Snow White- Percy Jackson¹

Chapter Four

A Friendly (Deadly) Game Of Capture The Flag

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For the next few days, Percy seemed to be adjusting a bit to his new surroundings. He now walked around as if everything was normal to him, which made Snow relieved. Though when it came to activities and lessons, they were another story.

Percy got his daily Greek lessons from Annabeth, which was another level of experience for him. They had to talk about the gods and goddesses in the present tense, and whenever Percy did otherwise, Annabeth would smack him with her textbook (let it be known that the textbook was thick and heavy). But aside from that, he found reading ancient Greek to be easy for him, much easier than English. 

Majority of the days, he'd rotate between different activities to see which one he was good at. Chiron stepped in to teach him archery–which let it be known–he was not good at. Chiron had to pull the arrow out from his tail. 

When he heard laughing, he turned to see Snow giggling to herself, seeming to have watched the action unfold. Percy glared at her, humiliated she had watched him shoot an arrow into their activities director in the butt. The other activities weren't any better. Foot racing: the wood nymphs were very quick to give up on him. Wrestling: that was a definite no. Clarisse was extremely close to killing him. And after she whispered a threat to his ear after she brutally defeated him, he accepted that wrestling definitely wasn't for him. 

The only thing Percy excelled at was canoeing, but he wasn't ecstatic about that one, finding it useless for any battle and not what people expected from the kid who single-handedly defeated the Minotaur.

Percy was aware of the seniors and counselors watching him. They were all trying to guess who his dad was, but that was proving difficult when he seemed to suck at basically everything. He didn't have special qualities like the other kids that would clue in to his immortal parentage. Luke told him once that he may be a child of Hermes. A jack-of-all-trades sort of thing. But Percy knew he was saying to make him feel better.

But despite all the minor downsides, Percy really found himself enjoying camp. He was getting used to the morning fog, the sweet smell of the strawberries, even the weird noises monsters made at night that once creeped him out was growing on him. Whenever he scraped his meals into the fire, he tried to feel some connection to his father. Nothing really came out of that, only the memory of his smile that brought a warm feeling to him. But that made him think of his mom, and how much he missed her smile.

Which really got him thinking. If the gods and all the magic and mythical stuff was real, then there must be some way to bring her back. And he was starting to understand Luke's bitterness towards the gods, something he shared with him during his first dinner. Okay, so maybe the gods had more important things to do, but they couldn't give signs like a call, or thunder, or something? Dionysus can make Diet Coke appear out of thin air, but his dad couldn't even make a phone appear?

Thursday afternoon, he had his first sword fighting lesson with Luke as the teacher. Everyone from cabin eleven gathered around to be taught by him.

They started with the basic stabbing and slashing, using straw stuffed dummies wearing Greek armor. The lesson, to Percy, was okay. He knew the basics. The problem came from finding the right sword. None of them seemed to fit right in his hand, every little thing made it hard to handle. As a consequence, his movements were awkward and uncomfortable. They later moved to pairs, Luke decided to be Percy's partner.

The way the campers wished him luck was as if Percy was walking right into his doom. When he said that Luke might go easy on him, they snorted, looking at him as if to say "Oh, you poor, poor fool."