Last day of ship week! Awwwwww... As my username may suggest, I'm a big fan of Hecate and an even bigger fan of her demigod children and how their interactions, behaviours and powers work. This story is the first that I'd written for this occasion, but the amount of requests for these two I've gotten has surprised me. So to those who have been asking all week; here is your Miranda and Lou Ellen story.

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters portrayed below.

Dedication: Maddi? I'm pretty sure you suggested this pairing like a month ago? I don't know man, you suggested a thousand things. Even if you didn't suggest it, I hope you enjoy it.

*For those who are wondering who this Maddi to whom all the stories are dedicated, she's the girl who talked me into writing a story a day for Slash week, so if you like these you've got a chicken to sacrifice to her or something.

Maybe Magic

Take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic.

-Frida Kahlo

"Wow," Lou Ellen heard.

The surprise nearly made her lose her connection and focus and she just about dropped the flower she was holding. Well, not exactly holding. It was floating a few inches over her fingertips…

At first, she was scared. It wasn't just because of the overwhelming auras that Lou Ellen exiled herself and hid behind camp's armory to do magic. Above all else, the other campers didn't like magic. Most of them were scared since there hadn't been a huge population of Children of Hecate at camp since Salem in the 1800's. They only knew Children of Hecate and their magic from their experience with Kronos' Army- which Lou Ellen was ready to admit wasn't the sweetest beginning. Some were openly hostile and very honest about how much they disliked enchantments and potions, actually.

But the girl watching her didn't look like she would or could hurt a fly, and her aura was a nice, buttery yellow colour. Lou Ellen liked yellow; it was happy, it was optimistic, it was friendly.

"Hi," she said cocking her head to the side. "Didn't mean to scare you."

There was a tint of green in her aura too, around her fingers most importantly. Nature, health, luck. It was present, but not enough to be her main temperament. Just enough to tell Lou Ellen that this girl was a daughter of Demeter. Well, the dirt beneath her fingernails would have given it away too. Her hair was a soft golden colour, and her eyes were a bright and popping apple green. She was wearing a pair of overalls, a Camp shirt and she was barefoot.

"I just… I think that that's cool," she said nodding her head towards the flower.

Lou Ellen frowned and the blossom fell back in her hand. "It's not very impressive. It's just a simple levitation spell with a…"

"I think it's cool," she said. "My name's Miranda Gardiner."

"Lou Ellen Bhatnagar," she said.

"Can you use that spell on bigger things?" Miranda asked.

"It wasn't a spell," Lou Ellen said. "A spell requires words and much more effort. This was more of an enchantment. Easy and harmless magic that you can do nearly subconsciously perform with only your own energy."

"Oh," Miranda said. "I didn't know there was a difference. Sorry. Can you do that enchantment on bigger things, then?"

"If I were well rested and in the mood, I could lift up the entire Big House," Lou Ellen said. For a second she expected Miranda to run away screaming since that was the kind of thing that Lou Ellen usually only boasted about to her siblings. Instead Miranda grinned.

"That's wicked."

"Not as wicked as this," Lou Ellen said. She unfolded her hand and the flower laid flat in it. By opening and closing her other hand she had the flower opening and closing, opening and closing, opening and closing… like an oyster.

"Wow," Miranda said, truly blown away.

Okay, maybe she was being a bit of a showoff. But Miranda's honest and plain amazement really did make Lou Ellen happy.

The conch horn blew.

"Ice cream!" Miranda grinned. After the Titan War, the counselors had broken down Chiron's willpower and after exactly 27 years of hard work and bloodstained petitions, had managed to make Sunday Sundae Bars a thing at camp. "Are you coming?"

"No," Lou Ellen said.

Miranda arched an eyebrow. "You… don't like ice cream?"

The truth was that Lou Ellen had gone to the first Sunday Sundae Bar, willing to take one for the team and represent the children of Hecate's "integration" into camp, and had realised that everyone was there with a friend. There were no planned seating arrangements like at meals, and so Lou Ellen had ended up sitting next to Clovis, who was snoozing away in a pile of whipped cream and sprinkles.

"I do, I just… don't go to Sunday Sundae Bars," Lou Ellen said.

"Well you have to," Miranda said. "Come with me. My sister's the one who dishes out the sprinkles, so we can probably get extras."

Lou Ellen was truly confused. This girl not only thought that magic was cool, but she also wanted to eat ice cream with her..?

Maybe she'd read her aura wrong. Maybe Miranda was a daughter of Hermes and this was all some horrible joke…

Whatever. Extra sprinkles won her over.

