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Let’s start this game over because waking up alone is boring.

​Sienna couldn’t help but give a smirk at the comment about Aurora not being involved with any of the combat stuff. A number of the people who she had convinced to help out today were lovers and not fighters. The people competing were the ones who were going to get praise and laurel wreaths, the people decorating were the ones who would be having all the fun.

Aurora complimented the color scheme. “Thank you! I wanted to make this all about unity between Camp Jupiter and Camp Halfblood. You know purple and orange aren’t the easiest colors to make work, but I think I found a balance.” She commented looking around and admiring the garlands and banners that had begun to be put up. Maybe she was being overly optimistic, but she was really hoping that this event could be a first step in unifying the two camps.

Aurora asked about the centerpieces. To be honest she wasn’t entirely sure herself. She had asked for orange and purple flowers and she got a wide variety in a bunch of different shades. Roses, tulips, tiger lillies, daisies, and a bunch of flowers she didn’t even know the names of.”So I’m thinking we don’t try to make them uniform or anything. Just make sure we have some orange and some purple in each arrangement, and we cut them so they aren’t sticking too far above the tops of the jars.” Sienna shrugged ”I don’t know what I’m doing. But. with my eye for color, and your eye for beauty I think we can figure this out and make something that looks good. Right?”

Sienna reached into a bucket and pulled out a huge purple hydrangea. She looked around and found a bunch of small orange flowers to surround it without the stems and put the arrangement in a jar. She spun it around and added a few more small orange flowers forming a ring around the hydrangea. Probably not her best work but it would do for now, she could always go back and rearrange things later. She put the arrangement aside and grabbed another jar.

”So what’s new with you. Any juicy gossip from around the camp.” Aphrodite kids were always good for some news about what was going on around camp.

​There was no doubt that the Roman camp was impressive. Training in units as a military force made them all formidable fighters. The Romans clearly took pride in showing how organized and capable they were. Sienna couldn’t really argue with that, maybe Romans were better fighters than the Greeks. But, there was more to life than fighting. Sienna wanted to show everyone that the Greeks knew how to party.

The Olympics had been started in Greece as away for people to come together and have good natured competition. An event like this to help unify the camps was exactly what they needed right now. Sienna had briefly considered joining in the races, but had decided that dedicating her time to making this a epic party was a better use of her time.

First order of business of course was setting a color scheme. Camp Halfblood was orange and Camp Jupiter was purple. Those were two colors that were difficult to bring together, but it was a task worthy of a child of Iris. She had chosen shades of orange and purple different than the official camp colors but worked well together, she had also added some pink to help tie things together.

In a show of dedication to the theme she had died one side of her hair purple and the other side orange, currently it was arranged into French braid pigtails. There was a lot of work to be done to prepare for the feast. Had she been overly ambitious in her plans, yes. Still she wanted this to be really special and make everyone feel happy.

Sienna had begged and flirted her way into getting as many people as possible involved in helping out. Making garlands of different colored dots, finding and dying tablecloths, hanging decorations on the walls, everything she could think of to bring the mess hall to life.

Sienna had managed to find a few children of Demeter and a child of Flora to help get her flowers for centerpieces. Sienna sat on the floor of the mess hall surrounded by buckets of flowers and mason jars. She looked up and noticed her new friend Aurora arriving. ”Hey, I’m glad you could make it.” she said genuinely happy for any extra help she got. ”Wanna help me with the centerpieces?” she asked. This would be a great job for the daughter of Aphrodite. Not only was Sienna positive that she could handle arranging flowers, they would be sitting together for a while which would give them a chance to catch up and gossip while they sat and worked.

​”Have you had any bad run ins with the Romans?” she asked Sienna hated to be judgmental but what she had seen so far of Camp Jupiter had been concerning. Camp Jupiter was structured into a strict hierarchy of ranks. The Greeks didn’t fit neatly into the military system of Camp Jupiter, and Sienna couldn’t help but think the Romans were threatened by that.

If the situations had been reversed and Camp Jupiter had been destroyed Sienna liked to think the new campers would have been welcomed at Camp Halfblood with open arms. At best the Romans seemed suspicious of the newcomers, at worst they seemed like bullies eager to prove their superiority in one form or another. Sienna was not going to stand for any of her fellow Greeks getting bullied and wanted to keep tabs on what was happening around camp.

