After getting treated like a king from the Hermes cabin. I went to the restrooms. As I walked towards the restroom I found Annabeth scorning the kid who yelled for me to "stop stalling" earlier. I couldn't tell what she was saying but judging by the tone she was disappointed and angry with him. I was annoyed earlier but in hindsight, he didn't do anything that big to deserve this level of scorning. I tried to avoid getting spotted by Annabeth because I thought that would make her even harder on him.
I almost got to the restroom before being spotted.
"Y/N!" She called out
"How are you?" I asked trying to create a nice conversation.
"Good, just keeping people in line." She said
"I thought that was the head counselor's job."
"It is but she's out examining cabin cleanliness right now so I'm in charge."
"Makes sense," I responded
"What are you doing out here?" She questioned
"Just wandering." A lie but I enjoyed talking to her.
"Can I join you on that little wander then? She asked
"Sure why not?" I responded.
Halfway through the little walk, I saw, out of my peripheral vision, her staring at me. Almost as if she was trying to figure out what made my brain work.
"Take a picture it might last longer," I said slightly smiling.
"Just trying to figure out who your parent is." She replied smoothly
"What's your guess?" I ask
"Apollo, but if it isn't that then I have no idea... and that annoys me. I have had to tour countless students around and have had at least two guesses on each of them. You are the only one I've had only one guess on."
"I'll take that as a compliment," I said while slightly laughing.
We continued in a comfortable silence until we reached the dock that overlooked the water.
"I love this place." She said while going to sit down on the dock letting her feet dangle off the edge.
"It's so..."
"Calming," I said finishing her sentence
She only nodded.
She patted the spot right next to her. After a moment of hesitation I sat down.
We waded through a moment of comfortable silence, listening to the birds chirping and the sound of the wind.
"Can you tell me about yourself?" Annabeth asked how she said it was more like a demand than a question.
"Oh uhh... I was born into a single-father family as an only child and attended school. Wasn't anything unusual until about a few days ago?"
"What happened?" She said now slightly intrigued
"Well, I woke up a few days ago from a bizarre dream about a girl and a forest... the dream is pretty hazy now but I woke up and went down to eat breakfast. While I was eating I looked out of my window and saw a falcon staring at me through a window and it almost did a little dance an—"
Annabeth almost knocked me over when she stood up.
"I have to go to Chiron. I'm sorry." She said as she was running away.
"What just happened?" I asked myself. I turned my attention back to the lake. Annabeth was right. It was absolutely beautiful. The blue lake stretched from left to right, reflecting the blue sky and the swaying trees.
After a few minutes of sitting there, I decided to head back to the cabin. On my way back, I saw Annabeth walking away from the big house fingering her necklace with an unreadable expression. I wanted to go talk to her but maybe she's dealing with something or maybe she doesn't want to talk to me. I decided to just keep walking and enter the Hermes cabin.
As soon as I entered everyone went up to me and asked where I had been for the past hour and a half. I didn't even know that much time had passed. I told them I was on a walk. I guess they took that as an adequate excuse so they left me alone.
"We got dinner in 15 minutes." Luke said as he walked outside to do "cabin leader stuff". I stood leaning next to the window thinking about today's events. I moved to sit down as my arms felt like noodles after the archery we were doing earlier. I sat down and looked at my necklace. The engraving was still the same but the bird was different. It was a wooden carving of a great horned owl. What is this necklace? I then turned my attention back to the window. As I was looking out of the window I saw the moon poke out from the horizon. I didn't feel fatigued anymore it was as if someone just took all of it and threw it into a trash can.
Before I knew it, Luke was back and gathered everyone.
"Dinner time. Everyone line up." Luke yelled above all of the chatter
We all did so and we were now on our way to the "dining pavilion". We were walking for about two more minutes before we saw it. It had multiple columns holding the roof up. By roof, I mean that it was an outline of one. There was no roof that could block out things like, oh I don't know, rain?
Percy was right behind me and I asked, "Wouldn't we need a roof to protect us from the rain."
"I remember somebody told me that it doesn't rain in the camp. It was either Chiron, Mr.D, or Annabeth. He responded.
We got to the pavilion and we sat down with our cabins. As I was thinking about me and Percy's conversation I asked,
"Who is Mr.D?"
Luke looked at me confused.
"You don't know who he is?"
"No?" I asked a question wondering if I should know who he is.
"His full name is Dionysus and he is basically the overseer of the camp."
"What? Why is the god of wine here and not doing god-"
"It's a punishment from Zeus." Luke finished.
"Here he is," Luke said before leaning out of the way so I could see him.
He looked like a rundown dad. He had black curly hair that went everywhere and an untrimmed beard that looked (just like his hair) like it went everywhere. One thing that signaled he was Dionysus was that wherever he walked the aroma of grapes followed.
"Hello everyone and thank you for another day of punishment." He said while drinking a coca-cola and then continued. "The only noteworthy thing to say to you guys is that capture the flag is tomorrow." That made the entire dining pavilion erupt into cheers. Over the cheers, I heard Mr.D say, "Oh not the cheers. That's the worst." As he rubbed his temples.
I heard a heavy clop against the ground which caught all of our attention. I looked over and saw Chiron looking over the crowd.
"Calm yourselves. We have offerings to give and dinners to eat." Chiron said before snapping his fingers and food magically appears in front of everyone besides me and Percy at the table.
"How do you guys get that?" Percy asked
"Just think about it and it comes here," Luke stated like it was obvious.
Percy closed his eyes and got... blue cookies?
I guess it works. I closed my eyes and wished for deer. I looked around and saw many questionable looks at me and Percy.
"What it's one of my favorite meals. My dad would go out hunting and come back with this." I replied to the looks honestly
"Mine is a long story," Percy said before grabbing his food but right before he could eat it Luke slapped it out of his hands.
"We have to do offerings first," Luke stated
I didn't know what that meant but I just followed everyone's actions. Luke told us that we would scrape some of our food into the fire and make a wish.
I went right behind Luke and scraped about a quarter of my meal into the fire wishing silently, "Whoever my parent is can you claim me, please?" I asked and as I did the fire burned green.
I went back to the bench and started digging into our meal. Nothing eventful happened during dinner except sporadic small talk. Eventually, we finished dinner and went to the campfire.
We all sat around the campfire as I and Percy wondered what was about to happen. All of a sudden multiple instruments started to play as people started singing. I and Percy didn't know any of the lyrics so we just hummed along to the melody.
One of the weirdest things during the singing was that whenever the campers were belting out notes the campfire would reach about 15 feet high and would be a golden-ish color but the less the campers would sing the lower the flame was. I honestly thought that was pretty cool.
After the campfire sing-along, everyone went to sleep. I got back to my bed and took off my necklace examining it. The bird was still the same but the engraving was different.
"See you, tomorrow." I was uneasy about that message. Was it just a meaning of good night or was it something more?
Other than that a day at this place couldn't have been better. I thought about everything that happened today and slowly drifted off to a dreamless sleep.
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Criticism is welcome