Chapter Text
Malcolm woke up with the most skull-crushing headache and nausea, a feeling that is usually associated with talking the Hurricane at Coney Island a million times.
But his friends didn’t wake up with a migraine the size of Texas.
Oh no, they had, in their completely sober manner, crashed straight into his sleeping area.
“What the fuck, dude!?” Mitchell screamed at the post of bunk.
Malcolm groaned, and plopped right back down on his mattress.
He was supposed to meet Annabeth at her school to go over college ideas but guess who wasn’t coming in ‘til 2 in the afternoon.
“It was like 100% weird and 20% kinda gross.” Lacy quipped up behind Mitchell.
Malcolm covered his face with a pillow and screamed.
“That’s not going to help you hangover,” Lacy’s sweet voice cooed. “Listen, I have a brandy egg and oatmeal hangover buster.”
Malcolm lifted the pillow a little bit and saw Lacy’s sweet adorable face smiling back at him.
Lacy’s the sorta pretty the early Disney princesses were held up too. Bright blue eye, straight blonde hair which is always in pigtails and the most adorable dimples Malcolm has ever seen in his life.
“Oh come on!” Mitchell yelled and snatched the pillow from Malcolm’s grasp. “Get up, and get dressed. The African demigods are coming today.”
Mitchell on the other hand was a total opposite.
Lacy was soft pink and pastel and everything innocent.
Mitchell was bright blue and neon and everything loud.
His tall, lanky frame is typical of regular 15 year old. but his hair is forever changing color based on his mood. His dark skin was a shade or two lighter than Malcolm's own. Right now, it was bright red and actually went with the royal blue pants he was wearing.
Malcolm hated Mitchell.
Malcolm sat up and grumbled something like “Africans demigods?” but sounded more like “Awiccan webiguds?”
“Yeah remember, the camp in Tunisia underneath the ruins of Carthage?” Lacy laughed.
“Yeah, like ten of them are coming today.” Mitchell added.
“So get your butt,” Mitchell hit him on the side of head with his pillow. “Out of bed and meet us at the gate.”
Mitchell dropped the pillow unceremoniously on the bed and walked out of the bedroom.
“Well,” Lacy put the water bottle in Malcolm’s hand. “Drink this. Get dressed then meet us at the gate, okay?”
She kissed him on the cheek and bounded after her brother.
Malcolm thought briefly about how his life had come to a 12 year old nursing him after a hangover.
Then decided not to dwell on things he knew, threw his body back on the bed, groaning.
~
“The only cure for a real hangover is death.”
― Robert Benchley
~
“Look who decided to join us.”
“Shut it, Lou.”
In was a cold January day and all the campers were gathering near the gate.
About 100 campers were huddling together, buzzing about the new arrivals, but complaining about the frigid temperatures.
Malcolm has said it before and he’ll say it again, Cold and ADHD do not mix.
“What?” Miranda came and threw an arm around Lou Ellen. “Too busy snogging your new bae?”
Miranda eyed him and handed him a Starbucks cup.
“Or should I say baby?”
Lou Ellen and Miranda started cracking up and Malcolm rolled his eyes.
“Wait!” Will Solace ran up.Their bright blue eyes were shining and dark skin ruddied red from the cold. Their tight curly blonde hair covered with a beanie that read ‘BI AND NOT SHY!’.
“Do you guys think that the hat is too much?” I wanna stand out to the queer demigods but I don’t want to offend anyone.”
“You’re fine.” Lou Ellen said.
“I agree.” Miranda added.
“Did you guys know that conservative groups go into villages in Uganda and spread the Work and the anti-gay agenda with it? Crazy stuff, man.”
Malcolm took a sip of his coffee, while his friends stared him.
“What? I watch PBS.” He countered.
“As usual, your mouth is being used for the wrong things.” Will winked at him, and then took off to tell somebody else on their beanie trouble.
“That has been the fourth time this week, they have done that. I have a boyfriend!” Malcolm sighed.