Realistically there wasn’t a whole lot she could do to stand up to the Romans besides make a statement with her art. Frankly, Sienna had never been very realistic when it came to challenging people she didn’t like. She was bound to get herself into serious trouble with the Romans and the mural was just going to be the start of it.

Aurora said she wasn’t very good at art. ”Everybody’s got to start somewhere.” she replied with a shrug. ”You get better with practice. But don’t worry, plenty of easy color in the lines type of work to be done.”

Sienna took a moment to stretch her arms and back sore from the work she had done so far. ”Like, I’m thinking maybe we could get a bunch of people involved. Get everyone united with a big project, get our minds off of things. What do you think?”

He said sorry over and over, it seemed more like a habit than a sincere apology. In fact now that he decided to correct her on using the word Hades she was certain he actually sorry for anything.

She glared at him for a moment before finding the words to explain herself. ​”You ever get mad and say what the Texas, or what the Michael?” she said pointedly ”No.” she answered for him.

Sienna knew that her opinion on this matter differed from other demigods. Of course she said Hades when speaking about a God or about the underworld, but this was different. Hades had become her favored expression of surprise or anger, it was a way to add a bit of flavor to angry words. Sienna had initially preferred a different four letter word for cursing, but Chiron repeatedly punishing her with clean up duty had broken her of the habit of dropping the f bomb. ”I’m cursing, I’m not speaking about a person for a place. Seems like a pretty bad idea to use the Gods names in place of curse words. I don’t know about you, but Hades is one God I wouldn’t want pissed off at me.”

He had backed himself up against the wall and was apologizing once more. For the first time she had realized how he was dressed. If you were going to run around tackling people into pools you would probably change into a swimsuit, and he was still wearing regular clothing. Her expression softened a bit ”You really did this by accident didn’t you?”

He mentioned forgetting to put on the breaks. When she thought about it she couldn’t remember how he had got out of the pool with her, he must have had some sort of power that let him do that. Maybe he could teleport, or maybe he had super speed just like she did.

He told her is wasn’t smart to “out” herself as being Greek. Every time she started to feel sympathy towards this guy he had to open his mouth say something that irritated her. First off, this was the second time he had tried to correct her. She had no patience for mansplaning, or anyone who treated her like she was stupid. Secondly he had implied that being a Greek demigod was something that needed to be hidden, There was no denying that a number of the Romans had been a bit hostile towards the Greeks. Maybe it would be easier to keep her head down and do her best to blend in, but blending in and staying out of trouble had never been Siennas style. ”Pretending to be someone I’m not is only something I do in front of Mortals.”

The main reason Sienna had chosen to come to this camp was so she could be herself. After Camp Halfblood fell she could have just gone back to the mortal world. She was a child of a minor Goddess and wasn’t high enough on the power scale to attract a lot of monsters. She probably would have been fine living in the mortal world so long as she never stayed in one place for very long. Sienna had chosen to live in a place where she could continue to be open about who she was, and she wasn’t going to let the threat of militant Roman bullies scare her off.

He approached the side of the pool and offered her a had up. Now that she was in the water and her hair was safely on top of her head where it wouldn’t continue to be damaged she had planned on just staying in the water for a while. Part of her wanted to refuse his outstretched hand after what he had just said to her. Yet she came up with a better idea.

Sienna accepted his hand and got out of the pool. He commented on the bleeding pink hair dye running down her face, but she ignored the comment. Once her feet were firmly on the ground she took off at super speed sprinting to the other end of the pool where a pile of towels was stacked. She paused briefly and grabbed two towels before speeding back to him.

Sienna didn’t typically show off her powers like this, but this was a special circumstance. If she had guessed correctly he had super speed but terrible control. The Romans like to think they were so superior to the Greeks, Sienna had an opportunity to show him up at his own game. It was true Sienna couldn’t keep up her super speed for long, but she had perfect control over stopping and starting. Being able to start and stop easily on a wet tile floor proved it.

She stopped a few feet away from him and tossed him a towel. She began to wipe her face and neck along her hairline where the pink dye was undoubtedly the worst, waiting to hear his reaction. The Romans may have been great at running all of their military drills and fighting as a unit, but clearly they weren’t doing a good job of teaching demigods how to master their individual powers.