Lydia extended her hand to shake Elliot's as he introduced himself. "I'm Lydia. Pleased to meet you." Beside her she could hear the spirits commenting. 'Oh he's back?' 'Never thought we'd see him again.' And other similar phrases. Forgetting that other people don't hear the spirits unless she properly summons them, she spoke as if she was just continuing off their comments. "So what brings you back to Camp Half-Blood?" completely forgetting that it would be weird for her to know that he's been here before, since they had never met.

She didn't really have long too long for the mood to change however. Elliot shifted and commented that someone was watching them. Lydia's head tilted curiously, and she looked at him. "Is that... not common?" She was fairly used to awkward stares from other campers. Sometimes the more mischievous ones would follow her and try and see what she got up to. People were often curious about her, but unwilling to talk to her. Something about being the daughter of the goddess of ghosts was apparently a unnerving to most. For Lydia, it was Tuesday.

The mood shifted again as another camper walked up. Today was a day full of surprises. Not one, but two campers had come to greet her. "Oh hey Alexia." Since Alexia's parent was also a minor deity, and they were near the same age, they had both been staying in the Hermes cabin for some time now. Lydia was fully aware of who Alexia was, in passing, even if they hadn't really interacted much beyond that. "The spirits say it's nothing, but Elliot here seems convinced it deserves our attention." Lydia said with a shrug.

Abigail had let Lydia know that she would be up at The Big House today for a seance. Typically she didn't really attend those kinds of things, largely because of everything that had happened back in her hometown. But Abigail was different. She was like Lydia. She understood and didn't find her abilities creepy or weird. She also didn't try to use her abilities to make money off others. She just tried to connect and be her friend. And for that reason, Lydia trusted her implicitly. It included sometimes participating in activities that she typically avoided.

As she entered the appointed room, she saw it all alight with candles. "Did you know that three percent of home fire deaths are caused by unattended candles?" Lydia said by way of greeting. It wasn't a condemnation of the presence of the candles. Because of her mother, and in part her father as well, Lydia tended to view the world through the lens of death. As a result the simplest things reminded her of it. She tended to spout off facts about death in random conversations--though she had learned to curb that a bit since coming to the camp when interacting with others--but with Abby she could be herself.

The spirits did oblige her request, but she had managed to catch the attention of someone else as well. Blinking her eyes and staring briefly it took her a moment to process that the new guy was, in fact, speaking to her. It was a rarity and something that didn't come very often at camp for her. "Oh you meant me. I... uh... well, the spirits." She said honestly. Lydia didn't hide her gifts. Her mother was the goddess of ghosts and nightmares. What other powers would she have? How other people responded to her honesty was on them. She was used to fear and ostracization.

She looked over at him and offered a gentle smile. "I'm Lydia Hawthorne, and... you are?"

I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE!
Lydia Hawthorne

Lydia often wandered the grounds alone. Occasionally her friend Abigail would join her. She didn't mind. At this point in her life, she was used to it. She was the spooky girl that could talk to the dead. Dead that most people couldn't even see. Ghosts. Most people found her a bit strange at the minimum, and terrifying at the worst. So when she saw someone arriving at camp that she hadn't seen before, she kept her distance and watched from the sidelines so she didn't get in trouble for spooking them off. He wasn't likely to be a new camper, too old. But she hadn't seen him before.

As she stood near a copse of trees, she could hear the spirits whispering. Some tried to comfort her, some to encourage her to talk to him, and a few of the more angsty ones just reaffirmed her decision to stay put. Normally their company was fairly manageable. They typically kept to one or two at a time. Today had been different. All day long, every spirit on the grounds had been vying for her attention. She wasn't sure what it was about the day. Perhaps a full moon was incoming. She hadn't really paid much attention to it to know. Whatever it was, they had been all around her today, and it was starting to get overwhelming.

Looking at the closest spirit, Lydia sighed. "Do you think you could be just a little quieter?" She spoke aloud, forgetting that the new person could likely hear her from where he stood. If he looked, it would look like she was either talking to nobody, or to him, as the ghosts typically weren't full bodied apparitions unless Lydia made them be so.

76

RPC #8

Lydia glided softly through the forest, her footsteps barely making a sound. There was something very otherworldly about her, as if she wasn't completely in the mortal world, but also wasn't entirely outside of it either. She was completely corporeal--there was no doubt about that--but she always seemed to be observing a world that wasn't entirely the same as those around her. She smiled as her friend guided her through to the next pinecone and the next. Before long she could see the opponent's flag waving in the distance. With a smile, she looked over at Abby. "Blood on the horizon." Lydia often had a macabre way of conveying information. It would have been just as simple to say that she 'saw the red flag' but it wouldn't have been Lydia to say it that way.

"We're no longer lost souls. We've found our final...uh..." She couldn't exactly call it a resting place. They were there to play a game, and were likely to experience significant resistance. Biting her lower lip as she thought, Lydia turned to her friend. "Ah, I know! We've come to our grave conclusion." She seemed proud of herself for being able to come up with an appropriate phrasing.

((End RPC, but can continue general RP if you want))

Lydia smiled as Abby chided her. "Do you think the ghosts play capture the flag, too?" She asked whimsically, following Abby with her eyes as she began to walk closer to Lydia. As Abby guided her on how to best find the trail, Lydia began to listen to the world around her, searching for a sign of where they might need to go.

At first she could hear nothing but the sound of the breeze passing through the trees, and the birds chirping. However, soon enough, she began to hear whispers. Before long, Lydia could just make out a few more voices. "You can't all talk at once or I won't be able to understand. How about you each place a pinecone down and point a tip towards where we need to go?" She calmly asked the spirits. If she had really wanted to, she could summon a full-bodied apparition to just guide them to the flag. But that would use up a large amount of her energy and she didn't think that Abby would want her to fall asleep at the opposing team's base.

A few moments later, a pinecone fell at her feet and spun to point a little off to the northwest. "Thank you so much! Abby and I will follow the pinecones. I promise to listen to each of you individually tonight." She smiled sweetly at the air. Anyone besides Abby might think she was a little crazy, but Lydia knew who she was talking to. They were there, even if they weren't visible for the moment. Walking in the direction that the tip of the pinecone pointed, she found the next one. "Come on, Abby. Here's the next one."

Lydia, ever her head in the clouds, had been right next to Abby when the game started. She wasn't exactly certain how the two of them got separated. She remembered Abby forming some sort of plan involving their shared ability to commune with the dead, and then Lydia's mind wandered off to what some of her ghostly friends might be doing today. She hadn't checked in on William Abercrombie in a while--he had been a militia man during the Revolutionary War, and his ghost often sought out Lydia when she was alone at camp for a chat--perhaps he was regaling Elizabeth Shoemaker with his heroic tales--she was a lady from the late 1800's who had died of 'consumption' and seemed to haunt the camp as well. She had been lost in the thought of what one of their conversations might look like, and then she remembered she ought to be playing a game. When her focus returned back to the present, Abby was gone.

She had been searching for near an hour now, trying to catch up to her friend. Finally she heard a voice. "I don't think I'm a spirit. Yet." She said with a gentle smile as she stepped out from behind the tree. "Sorry, I was thinking about William and Elizabeth again. Don't you think they would make a sweet couple..." She once again got that daydreaming look on her face as she began to think about the two ghosts.