Why My Dear, That Would Be A Deer (closed)

POV: Nephele Mclean
_____________________________

Nephele walked from the Stables, having just payed a visit to her favourite Pegasus, Wise-Guy. She liked to drop by and spend some time with the equestrians every so often, feeding them apples and making sure they were all nicely groomed and taken care of. She had a special soft spot for Wise-Guy, though. She always made sure she gave him a significant amount of her attention on her visits. She was amazed at how fast the colt was growing. Soon, he'd be taken out for flying lessons of his own and trained to carry riders. 

On her way back from the visit, Neph decided to cut through the Strawberry Fields, where she could take part in another one of her favourite activities, which just happened to be growing things. Nephele especially liked growing strawberries because they just happened to be her favourite fruit. 
When she got to the fields, she noticed three campers. Two children of Dionysus growing vines, and one girl talking to a baby deer. Nephele couldn't help but drop her jaw. The fawn was absolutely adorable, and Nephele wanted so badly to approach it. After some hesitation and mental debate, Neph decided that life was too short to not approach a complete stranger in order to bond with a baby deer. She took a few careful steps forward until she got as close as she dared. 
Nephele hiked up her floral maxi dress to allow herself to crouch down and look softly upon the small animal. 
"Hello," she spoke, addressing both the girl with her back turned towards her and the deer in her heavily Caribbean accented, yet soft voice. 
"Who's this little sweetheart?" She asked, this time talking about the animal in front of her.   

A wide smile appeared on Nephele's face at the invitation to pet the baby deer, now known as Asku. She stood up straight and walked up towards the girl and the animal, crouching down to scratch behind Asku's ears gently. He was soft, and felt so delicate beneath her touch.
"Lost, eh? I guess he came to the right place... You want some help finding where he belongs?" Nephele asked. The daughter of Persephone was always enthusiastic and ready to help the wild life around her. She couldn't imagine standing by helplessly while Asku tried to find his home again. Suddenly, Neph remembered that she had some left over pieces of chopped up apple with her, stuffed in a baggie located inside the hidden pockets of her dress. She quickly fished the baggy from her pockets and fed the baby a few very small diced pieces of apple. Asku's lips were velvety on the palm of her hand, just like the Pegasi's had been.

Nephele took a moment to regard the girl who could talk to deer. She tore her gaze from Asku, and looked into the warm brown eyes of the person so kind as to help the small fawn.
"Hey, I know you," Nephele realized out loud. The dark brown hair and tanned skin had seemed so familiar to Nephele before, but now that she'd looked at the facial features of the girl she stood face to face to, she realized that it was one of her cabin mates.
"You're Xanthe Capalidi. You live in the Hermes cabin." At this point, Neph was just repeating things that Xanthe already knew about herself, so she decided to stop looking stupid and stopped talking. Nephele stood up straight and faced the girl, allowing Asku to nuzzle her shin as she'd stopped petting him. Nephele had never really been that well acquainted with Xanthe before, and it had never struck her as a problem before now, but the realization that she had never talked to this person, who shared a cabin with her made her feel highly unsociable and awkward. She'd have to change that.
"I- uh. I'm Nephele Mclean. I also live in the Hermes cabin..." Neph cursed herself for continuing to state the obvious. All she'd wanted to do was avoid an awkward silence between the two. "But you knew that," she decided to throw in.

Inwardly, Nephele didn't really know what to do with the compliment. She wanted to deny it, thinking otherwise about the name she'd heard too many times to think of as beautiful. She constantly got compliments on her name, but it was just a name to her, it didn't hold anything special. Instead of shooting down Xanthe's sweet words, Nephele cocked an eyebrow and smirked in the direction of the kind Latina.
"Thanks. My dad named me after a cloud Nymph or something... He got really big into Greek Mythology after meeting my mom and learning she was a Goddess and stuff... Xanthe is a nice name too. I've never heard anything like it before." Neph kept a smile on her face as she briefly thought about the name. It had a tropical vibe to it, which she liked. Tropical things reminded her of back home in Trinidad. She liked to surround herself with things that reminded her of home.