Somehow Lou Ellen found herself drifting to Miranda and Miranda always found Lou when she was doing something magical- fixing the hinges on her cabin with a flick of her fingers, showing her younger siblings how to make drachmas disappear and reappear behind somebody's ear or in their back pockets or under their tongues…

It made Lou Ellen uncomfortable at first, to have Miranda watching her. But soon she realised that Miranda wasn't malicious in any way. She just loved magic. She wasn't scared or spying on the new campers or making sure that no children of Hecate set the camp on fire. She just loved magic. She liked being amazed. She liked not understanding what she was seeing, and was okay with it.

And so Lou Ellen told Harry and Dell and Jean Eugène and all her other siblings to relax and to let Miranda watch.

They told her that Miranda only watched when Lou was doing the tricks, but she didn't believe them at first.

Katie was home for the weekend, and so Miranda was the counselor for Cabin 4. Right now she was watching over Mary Lennox, the youngest camper (age 8) who was currently getting a private archery lesson with Will Solace. Lou Ellen had come to join her, sitting down next to her at the edge of the archery range, and they were talking.

"Lou Ellen, I have a question," Miranda said.

"Shoot," she said. "No pun intended."

Miranda smiled.

"Alright, so I know that you're not a parlour trick magician and I know that you're very serious about your art but I just wanted to know…"

"If I do card tricks?" Lou Ellen guessed.

Miranda bit her lip.

"I get that a lot," she shrugged.

Miranda nodded.

"Sure," Lou Ellen said. "I do. I love cards. First magic I learned was card manipulation. It's classic, it's cute, the mortals love it. Watch this."

She got up and took a pack of cards from the back pocket of her jeans and pulled them out of the pack, shuffling them.

"I'm shuffling them, right?" Lou Ellen asked.

"Yeah," Miranda said.

"Tell when you think I've shuffled them enough."

"Okay… umm… now."

With a quick and elegant gesture, Lou Ellen spread them out in her hand, the coloured side facing Miranda.

"Pick one," she said. "Don't let me see it. Just take it and memorise it."

Lou Ellen started cutting the pack and putting the top pack behind the other over and over- a Hindu shuffle. That was the first thing she'd learned as a child, how to shuffle cards properly, cleanly and neatly. "Tell me when you would like to put your card back in."

"Now," Miranda said. The cards froze in Lou Ellen's hands and as soon as Miranda's card was back in the pack, she dropped the top pack back down.

"Can you do a bridge shuffle?"

"I can't do any shuffle," Miranda said.

"Hmm. I'll teach you later. Hold your hands open and I'll do a shuffle on them, then."

Miranda obliged and Lou Ellen shuffled the cards.

"Still remember your card?"

"Yes," Miranda said.

"Good," Lou Ellen said, picking up the pack and putting it back together neatly. "Alright, so give me one hand now." She put the pack down on Miranda's palm. "Alright, so now I'm going to give you back your card which is the eight of hearts," Lou Ellen said flipping the top card to show Miranda her card.

Miranda's jaw dropped and she accepted the card that Lou Ellen gave her.

"Oh my gods, that's insane!" Miranda said, getting overly excited about a simple card trick. "Oh my gods, you need to have another pack of cards on you…"

"Search me," Lou Ellen said spreading her arms. Miranda patted Lou down and turned her pockets over, only to find a bottle cap and a few drachmas that she'd won over a bet. Then she demanded that Lou do the trick again, which Lou Ellen never did (you never did the same trick twice, because that's when people started really looking for an explanation), but since Miranda was nothing but bright-eyed excitement, she made an exception and obliged. Lou successfully detected the three of spades, the five of diamonds and the queen of hearts twice.

"Okay," Miranda announced. "You just weirded me out."

"Oh, sorry," Lou said. "Let me make it up to you. Okay, here's your first card- the eight of hearts. Now put your card back in, in the center of the pack."

Miranda did and Lou shuffled again, enjoying the look of awe on Miranda's face. A few half-bloods were stopping by, wondering what the excitement was.

"Lilly," Miranda said. "Violet. Come here! These card tricks are insane!"

They came closer, and with them came three sons of Ares. Lou Ellen swallowed. She didn't like anyone but Miranda seeing her do magic.

"She just keeps finding the card I pick and now she's doing something with the eight of hearts-that's my card, by the way, the card she always fings," Miranda blurted.

Lou spread out the cards in her hands, all facing down and told Miranda to touch a playing card. She did, and when Lou flipped it over it was the eight of hearts. Miranda beamed, and Lou Ellen refolded the pack, not touching any cards.

"It seems to like you," Lou Ellen said. "The eight of hearts. Look."

She flipped the card on top of the pack and Miranda just about squealed when she saw the eight of hearts on top of the pack.

"Here, try to get rid of it. Put it back in the center of the pack."

Miranda did and Lou riffled them and snapped her fingers.

"Okay, now check the top."

Eight of hearts. As if it'd jumped back up to the top of her pack.

"Miranda, I said to get rid of it," Lou Ellen said.

"I did!" Miranda said.

