Are We Allowed To Eat These? (Kona, and anyone else interested in nomming on strawberries)

Cat walked alongside the rows of strawberry plants, listening to the lively tunes coming from the satyrs' reed pipes as she admired the bright berries. A few Demeter and Dionysus kids were walking around too, helping the satyrs tend to the plants. The sun lit the fields well, making everything feel warm and bright.
   Gods. She wondered if they were allowed to eat them, or if all the strawberries were just for exporting to make money for the camp. That would be a shame. They looked soo good.
   She was so lost in thought about eating strawberries, she nearly tripped over a girl who was crouched down at the end of the row. A startled apology slipped out as she stepped back and looked in slight embarrassment at the girl, who appeared to be growing a new strawberry plant.
   Cat didn't know much about Hawaii except for volcanoes and coconuts and hula dancing, but it was evident that this girl was Hawaiian, with her tanned skin tone and dark, wavy hair, though she wasn't sure whether she was a Demeter or Dionysus kid.
   She realized suddenly that her attempt at apologizing for running into the girl had probably been too quiet to be heard. She cleared her throat and said, "Sorry 'bout that, didn't see you there."

Leilani had been growing new strawberry plants with her powers. when all of a sudden somebody had tripped over her. which was pretty painful. she looked up, expecting to see a clumsy Satyr or perhaps one of her siblings. but instead she saw an unfamiliar face. quite an unusual thing when the only people who usually entered the fields were Demeter or Dionysus kids. it made the two groups quite familiar with each other. so it was weird to see a girl from a different cabin here. unless she was a recently arrived Dionysus kid. she had slightly wavy brown hair, and seemed to be slightly taller than Leilani was. "oh...um...it's ok, that happens alot in here, though usually its because of clumsy satyrs." Leilani wondered who this girl was. she was certain she wasnt a Demeter kid. she had her usual anxiety that sprung up any time she was around a person she didnt know. hoping she didnt seem weird for kneeling down over what was currently a sampling (mostly because she had been interrupted while making it grow) Leilani did have some dirt on her, mostly from kneeling down in the soil to create strawberry plants all day. it was hard work maintaining these fields, especially since they were part of a camp of superpowered kids who usually didnt stick around to clean up the messes they make. there had been times when they had been required to regrow the entire field because some kid accidentally dropped a bottle of greek fire into them. Leilani worried how the girl might think of her, she hated making new impressions while she was partly covered in dirt.

Andrew followed behind Cat, arguing. "But Cat! When I break my leg, why can't Apollo just-" Suddenly, Andrew noticed a young girl, and felt his heart skip a beat. He reached a hand out to her, the plants around him shriveling into nothingness. "Hi. I'm Andrew," he said, mesmerized by this girl. She had long, dark hair that blended well with her darker skin... Oh, how  beautiful. Andrew closed his mouth, wiping off the drool that started oozing down his cheek. She had blue eyes, it looked like, and the dirt that covered her made her just more  beautiful, and Andrew tingled.

Cat didn't know whether she should be offended by the comparison to clumsy satyrs, but she decided to just laugh it off. She noticed the girl seemed a little on edge now, self-conscious. What for, Cat wasn't sure. Probably because there were flecks of dirt covering her, here and there. She averted her gaze, hoping to make her feel less uncomfortable that way.

   She was about to introduce herself, when she heard a young boy's voice behind her.
  "But Cat! When I break my leg, why can't Apollo just-"
   She grimaced. Darn. She had hoped she had lost the son of Hades by winding through the forest (not going too far in, though - she wanted to get him off her trail, not get him eaten by monsters) but it seemed to have not been enough.
   She turned to face Andrew to find that he was now staring at the girl she had bumped into, looking as captivated and enamored as an eleven-year-old could look.
   He reached out a hand, saying, "Hi. I'm Andrew." Oh, boy. He could not sound any more infatuated, could he?
   Cat sighed through her nose and looked away, feeling annoyed. Well, at least he wasn't bothering her anymore.

(Lei has brown eyes)

Leilani couldnt resist smiling when the girl turned away, obviously she had noticed how nervous she was. then a black haired boy walked up, he seemed to be talking to the other girl. then he turned to Leilani and seemed to freeze up. he was staring at her, which made Leilani wonder if she had something on her face. the boy was alot younger than her, she felt a little uncomfortable with the way he was staring at her. he held out his hand -which ended up making several plants shrivel up- and introduced himself as Andrew. she was a little freaked out when the plants shriveled, but she didnt show it. mainly because she was more worried about the way he was staring at her. she couldn't think of any reason why he would be staring. maybe he has just never seen a Hawaiian girl Leilani thought. there were  kids from all different parts of the country here, but Leilani was the only Hawaiian girl in camp currently. "hi, I'm Leilani" she said then she turned and noticed the plants she had just grown had shriveled also. "darn it, i just grew those." Leilani muttered not realizing she had been speaking out loud.

