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Another week gone by, another angle to consider. All of the regular campers had left so they could return home for the normal school year, so all who remained were Chiron, Mr. D, the year-round campers, and of course the satyrs and nature spirits.
They all spoke to each other now. After all, two full weeks without uttering a single word could do things to a person (or a centaur, or a god, or a dryad, or…). And the aftershocks of the battle had slowly begun to fade and wear off, though every day there was still some sort of reminder.
They had reached that late-August point when the mosquitoes always bite the most, the Sun always shines the brightest, and the birds always chirp the loudest. Chiron enjoyed this part of the year, when he suddenly had more free time to ponder various things. But for today, his ponderings would not be pleasant. Today, his ponderings would be mournful.
As he trotted a slow circle around the canoe lake at a gentle, measured pace, he thought through the long, long list of campers he had lost to this war. Not just the Battle of Manhattan, but the whole Titan War. Michael, Beckendorf, Luke, Silena, Bianca… the list went on as far as Chiron could see (which, as it turned out, was quite far).
On his walk, he passed a beautiful patch of wildflowers growing alongside the path. The blooms were in a million different colors, ranging anywhere from a fiery orange to a brilliant yellow to a deep azure. Chiron smiled despite himself. They would have loved those flowers. He thought for a moment. The nymphs wouldn’t be too mad…
***
“Well, this is it,” Grover said, glumly gesturing around. “Do you want a minute alone?”
Chiron nodded sagely. “Thank you for your assistance, Grover. You may return to your tasks. I can find my own way back to the main part of camp.” At those words, Grover turned and walked away quickly. He didn’t want to be witness to the coming sorrow, and honestly, Chiron didn’t blame him for that.
For a considerable amount of time, Chiron just watched, unmoving. The grove of trees which he found himself in was possibly the most wonderful natural place he had seen. If it wasn’t associated with such gruesome things, he might have visited it much more often.
The ground was covered in grass, weeds, and clover, with patches of dark, rich soil showing through the ground cover in some places. There were occasionally flat, smooth, grey rocks on the forest floor, their sides covered in moss and such. The trees formed a perfectly round circle around this little clearing.
No darkened leaves lay on the ground, but rather, they clung, bright green, to their trees, stubborn through the strong gusts of wind. The trunks of the trees were wrapped in ivys all manner of such vines, adorning them like crepe paper hung from a high, vaulted ceiling.
Chiron sank down to his knees, albeit a bit awkwardly, due to still being in his centaur form. Bundle of flowers clutched in one hand, he took the other hand and made the warding-off-evil gesture, a three fingered claw over his heart followed by an outward shoving motion. He thought back to when he’d taught Beckendorf that motion. His heart felt heavy in his chest as he remembered the day that used to be happy.
He caught glimpses of all those children. In his mind’s eye, he saw Bianca’s arrival at camp; he saw Michael’s first archery lesson; he even saw the day Silena, only 11 at the time, approached him to ask if it would violate the rules of the sparring class for her to bedazzle the grip on her sword. His eyes ached, begging to cry the tears of four millennia, but he resisted.
A bright red ladybug crawled slowly over his leg. He laughed wetly. When he reached back to try and touch it, it buzzed away, minuscule wings glittering in the sunlight. It reminded him of the birds he watched fly around the roof of the Big House, making their nests and being grateful that Chiron didn’t care enough to try and make them nest somewhere else.
On the opposite side of the small clearing, there was a small stone pillar. If an adult were to stand next to it, the little spire would probably come up about to the height of their waist. It was cut from the finest slabs of pale grey marble, and it tapered to a sharp point at the top; one probably could have cut something on it if they had wanted to. But no one did. That would have been considered highly disrespectful and well now, that just wouldn’t do.
Etched into the front of the spike were so many names that Chiron didn’t want to count. Counting them would only dishearten him further. They had been carved into the stone by hand, but the engravings were so clean that anyone would have thought a machine had done it. But no, the nature spirits and the cyclopes and the satyrs had all come together to create the memorial.
And what a memorial it was. Ancient Greek letters spelled out hundreds of names, in time order from the year the camp opened to the present day; names of campers and hunters alike. To an outsider they were just meaningless symbols, but campers and spirits knew better. Ancient Greek was their default language, after all. English didn’t compute quite as well (which accounted for the dyslexia diagnosis that most half-bloods received), but they could read Ancient Greek perfectly well.
One by one, he went down the list and read off the names, each one striking a sharp flash of pain in his chest. When he reached the names of the heroes of today, he sobbed out loud, but he persisted. “Bianca di Angelo,” He read out, removing a vibrant purple flower from his bundle and placing it on the ground.
“Zoe Nightshade,” He said softly, taking out another flower and laying it on the earth. It was a wonderful shade of deep indigo, with flecks of white and lighter blues. Surely a bloom worthy of the lieutenant of Miss Artemis herself. It had blossomed in a sort of spiraling way, the petals small and delicate. But he knew that as fragile as they looked, they were strong, just as their remarkable Zoe had been.
“Lee Fletcher.” Not a flower, but rather a pinecone. Not the same thing, but it had the same effect, the same symbolism. And Lee had never been one for flowers anyway. Chiron had painted little spots of gold on the pinecone’s edges, giving it a faint shine that he thought the son of Apollo would appreciate.
“Charles Beckendorf.” This one was bright orange, an Indian Paintbrush, he thought it was. It seemed fitting of Hephaestus’s eldest, a boy who had been rough, but equally loving, kind, and honest.
“Michael Yew.” A yellow tulip.
“Silena Beauregard.” A deep, bruised pink rose.
“Ethan Nakamura.” For Ethan, Chiron had chosen a Bird Foot Trefoil. He hadn’t known Ethan very well, because none of them had. All they knew about Ethan was that he was a child of Nemesis, and that he had been led the wrong way by Kronos’s forces. Ethan could have had an eye-opening time at camp, but he hadn’t, and for that, Chiron would forever be sorry.
“Luke Castellan.” A single stem of Baby’s Breath.
When he had laid every item on the ground, he looked upward at the small memorial once again, and he sighed, the tears finally falling down his wrinkled face, leaving tracks in their wake that burned as strongly as acid.
The world had been cruel to his campers, his warriors, the children he had practically raised as his own. Demigods all over the planet were met by rude endings every year, but they had been able to avoid godly war for decades now. The fact that it had finally chosen to unearth itself again was a testament to their current global climate as a whole.
He only stopped when the skin around his eyes was red and puffy and raw, and his eyes themselves practically itched. The hot sun was painful on his skin, even filtered through the trees. He longed for a break from this summertime heat, for it to end at last. But no such phenomenon came.