"Well clearly not, it jumped right back to the top of the pack," Lou Ellen said. "Okay, let's try this again. Hide it in the pack again… let's give it another shuffle…" Lou Ellen snapped her fingers. "Okay Miranda, here are all the cards spread out… touch one…"

Miranda did, and Lou cut the deck so that that card was on the top. She snapped her fingers and flipped it to show Miranda the eight of hearts again.

"Okay, we need to try something else Miranda, I'm going to put this card on the ground and I want you to put your foot over it…" Lou Ellen said.

Miranda did. She was barefoot, as per usual. Her toes were painted with bright yellow nail polish.

"Okay Miranda, I don't think you were listening at all," Lou Ellen said shuffling some more. "Because –touch a card darling-"

Miranda touched one.

"See, this card here is the eight," Lou Ellen said flipping it over, "is the eight of hearts and the one under your foot-" she said picking it up "-is the three of spades."

"That's ridiculous!" Miranda said. "That's totally impossible, what…"

"Oh well. There's nothing to be done," Lou Ellen said. "You just have an admirer, Miranda."

Miranda laughed. "That's incredible."

"I don't buy it," the son of Ares, Marc, said. "Magic is something that only the gods can do."

"Are you insinuating, son of Ares, that I, eldest living daughter of Hecate, cannot do magic?" Lou Ellen said. A few passers paused hearing the challenge in Lou's voice.

They wandered closer to check things out.

"Nothing like this, anyways," Marc said. "Card magic is just tricks and people having extra cards up their sleeves."

"Excellent theory Marc, but I don't have any sleeves." Lou Ellen said. People laughed.

"Whatever. You know what I mean," Marc said.

"Alright," Lou Ellen said. "Let me prove you wrong. Miranda, could you hold on to these for me?" Lou Ellen said putting the cards back in the pack and tucking them in Miranda's back pockets. She flushed.

"Okay, Marc," Lou Ellen said, pretending to take another pack from her pocket. "This is an invisible deck of cards. See?"

"No."

"Exactly because they're invisible, well done," Lou Ellen said. "Pretend. Alright Marc, so you're going to have to listen to me very closely, understood? Good. Now I need you to take the pack from me… okay, now look at this invisible table in front of you…" she ran her hand over an invisible surface. "Take the cards out of the box, and shuffle them a bit. Did you do that? Good, well done. Now spread them out on the invisible table, facing down…"

With the clumsy gestures of someone who sucked at charades, Marc obeyed, still glaring at Lou Ellen.

"Now take one and turn it over."

He obeyed.

"In the entire pack of 52 cards spread across the table it is the only one that is facing up, yes?"

"Yeah."

"Good, good. Is it the Queen of hearts? No? Good. And it's not the eight of hearts, because that one is still lusting after Miranda..."

A few chuckles arose.

"And it's not the ace of spades? Is it? No? Good. I'm just listing the cards that most people pick. So you're going to turn around to someone born in January in the crowd here- who's born in January? Kayla, alright. Turn to Kayla and whisper in her ear what card you picked…"

He did, looking at Lou Ellen suspiciously as he whispered.

"Did anybody except Kayla hear anything? No, you were very quiet, well done Marc. Alright, now I want you to put the cards back in the pack- all of them facing exactly the same way that they are now, this is very important Marc… Okay perfect. Now throw the pack away as far as you can."

He did and looked at Lou, completely unimpressed with her charades.

"Perfect. Miranda, can you give me back the pack of cards we were fooling around with earlier? Alright, thank you."

She emptied it out in her hand and started looking through them.

"Marc, your card is the one card that was facing the wrong direction in your pack, yes? Okay. What I didn't tell you at first is that my invisible pack was printed on the same day as my solid pack. They're twin packs. They have a connection. So when you turn over a card in the invisible pack… that means that that same card will be turned around in… this pack." Lou Ellen said finally reaching the card turned face-up.

Kayla's face gave it away. Marc had picked the three of spades, and that was the card that Lou Ellen had in her hand.

"Here you go, Marc," Lou Ellen said handing him the card. "You can hold onto that if you like, it'll find its way back to my pack in due time… Oh and Miranda." She turned over the next card and handed Miranda the eight of hearts. "Same for you."

Lou Ellen smiled at Marc and the half-bloods around her started clapping admiringly.

It made Lou Ellen uneasy. Such a big crowd of people watching her perform… what would be the repercussions? Someone setting fire to a pack of cards and leaving it on her doorstep- thus making all the other packs in the cabin unruly for future tricks? Graffiti on the cabin?

Miranda smiled as she clapped, and that made Lou Ellen's fears wash away.

She took a showy bow.

"How did you do that?" Miranda asked her when the crowd had dissipated.

"A magician never reveals her secrets," Lou Ellen said. "Sorry. Check your pocket, by the way?"

Miranda checked her pockets. The eight of hearts had, in fact, returned to Lou's pocket.

