𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐎𝐖 ༄ ᴘercy ᴊᴀᴄᴋꜱᴏɴ

daisies laugh at me

The part of me that found this hilarious won.

I turned away from the boys and stuffed my hand into my rucksack, bringing out a change of clothes. The necklace fell out too.

I stared at it a moment, the myriad of emotions all coming to the surface to haunt me.

It was a silver chain with a gold flat pendant that had an intricate design. A small asphodel flower, branded into the gold stamp.

My mama used to wear it everyday, and I couldn't remember a time she didn't reach up to play with it, looping it through her fingers. I was young and would look up at her with big eyes, awed by the swiftness of her fingers, and how effortlessly she spun the pendant round.

When my mother died, my mama gave it to me.

The death of my mother hit us hard. We were both there that day. We both saw her run into the burning building, in a attempt to be the hero and save the survivors she knew were still inside. No one made it back out. They didn't even find her body.

I was five.

Sometimes, I still fall asleep hearing my mama's yells of grief alongside the wail of the sirens.

Less than a year later, she drove herself mad with heartbreak, and soon there were visitors from a local asylum knocking on our door.

A month after that, I was put in my Uncle's care and he passed me from school to school, as I got expelled from each one. Then we got to Westover and things seemed to be looking up.

I stuffed the necklace deep inside my bag.

Speaking of my uncle, I really needed to contact him soon and tell him I was safe.

Breakfast was okay. Not anything special, really. At the end of breakfast, Chiron called me and Kai over and handed me us a timetable.

I think that was what snapped my realisation into place. This was really, truly happening. And I could be a part of it. This could be my new life now, if I let it. I'd belong here with people that were like me, with dyslexia and ADHD and shitty backstories.

The timetable itself was not like anything I had seen before and didn't have a single academic subject on it.

Rather, it (for today) looked like this:

-BREAKFAST AND CABIN INSPECTION

-ANCIENT GREEK

-POLISHING ARMOUR

-SWORD SKILLS

-GREEK MYTHOLOGY

-LUNCH

-VOLLEYBALL

-FREE TIME

-DINNER

-CAPTURE THE FLAG

It started off well enough. I was paired with a boy named Malcolm from the Athena cabin.

He taught me the names of all the Greek letters, and explained how all demigods were naturally hardwired to understand Ancient Greek. He told me more about how it was linked to dyslexia and why I may have struggled in school.

I wasn't sure how to feel about it. On one hand, it felt satisfying to know that there wasn't actually anything wrong with me.

There was a reason I was naturally behind everyone else and had to work twice as hard to catch up in school. It also made me kinda bitter. So far, I hadn't seen a single thing demigods had that actually helped them. It was just another thing, that all demigods were given that made their life harder.