Nephele wanted to ask Xanthe where she was from, but a sudden soft headbutt making contact with her shin forced her concentration back down on Asku, who wagged his sweet little cotton tail as he wobbled around on his lanky legs. Nephele decided to prioritize the lost baby fawn instead of questioning Xanthe about her life.
"I guess we should start looking for your home, huh?" Nephele bent down once more to give Asku another brief scratch behind his velvety ears and cooed gently to him, before she brought her hazel eyed stare back up to meet the comforting gaze of Xanthe. "Where should we start?" She questioned.

Nephele stood, internally envious of Xanthe's ability to talk to animals. She knew she could talk to bats because they were the sacred animal of her mother. Nephele had had a few conversations with bats before in her life. They were sweet animals, very misunderstood by humans. Often, Nephele would sit out by the forest as late as she could before the Harpies would find her and listen to the winged animals talking to each other in the night. They always seemed to gravitate to her, as if they knew who her mother was. To be honest, they probably did.

Once Xanthe had gathered enough information from Asku, Nephele was told that the last place the fawn had been was on a hill. Although there were many hills around camp, a certain hill instantly popped into the daughter of Persephone's mind.
"I think we should start looking at Half-Blood Hill. It's right near the forest, so if he came from anywhere, it was probably there." It seemed like a no-brainer that the fawn would have wandered into camp on his own from there. Nephele briefly wondered how he'd gotten passed the border, but realized that the barrier was more a protection from monsters, not harmless forest creatures.

With a soft smile directed towards Asku, Nephele began to walk in the direction of the hill. The soft grass blanketing the ground poked it's way through her toes as she walked. Nephele hated wearing shoes, and barely did. She would only wear shoes if she was training. On any other occasion, she was walking bare foot through camp. It was a practice called "earthing" that bestowed a stronger connection with the earth to the person who walked around on it in bare feet. Nephele seemed to feel the earths natural vibrations more than the next person. Walking on the ground and having it touch her skin gave her more energy and made her happier. She figured it was because she was so naturally close with nature.

Unable to keep silent now that she had someone to talk to that peaked her curiosity, Nephele turned to Xanthe as she walked.
"So," she inquired curtly. "You've been here for what, four, five years? I've been here for three now. How have I barely seen you around camp? What do you even do around here?" Nephele knew that the problem could be that she herself didn't do much around camp but garden things and hang out with her friends at the Demeter cabin, but she asked anyway, curious to hear what kind of things Xanthe got up to around camp.

Nephele listened intently, but perked up at the mention of joke playing. If there was one thing Neph loved to do, it was play jokes on people. She blamed it on her years in the Hermes cabin, as those elfish faced kids could be really bad influences on quiet people like herself. Xanthe continued to talk, and soon called Nephele pretty once again. Neph raised her eyebrows and glanced at Xanthe with a light-hearted grin. She wanted to say something, but decided to look away as Xanthe questioned her about what she did around the camp.
"Mmmm... The camp is a big place," Nephele agreed before answering. "As for me, well, I'm... Around. I like hanging out at the Demeter cabin. I feel more at home there than at the Hermes cabin. I've made many friends while being there. I've started sleeping on some of their empty beds at night, actually... Maybe that's why we haven't seen much of each other." Nephele paused to smile, a light chuckle escaping her lips. "Other than being at the Demeter cabin I'm usually just doing my rounds of camp... Meeting people... Pretty people... You're no exception of that, either," Nephele said casually, hiding the smirk she wanted to play on her lips. She didn't look at Xanthe, just kept her gaze forward, staring at the horizon dotted with bodies of campers lounging around with friends, and trees scattered near the protective barrier of camp. "I'm a lover of pranks too, actually. We should team up some time. We'd be unstoppable!" Xanthe let a wide smile cross her face at the thought. She imagined the pranks she and Xanthe would pull. They'd all be in good fun, enjoyable for both parties. Neph wasn't really a fan of playing pranks that offended or hurt the victim in the process, she liked to keep them fun and sweet. She'd met lot's of friends doing that.
"Other than that, I'm not really too interesting either I guess," Neph concluded with a small shrug of her shoulders.