"You're so good at magic," Miranda said as they walked to supper. "And so much more confident in front of a crowd while you're doing it… So natural, so chatty."

"Magic makes sense," Lou Ellen explained. "It's good."

"You mean there's a structure to it?" Miranda asked.

"There are types of magic," Lou Ellen said. "When you get really good at one you can use it in all kinds of ways- for show, for battle, whatever."

"Types like what?"

"Well it's something that my siblings and I have regular screaming matches about, but there are nine mostly acknowledged ones. Production, Vanish, Transformation, Restoration, Teleportation, Escape, Levitation, Penetration, and Prediction. The idea is that if you master all nine, you've gone as far as a magic-maker can go. You can mix them up too."

"Which ones are you good at?" Miranda asked.

"Production, vanish, and penetration are my solid ones," Lou Ellen said. "I used restoration a lot in the War. I can do transformation rather well but my mother hasn't acknowledged me for it yet, so I still have some work to do, and I can't use it in public. I'm working on levitation as well."

"Production like how you made the eight of hearts appear at the top of the pack all the time," Miranda guessed.

"Sort of," Lou said. "I can't explain my tricks."

"Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, you told me that already!"

"I can just explain the big theories of magic," Lou said. "And some tricks require the use of two types. Like, for example, if you want to take a dove, put it on a stool, cover it up with a shawl, and then take the shawl away so that the audience to see a rabbit there. There are different ways you can do that. You could use Transformation to make the dove a rabbit. Or –and this is what most beginners do- you could make the dove vanish and make a rabbit appear. Right?"

She thought that that would bore Miranda sufficiently to make her stop asking questions, but Miranda was still looking at her, bright-eyed and interested and totally engrossed.

"Okay," Miranda said.

"And different magic types work better for certain things- parlour magic, micromagic, mathemagic, scéances, escapology, shock magic…"

"What's shock magic?" Miranda asked.

Lou Ellen took the pencil that Miranda, careless with her beautiful hair, had used to make a bun, held her tongue out and passed the pencil right through.

Miranda screamed and Lou Ellen started laughing, which hurt like a hellhound.

"Ouch!" She said, pulling the pencil out. She clucked her tongue as if she'd eaten something sour.

"Okay that's disgusting," Miranda said. "I think I liked the card tricks much more."

Lou Ellen laughed again.

"You know something that I admire about you?" Lou Ellen asked.

"Hmm?" Miranda asked, looking up at Lou with her big green eyes that matched the tinges in her aura.

"You always walk around barefoot," she said.

"I lived on a farm before my grandpa died and my dad had to sell," Miranda said. "For the first six years of my life, I didn't wear shoes."

"Same," Lou Ellen said. Although no farms were involved in her particular shoe less upbringing. Her dad was pretty sure that shoes were a government conspiracy to track the every move and the endurance of their citizens. It was also worth noting that Lou had grown up with tin foil weaved in her hair and no electricity at a conspiracy theorist camp- where they ate organic, vegan and local. (Meeting the goddess of magic hadn't sat well with her father, clearly).

"So don't wear shoes," Miranda said simply.

Lou Ellen bit her lip. When she'd been on the run, shoes had been her first step to fitting into the real world. When she'd been onboard the Princess Andromeda, the S.S. Oceanus or at Camp 17, shoes had been part of the uniform that Kronos regulated tightly. And here, where everybody was already watching her every move, she didn't want to stick out more.

Miranda smiled at her, and Lou tugged on her laces and kicked off her sneakers. The laces tied themselves together and slung themselves over her shoulder.

The grass was ticklish and wet under Lou Ellen's toes.

"Better?" Miranda smiled.

"So much better," Lou said.

Miranda laughed.

Now Lou Ellen was starting to seek out Miranda as well. Sometimes Miranda would ask for a magic trick, or sometimes they would just talk about camp life and home life and how much they missed Sunday Sundae Bars (which was apparently only a summer event). Sometimes Miranda would be tending to the flowers hanging in the boxes under Cabin 10's windows or tending to the strawberry bushes or to ill naiads.

She knew that Miranda enjoyed Lou's company out of hope that she'd get to see a trick, or just because being around the Hecate counselor -with her wacky changing eyes and weird hairstyles and generally unsettling aura- made her feel special. She wasn't an idiot. But she was ready to take what she could get in this world, and if this was it, well Lou was much luckier than some other people.

Today Lou Ellen found Miranda in the strawberry fields. Miranda spotted the differences in her aura right away. There was a reddish glow circling the normal one.

"What's wrong?" Lou Ellen asked. "Why are you mad?"

"These stupid sea gulls keep picking at the strawberries," Miranda said. "Strawberry season is almost over. We really, really need to get as much as we can out of the crops this year- you know, to help pay the new construction and all the medical supplies- but these stupid sea gulls keep eating the berries… As if the normal crows weren't bad enough!"

