Lessons in Macaroni Necklaces

Go to arts and crafts, they said.

It'll be fun, they said.

Nobody'll blow anything up, they said.

It'll all be perfectly fine, they said.

At least they were right about one thing: nobody had tried to blow anything up yet.

Damon looked at the supplies in front of his. The instructor had said something about...."macaroni necklaces." Weird. He was pretty sure macaroni was something you ate. Mac and cheese. They served it at the mess hall. He was no expert, but he was pretty sure that only kids played with their food. But then, he wouldn't know; his mom and stepdad had made sure that he acted "his age" and never played with his mashed potatoes.

Anyways, he had no idea what the heck he was supposed to do with macaroni, glitter glue, string--and whatever the rest of these little trinkets were. He should've stayed at his bunk. At least avoiding getting blown was something he was good at.

Someone was talking to him.

Damon looked up from his supplies(?). Whoa....

Girl.

Shit. A girl was talking to him.

Fact: nobody talks to Damon. Another fact: if someone talks to Damon, they must be either very odd or very desperate. Fact again: if a girl talks to Damon, this means the world is most likely coming to an end and Damon is going to die a very gruesome death.  

His options didn't look too good.

What made things even worse was that this girl was extremely attractive: hourglass figure, dark skin, wavy hair, chocolate eyes....

Did he mention that girls made him jittery like you wouldn't believe?

Damon was still getting used to this whole "so-and-so's a child of so-and-so" thing, but he was pretty sure that this girl had to be the daughter of a beauty goddess. Or a love goddess. Or a enjoys-making-insecure-boys-nervous goddess. He nervously (must be the last option) fiddled with the collar of his orange camp t-shirt. What in Hades was he supposed to do?

Introductions. Conversation. You know--the basics.

"Uh....trying to, I guess," Damon muttered, hoping to gods that he didn't sound like an utter moron. "I'm not really sure what to do....or how to do it....or why we're using these," he indicated towards the macaroni noodles before him, "for crafts."

OOC: I'm totally fangirling like crazy right now.

BIC:

Damon nodded, listening to the girl speak. Momentarily, he had been distracted by his weird....err, Spidey-sense (only it was more of a "Phobus-sense") telling him that if by some misfortune a rat appeared in the arts and crafts area, this girl would let all hell break loose.

"Uh....sure," he said, uncertainly, as his attention refocused on the girl's words. You're being rude, he thought. "The name's Damon, by the way," he added quickly, the words sort of running into each other. "Damon Oleander."

"Um....could you please explain to me in detail what that is?" Damon asked, feeling his ears burn red. "I've got, like, no knowledge of anything artsy whatsoever." At least she told him her name. Wait a minute.....

"It's--it's nice to meet you, too, Véronique," he added, rubbing his neck nervously.

"Uh, on second thought, let's leave that for another day." Veronique giggled. "Here, we can just make a, uh, hm." She tapped her chin again.

"What about we paint vases?" She offered, getting up from her stool to grab some. After a few seconds, she came back with two short, wide Greek styled black vases and sat one in front of him and herself. "We can even make it more interesting! Let's design the vases with things that relate to our god parents! We can guess who it is! How does that sound?"

"Sure...." Well, Damon was crap at painting, too, but he wasn't sure that it was the right moment to say that; he was never sure when it was ever the right moment for anything. He carefully took one of the vases from Véronique's hand (making sure that their skin did not make any contact). He stared at it. He twirled it around in his hands. He raised it up to the light.

Well, his mind was blank.

He snuck a glance at what the girl next to him was doing. She had several bright, outlandish colors before her and was already painting patterns on her vase. That's good. That's just great. The intricate designs she was making were far beyond his comprehension. Sighing in defeat, he turned his attention back to his own vase with absolutely no idea what he was supposed to do.

Damon allowed himself a sideways glance at the dark-skinned teenage girl sitting beside him. "Well....you probably can't tell from my accent, but I'm actually Canadian," he began, believing this to be the most basic thing about him. "Me and my mom moved down here to the States when I was still really young. She met her husband here. He's got a couple of kids." He paused wondering if he should continue.

Véronique smiled at him warmly, and suddenly he felt like he could tell her anything. "Started getting attacked by monsters when I was around 13 or so....I don't really remember that much about that time," he babbled quickly, though quietly. "Ran away after that....lived on the road for about a year, then met another demigod. I joined his group for a bit, but...." It was like he'd snapped out a dream-like haze. He frowned, looking down at the vase in his hand. Surprisingly, it actually did have pictures on it....kind of like superheroes from comic books, actually....

