Annabeth Grover and I were the first heroes to return alive to Half-Blood Hill since Luke, so of course everybody treated us as if we'd won some reality-TV contest. According to camp tradition, we wore laurel wreaths to a big feast prepared in our honor, then led the procession down to the bonfire, where we got to burn the burial shrouds our cabins had made for us in our absence. Annabeth's shroud was so beautiful—gray silk with embroidered owls—I told her it seemed a shame not to bury her in it. She punched me to shut up. Being the son of Poseidon, I didn't have any cabin mates, so the unclaimed and minor godlings along with Luke from Hermes Cabin worked together to put together a sea blue shroud with dolphins and other sea stuff on it with …show more content…
"You got enough tin cans for the trip?" "Yeah." "And you remember your reed pipes?" "Jeez, Annabeth," he grumbled. "You're like an old mama goat." But he didn't really sound annoyed. He gripped his walking stick and slung a backpack over his shoulder. He looked like any hitchhiker you might see on an American highway—nothing like the little runty boy he used to be. "Well," he said, "wish me luck." He gave Annabeth another hug. He clapped me on the shoulder, then headed back through the dunes. Fireworks exploded to life overhead: Hercules killing the Nemean Lion, Artemis chasing the boar, George Washington (who, by the way, was a son of Athena) crossing the Delaware, Hariet Tubman: daughter of Hermes leading slaves to Freedom. "Hey, Grover!" I called. He turned at the edge of the woods. "If anyone can find Pan, I know you can!" I yelled, "The first satyr who found two children of the Big Three in decades!" Grover grinned, and then he was gone, the trees closing around him. "We'll see him again," Annabeth said. I tried to believe it. The fact that no searcher had ever come back in two thousand years… well, I decided not to think about that. Grover would be the first. He had to be. …show more content…
I like to see Zoё Nightshade try to get pass my new power to create hurricanes. The campers had one last meal together. We burned part of our dinner to the gods. At the bonfire, the senior counselors awarded the end-of-summer beads—a stormy gray bead with a lightning bolt in the middle of it. "The choice was unanimous," Luke announced. "This bead commemorates the quest for the master bolt—the first quest completed in a long time!" The entire camp got to their feet and cheered. Even Ares' cabin felt obliged to stand. Athena's cabin steered Annabeth to the front so she could share in the applause. I'm not sure I'd ever felt so happy in my life. My first quest gets commemorated in a bead. Maybe in the future Annabeth will get a quest that would be commemorated so that both of us and Luke would have a commemorated quest. … The next morning, I found a form letter on my bedside table. I knew Dionysus must've filled it out, because he stubbornly insisted on getting my name wrong. It's the same one I been getting for the past six years now—with the exception that only since Dionysus join us that our names filled out is