"Ouch," Lou Ellen said. "I'm sorry."

"You don't need to apologise," Miranda said. "It's just hard, and the entire cabin's a bit let down… we had a harder season than usual, what with only one son of Dionysus to help us out and all the injuries and missing people…"

"I'm sorry," Lou Ellen said. She thought for a second. "Give me a second."

She sprinted away from the fields and knocked on Cabin 6's door. Annabeth answered. Lou Ellen could hear some pretty heavy conversations about angles and power in the background.

"I need to borrow some paper," she said breathlessly.

"What kind?" Annabeth asked. "Why?"

"Just regular paper, cut in squares please," Lou said. "Perfect squares. It's to help Miranda. You know Miranda Gardiner?"

"Yes," Annabeth said. "Give me a second, I'll check what we have."

When Annabeth came back out and handed her a pack of square paper, Lou Ellen sat right down on the porch and started folding them into tiny little birds.

"What's that for?" Annabeth asked.

"To help with the berry crop," Lou said.

Annabeth had the wisdom not to ask, and to retreat back into her cabin to calm down a rather intense squirmish about the advantages of celestial bronze over Stygian iron.

When she got back to the field with tiny origami birds in her arms, Miranda look confused at first. Lou Ellen delivered a quick prayer to her mother and then blew on one of the birds. It flew out of her cupped hands and soared a bit over the fields before landing next to Miranda and cuddling against one of the plants. Lou Ellen repeated the process for all seven birds.

"What's this?" Miranda asked, smiling.

"It's not a permanent solution," Lou Ellen said. "I mean, I'm not the best at levitation spells and their cousins, plus the paper is done for after the first rainfall but…"

"Lou!" Miranda said. "Deep breath. What are these birds here for?"

"They're guards," Lou Ellen said. "They'll keep real birds away from the berries."

Miranda smiled.

"I got claimed there," Miranda said pointing to a big tree lining the forest. "I'd been in Cabin 11 for five days, and one of the unclaimed guys -who's now in Ares, by the way- threw a piece of trash at a nymph. I yelled at him that he shouldn't litter and that I hoped he went to Tartarus. It was the first time I talked since I'd gotten to camp."

Lou couldn't help but laugh. That was exactly like Miranda.

"I'm not laughing at you," Lou Ellen laughed. "I'm laughing with you. It's cute."

Miranda smiled lopsidedly. "Yeah... Most people get claimed just because, but I got claimed for telling a guy to go to Tartarus over a Doritos wrapper. A Doritos wrapper that would have destroyed an ecosystem and poisoned a nymph and prevented dozens of blades of grass from getting the light they needed for photosynthesis- but still a Doritos wrapper."

"Yeah?" Lou Ellen asked. "I got claimed after going through all seven Harry Potter books and finding a justifying branch of magic, talisman or potion for each spell ever cast."

It was Miranda's turn to laugh after that one.

Miranda had been watering the flowers in the boxes outside of Cabin 10 when Lou had walked into her cabin to change her shirt after getting it seared on the climbing wall. When she walked out, Miranda was getting chewed out by Drew.

"Go away." Drew said. "We can water our own flowers."

"I'm sorry," Miranda said trembling. "It used to be my job when Silena was-"

"Silena's gone," Drew said bitterly. "And I don't want you around our cabin. We can handle ourselves, even if we are children of Aphrodite."

"I never said that you couldn't," Miranda said.

"You were thinking it, you all do. Now go hug a tree or something."

"Drew, leave her alone," Lou said crossing the Center Green. The little girl by the hearth smiled at her as she walked by, but Lou was too focused and mad to smile back. Hopefully she knew.

"You don't need to be here you little witch," Drew said.

"I'm not a witch, I'm a magic-maker," Lou said. "Stop using slurs. And seconds, stop yelling at Miranda. She was trying to help."

"I'll call you what I want and keep her away from my cabin if I like it," Drew said. "What are you going to do? Turn me into a toad?"

"I could, but toads can still make noise," Lou said.

Drew was about to answer, but then she realised what had just happened. Lou had turned her lips into one giant scar.

Drew rushed back into her cabin.

"Thanks," Miranda said breathlessly. "Did you just transform her lips into a scar?"

"Yeah," Lou said. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," Miranda said. "But I didn't know that your mother had acknowledged you for transformation, that you could use it outside of practise."

"No," Lou Ellen said. "I used it out of necessity."

Miranda smiled at Lou.

"Nice handy work. Very admirable."

They were sitting at the edge of the dock with juice boxes that they'd stolen from the counselor meeting. When summer had officially ended, Katie was only at camp on the weekends and Miranda would replace her as counselor.