Nephele took in her surroundings as she, Xanthe and Asku passed the volley-ball courts. There was a group of demigods playing a game in teams of six. The sweating bodies stood in ready stances as one of the teams servers prepared to send the ball over the net. Nephele watched as the ball was tossed into the air and pelted with the palms of reddening hands. Nephele had never been one for sports like that. Sure, she liked dancing, but she'd never been good at playing anything like volley-ball or basket ball. People often blamed her height on it, and she couldn't really argue. It was fairly easy for someone to get the ball over her head to win a point.
Nephele looked away, leaving the demigods to their game and took a deep breath in. Spring was in the air, she could feel it. Nephele was in her prime this time of year. The weather was warming, and outside the border you could see trees beginning to bud very slightly. It gave her a tingling feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Soon, the group of three had made it to the top of Half-Blood Hill. Feeling triumphant, Nephele gracefully sat down on the ground, crossing her legs and began to scratch Asku behind his ears.
"We're close, little buddy!" She cooed lovingly to the baby. "We'll find your mom soon." Asku made a happy sounding noise in response and crawled into Nephele's lap. licking at her forearm as she continued to pet him. Gods, she was going to be so sad when the baby had to return to his mother. But she knew that his mother was probably worried sick for her son. Nephele would never be able to separate a family.
Shielding her eyes from the sun with a free hand, Neph brought her hazel gaze up to Xanthe.
"So, we get him to call for her and wait, then?" Neph asked. She paused for a moment before continuing. "Could you move over to the left a bit? You'd be a perfect shield from the sun." She asked in the sweetest voice she could. Plastering an innocent smile on her lips. "Please."

As Xanthe shuffled into place to block the glaring sun, Nephele looked up at her with a satisfied expression. Xanthe tossed Nephele a pair of sunglasses, which she placed on her face neatly with a wider smile playing across her lips. The tinted glasses de-saturated the world around her, but Neph didn't mind too much. At least her eyes weren't strained by Apollo's blinding sun.
"How do I look?" She inquired, exaggerating the pout in her lips and whipping her head in different directions to model the sunglasses, lightly giggling at how ridiculous she felt.
"Well, now that I've got these you might as well sit down. You're off duty for now," Nephele invited with a wink. She wasn't sure if Xanthe would be able to see the blink of her eye through the tinted glass of the sun-shades.

Nephele continued to scratch behind Asku's velvety ears as they waited for an answer to his calls. The longer they waited, the longer Nephele began to worry about the mother deer. She knew that monsters left animals and mortals alone, but she wasn't too sure about the other animals that roamed outside the borders of camp. Neph was afraid that the mother deer would be too big for her to revive if something had happened to the poor thing.
Nephele was no master in her necromancy ability. She'd had the chance to bring life to a few deceased woodland creatures from the forest, none of them bigger than a raccoon. Smaller souls seemed much easier to guide back.
While she waited, anxiety beginning to gnaw at her chest like a dog on a bone, she brushed her hands gently across Asku's fragile back and began growing flowers to keep her mind off things.

A few daisy's began quickly sprouting from the ground to greet the group of three. Their bright colours lifted Nephele's spirits greatly. Asku's attention turned to them almost instantly. He wobbled towards the flowers with his head turned down, curiosity bounced around in his coffee brown eyes. He sniffed them for a moment, then proceeded to wrap his lips around them and began to nibble the white flowers.
Nephele was never angry at animals chewing on the flowers she grew. She was a vegan herself, and without plants she'd have no diet. Nephele simply giggled in response to the baby's hunger.

