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FOUR, new kid, bad news
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CAPTURE THE FLAG WAS only a few days away, and Aster could barely stand it. The games were some of her favorite times, and she was able to show the other campers that it was a very sorry mistake for them to assume she was just a tree-hugger.
Aster and Annabeth got the wonderful job of teaching Percy about the Greek gods and monsters. Granted, Annabeth did most of the teaching, while Aster either was experimenting with new bouquets or sending vines towards Percy to scare him (Annabeth frowned upon the latter, much to Aster's dismay). In her defense, Aster only did it when Percy got on her nerves. Which was a lot.
Though Aster rarely saw him outside of his Ancient Greek lessons, he wasn't really good at anything. She watched him fail at archery, forging, and on the rock wall. Aster felt for him—she didn't pity him, there's a difference—because she had been like that when she had first come to camp. Granted, she was seven at the time, and he was twelve, but same difference.
If she was being honest, she didn't know how to feel about Percy. Aster didn't trust many people, and the small number she did took years to gain it. She supposed she could blame her dad for that, or maybe it was just her urge to control everything around her. If she never let anyone in, she could run the show, Aster reasoned. Probably not the healthiest way to live, but it'd gotten her this far. Aster had such mixed feelings about Percy, and her dreams seemed to keep getting worse.
They were always on Half-Blood Hill, and Thalia returned every night to sit with her. But now her friend was joined with an ominous, booming voice that rattled the ground with every word. It was terrifying and ancient, but something told her it wasn't god. It was... older. Aster had no idea what it could be, though. Thalia kept telling her to find it before the summer solstice, or it would be too late. The girl insisted that Percy was still the path to her destiny, so she followed her advice, for now.
The day before capture the flag, Aster was plopped down outside the Demeter kids' small vegetable patch, situated behind their cabin. Katie had been complaining that there was a predator eating all of their squash, and they needed to catch it as soon as possible. Aster was ninety percent sure that this "predator" was just Travis Stoll trying to get Katie's attention once again, but she didn't dare say the boy's name in front of her sister.
Nevertheless, Aster was bored out of her mind playing guard dog. As she sharpened her knives on a stone, she looked beyond the vegetable patch, where Luke was teaching a sword-fighting class outside the arena a few yards away. She noticed that Percy was in the class, so she watched, trying to glean what the boy was capable of. Besides that, her and Steve had a bet going for his first swordsmanship class—they wanted to see how fast Luke could disarm Percy. Steve said in under ten seconds, but Aster gave him sixty.
Watching Luke lead the class through testing their reflexes made Aster oddly nostalgic. Because she and Annabeth were only seven when they arrived, Chiron declared that they were too young to start their physical training—which had especially angered Aster. There wasn't much on this earth that Aster hated more than being helpless, and this lack of training just aided in keeping her unprepared. Luke was naturally gifted with a sword, and it didn't take him much time to pick up the basics and more. Two months after they had arrived, Luke extended the offer of training to Aster, as long as it was kept quiet. Because they had been on the road together, Luke had a special understanding on how much Aster despised being helpless. With his help over the next few years, Aster made sure that she would never feel that way again.
