𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐄𝐍‚ percy jackson

chapter one

12.14.2007

CHAPTER ONE: I Become Best Friends With My Enemy's Mom

If I learnt anything from today's long-ass car ride, it was these two things: 1. I love Sally Jackson 2. The apple must sometimes fall far from the tree, because her son still sucks.

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FREEDOM HAD MANY FACES. It was wicked and conniving ─ an ever-changing shapeshifter.

Diana King first encountered freedom six years ago, upon her arrival at Camp Half-Blood. It welcomed her with a cordial smile, a comforting hug. It was a warm and relieving sense of respite after months upon months of constant running. Diana was merely a child, and she put her faith foolishly in the comfort of freedom's embrace, as children so often do.

But freedom was a fickle thing. It constructed a careful illusion for the young girl ─ she believed she was released from her previous prison, free from monster attacks. And she was not wrong. But this illusion was soon sliced, and what Diana thought was freedom revealed itself to be another sort of imprisonment ─ the ever-present walls of Camp Half-Blood, a confinement she would scarcely leave for years to come.

Now, freedom took the form of a dream. All Diana wished for was a chance to venture beyond camp. In this fantasy, freedom leered at her tantalisingly, taunting and nasty.

It was not that the girl had never left Camp Half-Blood. She spent almost her entire year there at Chiron's insistence, but the centaur was not cruel. He allowed Diana days beyond the barriers, and on those rare and cherished instances, freedom took the form of her father's loving embrace.

But those days were few and far between. And though she was leaving camp, it was not in the way which she dreamed. No, Diana dreamt of heroism. Of receiving a quest and doing something great. But after six long years of isolation, trapped at camp, she had given up on ever being a hero.

That was until two days ago, when Thalia Grace invited her on a mission. "Westover Hall,"  She'd said, appearing in Diana's cabin through an Iris-message. "Two half-bloods. You in?"

Diana was, of course, very much in. She hadn't the slightest idea as to why Thalia insisted she tag along, but she didn't question the girl's reasoning.

She'd often envisioned her journey to freedom. Would she trek through the woods like an explorer, accompanied by a friend and a backpack of weaponry? Would she follow the trail of Hephaestus kid Isaac, who built himself a bike for his quest a few years ago? Perhaps she would saddle one of the pegasi in the stables ─ that would make for a rather majestic, heroic journey.

Her journey to freedom, however, came in the form of Sally Jackson's commodore.

When the group picked Diana up from a meeting point near camp, Thalia was riding shotgun, leaving Diana in a rather awkward predicament. She was friends with Thalia ─ the two had been close ever since Thalia's miraculous recovery, with the Golden Fleece's aid, many months ago ─ but she was hardly anything more than acquainted with Annabeth Chase. And Percy Jackson she despised. Chase and Jackson had a pre-existing bond anyways, leaving Diana to stare forlornly out the window at the rapidly darkening landscape.

It was there she sat, almost eight hours later, legs numb and neck cramped. The sky was now black as coal, dusted with a sprinkling of stars. In the distance, Diana could just see the outline of what she assumed to be Westover Hall.