Miss Quinn

24 ~ Mail

After sword fighting lessons, Annabeth and Emma went down to the beach and watched the surf. The girls had fun running into the ocean and running back out, being chased by the waves. When the dinner horn sounded, they grabbed their shoes and raced to the pavilion. Emma and Annabeth parted ways to sit with their own brothers and sisters. It was weird, Emma thought, that she had siblings when she'd grown up an only child. Will lead the Apollo children to the bonfire and they each scraped a portion of their meal into the flames. On her way back to her table, Emma saw a black-haired boy with sea green eyes sitting alone at one of the tables.

"Will," she said, "Who's that?"

Will glanced over to the boy and sipped his drink. "That's Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon."

"Why's he sitting alone?" Emma asked.

"He has no brothers and sisters," Will said. Then noticing Emma's confused face, added, "the big three, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades swore an oath not to have children a couple decades ago. Zeus and Poseidon have both broken the oath. Percy for Poseidon, and Thalia for Zeus, though she never made it to camp."

"Annabeth said she was turned into a pine tree." Emma said.

"Yeah, Thalia's tree created a barrier around camp to keep monsters out." Will said.

"I see," Emma said, not knowing what else to say.

The Apollo kids ate the rest of their dinner with only light chatter going on. Emma barely spoke at all, she had not realized how dangerous the life of a demigod was. In her mind she went over everything she'd learned since coming to camp. It was hard not to just blurt out her secret, that she was half-witch. The other kids around her were half-mortal, none of them were like her. Emma figured that she could never go back to being innocent and unknowing about the gods, but of course that was impossible. Her life was more difficult than it had been before, she now had to keep her lives separate, her demigod friends could not know about her wizard friends and vice versa.

Before she knew what was happening, Emma found herself getting up from the table and following her siblings back to their cabin. Emma had completely zoned out for a long time. She hadn't noticed them leaving the table until she was the only one left.

Emma ran to catch up to her siblings and was only a few paces behind them when a voice called out behind her. Emma turned around and saw a man standing there with a stack of letters in his hands. Emma remembered Apollo told her Hermes would be delivering her letters and realized this must be him.

"Lord Hermes," she bowed her head slightly.

"Emma, here are your letters. When you want to send any to your friends, just Iris-message me." Hermes said, handing Emma the stack of letters.

Hermes nodded his head and vanished. Emma ran back to her cabin.

"Emma, what took so long?" Will asked.

"Mail," she said, holding up the letters. Emma sat on her bed and opened the first letter. It was from Venus, asking if Emma would be able to go to her house sometime during the summer. Emma brought a quill and ink out of her bag, made sure no one was watching, then responded to Venus. Emma wrote that she was visiting her father in the states and couldn't come over, though she could still write with her. Emma read through all her letters and responded to all of them. She had gotten letters from Hermione, Ron, Fred and George, and her mum. Harry had not written to her, but Emma reminded herself that Harry was living with cruel Muggles and that they probably had locked away all his magical things.

Emma hid all her letters under the mattress of her bed and stacked the ones she was sending on the floor underneath her bed.

After stowing her ink and quill in her bag, Emma closed her eyes and fell into a deep sleep.