Hopeful - Luke Castellan [1]

9 ~ I Am Offered A Quest That Makes Me Question The Common Sense Of The Gods

Triton gasped in shock as he felt something shift. He followed the power pull and went to the moment he felt it. He watched as his little half-sister fought a hellhound and killed it. He then realized what caused the power surge, it was the bracelet that appeared on his sister's wrist. He recognized it immediately. Pallas's whip. The one he had enchanted so no one but the embodiment of the sea could use it. 

He watched as the whip turned from dark bronze to the golden of celestial bronze. Then Adelaide turned around and looked at the water and he gasped as he got a glimpse at her face. She had so many similarities to his daughter. "Father, Mother," Triton called out. 

Poseidon and Amphitrite immediately rushed to their son as Amphitrite spoke "what is it Triton?" 

Triton wordlessly pointed to his sister and Amphitrite gasped as she saw what Triton was seeing. All of the gods of the sea present had the feeling that Adelaide would mean something important.

************

The next morning, Chiron moved me to cabin three. I didn't have to share with anybody. I had plenty of room for all my stuff: the Minotaur's horn, one set of spare clothes, and a toiletry bag. I got to sit at my dinner table, pick all my activities, call "lights out" whenever I felt like it, and not listen to anybody else. It was great but at the same time, it wasn't. 

Just when I'd started to feel accepted, to feel I had a home in cabin eleven and I might be a normal kid—or as normal as you can be when you're a half-blood—I'd been separated as if I had some rare disease. Nobody mentioned the hellhound, at least to my face. 

The attack had scared everybody. It sent multiple messages: one, that I was the daughter of the Sea God, two that I had claimed a weapon that was last used thousands of years ago by my niece, and three, monsters would stop at nothing to kill me. They could even invade a camp that had always been
considered safe.

The only other camper who didn't stay away from me in fear was Luke. We still practiced sword fighting but he pushed me harder than ever and wasn't afraid to bruise me up in the process. "You're going to need all the training you can get," he promised, as we were working with swords and flaming torches and I believed him. "Now let's try that viper-beheading strike again. Fifty more repetitions."

Annabeth still taught me Greek in the mornings, but she seemed distracted. Every time I said something, she scowled at me, as if I'd just poked her between the eyes. After lessons, she would walk away muttering to herself: "Quest ... Poseidon? ... Dirty rotten ... Got to make a plan ..." 

I thought about hitting her every time she mentioned my father. I know that I should have been resentful of him but I knew that there was a reason that he had stayed away. Plus even though he had stayed away, he still protected me by giving me the protection necklace. I grabbed said necklace and thought about meeting my father. I also wasn't a fan of Annabeth's mother period considering her hatred of Poseidon's children and the death of Pallas, so I didn't particularly want to make friends with her daughter. 

************

I knew somebody at camp resented me, because one night I came into my cabin and found a mortal newspaper dropped inside the doorway, a copy of the New York Daily News, opened to the Metro page. The article took me almost an hour to read, because the angrier I got, the more the words floated around on the page.

GIRL AND MOTHER STILL MISSING AFTER FREAK CAR ACCIDENT
BY EILEEN SMYTHE

Sally Jackson and daughter Adelaide are still missing one week after their mysterious disappearance. The family's badly burned '78 Camaro was discovered last Saturday on a north Long Island road with the roof ripped off and the front axle broken. The car had flipped and skidded for several hundred feet before exploding.