“First of all, you don’t have a boyfriend. You have a fuck buddy, who hasn’t been around in months. And second, you can’t blame Will.” Lou Ellen clapped his shoulder. “They flirt with everybody.”
“Except me. They know not to mess with me.” Drew said, walking over.
But Drew doesn’t walk. Drew glides. Drew sashays. Drew saunters. Why would Drew Tanka do with as simple as walking?
She plucked the coffee out of Malcolm’s hands.
“Dude!”
She lifted up one gloved finger to Malcolm and took a sip.
Drew made a face.
“Hazelnut and caramel, really?” She asked Miranda.
“Yeah, Katie got a barista job at s Starbucks and she’s been bringing back rejects.”
Drew grinned.
“But seriously Will’s an asshole.” Malcolm started, snatching the cup back of Drew.”
“Will isn’t an ass, you’re an ass.” Lou Ellen poked in the chest.
“Yeah on the ass list, it goes Nico, you, Will.” Miranda added, moving her hand in a laddering motion.
“What did Nico do to you?”
“Nothing, but I know what he did last night!”
Malcolm threw his hands up in the air.
“Oh you guys are so mean.” Lacy said, walking up.
Mitchell threw his arms around Malcolm’s waist.
“Yeah, he was high and Di Angelo’s hot.”
“He’s not that hot.” Malcolm said looking down at the boy wrapped around this waist.
“Yeah his ears are sorta big.”
“Nice cheekbones though.”
“Yeah.”
“Ugh! Girl talk! Let’s get out of here.” Drew sneered at Malcolm and dragged the girls away.
“That was a really bad gay joke and I refuse to acknowledge it!” Malcolm yelled after them.
Malcolm sighed and looked back down at Mitchell.
“You aren’t getting off, are you?” He asked.
“Nope.”
“I’ll suck your dick.”
“Like you did Di Angelo?”
“Oh fuck off.”
He shoved the younger demigod off of him.
Malcolm wondered about Mitchell.
He was only 12 during the Titan war.
And he is only 15 now.
Drew tells him that Mitchell’s fine.
He eats, he sleeps. He annoys her to no end.
Malcolm lost 20 pounds after the Titan War.
But Mitchell?
Mitchell was fucking resilient.
“Hindu charms.” He told him once. “My father showed me once on winter break.”
He had pulled down the collar on his shirt to reveal words to his collarbone.
“शक्ति. बुद्धि. स्थिरता. Strength. Mind. Stability.”
Then he pulled out a crucifix on a chain.
“And some good old fashioned praying. My sister wants to be a nun, you know. I tell her no, I would miss her too much. Then she tells me I’ll visit her. She’s only six.” He smiled fondly at it then put it back in his pocket.
“Hey Hermes!”
A voice snapped him out of his daydream.
It was Will. That asshole.
“Get your head out of the clouds, they’re here!”
~
“It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity.”
― Dave Barry
~
The Africans were actually really cool.
“Our camp is different from this one.” One girl, Tanastswa had told him. “We are this weird mix of Bantu, Phoenician and Greco-Roman gods. We are what the world would have been if Carthage had won the Punic Wars.”
She was tall, 6ft 9 at max and skinny but the others told him that she was fast. Her skin was the same color as the sand of the Long Island bank and her dreads were constantly changing with ornaments. A daughter of Hermes who could run from Cairo and Alexandria in under a hour.
“Whenever I come to America, people always ask me for autographs. For the longest time, I was just writing ‘Tana’ on these basketball jerseys. And then a little boy was like ‘Tana? Who’s Tana?” Turns out you have a basketball player, Brittney? Yeah, Brittney Griner. She’s like my twin or something.”
They had blended to camp life easily.
Tanastswa would run with the dryads.
She had a crazy laugh that whipped through the trees and the camp.You could hear her from miles away far into the forest.
She had taken a liking to Hazel Levesque. She would tell her stories about Liberia and in return, Hazel would tell her about Hati, where her grandmother was a slave. Sometimes Malcolm would join too and talk about his black father back im Russia, who found the American Dream was nothing and went back to a country that still never wanted him.
