Red Skies at Morning | Clarisse La Rue x OC | Percy Jackson AU

Getting Stabbed in the Back (and Other Fun Camp Activities)

After what happened within the creek, the days started going by in a blur. Percy was moved to the Poseidon Cabin, Cabin 3, and most campers started avoiding him like the plague. I wish I could say I hadn't done the same but the idea of him destroying Olympus somehow came up every time I got close to him and after a while, I'd find the nearest excuse to get away from him. Even Clarisse kept her distance despite still wanting to kill him because he broke her spear.

The spear had been a gift from her father, and I got the idea that she viewed it as the physical representation of his love for her. Ares wasn't exactly the most... fatherly type. Actually, I'd say he was a horrible father even by the standards that the other Olympians set by never being in their children's lives. Like all the gods, Ares barely interacted with his children, but every time he did, he was either berating them for not being good enough or calling them weak disgraces to his name. Or worse. I'd never seen it for myself but just the way Clarisse acted around him when we'd gone to Olympus for the winter solace told me all I needed to know. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to Clarisse when some newbie half her size single-handedly beat her and her siblings and broke what she probably considered to be her father's love, all in one fight. I was trying my best to comfort her though.

On top of trying to make sure Clarisse was doing alright and Wings wasn't being overtaken with counselor work, my nightmares had gotten more frequent. I also began remembering them after waking up, which was new. Some were about two men fighting on a beach, whom I recognized as Zeus and Poseidon's human forms from the winter solstice field trip. Others were about an eagle and a horse fighting. The weirdest part was that I'd also see Percy in the dreams sometimes, running towards them and trying to stop the fight. He never made it because the ground would open up and swallow him or the dream would suddenly end.

I didn't know exactly why Zeus and Poseidon and/or the eagle and horse were fighting but at least that part made sense and explained the storms, but the weirdest part I couldn't figure out was why Percy was running towards them and trying to break up the fight. There was no way that's actually what he had to do, right? Demigods had dreams that usually meant something when they were so vivid, but if that's what this dream had been then I didn't want to think about what it meant when Percy was swallowed by the ground.

I'd been trying to ignore the dreams, and specifically how they ended, for days now. I knew it wasn't the best idea to hide something that might be important but I just wanted to pretend like everything was back to normal, even if that meant ignoring Percy's apparent destiny and the nightmares of the fighting.

The morning I woke up to find huge, inky-black storm clouds over Long Island Sound was not helping my goal to remain oblivious. Normally I liked watching the storms that passed around the valley, but this one was an obvious sign that Zeus was growing more irritated. I tried to take my mind off my dreams and the storm clouds by going up Half-Blood Hill and relaxing. On cloudy days I liked to climb to the top of the second tallest tree on the hill and just sit and watch the clouds. I'd never climb the tallest one, though. It felt disrespectful.

The story behind the tallest tree is actually why we called this hill Half-Blood Hill, in honor of Thalia. Thalia was the Daughter of Zeus. The same daughter that Zeus had broken his oath sire. She was a selfless warrior who was barely older than me when she "died". She was friends with Wings and Annabeth before coming to camp and they'd lived together out in the real world, fighting monsters and such until they'd been found and brought to camp by a satyr. 

They had nearly made it all the way to camp while being chased by an army of hellhounds and all three Furies sent by Hades. Thalia had stayed back to fight them so that Wings, Annabeth, and their satyr could reach the camp safely. They'd made it into the camp but Thalia had been mortally wounded and was dying right on the camp border.