𐌙/𐌍 Ᏽ𐌵𐌀𐌋𐌄 & 𐌕𐋅𐌄 Ᏽ𐌐𐌄𐌀𐌕 𐌌𐌙𐌕𐋅𐌔 ¹

Chapter 6

6 | Dinner by moonlight that goes with the smoke

Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately. Wherever I went, campers pointed at me and murmured something about shadows.

She showed me a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging their own swords), the arts-and-crafts room (where satyrs were sandblasting a giant marble statue of a goat-man), and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava, and clashed together if you didn't get to the top fast enough.
Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins.

"I've got training to do," Annabeth said flatly. "Dinner's at seven-thirty. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall."

"Annabeth, I'm sorry about the toilets."

"Whatever."

"It wasn't my fault."

She looked at me with a bored face. I had already apologized five times at this point.

"You need to talk to the Oracle," Annabeth said.

"The Oracle?"

"Yeah, I'll ask Chiron."

I stared into the lake, wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for once.

I wasn't expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage girls sitting cross-legged at the base of the pier, about twenty feet below. They wore blue jeans and shim-mering green T-shirts, and their brown hair floated loose around their shoulders as minnows darted in and out. They smiled and waved as if I were a long-lost friend.

I didn't know what else to do. I waved back.

"Don't encourage them," Annabeth warned. "Naiads are terrible flirts."

"I think I want to go home now," I said, feeling a little weird about the Naiads.

Annabeth frowned. "I don't think you get it, (y/n). You are home. This is the only safe place on earth for kids like us."

I sighed. "I know. Half-gods and all."

Annabeth nodded. "One of your parents it's still alive."

"But if all kids here are half-gods–"

"Demigods," Annabeth said. "That's the official term. Or half-bloods."

"Then who's your parent?"

"Cabin 6."

"Athena. The goddess of wisdom." I looked at Annabeth straight in the eyes. "That's why Clarisse called you wise-girl, then."

Annabeth nodded.

"And what about mine?"

"Undetermined," Annabeth said. "Like I said before. No one knows. Maybe they'll send a sign. That's the only way to know for sure: your parent has to send you a sign claiming you as their son. Sometimes it happens."

"And if it doesn't?"

Annabeth ran her palm along the rail. "The gods are busy. They have a lot of kids and they don't always ... Well, sometimes they don't care about us, (y/n). They ignore us."

Some kids at Hermes's cabin seemed depressed and gloomy about something, I guessed it was because of that.

Some kids at Hive were the same. Some had their parents dead. Some wished they would be adopted soon. Some had been there their whole lives and still hadn't even got someone's interest.