day. A certain son of Hephaestus beckoned her over to him.

Leo's face was sweaty, and both his face and clothes had spots of grease on them. "Hazel!" he hissed. "Hey, Hazel! Over here!"

The daughter of Pluto scurried over to the boy.

"Where were you?" he asked her. "I was looking for you everywhere."

Hazel paused for a while to consider what to answer. Stalking people? Eavsdropping on their conversations?

None of those seemed like the proper thing to say, so Hazel just tried to explain the crazy thing that had just happened.

"Um... Well... I... Rachel... We... Strawberry fields... Octavian... Drew... Disgusting!" she replied, rushing an incoherent string of words.

Leo raised his eyebrow. "Repeat that again, please?"

Hazel sighed in frustration. Why couldn't she just spit it out? Octavian dating Drew wasn't that bad... Okay, it was.

She began to explain again, when she was distracted by the absence of a particular son of Zeus.

"Okay. Sorry. Well, Rachel was giving me a tour of the camp, and we were by the pegasus stables. She told me to check out the strawberry fields, so we went there and then-- Hey, hang on. Where's Jason?"

Leo pointed to a table at the front of the room, where the son of Zeus sat alone, staring at his glass pensively.

"So why doesn't he just sit at another table?" Hazel asked. She didn't understand why Jason would want to eat dinner alone.

Leo shook his head, the brown curls on his head bouncing. "He can't. At camp, we sit according to our cabins."

"Oh," Hazel said, nodding slowly. "Then where do I sit?"