Little Tricks (PJO x HP) DISCONTINUED

CHAPTER EIGHT:WE CAPTURE A FLAG

The next few days I settled into a routine that felt almost normal, if you don't count the fact that I wasn't getting lessons from satyrs, nymphs, and a centaur.

Each morning Ara I took Ancient Greek from Annabeth, and we talked about the gods and goddesses in the present tense, which was kind of weird. I discovered Annabeth was right about my dyslexia: Ancient Greek wasn't that hard for me to read. At least, no harder than English. After a couple of mornings, I could stumble through a few lines of Homer without too much headache. Ara didn't struggle with reading ancient Greek at all though, "After nine years of reading French, Occitan, Arpitan, and Latin, linguistics becomes more of a hobby then a task. Plus, Papa used to curse in Greek."

Several jaws dropped, "How do you know these languages?" Weasley gaped, Ara looked surprised, "Weasley, you do realize that most pureblood and half-blood family's are influential in other countries right? I had to learn these languages to make sure I didn't offend anyone. And I learned a small bit of Greek to know what Papa was saying. That was also how I learned too curse."

Regulus smiled fondly, as James laughed "I remember when you said 'fuck' back to Reggie in Greek. I was so proud."

The rest of the day, We'd rotate through outdoor activities, looking for something we were good at. Chiron tried to teach me archery, but we found out pretty quick I wasn't any good with a bow and arrow. He didn't complain, even when he had to pull a stray arrow out of his tail.

Foot racing? No good either. The wood-nymph instructors left me in the dust. They told me not to worry about it. They'd had centuries of practice running away from lovesick gods. But still, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a tree. Ara kept trying to beat them but that didn't work out, in the end Ara was on the floor begging to go to sleep.

And wrestling? Forget it. Every time I got on the mat, Clarisse would pulverize me.
"Keep trying punk, you just might get better," she'd mumble in my ear.
The only thing I really excelled at was canoeing, and that wasn't the kind of heroic skill people expected to see from the kid who had beaten the Minotaur. Ara couldn't find anything she was good at except sorcery. She ended up practicing magic with the Hecate kids. At one point Ara brought back a dead butterfly for two minutes. I later learned this was because Circe was also the goddess of necromancy. After Ara brought the butterfly to Chiron, he made her swear an oath to always put the dead back were they belong. Ara agreed and ended up spending time near the woods trying to raise things bigger then butterflies.

Nico smiled proudly at his sister, although he was a little jealous. Raising the dead was his thing. "What's the longest you've kept something alive?" He asked. Ara thought for a moment, "Six minutes. It was a lion. You remember? It attacked Luke. Either way you're more powerful in this area." Nico beamed, receiving praise from his sister happened often, but either way, to Nico, it was worth more then gold.

I knew the senior campers and counselors were watching me, trying to decide who my dad was, but they weren't having an easy time of it. I wasn't as strong as the Ares kids, or as good at archery as the Apollo kids. I didn't have Hephaestus's skill with metalwork or—gods forbid— Dionysus's way with vine plants. Luke told me I might be a child of Hermes, a kind of jack-of-all-trades, master of none.

Ara, Draco and Hermes cringed, that would be awkward.

But I got the feeling he was just trying to make me feel better. He really didn't know what to make of me either. Despite all that, I liked camp. I got used to the morning fog over the beach, the smell of hot strawberry fields in the afternoon, even the weird noises of monsters in the woods at night. I would eat dinner with cabin eleven, scrape part of my meal into the fire, and try to feel some connection to my real dad.