Miranda was wearing an old t-shirt that had been died with dirt from some Canadian island, a straw hat and her torn up and well-worn gardening jeans- jeans that had been ruined and dirtied multiple times and smelled like dirt and compost even when they were fresh out of the drier. She still wore them, and said that the only downfall was that the gloves would always fall from this hole in the back pocket. She still managed to look dainty and fairy-like and entirely at ease with herself. It was cool.

They were talking about how boring the meeting was and Miranda was complaining about how Clovis kept falling asleep on her shoulder and he drooled in his sleep. Lou Ellen was laughing at how gross that was, when the wind picked up and Miranda's hat flew off into the water.

"Oh no," Miranda said. The flicker of her aura –from cheerful yellow to bummed out blue- immediately got Lou going.

"I've got you," Lou Ellen said getting up and stepping onto the water. That's right, stepping onto the water. Percy Jackson used to laugh and call it her Jesus impersonation. Carefully and slowly, Lou stepped towards the hat, careful not to lose her focus and drop straight into the water. She reached the hat and brought it back to the dock, like a hero. She even plopped it back on Miranda's head and made sure to tuck each curl back under it, just like she'd been wearing it earlier.

"Wow!" Miranda said. "What… that's so cool! What kind of magic is that?"

"Penetration," she said. "I just perform the opposite procedures."

"Wow," Miranda repeated. "My hero!"

Apparently a new demigod had just stumbled across the boundaries, so the counselor meeting had been put on hold as Chiron went out to comfort the shivering and terrified twelve-year old. The counselors decided to play cards (poker, more precisely).

Miranda was shuffling the deck and she was so bad at it that Lou Ellen made her stop.

"You were supposed to teach me!" Miranda blushed. "We never got around to it."

"Oh gods," Lou Ellen said getting up and standing behind Miranda. "Okay. First, your grip's all wrong. You need to hold the pack like this."

She took Miranda's hands and pried her fingers to the right place. Warmth spread Lou Ellen's hands -magical energy- and she had to push it down. She hadn't meant to perform a spell...

Then she realised that it was just the thrill of touching Miranda's hands.

Oh.

She was tempted to let go of Miranda's hands and say that they couldn't waste poker time and just hand the deck to an impatient looking Clarisse La Rue, but she sucked it up and guided and talked Miranda through the most basic shuffle she could think of. For someone who so delicately nurtured plants and picked flowers, Miranda sucked at it but eventually they got it right.

"Great," Clarisse said. "Now give me the cards so we can get something going here."

"I hate having my hair down," Lou complained as she tugged at the ink black strands- which were dead and burned by too many spells gone wrong anyways.

"Well, why didn't you tie it up?" Miranda asked.

"No time," Lou Ellen said. On account of a potion gone horribly wrong, she hadn't slept and hadn't had time to do her hair in the morning. She knew a lot of good spells that made braiding and twisting and pinning up her hair easy, but even that had been out of it.

"Let me do it," Miranda said. "Sit."

"We've got cabin inspections to do," Lou stuttered.

"Sit," Miranda ordered. Lou Ellen sat on the central hearth and Miranda started expertly pulling and crossing Lou's hair, saying things like 'I'm jealous of the length' or 'tell me if I'm pulling too hard' when really all that Lou Ellen could think was 'eeeeeeeerrrrrr'.

If Miranda was going to play in her hair every time that it was down, Lou Ellen was never using magic to tie it up again.

Something that had quickly become clear about Miranda was that the girl was a dreamer. Dreams and magic went hand in hand really, so this only made sense.

They'd be walking through camp and Miranda would point at an empty patch of grass and go we should grow potatoes there or wouldn't that be a nice spot for a rain barrel? Oooh- no, one of those giant games of chess! Wait, no, I hate chess. A playground! Yes, let's make the Cabin 9 boys build a jungle gym here!

She saw fountains and outdoor showers and ponds for aquatic plants where Lou only saw emptiness. Some of Miranda's plans were delusional, but that didn't make them any less fun to listen to.

"Chicken coop," Miranda said. "We need a chicken coop."

"No!" Lou Ellen said.

"Why not?" Miranda said. "Fresh eggs every morning is the best!"

"But chickens are so noisy!"

"So is Cabin 11, but we keep them around!" Miranda argued.

For once Lou Ellen didn't have a comeback.

"I still won't back you up if you bring it up at a counselor meeting," Lou said.

"We could name one Audrey!" Miranda said, as if that was a seller.

"Hey Miranda. Want to see some shock magic?"

"No I don't want you to put a pencil through your tongue again!"

"No, no, no," Lou Ellen said. "It's much more mild," she said taking a pack of cards from her back pocket. That's what sold Miranda, really. She loved card tricks.

"Pick a card," Lou said. Miranda did.

"Can I show you?"

"Sure."

Miranda flipped it over. Queen of hearts. Telling card, really.

"Alright," Lou Ellen said unzipping her hoody. "See my collar bone?"

