The Lost Quiver Ch 7

Chapter 7: Big Brother
When we got back onto our connecting train, Abrams and I had changed into some dry clothes and we took out seats in an empty car.

“Swift, how did you manage to pull that off,” Abrams asked me, but I didn’t want to answer. I hadn’t told anyone how I managed to get back to camp last summer after my trip to the Underworld. Blessings from a god are rare and I don’t like to show off like some of the other campers like that child of Ares. At the same time, Hermes had a lot of children and if they knew that I had his blessing, I would most likely wake up the next morning with all my stuff stolen and me on an air mattress in the middle of the lake.

“Oh, after you were eaten,”

“Eaten?” Megan interrupted.

“Ya, Abrams was eaten by a sea serpent. Anyway, after it ate you I..um…it went back for the lake, but I climbed up its tail and smashed it over the head with my hammer. That’s when it turned to dust,” I told him, with my head turned slightly. Megan knew I was lying because I could never make eye contact with someone I was lying to, it wasn’t something I liked to do. Megan knew I was lying, she always did but I could tell she was trying to figure out how I could beat a sea serpent by myself. Abrams on the other hand had eaten ever word up.

“Man that is so cool, I should try out a sledge hammer when we run into the next monster,” he said as he leaned back into his sit and tried to imagine how awesome it would be. “Awesome,” he said under his breath.

“You know he sees you as a big brother, right?” Megan asked me as Abrams was already lost in his own dream land of monster smashing.

“I don’t know about that, I mean since when has a child of Ares ever looked up to a child of Hermes?” I said as the Ares kids always felt that they were the best cabin ever, mostly because they were good fighters. They were a rough crowd and even if I woke up sometimes with all my money gone, I still enjoyed the company of my siblings (and I always stole it back before long).

“It’s true, if I were looking for affection from a brother or sister, it wouldn’t be from the Ares cabin. They play rough, but Abrams isn’t that big a guy and they pick on him for it. He feels he always has to prove how tough he is so that his other children will accept him. On the other hand you have been looking out for him and from what I heard; he even wants to copy your fighting style by using a hammer,” Megan smiled as she looked back at Abrams in the other seat who was still thinking about monster fights, but I couldn’t tell if he was awake or just talking in his sleep because his eyes were still closed.

“A big brother; I guess I could teach him a few things,” I murmured as I didn’t completely hate the idea. Then the train began to slow down and eventually stop all together. Normally I would think that we were just letting another train pass by us or something, but we were out in the middle of nowhere and normally you can hear a trains whistle from a mile away. Then a voice came over the intercom.

“Attention passengers, it appears that the tracks ahead of us have broken. A train will be arriving on the tracks parallel to us in an hour and we will switch trains. Please remain seated and thank you for riding with us,” and the intercom cut out.

Megan and I looked at each other and I reached for the pendant around my neck. I didn’t know a lot about train tracks, but I knew they weren’t that easy to break and if the engineer just learned about it, it couldn’t of been that long ago. It’s as if something were trying to slow us down, but all I could do at this point was wait for the next train. I just hope the train showed up before something more monstrous did.

Darkcloud1111 ~Fastest Hero Alive  18:40, March 6, 2011 (UTC)