Daughter of a Curse

I had the same strange dream. The night and day time forest, along with the three animals and the star. But this time, it was different. After the sequence finished, I didn’t wake up and the dream continued. The adult deer looked as if she was sad that the wolf was gone. While the fawn was just prancing around like it had no idea what just happened.

Then, in the middle of the night sky and the daytime, I lighting bolt shot down in front of the two animals. Both of them jumped back, and the mother deer quickly ran in front of the baby. Thunder shook the earth, but the mother stood her ground. Then, I massive bolt of lightning struck the baby, and it was gone.

I shot up from my sleeping position, panting heavily.Even though the dream wasn’t very intense, I seemed to feel the emotions that they were all feeling. Once I calmed myself down, I looked to try and remember where I fell asleep that night.

I looked around to see a very unfamiliar room. The walls weren’t painted, so all I saw was a dark, brown wood. The floor looked the same but it was polished. I looked down and realized I was in a small bed, it seemed to be twin sized. The sheets were a very dull white, and the blanket was as well. The bed frame looked to be a metal of some sort.

Off to the side, there was a table that had containers of liquids of many kinds. I felt as if I was in an old doctor’s office because on the table, there were some doctor instruments that I usually see when I get a checkup. I looked around again and aw that there were multiple beds, only a few had people in them.

I looked down on the floor and noticed the very same bag I brought on the camping trip. I stood up and walked to my bag. I looked inside to make sure everything I brought was there, including the lighter. Then, I remembered what happened. The multi-headed beast, people dying, the heads on fire, following the deer, then the border that stopped the monster.

It all came back at once and I felt like I was going to faint again. I heard the door creak open right before I was about to fall. Someone ran over and held me up before I collapsed.

“Whoa there, you shouldn’t be standing yet,” A gentile, female voice said. She walked be over to the bed I had awoken in and laid be down. I felt weak and tired, like I was sick. Suddenly, my mouth felt dry, so I opened my mouth and closed it a few times, drying to moisten it up. The girl looked at me and I got my first good look at her.

She seemed to be my age or a little older. She was wearing an orange t-shirt that said ‘Camp Half-Blood’ on it, and I assumed it was an old summer camp shirt she went to.

Her eyes were a beautiful blue that let you know that you were okay. She had a few freckles that started on one cheek and ran over her nose to get to the other. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, but had a few loose strands hanging in the front. Her hair was a light, dirty blonde. Her smile seemed to light up the entire room. She looked very familiar though, like I knew who for a while.

“I’ll be right back,” She said in that same, gentile voice. She quickly flowed out the door and came back a few minutes later with a drink in her hand and a small cube of food in her other. She placed the glass on the table next to me and put a napkin down to put the cube on top of. She picked up the glass and handed it to me. Inside, it looked as if to be apple juice, or maybe even apple cider since it had the same color as it. She handed the glass to me.

“Here, drink this, it will help you feel better,” she told me. I took a sip of it, not sure what I was drinking exactly. I was surprised at how good it tasted. I expected it to be an apple related drink but it wasn’t. It tasted like Mrs. Maitland’s homemade cheesecake. The thick crust, the creamy custard part. I chugged the entire glass, instantly wanting more. Mrs. Maitland’s cheesecake is by far my favorite food I have ever eaten. I then realized that cheesecake is a food, not a drink. Maybe it was liquefied. I told myself.

The girl then handed me the small cube of food as well. I immediately took a bite, hoping it would taste as luscious as the drink was, and it did. It tasted exactly like the drink did, like the cheesecake. But this time, it actually was a food. I ate the rest of it in a few seconds. I felt satisfied already, and I actually felt better was well. No longer did I feel weak and sickly, but I felt healthy. I moved my feet over to the side of the bed, about to get up.

“No, no, not yet sweetheart. You need to rest still,” she said. I couldn’t help but listen to her because she was just that person that you could trust. I nodded in agreement a moved my feet back to their original position. I pulled the blanket over my body and got comfortable.

“So, what’s you name?” the girl asked. I looked at her and she was putting away some medical devices.

“Ambrosia,” I replied in a quiet voice. Immediately, stopped what she was doing and just stood there, with a thermometer in her hand. She looked as if she was recalling memories, and then, her cheerful face changed into a sad and miserable expression. A few seconds later, she resumed cleaning and continued talking, her face back to the way it was.