"Yes."

"I want you to push the card against it. Face down, okay?"

"Okay," Miranda said. She hesitated before obeying. A warm feeling spread through Lou Ellen's chest.

"Okay, that's enough. Now pull the card back."

Miranda did and gasped. A card –the queen of hearts- was now tattooed against Lou Ellen's collarbone.

"Whoa," Miranda breathed. "That's so cool."

"Yeah," Lou Ellen said. "Check your card."

The original queen of hearts was now blank.

"When I was on the run that's how I kept maps and stuff without having to carry them."

"Does it hurt?" Miranda asked.

"It's not a real tattoo," Lou said.

"Your skin is reddish."

"That's just because of the card's suit," Lou reassured her.

"Can you… take it out?" Miranda said. "I mean, could I take back the queen of hearts?"

"No," Lou said. "It's going to stay there a while."

"That's fine by me," Miranda said, smiling meaningfully.

"I never liked her much," Lou Ellen said as a stuck up demigoddess walked past them after saying something rude about how they looked like hobos when they weren't wearing shoes.

"I bet she's... sweet to... you know, some people," Miranda said.

"No," Lou said. "Bad aura."

"Bad what?"

"Bad aura," Lou Ellen said. "Such a deep red- it's hostile. But it flickers. She's so insecure. Sometimes it flickers to grey because of how disturbed and restless she is. Then it gets this murky green for how concerned she is about everything- goes with insecurity a lot of the time. Gold- she's had a really posh kind of life. And these colours- they've taken over everything else about her. I don't know her story, but I wouldn't want to waltz into it now."

Miranda was quiet for a while. "People have auras?"

"Sure," Lou Ellen said. "Even gods."

Miranda studied her hands. "Even me?"

"Yeah," Lou Ellen said. "You do."

For a second her colours flared.

"What does it look like?" Miranda asked.

Lou Ellen gulped.

"Yellow, mostly. Yellow's the colour of happiness and joy and all that, smiles and optimism. Warmth and amity and everything like that. You kind of go from a soft, buttery and calm and peaceful yellow to this bright canary colour that fills everything around you will life. Your aura's not solid though, it's like sunlight- warm and nourishing and sustaining. There's a bit of green too -a really intense pine green like the forests around camp, but not for tradition and wealth and stuff, it's because your mother's a nature goddess. Around your chest you've got some pretty solid and deep and luxurious brown- connection to the earth, integrity... you've got... you have a gorgeous aura. An aura that's easy to read, stable, open, unchanging. You're permanent, and all that stays is all good things."

She blushed furiously. She felt like she'd said too much, but at least she'd kept her yap shut about the pinkish, loving glow that tinged Miranda's face.

"And what about your aura?" Miranda asked, smiling contently.

"Mine?" Lou Ellen asked.

"Sure," Miranda said.

Lou Ellen shrugged. "I don't know."

"What?" Miranda asked, horrified. "How could you not know?"

"I can't see my own aura," Lou Ellen said.

"Hmm," Miranda asked. "That doesn't seem fair."

She shrugged again. She'd never really thought about it before.

"I bet if I saw your aura, it would look gold," Miranda said. "Gold like Willy Wonka's tickets. Energetic and rich. And there would be some purple too- that's what royals used to wear."

"Because I'm a royal pain in the butt?"

"Because of how good you are at magic!" Miranda said. "Among all your siblings, the entirety of Kronos' army... It's because you're powerful, and not just with magic you just have this energy. You're such a wealth of information, of stories, of advice, of tricks, of jokes, of creativity... You're a treasure. You'd be purple. Maybe there would be some white too, white walls are always the best ones to decorate and add to and get to know. White is always clearest, and you always seem to know what's going on and what you're going to do... And maybe there would be some glitter there to represent Hecate. Oh, and some pink. Just a bit of pink splashed around."

"Thank you," Lou Ellen said. "But that's a pretty rare mix."

"You're a pretty rare person to find," Miranda replied.

They were waiting for Percy and Annabeth to stumble into the counselor meeting before beginning it (every theory imaginable was flying around as people wondered where they were). Lou Ellen was bored with the gossip as she tended to get, and she was working on a new trick. Putting a scarf in a bottle and having it float around.

"Oh, you got your levitation license?" Katie Gardner said out of nowhere.

Lou Ellen looked up with a snap of her head and a frown.

"Miranda was telling me about it," Katie explained.

"Oh," Lou said. "Well, yes, I did."

"Congratulations," Katie smiled. "You know, she really likes your magic."

"I know," Lou Ellen said quietly.

The scarf dropped to the bottom of the bottle.

And that's about it, she thought to herself.

"Where are you dragging me off to?" Lou asked, as Miranda pulled her through the woods.

"My spot."

"Your spot?"

