strangeness//charm

✧ —— AVI MELROSE :: CHER HOROWITZ / CLUELESS 

avi loves anything 90s. she also has a lot of yellow clothes already. really, the only thing she needed to buy for this costume was the blazer and the skirt (she had a similar skirt, but she needed them to match) and the shoes, since she spends most of her time wearing boots and sneakers.

avi is obviously very different from cher personality wise. but channeling her inner cher was pretty fun. and so was proving that she could pretty much quote clueless line by line.

bonus:

    Wyn was worried if he couldn’t even score his friends to come, than would anyone? Luckily The Fates found favor or just pity on him, since Avi agreed and at least one other of her siblings. His grin was toothy and wide, curling the corners of his cheeks even. “Oh thank you!” pausing only to hug her, “Trust me I got a lot of cool slides and activities that hopefully won’t make it such a bore…I just know that everyone rather use swords or shields to get their points across; not to mention weapons definitely keep you from being bored…but—” he shrugged. The son of Psyche knew your feelings and communicating them were far from easy or fun, he only lucked out cause of his mother. So he wanted a space, a safe one, where others can find that confidence he has about himself and the way words can release your soul. 

    “Anyone one else or cabins you can think of that I can persuade in showing up?” he thumbed the pamphlets let, “I was thinking cabin six and sixteen, but not sure how the others would care.” 

avi returned his hug, a small grin on her face. she liked making her friends happy, of course she’d support wyn. “mmh i’d rather fight with words than swords so.. i’m excited to see what you have in store for us.” she replied, just happy that she could hang with friends and skip out on archery with a good reason. it wasn’t like she needed much help with her words, being a daughter of the god of poetry and all. but maybe wyn had some interesting points or tactics. avi had always felt like she could use a bit more of that during cabin counsellor meetings.

“anniversary cake?” she questioned in confusion, wondering what kind of anniversary it was until avi explained, making her suddenly recall the events of her coming to the camp in october and meeting the red head. “ohhh!!” she answered in realization, and opened the door wider for avi to come in. “i didn’t even… think about it, wow. i’m so shitty.” she chuckled, pushing her messy short hair back. “damn, you really went off on that cake.” 

    Avi was always a joy to spend time with, even when Wyn doesn’t feel up to it as his powers sometimes makes him needing breaks from others—but not with her. Perhaps it was her father’s ichor, maybe the fact she grew up so open minded or vibrantly but it was hard ever to be down around her (at least stay that way too). “Oh, no I get it…” flashing an empathetic smile at her siblings, “Beginning of the week is always the hardest to rearrange schedules but trust me it’ll be a fun class. Oh and!” he shot up, eyes perked and his smile widening, “If you come to the class it can excuse you from missing whatever you were suppose to be doing in it’s place.”

   So if your chores were during that time slot than for once Chiron would look the other way, that was his sweetener when anyone would quickly dismissed it. “I also plan on heading into the city, getting doughnuts and coffee for everyone too.” Edwyn paused for a moment, letting the group of Apollo kids whisper and talk among themselves, while he focused on Avi, “Honestly I know it can be a bit of a bore, but I’d love a friendly face out in the crowd.” 

avi perks up at his words, quickly scanning over her own schedule to see what she was supposed to be doing around the time of wyn’s class. archery. she purses her lips. any time she needs to hold a weapon, she cringes. she knows it’s very stereotypical hippie of her, and that she needs to know how to defend herself. she’s not even that bad at archery - thanks dad - but that’s probably exactly the problem: she uses it as an excuse to just skip the class.

“Hmm, maybe…” Min nods. “Guess I might talk to Chiron about it.” They write a mental note of that and file it away to remember later. “Just gotta hope he’s not too busy, y’know with everything…that’s been happening.” 