OOC: Thinking that Véronique uses her charm ability on him, if you don't mind.

"Ya....I guess," Damon replied in a mumble. He placed the vase on the table with a resounding thud. He frowned, his forehead wrinkling; what the--that was his vase?!

Turning away from the (weird) vase he presently had in front of him, Damon rubbed his jaw (he should really shave soon--he'd have a full beard if he wasn't careful) thoughtfully as he examined Véronique's vase.

Whoa....

A meadow filled with roses and other assorted flowers, all bright and colorful against a plain amber color.  There were heavenly white doves circling the opening....only they looked vibrant with color, not just a plain, mediocre white. He turned the vase in his hands, exposing the other side: a beautiful woman clothed in warm light with a dove resting upon her shoulder. She blended so well with the rest of the images that she didn't seem out of place or irrelevant to the theme: beauty, love....

If it wasn't for the fact that she had told him that she was painting an allusion to her godly parent, he would've said she was a daughter of Apollo or something.

"Aphrodite," he answered, without a trace of doubt in his voice. Instead of waiting for confirmation, he immediately pushed forward his own vase. Instead of a classic painting like Véronique's, his looked more like a comic book: a whole phalanx of soldier in Greek war gear dropping their weapons and fleeing in panic, some screaming and kneeling in fear, others on the ground in pools of blood--but at the center of the chaos stood a majestic figure with the head like unto a lion's with flaming red eyes, bearing its teeth, with two black rats by its feet. "Your turn."

Crap. Had he freaked her out?

Well, you do have that effect on people, he told himself. "First one's the correct answer. Deimus is my uncle--and the more attractive of the two," he laughed, trying to ease the girl's nerves. "Who were you thinking of?" he asked. Probably Ares, he figured; after all, the war god was his grandfather.

Damon winced and a sudden mental image of him bashing his own head with a baseball bat flashed before his eyes. Yup. Try not to freak people out--that's what Zach had told him years ago....a lifetime ago. Even our kind isn't used to that kind of stuff. Try to keep it to yourself.

Of course, only he would've screwed this up the first time a girl talked to him at camp. "Err....well, y'see....it's complicated. My dad--Phobus--he's the god of fear....so I can kind of see what agitates people or what they suffer from. That guy," he pointed at a young demigod sitting in front of them, "has arachnophobia hardcore, and that one," he pointed to a girl who was presenting a necklace she no doubt had made herself to a boy around her age, "she--she has nightmares about drowning. It's...." He had never told anyone about that, ever since Zach....ever since he had....

Keep it together. He sighed. "Ya....you don't like rats. You hate them. You're terrified of them. I can't tell you why or to what extent, but I can tell that much," he finished. He didn't know why, but he really felt....comfortable around Véronique--more so than most of the Earth's population, anyways. It felt like talking to Anita, who'd always liked him more than the boys, or his mother, who understood him in so many ways and had been confused by him in so may others.

And he was definitely freaking her out. Yay.

Damon nodded absentmindedly at the girl's words. Hmm....she didn't seem too freaked out (at least, he couldn't tell if she was)--which was highly irregular. Huh. That was something.

He wondered why she wanted his vase; maybe she liked to collect things about people she's met, but besides that, Damon had no idea. He shrugged. "Sure, why not? It's just going to collect dust at my bunk," he replied nonchalantly.

Ugh. Her face was impossible to read.

Back when he'd actually been a part of the mortal world (other than sleeping in dumpsters and raiding McDonald's at night), people his age would ask him, "Why don't you socialize, Damon? Do you have social anxiety or something?"

No, it's just that human beings are extremely complicated things that are very difficult to read at times.

Did she want him to take it? Did she care? Would she be offended if he didn't?

Maybe he should just stick to comic books....

He decided to take a risk. "Sure," he replied, allowing himself a small smile as Véronique beamed and handed him the vase. "This one actually looks good," he added, and he meant it. Wow--an actual compliment from Damon. Being a demigod does wonders on the soul, apparently.

"Sure....stables sounds nice," he replied awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck again. Well, he sort of freaked out the horses sometimes, but it was better than being in a cabin filled with people....well, like his cabin, for example: he couldn't even read a comic book in peace.

A sudden thought struck him. "Wait--so are we, like, friends?" he asked, like a timid child.