Cat heard the girl introduce herself as Leilani as she watched satyrs drop their reed pipes and trip over their own hooves in the middle of the field. I'm not that clumsy, she thought.
   She glanced back at the other two demigods as the Hawaiian half-blood muttered, "Darn it, I just grew those," to herself as she looked at the plants that had shriveled up from Andrew's death-child aura.
   Honestly, she had to give the girl credit for sensibly ignoring the fact that he was drooling all over himself, and calmly introducing herself to him as if she didn't notice his obvious instant crush. She didn't seem like too bad of a person, either. A little on the shy side, though. Not that that was a problem - she had known plenty of shy people. She hadn't necessarily been friends with them, but they'd stick together, simply because they had no one else to stick with.
  "I'm Cat," she told Leilani with a friendly smile. "Nice to meet you." She glanced at the son of Hades, then back at her, giving her a 'Sorry about the kid' look. As close as she could figure, Leilani was about her age, or perhaps a little older. Having an eleven-year-old boy ogling at her couldn't be too fun, especially not since she seemed like a generally self-conscious person.

((I dunno if Axel mentioned anything, but Ceru recommended I join this topic since it's actually somewhere Jericho would be, lol. Hope that's okay! >.<))

Jericho was kneeling in front of one of the rows of strawberry plants, his bare knees scuffed with smears of dirt and his unruly curls falling into his face as he concentrated on helping several plants grow at once. Since it was getting close to the end of summer, strawberries were in even higher demand out in the mortal world, so the Dionysus and Demeter kids had been spending a lot of time there. Jericho wished he could've been making something with the strawberries instead, but he supposed they needed to be grown first. That, and his cabin leader had ordered that they all go out and help.

With a sigh, Jericho sat back on his knees to take a breather. He looked around at all the other kids and satyrs working magic on the plants. An unusually large group caught his eye. Squinting his eyes, he tried to make out who they were. There was Leilani, a Demeter kid he'd often seen out in the strawberry fields, then another face he recognized: Cat--a daughter of Apollo, he was pretty sure. The last kid he didn't recognize, but he looked younger. Jericho wondered if he was sick or something, since he was rather pale. In any case, Leilani looked slightly disgruntled about the plants she was growing. Jericho wondered if something was wrong. He had never been the confronting kind, but he figured if it had to do with the strawberry crop, maybe he should check it out.

Getting up and making his way over to the threesome, he twisted his hands together as his eyes bounced nervously from each of the three people. "Um..." he started, looking at Leilani, "is something wrong?"

Andrew continued top stare at the girl. "You're pretty," he said.

(Mindless, short post. I hate myself.)

(omg poor Lei)
Leilani interpreted the look that Cat gave her. It was an obvious apologetic look. Leilani could guess that it was this slightly creepy kid that was staring at her that Cat was sorry about. The boy seemed to be acting...weird. Andrew continued staring at her. Which still made her incredibly uncomfortable. When the boy opened his mouth to speak he simply said "You're pretty." Leilani realized he might be staring for more than just because she seemed unusual to him. She realized that the look in the younger demigod’s eyes was that of attraction…Ew. The last thing she wanted was to be this little kid’s latest crush.
Leilani thought maybe it was just the heat, after all this kid was incredibly pale and it was a hot, sunny day. Still almost anyone could see how uncomfortable she was with this unwanted attention.

Leilani turned when somebody else joined the group. Luckily it wasn’t another random stranger who was joining the conversation. It was just Jericho, a son of Dionysus who she had known for a little while. He was asking what was wrong, which was strange because he was probably the least confrontation person she had met at camp. Then she realized he was talking about the plants. "It’s nothing just this kid's aura killed some of the plants." Leilani gestured to Andrew. Who still seemed to be staring at her. She wondered if he had killed the plants on purpose, or if he simply couldn’t control his power very well.
why is he still looking at me like that Leilani thought. She backed away from the staring black haired boy, and looked back to the plants. She could probably just make them grow instantly, but she still had a lot of work to do and didn’t want to waste energy. Making plants grow slowly one at a time used a lot less energy than making them grow all at once instantly. Three years of camp had helped her master her powers in that way, she could always use her powers to grow all the plants in the fields in a few minutes, but then the amount of energy she would have to use for that would knock her out for at least the rest of the day. So Leilani didn’t see it as worth the effort.