“Ya know, I had a friend named Ambrosia too. She lived with me in this big orphanage and we were very close. She, she looked a lot like…” She stopped talking and turned her gaze toward me. She examined my face and she whispered something that sounded like ‘it couldn’t be’.

“Um, Ambrosia, do you mind answering a few questions for me? Their just to make sure you don’t have any, uh, memory loss, yeah” she asked hopefully.

“Sure,” I replied. She smiled that warm, familiar smile again and couldn’t help but smile back.

“Okay, where did you live before you came here?” She asked. I was confused by her question. I didn’t know why she said ‘before you came here’. I still live there now but I’m just, here, wherever this place is.

“In an orphanage,” I replied softly. Honestly, I was embarrassed that I didn’t live with a happy family in a nice house. I just lived with a bunch of unrelated people in a house where the only place I could have to my self was my small room.

When I said ‘orphanage’, her eyes widened. I couldn’t help but be creeped out because They were so wide, I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head.

“Umm, who, uh, ran the orphanage?” She asked, a little uneasy.

I replied with an honest answer ‘Mrs. Maitland’. She looked shocked again.

“Okay, one more question. Do you know of a girl named Delia?” The last question brought back too many memories and I began to cry. The thought of my best friend randomly going away made me sad. All these years, I held this in but when a stranger asked me if a knew of her, I randomly began to cry.

I felt her sit down next to me and rub my back. Just her being in my presents made me feel better. Soon, all my tears had come out and I looked at her. Just then, I made the connection. The same dirty blonde hair, the bright blue eyes, that wonderful smile, and the fact that she loves to heal people. I had just reunited with my old, best friend.

“Delia?” I repeated her name, confirming that it was really her. She nodded her head and a few tears escaped from her eyes. We both hugged each other for what felt like hours. I couldn’t believe I found my friend again.

Eventually, we both calmed down and kept asking each other questions like ‘how have you been’, ‘what have you been doing’, and things like that.

“Okay, so, what is this place?” I asked curiously. Delia smiled again, like it was a question she was waiting for me to ask.

“I can’t tell you that, come on, I know someone who can,” She said. I was confused again. I didn’t understand why she couldn’t answer that question. It’s not like I fell into a portal into a different dimension and the world was filled with pink gumdrops that walked around. I got up anyways and walked to the door. But before we left the room, I remembered Calissa. I stopped in my tracks.

“What about my friend?” I asked, wondering if she’s even alive. But her cheerful face reassured me that she was alright.

“Who, you mean the blonde? She’s outside, I’ll bring you to her later, but first, we need to do something.” She said excitedly. She led me down the stairs, which brought us to the first floor. It looked almost like the living room to a house. She then led me out the door that brought us outside. We ended up on a large deck.

It was made of wood and wasn’t painted very well. There was a table with two lawn chairs at the end of it. In one of the lawn chairs, there was a man reading a magazine.

The man didn’t seem to notice either of us at all, or we was just ignoring us. He slowly lowered his magazine and looked at us both. His eyes glanced at Delia first, then they went to me. He seemed to be examining me, sizing me up, labeling me. I also started at him, trying to get a good look.

He had very dark hair, I would call it black, that was messy and all over the place. His eyes were very strange color, they were purple. Not a bluish-purple or a grey that looks slightly purple, but a bright, purple. He was wearing a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt. It had many yellows and oranges and greens in it.

He raised his magazine up to his eyes again and continued reading it. He slowly turned the page and grabbed a can that was next to his hand. The bright red color of the can immediately gave away what he was drinking. He raised the Coca-Cola to his lips and took a sip.

“Don’t mind him,” Delia said to me. “Mr. D isn’t a real big people person,” she whispered the last part so only my ears could hear. I looked over to the man who she claimed was Mr. D and he was scrunching his eyebrows together. I believed he was trying to figure out what Delia said about him.

We both looked to the stairs that led you either onto or off of the deck. I man was walking up onto the porch. He had brown hair and dark brown eyes. He was very tall, very, very tall and had a very kind face. As walked up onto the deck, I got a better look at him. But that better look, revealed a shocking sight.

