My mind clouded over as we walked along the road in silence. There was forest to our left, and farm land to our right, and the sun was only just dipping below the horizon. My body ached, I knew I was still shaking. I forced myself to stop thinking. I focused on my footsteps; right, left, right, left.

It wasn't until the first star came out that Johnny spoke.

"Do you want to stop for the night?"

I looked at him. He wasn't smiling, but he didn't look upset either. It was more like his shock hadn't worn off yet. The Furies's image was still burning in my mind.

"Where?"

"There's a treehouse a little way in the forest here. We can camp there tonight."

I didn't worry about how he knew this, I nodded and followed him back into the woods. The further in we got, the darker and colder it became, until I was shivering and holding Johnny's hand so I wouldn't lose him.

"We're lost." I told him. "A little way in, you said. Johnny, it's not here."

"I know," he sounded nervous. "I thought it was...ah, never mind. I found it."

Johnny raised my hand and pressed it against the rung of a metal ladder. I didn't like the idea of going first when I couldn't even see my own hands, but I climbed up nonetheless.

It wasn't very high up off the ground. I felt wood and pulled myself into a seated position with my back against a cool wooden wall.

"Johnny, come up now."

I could hear a 'clang' every time his hoof (sheeeeeeep) hit a rung, and soon Johnny was sitting beside me with his furry legs pressed against mine.

"Is there a door to this tree house?" I asked. Johnny grabbed my hand again and pulled me into a standing position. I held my other arm out in case there was anything to hit in the dark. We skirted along the wooden floor until Johnny pulled me inward. In a matter of seconds, a light was on and I could see again.

The treehouse was also very big, for a treehouse. There were three sleeping bags rolled into a corner, a bag of pop cans that weren't open, and a small supply of sour keys. The walls were worn and a faded red, but Johnny seemed right at home as he picked up a sleeping bag and threw it at me.

"About back there," he said as he started to unroll his own. "Good job. I mean, those Furies scarred me for life, but we probably would've died if you hadn't lied about being a Weasley."

I laid my blue sleeping bag on the floor and sat down on it. Johnny mirrored me, and handed me a can of Coke and one of the bags of sour keys.

"I don't like Furies." I told Johnny as I opened my drink. I hadn't realized how hungry I was until now, and I drank three cans of soda and ate two dozen sour keys before we spoke again.

"We'll get to camp in the morning, alright? I'll stay up and watch for monsters, you get a good-night sleep, okay?"

"Wake me up if you get tired." I told him as I got into my sleeping bag. "Then you can sleep too. You'll need to be well rested, because tomorrow I'm going to be asking you a lot of questions."

"You'll get your answers." Johnny smiled and reached for the light switch.

"Leave it on, would you?" I asked.

He nodded. "Of course. Goodnight."

I put my head on my arm and closed my eyes. It wasn't long before I fell into a dreamless sleep.

~

Johnny shook me awake after what felt like hours. The light in the treehouse had been turned off, but the sun had only just risen so it made no difference.

"You didn't wake me up," I crossed my arms over my chest as I sat up. "Johnny, you need sleep too."

"I'll sleep once we get to camp. It's not far. Come on."

I was still upset with him, but I nodded and yawned.

"Question time?" I asked as we slid down the ladder.

"Fire away."

"Tell me about camp."

Johnny slung his bag over his shoulder more securely as he lead the way back out of the forest. We'd agreed to take some sour keys and cans of soda with us, and they were securely under on of Johnny's science textbooks. There were birds chirping, and now that the sun was up we could actually see where the exit was.

"It's not called Camp Demigod, I can tell you that. It's called Camp Half-Blood, and it's hidden beside Long Island Sound by a magical boarder that stops monsters from coming in. Mortals can't see it. Demigods find refuge there. It's a win-win for everybody. The person in charge is Chiron, remember him from the myths? No? Then I can't wait until you meet him. I won't tell you more because there's an orientation video that explains it in more detail. Any other questions?"

I thought for a moment. Camp Half-Blood really did sound like a safe haven; boarders to block out monsters, lots of demigods to protect me from any more psycho ghosts.

But I remembered something I'd heard the day before, so once we got back on the road I turned to Johnny.

"What's claiming?"

"Where did you hear that?"

"Tell me."

"Okay," he put his hands up in surrender, and flashed me an easy smile. "Claiming is when your godly parent lets everyone know that you're their kid."

I imagined Greek gods from pictures in our english textbooks running around camp and pointing at new demigods - claiming them by saying "Mine".

"Alright." I said. "So how come I only found out now that I'm a demigod?"

"You're only thirteen," Johnny said as he turned and started walking across farm land. "We try to let you live a normal life until you start getting attacked by monsters. Then we drop the bomb and tell you what you are, and we bring you to camp and train you to fight them off."

"And it always works like that? How do you know who's a demigod?"

"It doesn't always work like that. Sometimes bad things happen - demigods or their satyrs don't make it across camp boarders. Stop looking so scared, we're almost there. And just like monsters, you guys smell."

I shoved him over, and he stumbled over his hooves and bleated.

"Hey! I didn't mean you smell bad! It's just a...a scent of power." I liked that, 'a scent of power'.

"Okay, I'm sorry. But is that what you were going on about back at school. When you said it smelled like nachos?"

