Camp Half-Blood and Earth's Daughter

Chapter 18

"Percy!" Annabeth laughed and got up to hug him.  Percy wrapped his arms around Annabeth and placed a kiss on her lips.  

"What are you doing here?" Clarisse asked, rolling her eyes at them.

"Looking for Annabeth.  I saw she wasn't outside with you, so I came in to check on what was going on," Percy explained, greeting Clarisse with a nod.  He let go of Annabeth and turned to me.  I flinched at his obvious hatred for me, but his expression was softer, as if he was becoming more, friendly?  No, that's not the right word.  Perhaps he was just starting to become more open to me.  Maybe he didn't exactly trust me, but Annabeth's kindness towards me might be influencing him. Who knows?

"You haven't answered my question," he said with a smirk.  I pulled myself together and smiled.

"Sorry.  I'm not really sure what I can do," I answered and started to explain that I was testing out my powers and discovered that I can conjure fire.

"Well, we know that you can control the earth and fire, maybe you can control water and air too," Annabeth suggested.  I shrugged.

"Maybe," I said.  The three of them continued to look at me, as if expecting something.

"What?"

"Well, aren't you going to try?" Clarisse asked as if this was obvious.  My eyes widened in surprise.  I didn't expect them to want to stick around.

"Oh.  Yeah, okay," I said and closed my eyes.

I reached my hand out and opened a hole in the ground, planning on attempting to conjure water inside of it. 

"Look!" Annabeth shouted suddenly.  I opened my eyes to see water slowly filling the hole.  It was very slow, but it was working.  Percy walked up to it cautiously and peered into the hole. 

"Yup that's definitely water," he nodded in confirmation.  Annabeth rolled her eyes.

"Like that needed to be sorted out."

"Well, this has been fun but it looks like you two can handle yourselves, so I'll be leaving now," Clarisse said and waved goodbye as she left.  Percy and Annabeth laughed and waved goodbye to her.

"Try and conjure it into this cup," Annabeth suggested and held out a red plastic cup.  I held my hand over it and attempted to fill it with water.

Instead of the cup filling, the water in the hole started to overflow.

"Oh!" Annabeth laughed.  I quickly drained the hole and covered it up.

"Maybe you can only control elements if they are in the ground," she said.  Percy furrowed his eyebrows.

"But the torches weren't in the ground,"  he argued.  

"I made those out of stone, so maybe that had an influence on that," I corrected.  The three of us thought about it for a minute.  We seemed to come to an agreement.  

"Hey can you tone down the ground moving and the tunnel making?  Hazel keeps getting freaked out that someone's digging a tunnel into camp," another voice laughed.  We all turned to see the newcomer: it was Nico and Hazel.