"Camp's forest is really, really strange. It seems to like children of Demeter," Miranda said. "Did you ever hear about secret gardens?"

"Like the movie?"

"No, like, actually secret gardens," Miranda said. "Spots in nature that only one person can find… anyways, camp's got plenty of those. Katie has hers. I have mine…"

Lou Ellen didn't dare to believe that that's where they were going. But Miranda brushed aside a low-hanging branch and sure enough, they walked into a garden that would be destroyed if other campers could walk in at their whim.

It was full of what looked to Lou Ellen like outdoor doll houses. Wheelbarrows, pots, a bird bath and even tea cups displayed on a little table had all been filled with dirt and all kinds of tiny plants and moss types. But the real impressive part was the tiny furniture. There were swing-sets and ladders and fences made out of twigs and string, toadstools made out of clay and toothpicks, wire and bead wind chimes, wells and houses made with rocks and twigs, popsicle stick doors, twigs out of bent wire, tire swings made out of toy wheels, stepping stone paths made with river stones, clotheslines holding up doll clothing… the variety was amazing.

"Miranda, what's all this?" Lou said.

"These are fairy gardens," Miranda said. "Remember how I had to start wearing shoes after my family sold the farm to the government? Well, we moved into the city and I had major issues with the cement and the urban everything. So my father used to make these with me all the time when I was little. He said it was to 'keep my thumbs green'. He told me that it was a safe haven for fairies, a kind of hostel. Every year I asked him if fairies were real and every year he said yes, so every year I believed in magic."

Miranda shrugged.

"You ask me why I believe in magic so hard, well here you are," she said showing all her tiny gardens. "I just wanted to show you my kind of magic, or at least how close to them I can get."

The fact that Miranda hid these away made Lou Ellen realise that she didn't show these to just anyone, and that to Miranda Lou was special.

"Thank you," she said. "These are beautiful and adorable."

She smiled. "You're welcome. But I didn't show you this just because they're cool. I wanted to show you these because… Okay, how do I explain this…"

She took a deep breath. "Katie and I were talking, and we have a theory. I think that you think that I only hang out with you because of your magic."

Lou Ellen's blood froze in her veins.

"Is it true at all?" Miranda asked.

Lou Ellen didn't know what to answer at first.

"That's how it was when I was little. To the kids at school I was a puzzle. I sat at the popular kids' table on the bench that acted as a curio cabinet. That's how it was in Kronos' Army. We were exhausted, the children of Hecate. Tested and tried until we either died, blew up or went AWOL. It's just what I'm used to. And you get this look on your face, every time I pull a coin from your ear or show you the card you touched in a pack. You love magic. You love having your breath stolen from you and you like feeling wondrous about the world. And it breaks my heart a little, Miranda. It breaks my heart a lot that I'm only an obscure science or an aura reader."

"Lou Ellen, I don't like your magic. I think that you're magic." Miranda said. "I think you're incredible and breath-taking and enigmatic and wonderful and interesting and unique- so, so unique."

Lou Ellen nearly wanted to shake your head.

"You're just always doing magic, Lou," Miranda said. "As your safety blanket. As a way to get rid of spare energy. Talking magic was a way that I could make you talk to me and open up. I'm not surprised that you can't see the difference, but I can. There's Lou, and then there's Lou's magic. I love them both, but I wanted to show you these gardens to prove to you that I don't look for you around camp or make faces at you during camp fires because of the magic. I have my own source of magic, since I was little. I do it because you're Lou Ellen."

Lou didn't answer.

"You're not convinced," Miranda said.

"No," Lou Ellen admitted freely.

"What do I have to do to convince you?" Miranda asked.

That's when Lou read her aura.

See, the thing about auras was that if someone's aura changed subtly, and you saw them every day, you didn't register the change. It was like putting a frog in a pot of water over a stove top and cranking the temperature up a bit at a time. The frog didn't notice the temperature until it was dead.

Lou saw a red tint around Miranda's aura, but not the angry red one. Nothing mean or negative like anger. Something soft. Something good.

She grabbed the daughter of Demeter by the back of her head and smashed her lips to her. Surprised at first, Miranda tensed, but then she kissed back. Her lips parted a little bit and her hands too flew up to Lou Ellen's hands. Her energy too became soft and giddy at once. Her fingers too knotted in Lou's hair as if she never wanted to let go.

When they did, they both panted, looking at each other.

"Okay, I'm convinced," Lou said.

"Oh good," Miranda said. "Because I wasn't going to go long without doing that again."

She pulled Lou Ellen back to her.

Upcoming ship weeks

August

10 - 16 - Free slash week

17 - 23 - Free friendship week

24 - 30 - Chris and Clarisse

31 - 06 - Jason and Reyna

September

07- 13 - Jason and Piper

14 -20 - Frank and Hazel

21 - 27 - Calypso and Leo

28 - October 4 - Percy and Annabeth