They cast a final look to the cloudy sky then turn back to Avi. “We do Facetime from time to another, but face to face? I saw her before I left to camp. When I’m not here I’m living with her. I think I’m too attached to leave her yet,” they laugh softly. “How’s your mom doing though?”

avi laughs, recognizing herself in min’s words. “i visited during the summer for a few weeks. kind of... reversed camp. it was good though. i missed all my cousins and aunties.” she explained, dragging some fries through the excessive ketchup absentmindedly. “she’s good, my mom. i think she misses me. she had to let go of me very suddenly. but she’s keeping busy with her company.” she shrugs. “i mean we don’t really spend enough time outside camp until we.. permanently leave, to live on our own. i’m not paying for some apartment or something where i’ll never be anyways. because i’m not leaving camp to... simply leave camp. i’m leaving to visit my family.”

    Being a bother never crossed the boys’ mind; never. Passing flyers out to whomever passed him, even chatting off their ear when he could felt like the right thing to do—as almost all his plans normally felt. “Hey!” he approached the group ahead of him, “I don’t know what your plans are for Tuesday morning but you should come out to my class.” offering up his flyer. The title of the class was written boldly across the pamphlet style piece of folded paper stating: Diplomacy and Communication, an art of Battle Strategy. “I got approval from Chiron and I think it’d be great to maybe add it on to our normal studies. What’cha think?”

avi was surrounded by a few of her siblings, discussing some scheduling issue. as if she had any control over when her siblings where supposed to train or have their classes or chores or... anything. she was just the messenger, and right now she was pretty close to being killed.

Resting their chin on their palm, Min looks up thoughtfully. “It would be really neat if we could add a tomato plot to the strawberry field, or just grow any other stuff.” They squint at the sky, envisioning what the new plots could look like. “I don’t think the tomato vines growing over our walls could satisfy everyone’s ketchup needs.”

Avi’s warm smile feels contagious, and Min can’t help but smile too as they thought of their own family. “You can drop by anytime you want, y’know. I really do appreciate the company. And I’ve been doing just fine. Just…missing my mom a lot,” they shrug. It might’ve sounded childish, but Min loves her too much to care. “How about you? Well, aside from the ketchup crisis.”

avi giggles as min starts to talk about new plots, looking off into the distance with a dreamy expression. it looks pretty cute. “maybe the harpies just need to order some more.” she finally decides. as much as she was all for self reliance, she also really wanted to have enough ketchup.

mae happened to just wake up a little late and even stayed in bed, feeling worse and worse everyday. maybe it was her getting sick or maybe it was her seasonal depression starting early, but she was still in her pajamas and it took a lot for her to get up to get a glass of water. just as she was doing that, she heard the door being knocked and jumped a little, not expecting that. “what?!” she called, walking over to the door to open it, only to be faced by avi’s face being blocked by the tallest, messiest cake she’s ever seen. “… what the fuck, avi?” 

“If you have no fear of overdoing it with the sodium intake, then the only limit is your imagination,” Min shrugs. “Fries taste pretty damn good with ketchup anyway. Though there is a price to be paid for using my bottle…” 

They snatch a small handful of fries, swiftly moving them to their plate. “I really hope you don’t mind!” They apologize, though the wide grin on their face shows no signs of regret whatsoever.

avi laughs at min’s threat, she knows they aren’t serious anyways. but the laugh is briefly wiped from her face when they steal some of her fries, leaving a shocked avi. “heyy!” she finally yells after a few seconds. “that’s not nice. that’s a lot of fries!” she whines, pouting.

“so how much ketchup is too much ketchup?” avi questions, sitting down across from min at the demeter table. her siblings had taken the ketchup bottle at the apollo table hostage, leaving it empty once she finally got her hands on it. now she came to.. borrow min’s. and to keep them some company.

she put a good amount of it on her fries, looking up with a grin when she put the bottle down again. “this isn’t too much, is it?”

she had to walk carefully from the kitchens to the hades cabin. her creation was pretty tall, and if the cake would topple over all her work would’ve been for nothing. but she arrived safely at mae’s front door, kicking the door knock with an even brighter smile than usual.

