Hestia had no words to say.
Everything Hestia was about to say shattered in that instant. After all, he was right. The vision of love that Aphrodite represented was quite twisted, and real love wasn't exactly how she usually portrayed it.
They were interrupted when one of Aphrodite's daughters stepped out and saw the blond looking at the cabin. Her eyes lit up immediately before she turned back inside.
"The new one is here!" came the excited voice of one of the campers from cabin ten.
A cold drop ran down Damon's neck when he heard that.
"Maybe we should move on to the next cabin, right?" he asked, his voice sounding almost pleading at the end, drawing an amused laugh from Hestia.
"Come on, the next one is Hephaestus' cabin," she said with amusement as she noticed how quickly the blond set her down to pick up the pace in a not-so-subtle way.
Damon, honestly, the first thing he had ever read about mythology was about Aphrodite. He had promised Uranus that he would protect her, and he felt that by leaving, he had broken that promise.
He wanted to know what had happened to her, whether her brothers and sisters had protected her. Let's just say he didn't like what he found very much… she was protected, physically… but he had never thought he would end up feeling the need to protect her from herself.
Meanwhile, on Olympus, things had become… strange.
A mortal—(or what they believed to be a mortal)—carrying Hestia on his shoulders was already something you had to see to believe. After all, they were completely sure that if someone tried something like that, the sweet and kind goddess of the hearth would beat them senseless for daring to do so.
Mortal, god, titan, whatever… Hestia was not weak at all…
And now, on top of that, that same blond had just dismissed Aphrodite without receiving a lecture from Hestia… and the strangest part of all was that Aphrodite hadn't said absolutely anything.
In fact, for a few moments, it seemed to affect her more than many of the direct insults she had received from other deities. Maybe because, although it had sounded dismissive at first, deep down it hadn't been an empty attack, but something far more uncomfortable:
A truth.
To everyone's surprise, that created a rather uncomfortable silence in the room.
Seeing Aphrodite without words was, honestly, a rare sight worth admiring.
After seeing Hephaestus' cabin, they moved on to cabin eight.
"This is Artemis' cabin. Even though it's almost impossible for her to have demigod children, it was built in her honor and is used by her hunters when they need to stay here for some reason, although it doesn't happen often," Hestia commented.
"I think I saw her before coming here," Damon said while looking at the silver cabin in front of him. "Red hair, silver eyes, dressed like a hunter or something similar, and surrounded by a group of girls."
That caught Hestia's attention, but she stayed silent because she knew the blond wasn't finished yet.
"Although it's strange," he said. "I've never seen her in my life, I'd bet my hand on it… but even so, I had the feeling she hated me." He added with some confusion in his voice, "I mean, it's not like I even know her."
Hestia felt a bit sad, because that was exactly how Artemis usually was.
"She tends to judge without knowing… especially men. All of them, to be exact."
"Well… that's bullshit," Damon replied, earning a tug on his hair from Hestia and letting out a small complaint.
"Everything happens for a reason. If she reached that point, it's for a reason."
"Yeah, I get that, but generalizing is still bullshit. You can't despise everyone for the actions of one," he argued. "Being a woman in a sexist society is hard, and even more if you get to see the worst of it."
Hestia nodded, agreeing with him. After all, constantly hearing Zeus and, even worse, Ares, despise women by saying they only exist to bear children for men… it was ridiculous to think that way.
"I don't identify with those men, damn it. I'd probably hate them more than Artemis herself," Damon replied, leaving Hestia a bit surprised.
"It doesn't make sense… the strongest being in all of existence is a woman, and the most perfect being I've seen with my own eyes so far is another woman… if one day either of them is looked down on for being a woman, I'll have to commit seppuku."
"In fact, if one day you look down on a woman by your own will, I'll fix it from the inside," Matatabi's voice was heard with an overly sweet tone, which made everyone nervous and earned nods from her sisters.
Hestia, in truth, was quite satisfied with the blond's answer. Every second she spent with him was better than the last, and the fact that he was so direct with his thoughts made her like him even more.
"Seppuku?" Hestia wondered mentally. She would look up what that word meant on her own.
They passed the remaining cabins while continuing to talk about the others, and about why some of them were empty, until they reached the last one: cabin number one.
They didn't even need words.
They stood in front of the largest cabin of all, with a polished bronze door that shone so brightly that, from certain angles, it seemed to shoot threatening lightning at anyone who dared get too close.
"Zeus, right?" Damon said, a drop of sweat running down his neck.
"Y-yes," Hestia stammered, covering her face in embarrassment at her younger brother's lack of humility.
"It's as big as three cabins combined. It could easily be Hermes' cabin, since that's the one with the most people," he muttered more to himself than to Hestia.
"Let's go back to the campfire," the blond said.
Mount Olympus
"I didn't expect that," Hermes commented.
"He's more interesting than I thought," Athena said, now the one speaking. "Very interesting, in fact."
"Pfff," Artemis scoffed. "He's still just a boy."
"Come on, Arty, even you can't deny that this isn't normal," Apollo commented.
While the others discussed what they had just witnessed, Demeter was very confused. From the moment she saw the blond through Iris' message, her body had started reacting in a way she didn't understand.
Everything was too strange.
She had never seen him before, or at least that's what she believed, but even so she had to hold back her own tears. It was as if something inside her was screaming that she knew him, and those tears threatened to fall for a reason completely beyond her understanding.
Leaving, going to the camp, seeing him in person and hugging him while crying was something her body was urging her to do with an absurd level of desperation.
And the worst part of all was that she had no idea why.
A constant sense of nostalgia began to take over her. The feeling grew stronger every time she saw those blue eyes, to the point where she ended up looking away from the image and simply listening.
To her relief, Iris' message disappeared shortly after, starting the discussion among the rest of those present. But not even that was enough to push away what she had just felt. What had happened to her was not normal, and Demeter knew it perfectly well. She also knew that if she got close to the blond in that state, she wouldn't be able to hold herself back and would probably end up hugging him without even understanding why.
That led her to a single conclusion.
She would keep her distance until she figured out what the hell was happening to her.
>>>>>>>>
Stones please