Claiming:Camp/Tabitha Retford

Name: Tabitha Andromeda Retford Gender: Female God Parent: 1. Demeter 2. Iris 3. Apollo Current Age: 14 Mortal Parent: Charles Ryan Retford Appearance: Personality: Tabitha is in a word oblivious. She will talk to anyone she sees, and won't stop talking. While she is a decent listener, she much prefers having other people listen to her. She has no sense of spatial awareness, often bumping into, stepping on, hitting, or otherwise harming those who wander too close to her. Tabitha will call it like she sees it, and can accidently offend people with her total lack of filter. She has mild Asperger's, and gets absorbed in things like writing, drawing, and biology classes, while crawling through the many things she finds uninteresting. Although Tabitha much enjoys talking with people, she tends to be reclusive, preferring the company of plants, pen and paper to that of people. Tabitha is creative, quick thinking, and brave, although a bit reckless. Tabitha loves talking to things that won't talk back, spending hours reading and telling stories to flowers, trees, earthworms, and is she's really bored, rocks. Tabitha appreciates hard work, but has a hard time motivating herself to reach the level of profiency her perfectionism demands. She's not intentionally lazy, but highly distractable, and can get frustrated if things don't work out the way she thinks they should. History: Tabitha's father, Charles, met her mother Demeter (Sorry, if this cabin is full I will edit this section) while working at a community garden near his hometown of Sacramento, CA. Charles was both an agricultural biologist and an avid backyard gardener, and worked at the community gardens on weekends from 4-8 PM. Charles Retford had studied Greek 'Myths' when he was in Elementary school, and had always been fascinated by Triptolemos and Demeter. This fascination was largely forgotten throughout highschool and college, but after his job was secure and he began having more free time, Charles began thinking more and more about the Greek Gods. Although his career was in agricultural biology, Charles had always harbored the desire to be a farmer, but as he grew older and realised that impractical, he decided instead to work on bringing backyard homsteading to his very modern city. He began with pottted plants in his livving room, and to amuse himself while he worked he would think about and recite myths about his favorite gods. After starting the community garden, he began spending more time outside with plants, and eventually began having imaginary conversations with the goddess. One year, when a frost was forecasted a week before when he and some 4th graders were going to harvest the garden to donate food to the homeless shelter, Charles decided to pray to Demeter. He had always been a casual atheist, but had wanted to find a religon, having been raised with no such opportunity by strictly atheist parents. He prayed at first for Demeter to stop the frost and save his crops, and she did. Demeter had long ignored Charles, but as his prayers and work toward plants and gardening had slowly increased, so had her interest. She would occasionally look down on Charles and his garden, and one day appeared to him in person. Charles had always been a bachelor, devoted to his work and plants more than love for another person. But when Demeter appeared to him one day while he was alone harvesting in early August, he was entirely entranced. Demeter had planned to return to Olympus directly after meeting him- she had just wanted to meet the mortal who knew not of her existence, yet was so entirely devoted to her, but ended up staying with Charles until mid November. At the end of harvest time, Demeter left Charles, and he nearly went insane with loss of the only person he had ever loved. The garden fell into dissarray, and Charles had nearly lost his job, when Tabitha appeared one day in the cabbage rows in the garden. Charles had been wandering aimlesssly through the overgrown plants when he heard her, and had rushed oer to see what was crying so. There he found Tabitha, with a note that read: My last gift to you. Our daughter, Tabitha. Raise her well. ~Demeter. From then on, Charles devotedhis life to his daughter anfd his garden. Tabitha grew up among tomatoes, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, chard, squash, zucchini, and endless variety of berries. Tabitha's first words were ;green' and 'zucchini', and she loved camping underneath the leafy stalks of corn and sunflower in the raised beds, while her father dutifully kept watch. Tabitha attended Preschool at Tiny Tot's playschool, and quickly named her classmates and teachers after vegtables she liked or hated. 'Brusselsprouts' was her 3 year old 'crush', and she would loudly complain about her least favorite teacher, 'mizze Beansprout'. Tabitha wasn't bothered by anything unusual until 8th grade on the playground. Tabitha had been telling her friends stories about Demeter, who her father had taught her about as nothing more than a myth, to her friends. They were laughing and doing Demeter impressions, including looking stuck up while kissing trees, when Tabitha had to run inside to grab a binder. She had been 13 for nearly a year, and the Hellhound took her entirely by surprise. She avoided being bitten by defending herself with her math textbook- she had never liked geometry anyway- and managed to stab the beast in the eye with her magenta colored pencil. When the Hellhound reared back, hurt, she chucked her friend Angie's backpack at the beast and ran out the classroom. Sacremento was busy enough that by the time the taxi had gotten her home the Hellhound had only just picked up her trail. Mortals that day wondered at the out-of-control large black van that zoomed along the highway, unable to see it for the Hellhound it really was. Tabitha managed to arrive home minutes before the monster, and her dad wasn't home from work. The monster reached her doorway, and tabitha fled to the back of the house and into the compact backyard. She quickly scaled an orange tree, and pelted the Hellhound with rotten fruit from a few feet above its head. When the beast managed to tear a hole in her teeshirt with its powerful leaps, Tabitha snapped off a branch of the tree and stabbed it into the monster's remaining eye. Yowling, it dropped to the ground, where Tabitha's friend Angie beheaded it with her blade. Angie quickly explained to Tabithat what had happened, beginning with the fact that she was a Satyr, Tabitha was a demigod, and the monster was a Hellhound. Tabitha ignored the whole explanation, stalking to the front door of her house. When Charles got home from work, he was met with a hysterical Tabitha and irritated Angie, the latter of whom was repeating that she and Tabitha had to go right then. Charles quickly told Tabitha the details of her birth, leaving out entirely who the goddess was. Shocked and frightened, Tabitha was dragged away by Angie into a taxi cab after Angie packed Tabitha's suitcase and Tabitha's dad hugged her goodbye. As Tabitha was fairly young, and not a child of the big three, she was bothered only twice by monsters. Once was by another Hellhound, and Angie just whistled loudly and it instinctively dropped, at which point Angie, half satyr, half demigod child of Ares, and rather violent, beheaded it. The second time they were ambushed by two Empousai shortly after entering New York. The Empousai had been waiting for other demigods, but leapt at the chance to attack Tabitha and Angie, who were alone and seemingly unarmed. They would've died, but Tabitha instinctively called with her mind and the nearby grass skyrocketed, tripping and snaring the Empousai. Angie quickly beheaded the first, but the second one escaped and quickly killed Angie. Once again ignorant, terrified, and alone, Tabitha dived for Angie's sword while the Empousai was distracted, and stabbed her. Tabitha didn't manage to kill the Empousai, but the monster's shreik alerted the nearby demigos, the Empousai's intended prey, to Tabitha's location. They took her to camp, having Tabitha ride double on one of the Pegasai they had rode on. When Tabitha arrived at camp, she was 14, exhausted, confused, lonely, and scared, but has adjusted fairly well, as she has now been at camp close to a month. Possessions/Weapons: Tabitha has Angie's sword, which changed to have a wooden handle when she stabbed the Empousai, a gift from her mother. The handle is nothing special, but it will accept no user but Tabitha. Signing Your Claim: Quillatrin (talk) 05:19, August 5, 2015 (UTC)