Up on Mount Olympus, Hera and Aphrodite got into a fight about what love truly is. Hera argued that it should be a lifelong bond never broken, while Aphrodite claimed it was short-lived and, while necessary, broken frequently. They both cursed each other out of anger. Hera was cursed to fall in love with a young boy and, in the middle of the affair, realize what she'd done. Aphrodite, on the other hand, was turned into a peacock.
That night, Hera spotted a mortal teenage boy down in Hartford, Connecticut: Brian Marin. She instantly fell in love with him, thinking he was totally gorgeous. She followed him to a party, where she took on the appearance of a dazzling teenage girl. She saw the boy getting drunk, so she did the same - yeah, it was the type of "you do, I do" relationship. She drunkenly flirted with Brian and they went to the bedroom, getting a little chummy. After the affair, the curse wore off. Hera was shocked and angry, but the damage was done. She fled the party, leaving poor Brian confused and alone in the bed. Back on Mount Olympus, Hera had no choice but to give birth to the little baby girl. She gladly gave it away after its birth to Brian, not even explaining what to do for the girl's safety. Unfortunately, Brian was still a teenager, so obviously he set the baby up for adoption.
A married woman (a 27-year-old, thankfully) who desperately wanted a child but didn't want to go through labor was at the adoption center, or wherever babies go when set up for adoption. The lady, Ava Luis, did all the paperwork needed and even named the girl Sydney after Ava's favorite city. Sydney had always been an early bloomer and a fairly, uh, light child, being born five and a quarter pounds. Two years after Ava adopted Sydney, she finally mustered up the courage to have a child. This time it was a baby boy, named Austin after Carson's favorite city (Carson was Ava's husband). Austin and Sydney didn't get along very well in their early years, but when Sydney turned nine and Austin turned seven, they began to tolerate each other more. By the time Sydney was eleven, she had competed in the state spelling bee - and won. However, Sydney's academic achievements probably ended there. Her average grades were C's, except in spelling of course. What made Sydney even more ashamed of her grades was that Austin got straight A's. So did all of Sydney's friends.
However, Ava blamed all of this on Sydney's diagnosed ADHD (Sydney didn't have dyslexia). Sydney nevertheless enjoyed school because note-writing in class kept her hands moving and busy. At age twelve, of course, something just had to ruin Sydney's happy streak. For some reason, a flock of birds had decided to attack her. Sydney was in music class at the time, and tripped over some cymbals, scaring the birds away. Of course, the Mist just made it look like a flock of pigeons. But to Sydney, they were metal birds and scared her out of her wits.
Sydney's scent was strong enough for a satyr to come at age thirteen, though. This time, the satyr easily stabbed a hellhound in the heart that tried to attack Sydney right after school when she was still on campus. The satyr begged Sydney to come with him to camp, explaining everything to her, but Sydney straight-up refused. She had gotten closer to Austin over the years; no way she was going to leave that easily. It was a month later when Sydney was fourteen that the satyr asked yet again. Sydney refused so angrily that the satyr just absentmindedly killed a harpy after their conversation, his heart not into the task. Finally, when Sydney was well into fifteen and had explained her demigod condition and camp to Austin, Ava and Carson, the satyr said Sydney had to come. Sydney finally agreed to come with the satyr, if only because Austin was away on a school camping trip. They boarded a plane and landed in New York, then walked for a day to Long Island. There, another flock of Stymphalian birds was waiting for them. Sydney knew what to do, because the satyr had been training her to defeat certain monsters, and Stymphalian birds were the easiest. She clashed two rocks together, and the birds scattered.
Sydney spent two whole weeks at camp, picking a curved scythe as a weapon. She liked how a scythe could be harmless, nurturing even, or deadly. It definitely fit her personality. While at camp, she turned sixteen years old. Sydney mourned the fact that she could've gotten a driver's license, only never took the test. She didn't voice the fact, but instead figured at least she had her learner's permit. Once, she stumbled out of camp borders and was greeted by a terrifying group of empousai. She quickly backed away into the camp again, alerting Alexander. In all the commotion, she took it as an opportunity to escape and hopefully find her family, not knowing that she had been adopted.
Instead, she stumbled upon a forest. Venturing deeper, she came upon The Sanctuary. A demigod there interrogated her. Soon realizing that the demigod was intending to fight the gods, Sydney lied to save herself from being killed. She replied that she hated Camp Half-Blood and everything it stood for. However, when the demigod told her all the reasons she'd come to the right place, she definitely agreed with their beliefs. Hera had grudgingly claimed her a week before, only because Aphrodite had mocked her for being scared to claim her own child (though Sydney didn't know this). The gods made demigods do their bidding, and that, Sydney believed, was totally unjust. So she spent an entire day out in the forest listening to the demigod and talking, sometimes just about random stuff. Sydney finally joined the BC after days of the demigod's goading.
Sydney Luis
