Havoc - Piper McLean

7: Moving taxidermy leopard

|moving taxidermy leopard|

—"Hera's cabin" Annabeth said, panting since the three of them had run all the way to the Big House (Camilla thought it wasn't even that big of a house). "Vision. Bad" 

Jason, like a sane person, found that the answers unsatisfactory since they didn't make any sense. 

The scene inside the house was something Camilla gaped at. A stuffed leopard hung on the wall (IT FUCKING MOVED, OKAY?? CAMILLA COULD HAVE SWORN IT MOVED) Then there was the half horse guy who looked deeply troubled like Jason was his son who just came out to him as gay. And the blond himself with his gold sword in hand. 

Camilla found her eyes glued to the lines on his forearm. Lines she knew hadn't been there for the Jason she had memories of. 

Rachel, Annabeth and Camilla had interrupted whatever important discussion the two must have been having, dragging an unconscious Piper between the three of them in increasingly awkward positions.

Piper wasn't... bad to look at. Even when she was unconscious, her lips parted just the right amount to make her look good, her eyelashes fluttered in the way movie heroines would look when they were knocked out and as much as she didn't want any attention drawn to her, it was kind of impossible not to notice her. 

Camilla had an arm snaked around her waist, which she tried not to think too much about. She could feel Piper's warm skin through her t-shirt since her hand was under the girl's jacket. Camilla hoped Piper wouldn't mind. But she knew how some straight girls were with having someone like Camilla even breathing next to them (No Isabel, just because I like girls doesn't mean I like you, I have standards)

"I think..." Rachel gulped, "I think I may have killed her."

—Jason and Camilla put Piper on the couch while Annabeth rushed down the hall to get a med kit. Piper was still breathing, but she wouldn't wake up. She seemed to be in some kind of coma.

Rachel was still racked with guilt and paced. She genuinely looked scared that Piper might die at any moment because of her, which wasn't a very reassuring thing to say to two new campers. 

First day here and one of the people she knew was already hurt, Camilla was starting to like this camp less and less. Then there had been that feeling in her stomach the entire day, just a bottomless pit. Kind of like the anxiety you have during an exam while you try to desperately write anything but you know what you wrote is wrong. 

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. 

All of this was wrong. Camilla wasn't supposed to be here. She'd felt that way a lot in her entire life, never fitting in anywhere. But this time she really meant it. 

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. 

She looked down at the girl on the couch, still out cold, her dark skin glowing in the lamp light.

Camilla let herself take in the room she was in. The living room looked like it had been swallowed by a rain forest. Grapevines curved up the walls and across the ceiling, which Camilla found a little strange. She didn't think plants grew like that inside, especially in the winter, but these were leafy green and bursting with bunches of red grapes. (Dionysus, Annabeth had said)

Leather couches faced a stone fireplace with a crackling fire. Wedged in one corner, an old-style Pac-Man arcade game beeped and blinked. Mounted on the walls was an assortment of masks—smiley/frowny Greek theater types, feathered Mardi Gras masks, Venetian Carnevale masks with big beaklike noses, carved wooden masks from Africa. Grapevines grew through their mouths so they seemed to have leafy tongues. Some had red grapes bulging through their eyeholes.