The top half of him was a man, one hundred percent man. But the bottom half of him seemed to be a horse. I was shocked and confused so I took a few steps back. Since I couldn’t see behind me, I stumbled on an empty lawn chair and fell onto the floor.

Delia walked up to me and helped me stand up. She sat me own in the same chair that I tripped over. Once I calmed myself down, the half-man, half-horse person walked up to me and introduced himself to me.

“I am Chiron, and as you can see, I am a centaur,” he told me. I couldn’t grasp the fact that I was in the presence of a mythological creature. I tried to think of a reasonable explanation and I came up wit the conclusion that I was still dreaming.

I never left for the camping trip and any minute now, I’ll wake up to the honking of Brian’s car horn. I am just having a very strange, and very realistic, dream. But, something told me that this was no dream and that everything happening was real.

“Wh-where am I?” was the only thing I managed to say. Chiron smiled at my question and held out his hand, gesturing for me to come.

“Come on dear, lets walk. I’ll explain all of this to you,” he said in a kind voice, unlike other centaurs I have read about. I wasn’t sure, so I looked at Delia, wondering if it was okay if I went or not. She nodded and smiled, signaling that it was okay. I walked away with the horseman named Chiron.

We walked off of the porch and I felt the warm sun on my face. It immediately enlightened me and I forgot what was happening. After a few seconds of soaking in the sunlight, I snapped back to reality and realized there was a centaur in front of me. My eyes widened and I just stared at him.

“Are you having a hard time processing the fact that I’m a centaur?” He asked me. I could’ve sworn he was reading my mind because I was just about to say that.

“Yes, I am,” I said in a hushed voice. He smiled and started walking again.

“Well, incase you haven’t made the connection yet, I am Chiron, trainer of Demigods,” he explained. I immediately stopped walking because what he said just confuse me even more. Chiron noticed so he turned around and looked at me.

“You’re who now?” I asked in a loud voice. I couldn’t believewhat I just heard. He is the Chiron from ancient stories. I learned about him in my Greek class. But, those were ancient stories, they were just myths as well. He shouldn’t even be alive!

“I know you might be confused or scared. Don’t be, everyone here has felt the same way you are right now it will all make sense, lets just keep walking,” he told me in a reassuring voice. He put his hand on my back and guided me to continue walking.

“You are in a place called Camp Half-Blood. It is protected by a border that only certain things can pass through, like yourself,” he told me. When he told me about the border, I remembered how the monster couldn’t pass through but me and Calissa could. Why could I pass through? I asked myself. I wondered if it had anything to do with the name of the camp. Many question ran through my mind, but I asked only one of them.

“Why is it called Camp Half-Blood?” I asked him. He smiled in response.

“Very good question my dear,” he told me. “You see, this camp is filled with lots of, uh, special, people. Most of them have a special parent as well. You are one of those special kids too,” He explained to me. I was unsure what he meant when he said, special.

“And my special, you mean…” I said, waiting for him to finish my sentence.

“I’ll just go right out and say it to you, this camp is filled with demigods, and you are one of them,” He explained. I gasped because I didn’t know what else to do. I realized that this was a joke, no way could I be a demigod, or this guy be a mythological centaur, or a giant monster attack us.

“What kind of person would do this? Play a joke on someone, have a fake monster attack them and lead them to believe people actually died? Have their best friend supposedly reunite with them? That’s probably not even Delia! And have someone dress up in a centaur costume and claim that they train demigods!” Once I finished, I was panting heavily because I was so angry. I couldn’t believe that a sick, sick person would do that to me! What would they get from this, a traumatized person? I didn’t know anyone that hated me that much.

I them recalled a few of my memories. The very realistic acid melting peoples flesh and the blood pouring from the monster’s mouth. I remembered how much the girl looked like Delia, and how much she acted like her too. Then I looked at the man, is so very realistic horse body. This isn’t a dream, and this isn’t a joke either. This is real. I told myself.

I then sat down on the ground and took in all of this information. I then wondered how Calissa was doing. I thought of what she did when she found out about all of this. Did she scream? Did she try to escape? It was probably something absurd and over reacted.

“How did Calissa take it?” I guess he already knew who she was, or he guessed because He immediately answered.

