Cassandra's Curse

{14} The collective term for 'gods' is an Argument.

So what is up my people! This is one of the last chapters before I stopped writing this story, so updates will be less frequent. And if they stop at some out of the way state, don't judge me. I don't live in America and I'm going off a map of the United States, so just bear with me. 

READ ON!!!

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Chapter 14: The collective term for ‘gods’ is an Argument

Mine and Leo’s friendship stood at a mutual understanding for two weeks after I got to camp.

Gossip spread quickly about my match with Percy. Every time I walked past the arena or the chariot ring, I heard the whispers of the other campers like the eerie blowing of wind.  I felt stares on me everywhere I went, and I was getting sick of it.

The unanswered questions just kept whizzing around my head. It frustrated me that all I could do was stay at camp; doing nothing in particular, all the while the dream kept resurfacing and the gods (or one in particular) were plotting against me.

I felt physically ill at the thought of staying at camp for more than a few weeks.

On the Monday two weeks after I arrived at camp, I was coming back from Zianna’s river and something struck me like a bolt of lightning.

It would be my birthday tomorrow.

And I was dreading it.

Not because I would be eighteen –no I’d always looked forward to that part- it had nothing to do with being older, closer to death, more at risk for going grey; no it was because all my birthday’s had been glum affairs. I’d never had an actual party, (where people always spike the punch bowl), and the only presents I’d ever gotten was a lumpy woolen sweater that was a hammy-down from a recently adopted orphan.

So I’d learnt not to expect anything extraordinary.

I had woken up from the usual dream, thrown on some loose shorts and a black tank top, and was walking towards the breakfast pavilion when I was . . . struck, I guess you could say, by an inexplicably painful migraine. I had no idea what brought it on, but afterwards my vision blanked out.

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I saw a collection of people. They were glowing, or had some sort of light coming off their skin. They were all completely different, but wearing the same old fashioned clothes.

And they were arguing incessantly.

I somehow knew these people to be the Olympians.

I suddenly felt a wave of sympathy for the ancient Greeks if these were the bickering siblings that they worshiped.

I saw Ares point at someone holding a trident (Poseidon), and Poseidon wink at him. This made Ares very angry, and he had to be shouted at by who I assumed to be Zeus before he calmed down and slumped back down on his ‘throne’.

Again, they were arguing about something.

“Just because your eye-sight can’t see past the mirror, Aphrodite, doesn’t mean everyone else is like that.” Someone began.

My mom put her hands on her hips and glared daggers at that person. “This isn’t about me Hermes; this is about my daughter. And she has as much of Ares in her as she has some of me.” Aphrodite looked completely different to how I imagined her, “I will not let any of you harm her. She is under the protection of Ares, Aphrodite, Artemis, Apollo, Poseidon and Hestia. No one will harm her under our gaze. Remember that.”