Claiming:Camp/Sophie Nathan

Name: Sophie Nathan

God Parent: Iris

Mortal parent: David Nathan (later deceased)

Species: Demigod

Personality: Being a pretty open synesthete, Sophie is great at remembering names and places. She loves listening to music and hearing the sounds of camp. Crickets make the most soothing colors and shapes. Sophie

Sophie Nathan has a sense of humor, trying to make light out of the many bad times she has endured, especially of her days feeling depressed or anxious around her mental state before she got to camp. Over the years it was hard her to accept problems of any kind, leading to panic attacks, but by the time Eli brought her to CHB Sophie would be much more at ease with herself, not afraid or annoyed when people asked her questions.

Age: 15

History:

David Nathan was a tattoo artist in boring old Pennsylvania. Business tended to be low, but David was a real artist, and could charge a healthy amount more than any boring old tattoo artist. In his late 20’s, David himself had quite a collection of tattoos, along with a terrible vice for smoking and sometimes drinking. One Wednesday, a customer that was actually around his age (opposed to his usual customers of midlife crises and rebellious teens) came into the his shop. She had pink hair and tan skin and quite a few tattoos herself. The cutie called herself Iris. Iris wasn’t the most unusual name, so the goddess didn’t have to give herself a cover. And from the moment she asked for a rainbow tattoo on her wrist, Iris and David were starry-eyed.

David and Iris went on quite a few dates, Iris dropping a subtle hint that she might not be there for long. “Iris” was an artist as well, but her agent and her were just on tour for inspiration, so she might not be in boring old Pennsylvania for long. After around two months, it seemed both artist’s works were lively with inspiration. Iris convinced David to start working more on an easel and less on his human canvases.

She did him some good, getting his life together. David was sober now, she weaned his smoking a bit, and got him a part time job selling his artwork. And then Iris got pregnant. How long she’d been pregnant, David didn’t know, so he didn’t question when the baby came in only 4 months. Maybe that was the mist’s fault In the hospital, the couple got one look at the baby girl and named her Sophie. “Those baby blue eyes… these baby blues are my favorite color in the whole wide world– and that means a lot coming from an artist like me,” David had said, and Iris agreed despite the fact she loved all colors.

Iris broke the news that night while they were still at the hospital, announcing she had to leave per her agent’s orders. Something about Nevada. “That’s great, I can come with you!” David had been thinking quite a bit about proposing earlier. But Iris said that he “couldn’t, just couldn’t”, and the mist gave him some excuse he would have to accept. Within the first couple years of being a single parent with two unstable part-time jobs, David relapsed heavily back into smoking and drinking. Still, heartbroken about Iris leaving him, David found him another job as an art teacher at a community college. He would only have to work three days a week. The pay was good enough, and he befriended some professors while he was there. That was enough to get him off drinking, at least for a while.

Sophie’s early life was difficult. Up until the age of 5, her father, however hard he tried, couldn’t figure out how to do the things most fathers should. He’d leave her at the college while he smoked in his tattoo shop. Iris had broken his heart and swept it under the carpet in there. He spent too much time in there.

Yet, from then on, they started to bond. At the age of 7, David let Sophie hang around the shop, and she would draw what looked like multicolored shapes and sometimes patterns, floating across the paper. David didn’t bother to ask why she did that. Her social life was small and uneventful. She hung with her friends from art club at school, and started getting into singing when at the age of 9 her father gave her an Ipod. David started seeing more of those non sense drawings shortly after. Sophie had taken to walking around the park near her elementary school and just taking her surroundings in. David didn’t think much of that either. His head those days seemed to be in the clouds. The smoke clouds.

At work, David had formed quite a crush on the english teacher, Ms. Karen Anderson, and a couple weeks after 5th grade ended for Sophie, they had been on many dates. July 4th, Karen and David announced that they would be moving in together. Sophie was bewildered, and no matter how sweet of a mother figure Karen would try to be, Sophie couldn’t help think that Karen would leave one day and it would just be her and her father again. The good ol’ days.

But the days didn’t get better. A late august morning, Karen come home from work and told Sophie that her father was in the hospital. On the long drive there, her step-mother explained that David has lung cancer. She supposed that meant Karen wouldn’t let him buy those cigarettes any more.

It was just Karen and her, but Karen wasn’t around much anyway. That meant more walks and more drawings. Karen came home tired and overworked most days, but finally on thanksgiving, she asked Sophie why she had to many similar drawings. Sophie simply replied that she was drawing the music. Karen asked, confused, what she meant. Now it was Sophie’s turn to be confused. “Doesn’t everyone see those colors?” She clapped her hands to show Karen. “See, now what color is that?” But Karen told her that it didn’t have any color. It was blue, Sophie tried exasperatedly to explain. A jagged blue line at the bottom of her vision.

Crazy. Freeek. Those words became familiar at school. At their school’s band concert, Sophie complained the colors were too strong. She was only met with looks. Slowly Sophie saw that the letter “T” shouldn’t taste like peanut butter, that harps shouldn’t feel like raindrops on her skins. Paper shouldn’t give her the shivers.16 shouldn’t taste like kettle corn. And definitely the number 27 shouldn’t be the color of caramel. But it was.

Crazy. Freeek.

Sometime around Christmas, her father started treatment to prepare him for a surgery to remove his tumor. That was only a little more than a month after Karen and David got married. That’s also when Sophie got called out of school, when Karen brought her to a therapist named Dr. Aria Greg. Dr. Aria Greg’s name looked the colors of lemon rhubarb pie and smooth vanilla yogurt.