"You're pretty," Andrew told Leilani, still staring at her mindlessly.
   Oh, dear god. Cat couldn't even appreciate the bluntness of his sentence due to the ridiculous content. She wanted to burst out, Are you freaking serious? You just met her and you look like you're about to propose on the spot, for god's sake! Oh yeah, and you're eleven, kid. She held it all in and resorted to a simple mental facepalm. And another one. And one more.
   She registered then that someone had joined them and asked Leilani if she was okay - and then she realized that she knew that someone. Sort of. Jericho, who she had met a few days ago.
   "It's nothing, just this kid's aura killed some of the plants," Leilani told the curly-haired demigod, gesturing to Andrew and subsequently realizing the kid was still gazing at her dreamily. The Hawaiian backed away, discomfort clearly growing, and looked down at her plants.
   "Ohhhkay," Cat interrupted, taking Andrew's shoulders and pushing the son of Hades away from Leilani. "That's enough pre-teen romance for one day. I'm guessing you two have a lot of work to do, especially since little Skullhead over here used his death-child voodoo on your plants, so we'll get out of your hair now." She flashed Jericho and Leilani a quick smile as she began steering Andrew away.

Andrew looked back to Lei as Cat pushed him away. He put his hand up to his ear, and  whispered, "Call me!" He waves bye to her, sinking down into a ball. He ran his hand through his hair, sighing and starting out into the sunset. "She smells like roses,"

((Lol, apparently it's evening.))

Jericho cast a wary look over at the pale kid as Cat led him away. She had said something about "death-child voodoo," which must've meant he was a son of some kind of death god. Thanatos? Hades? Jericho couldn't be sure, but either way, the idea made him uncomfortable. He'd been too close to death several times and he didn't like anywhere nearer to the personification of it than he had to. Needless to say, he was rather relieved that Cat was making him leave.

Turning back to Leilani, he tentatively knelt down by the girl's plants--making sure not to be too extremely close to her--and examined the damage that had been done to them. He carefully lifted a strawberry, noticing that it was shriveled up and dried, but not black or brown. "They're not quite dead yet," he mumbled, almost more to himself than to Leilani. "We can revive them easily enough without using too much energy." He started to work on one of them, making sure the vascular tubes throughout the plants were open so water could go through and the leaves were turned up to reach the dying sun.

Leilani was happy when Cat came to her rescue, then she was mortified when Andrew turned and whispered "Call me!" she breathed a sigh of relief when the love-struck boy was out of sight. She hoped this kid's little crush on her would go away. maybe he will start crushing on an Aphrodite girl instead, they all love attention. Leilani thought, well most of them anyway Leilani added amending the statement when she remembered that Aphrodite kid she had met at the beach, Daquiri. Leilani turned back trying to forget the incredibly awkward and uncomfortable situation she had just been in, that was when Jericho mumbled that the strawberry plants weren’t completely dead, which meant they could be revived, which would be far quicker than growing completely new plants. Leilani's siblings were obviously tired, and she knew they were expecting her to tell them they were done for the day.
Leilani turned toward the decayed plants, Leilani knew that they would only cling to life for so long, which meant that this couldn’t be put off until tomorrow. They had to fix them within the next hour or so, otherwise these plants were as good as gone. Leilani felt it was her fault for this somehow, she had technically been put in charge since she was the Demeter cabin leader, and not only were the strawberry fields part of the camp's cover, they were also important because they were most of the camp's income. "You think we can revive these plants ourselves?"

As Cat dragged Andrew away from the other two half-bloods, he turned to look back, and she heard him whisper, "Call me!" and wave goodbye. Oh, god. She squeezed her eyes shut, wincing as she continued to walk along. When she let them open again, the pale half-blood boy was running his hand through his dark hair, staring at the sunset.
   "She smells like roses," he said.
   Turning, she saw that the strawberry fields were now out of sight. In relief, she released Andrew's shoulders and gave him a light shove.
   "I'm going to leave now," she informed him, relieved to finally get him off her back. "And you should steer clear of the strawberry fields for now. Don't want to kill Leilani's planting efforts, right? That would really make her unhappy."

"Yeah, sure," Jericho said quietly, making a small shrugging motion. "I was basically done with my section for the night anyway. He continued to tend to the plants, making sure not to rush any of their growth. It was a delicate process, and each responded better if it was done carefully and not all at once like an instantaneous growth would go. He felt slightly awkward for not making conversation with the girl next to him, but he had no idea what to say.

Andrew continued staring into the sunset, muttering to himself, "Roses," over and over again.  He looked up to Cat eventually, and asked her something. "Have you ever fallen in love?"