Nephele continued to grow flowers for Asku to snack on, but turned her attention to Xanthe. She swept her hazel eyes over the girl she had just met a few moments ago, taking in the warm light that circulated Xanthe's brown eyes and the way her dark brown hair fell around her tanned face. Nephele couldn't help but admit that Xanthe was a very pretty girl.
Nephele propped her elbow on her knee and cupped her face in her hands, drumming her fingers along her cheek as she continued to wait for an answer that never came from Asku's mother.
"Maybe we should take him into the forest," she suggested. She knew that might be a risky move, but she was getting antsy waiting for the fawns mother to call back to him. "Maybe she's too far away and can't hear him." Nephele couldn't hide the worry that lingered in her voice as she spoke. She flicked her gaze from Xanthe to the forest, looking past Thalia's tree and into the dangerous unknown, with the monstrous forces that could be lurking about waiting for them. Nephele's paranoia about something happening to Asku's mother licked at her so violently that she felt as if she had to go out and look for the doe. If she found her too late, she'd definitely not be able to bring her back.
"It'll be fine," she said, mostly to herself but directed the words towards Xanthe. "Let's go out. It shouldn't take long."

Although Xanthe's touch had brought a glimmer of comfort and calmness to Nephele's troubled mind, she followed the taller girl into the forest with her hazel eyes on full alert.
Her bare feet stepped lightly on the forest floor, avoiding the lone twigs and sticks that sat waiting to impale the soles of her feet.
As an advocate for peace, Nephele didn't usually feel safe in the presence of a bow and arrow. Perhaps it was the fact that Xanthe was the one holding the weapon that let Nephele's mind rest easy over the fact. She hadn't known the girl for long, but Neph was confident that Xanthe wouldn't be using the tool for anything other than self defense.
Having not anticipated venturing out into the intimidating forest, Nephele hadn't brought her celestial bronze knife along with her. It sat safe, well, as safe as something could be, in the Hermes cabin, tucked underneath the pillow of her bed. The only defense Nephele had for herself was her ability to manipulate plants. She hoped that would be enough to stop something from mauling her. Neph figured it wouldn't have made much of a difference if she had brought it. She was no expert in combat outside of sparring with people of her skill level and the straw dummies that sat frozen in their spots.
Nephele walked along a large root of a willow tree, gently placing her hand on its trunk and dragging her fingers along the jagged bark, calming herself with the sense of the spirit within the tree, knowing that she was protected by the botanical life of the forest.

Asku seemed to be right at home in the forest. He wobbled along side Xanthe, stopping every so often to stick his black nose into every nook and crevice the forest had to offer him. The fawns curiosity caused a slight smile to creep along Nephele's nude toned lips. Asku was more than likely sniffing around trying to catch his mothers scent, but at the same time he looked as though he was exploring the world all over again.
Nephele was just starting to relax in the environment of the intimidating forest, before she stiffened at a loud cracking noise not too far from where she, Xanthe and Asku walked. It had sounded like a branch had snapped in half. Nephele dreaded to think what could snap a branch in half so quickly.
The daughter of Persephone's hazel eyes darted around the clearing she found herself standing in. Moss between her toes, and trees surrounding her, casting shadows into the horizon to conceal whatever had made the noise in the first place.
Nephele kept her hands at her sides, heart pounding and limbs as stiff as boards. Her fingers extended towards the ground, long vine-like plants succumbing to her whim, twisting themselves around her wrists like rope, driven to protect her.

It didn't take long before their demigod scent had been pin-pointed. The shadows no longer hid cowardly creatures from Nephele's sights. They were coming into view, demonic orange eyes blazing like hell fire, long fangs sharpened to tips like the finely pointed arrow heads that sat in Xanthe's quiver, thick black fur coats pulling light towards them like magnets.
There were three of them, one coming from the right, another from the left and the last, biggest one coming at them straight on with a powerful stride. The pack of Hell-hounds seemed to be taking their time, sizing up the two demigods they planned to attack with calculating stares. They ignored Asku, but the fawn definitely saw them. Stricken with fear, Asku called out once again for his mother.