Karen had supplied one of Sophie’s drawings, and Dr. Greg studied it with a furrowed brow. She asked if Sophie had ever used drugs. If she felt neglected or had a particularly bad home life. The answer were no all of the times, of course, and Sophie decided right then that she was crazy. Freeek.

After the visit, Sophie swore to Karen she would never go back. Up to her birthday on march 29th, when she would be turning 12, Sophie battled with panic attacks. It only seemed to get worse the more she thought about her mysterious mental state. On the April 1st shortly after her birthday of which she had no party, Sophie was pulled out of school again. It was Karen again. “I don’t know how to tell you this…”

Her father had the surgery. But as you might see where this is going, it didn’t go so well. Sophie felt like her heart was being cut open, smooth silver rods spearing her vision as the pain welled up in her tears. She was just waiting to hear the April fools. She didn’t. Not the next day or the next, or the next one. She was out of school for the next week.

In the beginning of 7th grade, Sophie got her first monster attack. And it certainly wouldn’t be her last.

The day was crisp and slightly chilly, as per early september tended to be. Sophie was walking in the park by her old elementary school, and in was almost deadly empty. Toddlers waddled in front of smiling parents, some old men played chess with rusty glass pieces, and a group of soccer boys from her school were playing a friendly game. Leaves crunched with gold splotches and and a breeze wisped by (yes, like a pochahantas said, “with all the colors of the wind”) with a pale pale blue tinge across her vision. Sophie walked down an empty brick path, counting each step. 2– pale cotton candy pink, 3– black like a club on a card, 4– blue and diluted like it something that was boiled to long, 5– dusty olive green like an only book… each step she took seemed to whisper: freeek.

But something much freakier hid in the bush beside her. The Orthrus leapt out, growling and stepping forward slowly, moving Sophie back. The sound was the thick, lumpy color of grilled ground beef, and shivers were cast of her like fluttering paper. Baring two sharp sets of teeth, the two headed dog jumped at her.

In that moment, it seemed like time slowed down. The sky, despite the traumatic scene, had a distinct rainbow slashing across it. Finally, colors that others could see. It didn’t occur to Sophie that it hadn’t rained recently, giving the rainbow no cause to be there.

Sophie skirted out of her way, though the dog did get a bit of a slash in her collar bone. It growled and barked. Browns, reds, and silvers danced around her vision making dodging around the Orthrus even harder. The loudness and colors overwhelmed her completely and Sophie feared she would have another panic attack.

Somewhere, over the rainbow…

Sophie had an idea. Turning to her toes and sprinting back the way she came, the monster was on her heels as Sophie prayed to all the religions she knew for a miracle.

Somewhere, into the rainbow…

The dog got a good bite of her ankle as she jumped up, somehow through a rainbow, as Sophie could grasp it, landing on the black leather tattoo chair in her father’s closed shop. In a cloud of dust, Sophie looked around with wild eyes. Her leg and collarbone dripped crimson and Sophie used to first aid kit she knew that shop had to have on hand incase of an emergency occurred. Sophie propped her leg up and called Karen, who dizzily muttered something a rapid stray dog and hung up. Within 13 minutes, her loving step-mother arrived and brought a passed-out-from-exhaustion-of-using-her-powers demigod to urgent care. Sophie got bandaged up and her wounds healed by the time October had rolled around.

Sophie would never try to reason with Karen what she had saw, and firmly believed she was honest to goodness crazy. Still, on a warm enough November day, Sophie visited her father’s shop again. A mail woman with pink hair and tan skin and couple tattoos beat her there, apparently. She had a green package. Turning around as she heard Sophie approach, she could see a rainbow tattoo on the inside of her wrist. If only this mail lady knew about rainbows like she did.

“Oh, sorry, the owner… isn’t here any more.” He’s dead. And my father. The mail lady smiled and said that she was looking for someone by the name of Sophie Nathan. Bewildered, Sophie accepted the package and the mail lady bid her adieu. Without being strange enough, Sophie sat a faded dark green bench and opened the package.

Inside a was sword about length of her elbow to the top of her fingers. It was engraved with a rainbow on the hilt. Tentatively picking it up and touching the engraving, the celestial bronze sword turned a gold color, the same one she saw as she was crunching her feet on the ground. Curious, Sophie clicked her tongue and it turned a robin egg blue with ruby specks. Just like she saw. Sophie touched the rainbow again and it returned to its gleaming bronze color.

Sophie would used this sword for her next 2 monster attacks of a harpy and telekhine. Though with dings and bruises from each attack, Sophie almost fully healed every time. Sometime in those two years, Karen convinced Sophie to talk to a neurologist about what they would figure out is a condition called synesthesia, where she experienced two senses at once. Nothing was wrong it her head. In fact, it helped her remember more, like how massachusetts was orange and arizona was a dry, sandy wheat color. At school, talk about her mental state calmed down, and only occasionally would a new student come and ask her the color of their named. Or, they might decide to be annoying (on purpose or otherwise) and explain to her they didn’t like the color and she should change it. Her days of panic attacks would mostly be to an end, as well.

Her last attack was at 15 with a fire-breathing horse has singed off quite a bit of her hair, leaving it the way one might see her as she walked through camp a little later on. A satyr named Eli who assisted her in the attack explained camp half blood and her real mother, along with offering his condolences about her father. That last part turned her blood to ice, but after so many years Sophie had learned to harden herself about the fact she was technically an orphan. So Sophie and Eli made the short car trip to camp half blood, Sophie getting claimed shortly before she arrived, as she inspected her sword. Eli's name was the color of a ripe banana. (She has been at camp for a day, since Eli and Sophie thought it would be safest to arrive at night, when things were quieter)