The Unclaimed Daughter (PJO fan-fic)

Chapter II

The demigods decided that we should depart in the morning, I agreed though I had always felt somewhat stronger during the twilight hours. I volunteered for the first watch but even so, Annabeth asked to join me and I shrugged.

"However you wish to spend your time is up to you," I said.

Annabeth eyed me closely for the remark but did not speak. Instead, we took seats in the cold grass.

The air was chilled with a spring dew and the whole forest seemed to have plunged into an unnatural silence. I took a short breath but when did not see any movement in the trees, I pulled out my knife and unfinished deer and continued to carve at it.

"What are you doing?" Annabeth asked me.

Looking up, I realized that she could not see what I was working on because my back was to the fire's glow. My own eyesight had always remained true to me even in the dark. "I am whittling a whitetail buck," I answered as my attention returned to it.

"I don't know many demigods to pick up hobbies," she commented.

"Well, when you live on your own for three years you find that you have a lot of free time," I told her. "If I had not taught myself, the boredom might have been too great to bear."

She nodded slowly.

A silence descended on the two of us while I continued to whittle.

I finally broke it. "Why would you want to aid me?" I made eye contact with her. "You had no idea who I was except for what Grover told you."

She did not respond immediately but thought about her words with care. "There are quite a few reasons," she answered slowly. "To begin with, we're all technically related to each other in some way, and if we didn't, you would be killed," she began to count the reasons on her fingers. "And Grover said that you were almost as powerful as Percy whose the son of one of the Big Three so you will be a great help at the camp."

"Do all of you know who your parents are?" I inquired, blowing off a few leftover wood shavings from the deer's horn.

Annabeth nodded. "Yes, since last summer, Percy had all of the gods swear to claim all of their children by their thirteenth birthday. I'm a daughter of Athena."

"But I just turned thirteen," I commented. "If I am a demigod, why have I not been accepted yet?"

Annabeth shook her head. "I have no idea."

It was a few more hours in which before Annabeth finally told me that I could bed down and she would wake one of the "guys".

---

The morning dawned brilliantly when I opened my eyes. I noticed that the others were just beginning to arise as well.

"Good morning, Tristan, sleep well?" Grover asked me in a surprisingly chipper manner.

I nodded. "What has you in such an excellent mood?"

"I love this place," he answered. "When I was on my search for Pan, this was one of the first places I came to."

"Wait, were you the one to finally discover where he was hidden?" I inquired. "Everyone else perished during the quest."

"How do you know about Pan and the gods?" Percy asked me. "Normally, kids learn about the gods in school, sure, but you didn't need any convincing about the reality of those myths."

I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion and then things began to make a little sense. "Is that why so many mortals do not care about leaving their trash around? They do not know about the nymphs?"