“She actually took it very well. She said ‘Everything makes sense now’.” I just sat there in awe. I did not expect her to act that way. After a few minutes of sitting down, Chiron told me he would get Delia to show me around. We walked back to the big house and found Delia.

“Do you mind showing Ambrosia around?” he asked my friend. She nodded and walked ahead.

She grabbed my arm and said, “Come on Ambrosia! This’ll be fun! I love showing people around!” He exclaimed.

We walked for a little bit before we got to a large field, filled with red dots. I realized that it was the same field I saw we were running to safety. I saw a few people in it gathering some of the bright red fruit. I also noticed something strange, there was a man in the middle, playing some kind of flute or something, and a long line of bugs came flying out. As the man walked out, I realized he had very hairy legs. I examined him closer and saw two horns coming out of his head. His legs weren’t just hairy, they were animal legs!

“This is the Strawberry Field, it’s were we grow amazing strawberries ands sell them to make money,” she told me. She must’ve followed my gaze to the man with hairy legs. Because she explained him to me. She told me that he was a Satyr. They are half goat, half human, kinda like a centaur. They go out and find demigods and bring them back to the camp to protect them. They worship the god Dionysus, which was the man she called Mr. D earlier.

“Wait, so I just saw a god?!” I asked surprised. She nodded her head and kept on walking to the next destination. We walked past the forge and the armory where she said the name described itself. Then, we arrived at something that looked like a horse stable. There were multiple people walking out on horses, but I couldn’t help from noticing that a few had wings.

“These are the Pegasus Stables. It’s were we keep our horses and our Pegasi!” She said excitedly. She must really like the Pegasi. We continued walking until we got to a large forest. There was a small river that divided it in half.

“These are the North Woods,” she explained. “It’s where we play capture the flag! Oh, I think we’re going to play it this Friday!” She said excitedly. Capture the flag must be very fun around here. “Also, Zeus’s Fist and the Labyrinth are in there but you don’t need to know about them.

We walked past a large body of water that I believed was the ocean. She told me that it was the Long Island Sound. We walked and walked until we reached an area that had multiple strange buildings. There were two buildings slightly bigger than the rest, then next to them there were ten smaller buildings, five on each side. Each building was unique in it’s own way. A few very special ones caught my eye.

One was blue and looked to be covered in coral. I walked up to it and peeked inside, to see what the décor was like. For some reason, I thought that it would be empty, but I was wrong. I looked inside and saw four people in it.

One of them was a boy that looked to be my age. He had jet back hair and blue eyes. Another was a girl that had blonde hair and grey eyes. She was sitting next to the boy with black hair. There was a satyr in there as well, with dark skin and short black hair. He had small horns coming out of his head. The last person was very strange, had only one eye in the middle where two eyes should’ve been. He was a Cyclops. I must’ve gasped loudly because they all turned to look at me. Before I could do anything else, Delia pulled me away by the arm.

“Uh, let’s look at the other cabins,” she told me. She explained that these cabins are all for the gods at Mount Olympus, all twelve of them. The two biggest ones are for the rulers of Mount Olympus, Zeus and Hera. The rest were for the others. The one I was looking at was for Poseidon. Only two of the people in there were actually the sons for Poseidon, the rest were just visiting.

All the cabins were very unique, but some were better looking than others. My favorite was probably a silver one. It was for Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. Since she was also goddess of the moon, it was silver, like the moon. Delia told me it seemed to glow at nighttime. I looked inside and it was completely empty

“Artemis is a virgin goddess, the only people that are ever in there, is when the Hunter’s come,” she told me. She said she would explain what the Hunter’s were later.

We kept on walking, and on our way, she showed me a few more places like the mess hall, where we eat. The lava climbing wall, where lava climbs out of the top and you try to not, well, die. There was a amphitheater and an arts and crafts building. There was also a canoe lake and a volleyball court.

We finally made it back to the big house. Delia told me that it was called the Big House. Meetings take place in there, and Chiron lives there too. There’s and infirmary and something special in the attic that I’ll eventually find out about. I hated how she kept on leaving things for me to find out later, honestly, I wanted to know everything now. The sky was growing dark and Delia told me it was time to eat. I didn’t know what I thought about this place because I was still processing everything.

I kind of like it here. I thought to myself.