Johnny nodded, then looked at me with a rather large grin on his face.

"We're here."

~

"Do you see that huge pine tree in the distance? That's Thalia's Pine. When Thalia died originally, Zeus turned her into a pine tree to save her life. That's when the magical boundary formed and stopped monsters from terrorizing our camp. A long time ago, when two heroes named Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase retrieved the Golden Fleece, Thalia turned back into a human, but her tree remains. The magical boundary is still there, and so is the Golden Fleece. See that dragon around the tree? That's Peleus, and he'll make sure our camp is safe."

I tried to soak that information in as we passed around the dragon. It amused me that a childhood fantasy I had was real; dragons. I wondered why I wasn't freaking out anymore. Maybe I had accepted that these things were real. Maybe I was still half-asleep.

It was much too early for anyone to be awake, much less kids my age (I may or may not have complained a couple of times, to which Johnny pointed out that the longer we stayed in one place the more of a chance we have coming across another monster), so it didn't surprise me when I found that we were the only people moving in sight.

"To the Big House," Johnny pointed, taking my attention to a four-story sky-blue farm house with white trim. There was a wrap-around porch that I imagined had a great view of the Long Island Sound, the camp, and the vast expanse of forest. On the porch were lawn chairs and tables, some furnished with pillows or blankets, others not. Hanging from the weather vane was a large bronze eagle with wind chimes that turned into dryads as they spun.

"What happens in here?" I asked curiously as we stepped up onto the porch.

"Loads of things. This is where Chiron lives and runs camp. It's also where wounded demigods come to recover. The attic is the old home of the Oracle of Delphi - who is now Rachel E. Dare and lives away from camp. We hold camp counsellor meetings here, too, around the ping-pong table in the Rec room. The basement is a sort of storage space - we've got stockpiled ambrosia and strawberry preserves down there." Johnny explained hurriedly, then knocked on the door to the 'Big House'.

"Strawberry preserves? Ambrosia?"

"I love how strawberry preserves came before ambrosia," Johnny gave me a toothy grin. "But yeah, our cover for camp and how we get money to cover expenses comes from our strawberry fields, but you'll see those when you get the tour. We call ourselves Delphi Strawberry Farms. Ambrosia's the food of the gods, it helps heal demigods, but if you guys consume too much..." he made a popping sound with his mouth and wiggled his hands around in an explosiony sort of way.

"Quite right," I jumped as the door swung open, and a man in a wheelchair came out. He was in a blue nightgown, and he looked as though we'd waken him from a restful slumber. His face was thin, his dark eyes old, and his dark brown hair was wild and untamed. But his face was the friendliest thing I'd ever seen - a welcoming smile forever plastered on, eyebrows raised in just the right way, and an old but soft look to his weathered light skin.

"So I would advise against eating any unless you are injured. Please, come in, I'm sure you have questions."

~

Johnny introduced us. We sat in a cozy little living room where comfy leather couches made a V facing the stone fireplace. Above the mantel, a stuffed leopard head was snoring contently.

"Is that a leopard? It's not alive, is it?"

"It is," Chiron nodded, rolling to a stop beside one of the couches and motioning me to sit. "His name is Seymour, he was a gift from the god Dionysus, who used to run the camp with me until his punishment was over. Now he is back on Olympus with the other gods. If we talk quietly, we can avoid waking him up."

I stared at Johnny. He smiled, and took a seat on the couch. I sat back beside him, so I was closer to Chiron and he was closer to the grapevines growing on the wall.

I tried to place Chiron from my mythology textbook. All I could come up with was the guy who ran the ferry to the Underworld, and Chrion neither looked like he could run the ferry in his wheelchair, nor like he was associated with death.

"Perhaps I should show her now, in the confine of the Big House?" Chiron asked Johnny, who wrapped an arm around me and grinned.

"Oh, definitely. She'll love it."

"Love what?"

Chiron put his hands firmly against his armrests and pushed upwards. I was about to jump up to catch the cripple, but then his blanket flew away and his legs swung open. He walked forward until there was a white stallion where his legs should've been. I opened my mouth.

"You're a centaur."

"Good job," Johnny agreed. "Was it the lower half of a white stallion that gave it away?"

I shoved him over, but didn't let my eyes waver away from the centaur. I remembered Chiron from the myths now; he trained loads of demigods who went on to do famous things.

"Yes, yes, this response is natural. I wanted to do it inside so you wouldn't embarrass yourself in front of the other campers." Chiron explained.

Johnny snickered, "So you embarrassed yourself in front of us."

I shoved him over a second time, but he kept laughing. Chiron sent him a weary look, then smiled down at me again.

"Perhaps Johnny can take you to watch the orientation film? I would explain this myself, but, ah, I am too tired."

I wondered what kind of orientation thing they'd have here, for a place like this. I nodded. "Okay."

"The orientation film? You got it." Johnny was standing now.

"It's in my office, Johnny. Bring Y/N there, she can watch the film alone, and you come back and we'll talk. I want to know all about your adventure with the Vandari."

"How did you--"

"You're very famous, I saw a cellphone video of it on the TV." Chiron said, shaking his head. "Not your fault, but I'll have to deal with it tomorrow. Go, Johnny."

Johnny nodded, and helped me into a standing position. "Yeah, alright, come on Y/N, follow me."

_________
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