Leilani began working on plants, after dismissing her siblings. she appreciated Jericho's silence, knowing he was every bit as dedicated to this job as she was. She had always considered Jericho a friend, they had both arrived during the same summer. Leilani returned to making the plants grow. knowing that Jericho was probably doing the same.

(short post but im feeling lazy)

Andrew ignored her attempt to manipulate him into leaving Leilani alone in favor of staring into the distance while repeatedly muttering "Roses..." like a lovesick robot. After a few more moments of that, Cat turned away, intending to go back to the strawberry fields for a little snackfest.
   "Have you ever fallen in love?"
   At the sound of Andrew's question, Cat stopped in her tracks. Turning around slowly to face the son of Hades with a What in the world is with you look, she said, "No. And I don't want any part in that... ridiculous thing. Listen - love screws with people's lives. It makes people let other people hurt them physically, verbally and mentally because they think they love them while the other person really couldn't care less. And even if they do, they're bound to break apart eventually anyway. If that's not stupid and completely not worth it, I don't know what is." She whirled on her heel, ready to leave, but then added, "And really, Andrew, you just met her and you've turned into a babbling idiot, going on about roses and drooling over her. I could see from her face - she was creeped out. Think about that. If I were you, I'd stay away. For your own good. And for hers."
   With that, she walked away, back to the strawberry fields and leaving the child of the Underworld in the dust.

  [The cut-off's coming up soon, so if you guys want to quickly end this, to just submit another post about growing the plants a little more or thinking about what Cat said for Andre, I could then have Cat walk back to the strawberry fields and end it there. Sound good? ]

Andrew glared at Cat as she walked away. He felt like he'd just been slapped in the face. "For your own good. And for hers."That's what she said to him. Those words kept ringing in his head, along with "They're bound to break apart eventually." He balled up his fists, and opened his mouth to yell.

 "You don't know me!! You don't know what's good for me and what's not! So you can just p*** off!!" The words Andrew said surprised him; he'd never, never said the "P-word." Tears formed in his eyes, his anger turning into sadness and worry. The fear of Leilani not liking him struck him, and he was overwhelmed. The anger and hatred towards Cat rose up again, and boiled at the surface. Andrew's breathing was shaky, the tears streaming down his cheeks. He did not brush them off; he kept them falling down, not giving anyone the satisfaction of him trying to be strong.

 Eventually, the tears burned his flesh, and Andrew sat down in the dirt, hugging his knees to his chest. He buried his face in his hands, and sobbed quietly. The time came when he looked up, his tears dried. He stared around at everything: the dirt, the sunset, the cabins, the lake. Andrew took his finger, and began writing in the dirt. Andrew Andreli, Son of Hades is what the dust read. He swiped his hand across it, and it all disappeared. Except three words: Son of Hades .

That's what he was. That's what he's been. That's what he'll always be. A dirty, no-good son of Hades. He would be hated because of his father. He would die alone, no wife, no children, nothing. He would always be just a Son of Hades.

Cat heard Andrew yell after her, "You don't know me! You don't know what's good for me and what's not! So you can just p*** off!"
   The last part threw Cat off. She nearly stopped in her tracks, but kept walking instead. She felt a little guilty for ragging on him so hard. He was just eleven, after all. But then again... he was just eleven. A shame the kid couldn't enjoy his ignorance for a few more years before being sucked into the trap, and then experiencing a whole new level of ignorance. He shouldn't have to be tripping all over his own feet after a girl who was... what, two or three years older? The kid'll end up feeling some variation of heartbreak, one way or another. The sooner he gets over this, the better off he'll be, she thought, setting her jaw. ...Seriously. Roses? All she smelled were the strawberries. Speaking of which...

((Well, I'm not entirely sure what to post... So I guess just more growing plants? >.<))

It wasn't too long before both Jericho and Leilani had finished regrowing all of the plants. "There," Jericho said softly, sitting back on his feet. "All fixed." Standing up, he brushed the dirt off of his knees and shorts. Out of pure politeness, he extended a hand for Leilani to pull herself up. But he made sure not to look at her face to see if she was going to take it or not; that would be too embarrassing.

Leilani was happy when they finally finished reviving the last of the plants, when Jericho extended a hand to help her up, Leilani was more than happy to accept it. she looked at Jericho, "thanks for helping, i know you didnt need to"

Cat came up behind Jericho as he helped Leilani to her feet, the task complete. The strawberries were now looking as ripe and delicious as the rest of the field. Wonderful.
  She tapped Jericho on the shoulder, then stepped around him to face both demigods, stuffing her hands in her pockets with a grin.
   "So..." she said. "Are we allowed to eat these?"


[And... I believe we are done here. ]