walk in the woods

Nearby bushes rustled, and a blonde haired girl with misty grey and blue eyes popped out. Behind her was a group of three snarling dracenae. The girl whirled around, her silver dagger glinting in the sunlight. Light reflected off her dagger, beams of bright yellow and white momentarily blinding the monsters. The teenaged girl used this to her advantage and threw her knife, making it move in a wide arc, slicing all the dracenae in half. The scaly green monsters screamed as they dissapated into the air.

The girl turned around, noticing a girl with rainbow streaks in her hair. Looking momentarily surprised, the teenaged girl jumped back before relaxing. "Oh, hello. I didn't notice you there." She smiled. "Katie Butler, daughter of Aphrodite. You?"

Katie Butler smiled. "Pleased to meet you, Brook. As far as I know you're the only child of Iris at the moment, greek or roman. Say, does Iris even have a roman form...?" Katie almost got lost in her thoughts, but snapped back to reality, red in the face. Damn. She really needed to stop doing that, it was annoying. "Are you new here?" Katie asked, changing the subject to avoid further awkwardness and embarrassment. "If you are, welcome to Camp Half-Blood."

Katie tapped her chin, subconsciously pushing out her bottom lip further in thought. "I think, actually, Iris was one of the gods and goddesses that remained the same-Greek or Roman." Katie dropped her hand down to her side and shrugged casually. "I'm not sure. I know about my mom, her greek form Aphrodite and roman Venus, and the other Olympian gods...not much about any others, sorry. A trait that runs in most of my sisters-forgetfulness and not wanting to learn anymore than we know. The Athena and Minerva kids won't stop lecturing us about that..."

Katie cut herself off again, biting her tongue and mentally cursing at herself. Gods, she really needed to stop babbling. The last thing she wanted was to scare a new camper away...because that would sure as Hades be extremely embarrassing. "Er, sorry," she muttered, her cheeks burning. "Forget I said anything."

Katie smiled again, glad that Brook wasn't staring like her as if she were wacko, or slowly backing away or anything. The head counselor of the Aphrodite Cabin toyed with her own hair absent mindedly, turning around, scanning the forest for any signs of a monster. When there appeared to be none, she turned back to Brook again. "So..." she said, after awhile, in an attempt to get another conversation going. After awhile, Katie finally spoke again. "What're you doing here in the forest?"

Katie nodded. As if on cue, a light shower began, not as strong as the rain about half an hour ago, just a light pattering. Katie held out a hand, frowning. A flame flickered to life in her hands, then quickly was put out by water. Unfortunately, that was probably Katie's weakness. If it was raining, the clouds blocked out the sun, and poof-no light powers. The falling rain could put out most fires she started, so if Gaea attacked during a rainstorm, Katie'd be royally screwed.

The daughter of Aphrodite looked up. Raindrops fell on her face, and when she looked back at Brook, you could almost imagine she was crying by the way the rain was streaking her face. "I used to like the rain, until I found out that my powers with light and fire weren't of much use in the cloudy, wet weather. But," she added, a mischievous twinkle lighting up in her eyes, "I can still do this."

The ground began to shake violently, and within seconds all the rocks and pebbles on the ground uprooted themselves, hovering aboveground. Katie frowned, beads of sweat forming on her forehead in concentration. A dracenae chose that moment to charge out from bushes, hissing angrily. Immediately all the stones flew towards the intruder, pelting the monster over and over. Katie's knife shot towards the scaly woman, and she disintegrated with a shriek when the celestial bronze blade pierced her chest. The rocks dropped to the ground, having served their purpose in Katie's demonstration. The dracenae coming in was quite a stroke of luck. Katie's knife flew back to her hand.

"What'dya think?" she asked, smiling at Brook, trying not to show that the little show had drained her of some of her energy.