“i kind of think my skirt might be like, a fraction darker than it was before? but, y’know, that could just be because the sun dipped behind the clouds.” isolde shrugged, smoothing any traces of disappointment from her face as she smiled at avi. it wasn’t that isolde wanted more power or anything – she was perfectly content knowing she would never be like kiran or any of the other more powerful demigods, but being able to change the colour of things seemed like a cool power to have. sure, her cabin at camp half blood was magically enchanted to look however she wanted to, but what about when she didn’t live at camp anymore? it would be so useful to be able to paint her bedroom walls with a thought. isolde could tell the difference between two shades of blue without even having to think about it, she passed any colour test easily, and she even found that she automatically new the hex codes for colours on photoshop – so didn’t it stand to reason that she could change colours, too? 

isolde didn’t have any siblings, and she’d never met her mom, so there wasn’t really anyone to ask about it. she supposed chiron might know, he was literally thousands of years old after all and surely had met children of iris before her? with everything going on, though, she didn’t really want to bother him with that, so she resolved to figure it out herself. she brightened at the compliment. “i’ve always been able to make rainbows appear, that was easy enough, and then i found if i concentrated hard enough, i could mimic other things? i can like, glamour things so it looks like a different colour, but i can’t hold it very long. it’d be cool to like, actually be able to change the colour permanently. sometimes i wish i had a more experienced sibling to ask about this stuff, you know?”

“mmh, or it really did?” avi questioned, peering at the skirt with squinted eyes. she hadn’t seen the skirt’s original colour, so she didn’t even know what she was looking for. but she desperately wanted to see it, just to make isolde feel better. she nodded along to the other girl’s words. with a cabin as full as the apollo one, avi couldn’t relate to not having older siblings to discuss things with. add to that the fact that she grew up in an even more filled house, she had never really known what that was like. but she couldn’t imagine not having all those people around, and just the thought of having the whole apollo cabin to herself gave her a cold sinking feeling in het gut. 

“maybe if you offer your mother food long enough and ask for her guidance you’ll get something? it won’t be much probably but it’ll be better than nothing.” avi offered. the gods almost seemed like abstract ideas, more so than actual existing beings. avi had never met one, other than dionysus when he was still around at camp. but there were enough stories of gods guiding their children in vague and indirect ways. it seemed worth a try.

iris wasn’t known for being one of the more powerful gods, something she passed down to her demigod children. however, isolde had chores to procrastinate on, so she found herself by the lake, attempting to change the colour of her skirt. of course, isolde couldn’t change her clothes at whim like a child of aphrodite but she could make illusions, and her mother was the goddess of literally every colour to ever exist, so isolde figured changing the colour of her skirt was at least theoretically possible. concentrating hard as she was, with her face scrunched up and eyes squeezed tight, isolde didn’t realise anyone was near her until a twig snapped, sending a flurry of pebbles right into isolde’s foot. isolde stumbled back into reality, almost slipping off the log she was using as a seat. flushing, she pushed her hair off her face and turned to the person.

“um, is it silly if i said i was attempting to see if i could, like, change the colour of my clothes? i know clothes changing is an aphrodite thing but my mom’s a literal goddess of colour, sooo.”

avi was absentmindedly walking past the lake when something caught her eye. she couldn’t put her finger on it for the first few seconds, but something about the picturesque scene in front of her was off. then she saw it. isolde, pulling a face like she either had very bad eye sight, or was trying to... take a shit basically. avi giggled, coriosity driving her to approach the other girl.

a twig broke under her doc marten clad feet, snapping under the weight and also snapping isolde out of some kind of trance, seemingly. avi’s expression must have been something kind of confused or curious, because isolde immediately began explaining what she had been doing. “point taken. but you can do illusions right? i guess that counts. or maybe there’s some unlocked iris power that you could be the first one to discover..” avi started to talk more and more animated as her sentence carried on, plopping down next to isolde more as an automatic action than something she was aware of doing. “have you had any succes yet? a little birdie told me that your illusions are quite convincing.”

dean squished up next to the person he’d recognised after spotting them sat at the amphitheater alone, excited as he always was to see the campfire lit. “hey, what appears over ash’s head when he gets an idea?” he asked with a playful smile, ready to tell the other his joke. “a light-bulbasaur.”