There was a son of Mars, who was surprisingly docile.
He would just sit next to Hestia at the campfire and tend it with her.
He wouldn’t talk to anyone in his cabin. Clarisse understood his state and made sure no one messed with him. Malcolm thinks he’s grateful for that.
“He used to our champion.” Tana whispered in his ear one day. “Cutthroat and ruthless. Then he went home, back to ʿIzrāʾīl, his village in Southern Tunisia. He came back broken. We never figured it out.”
There was a daughter of Melqart, a Phoenician equal to Hercules, who looked meek and fragile at first glance but then Malcolm saw her spar with Jason Grace. She didn’t use a weapon. He used her bare fists. She wrapped her right hand in string and cloth and kept the left one free. Her moves were quick and precise, the Roman being knocked down within a span of 4 seconds. She helped the ex-praetor up with a smile and a pat on the back. Jason couldn't look her in the eyes for days. Until she had stod up at lunch, marched up to Cabin One's table and sat right down and told him to meet her in the arena in five so she could show him the way of Dambe.
There was another boy, Abidemi, who seemed to pull in the demigods, African and Greeks alike.
He seemed extremely fond of Nico and Nico of him.
When Malcolm asked him about it, he would just blush.
“He’s a great guy, Malcolm. Don’t think too much of it.”
“He’s a son of Tanit, you know.” Tanastswa sat down next to him during the campfire, looking to where Abidemi was recounting the story of the Illiad to the younger campers. “His mother is the most important deity at our camp.”
“Yeah, he’s a great guy.” Malcolm replied, echoing Nico.
“He used to be a great leader too.
“Used to be?
“During Ukuqala Kokuphela, you called it the Titan War, I believe? The Umkovu, uh zombies, came up and started wreaking havoc all over the Sub-Saharan Africa.”
“So all those ebola breakouts and AIDS resurges…”
“The Umkovu. We fight every day. All across the continent. But 3 years ago, a particularly bad wave was coming; our ساحرة, much like your oracle, had heard whispers about the end from the underworld and from the gods up above. But Abidemi couldn’t allow that. None of us could. He led a small group to Tokbual, the mountain where Atlas used to sit.”
“In the High Atlas Range, correct?”
“Correct. He just sat there. Sword of Ba’al put down at his left side and me on his right. Then the sky fell. We all knew what it was. The collapsing of the western state. The return back to Mama Africa. That’s what the ساحرة called it.
“But Abidemi caught it and held on. Your champions Annabeth Chase and Percy Jackson. They held on for a short time each, right?”
“Yeah.”
Annabeth had told him it was one of the painful things she has ever done. Her shoulders ached for days, her legs were still not quite right. Even as the silver streak in her hair faded, her pair never did.
“Abidemi held it for 72 hours.”
“72 hours, while we…?”
“Yes, while you faced the Titan Lord, Saturn and the Romans brought down his dwelling.”
“And the Vikings did the exact same thing. But to the North.”
“He was beautiful, holding the sky, but he came down from the mountain, knelt at my feet and said,
‘Tanastswa Akpu-nku , daughter of the Roman Mercury and faithful daughter of Carthage, I’m deeming you Mama Africa.”
“He pasted his leadership onto you?”
“While he was holding the sky, I led the team back down, and slaughtered anyone who tried to get up the path. Many died; I went down with 30 and back with 7.”
“Wow.”
“Your camp wasn’t the only one to gain losses in their fight.”
“Shortly after he stepped down, he came out.”
“Abidemi’s gay?”
Malcolm didn’t believe it. The way he was flirting with some of the Apollo girls made him throw that idea to wind.
“No!” Tana laughed. “He’s trans.”
“Trans?”
“Believe it or not, he used to be Mama Africa.”
“Are you sure you should be telling me this?”
“Oh please. He’s been out for 5 years. He’s completely transitioned.”
She sighed and looked at him again.
“And he’s my best friend.”
~
“I mean, this is what you say. "I ain’t left nothing in Africa," that’s what you say. Why, you left your mind in Africa.”
― El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
~