Trip to Olympus: Chapter 7

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Chapter 7: I Eat Dinner with a Horse
At the dining pavilion, there were tons of campers in orange T-shirts that said Camp Half-Blood on them. There were also dryads, naiads, and satyrs (which I had called fauns because that’s what I remembered from The Chronicles of Narnia, but Austin corrected me). Let me just say that there were way too many there for that pavilion. The picnic tables were almost completely filled with the exception of a few that were empty or had a couple of people at them.

“Why are some of them empty?” I asked Austin. He didn’t have time to answer my question because Chiron walked over towards us.

“Austin, you may go sit with the Athena cabin now. Kelsey, you can sit me at the head table just for today,” Chiron said. Austin walked over to one of the picnic tables where a whole bunch of blonde-haired, gray-eyed, athletic-looking kids were sitting. I could see what Austin meant about being the only one without blonde hair in the Athena cabin. Chiron led me over to the head table where the satyrs, naiads, dryads were sitting. I sat down and Chiron told me to say what I wanted to drink. I, of course, said lemonade since I don’t like any kind of pop. Then the wood nymphs brought us our food, which I was glad because it was pizza. After everyone got their food, each table stood up and one by one they started scraping a little bit of their food into a fire.

“Kelsey, go give your offering to the gods. This is something we do at every meal,” Chiron told me. So, I did what he said. I got up and walked over to the fire. I heard the camper in front of me say, “For Dionysus” which I figured must be his dad, so I followed his example in my own way. I scraped a small piece of my pizza into the fire thinking, For whoever my parent is. Then I went back to my seat and ate my dinner. For the first time that day, I didn’t have any questions running through my mind. Actually, I was hardly thinking about anything. I looked at all of the other tables. Everyone else seemed to be having so much fun, laughing and joking around with their half brothers and sisters or just discussing things. I felt so left out of all of the fun because the head table wasn’t exactly the party table at the moment.

    Dinner was finally over and the plates were cleared. I had just realized that dinner was the first actually normal thing that had happened to me all day, which didn’t include the fact that I sat at a table with nymphs and offered a little bit of my pizza to the gods. Sadly, the normal thing didn’t last very long. The strange thing that happened was Chiron rising out of his wheelchair, which I didn’t think was possible, and his whole lower half being white stallion. In other words, he was a centaur, but after everything else that had happened to me it didn’t seem that strange at all. I had been at camp for only a few hours and I was already accepting the fact that this was my new reality.

“We have a new camper today,” Chiron announced, “Her name is Kelsey Fisher. For now, she is undetermined, but I have a feeling that she will be determined sometime tonight.” Everyone was looking at me. Some of them were smiling at me; some were studying me trying to figure out in which cabin I would fit best, others were looking right above my head like they were waiting for a sign. Come to think of it, they probably were waiting for a sign. Great, I thought, now everybody’s going to be staring at me the rest of the night until something happens.

“You are now all dismissed until the campfire,” Chiron said. Everyone got up and went in different directions, spreading themselves throughout the valley. Soon there were only a few people left. I stayed sitting at the head table staring out at the ocean. It was a really pretty blue-green, and it looked calm. I probably could’ve sat there all night and stared at it even when it was dark, but I was interrupted by a voice from behind me.

“You can go down there you know. You’re allowed, it’s part of the camp,” the voice said. I turned around to see Rose.

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I know I just liked looking at it from up here,” I told her. It was the first time she had said anything to me since I had seen her this morning.

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“You know, I know who Austin’s parent is, who Celestina’s parent is, but I don’t know yours. You never said who your parent is,” I told her.

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“My mom is Demeter, goddess of the harvest. Why did you need to know that?” she asked.

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“I was just wondering,” I said, “Well, I think I’m going to go down there now. Do you want to come with me?” I asked. I didn’t really want anyone to come with me, but I thought I’d be polite.

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“No, I’m fine. I have something else I need to do. I guess I’ll see you around camp,” she said.

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Yeah, I’ll see you around camp,” I said. She took off down the hill towards the cabins. I started toward the sea. For some strange reason, I suddenly remembered my mom and dad. I mean, it’s not typically strange to think about your family, but I hadn’t thought about them all day and I wasn’t even thinking about anything close to the topic of family. Honestly, I don’t think I was thinking about anything. Anyways, I remembered my mom and dad, and thought about how worried they were when they didn’t see me come home from school today. What kind of a daughter was I? I didn’t even think about them at all. My mom was probably freaking out right now. Who knows what my dad was doing, but he was probably trying to keep my mom from freaking out. My younger brother was probably cheering over the fact that I was gone, and being yelled at by my parents (mostly my mom). I turned around and started sprinting towards the Big House as fast as I could. I needed to call home.

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: center;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Previous Chapter    Next Chapter