<strong><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 12pt;">Vanessa Concepcion</span></strong><br/><br/>It was a perfect day for making pictures.<br/><br/>Vanessa watched the gathered campers.  Her dark eyes quickly settled on a gaggle of newbies.  The new ones tended to cling to each other like fragments of a broken magnet, a splintered, rough ball which could not be pried apart.  Her black hair, frizzed and unkempt, hung like a cheap doll's wig over her camera as she began to quietly take the pictures she saw.  The shutter of her camera, the one she secretly named Niki, snapped just in time to catch a new boy, blond and wide-eyed, gazing desolately at the gruff Mr. D's "welcome".  It hadn't been that long ago since she had been among that scared, confused throng of loose nuts and bolts who had not yet been claimed by a divine parent.  Thinking back, she wondered if there would be a dry pillow in all of the Hermes cabin.  Maybe someone should make them water-resistant pillowslips, or maybe pillows that kept cool and dry no matter how much you missed your mom or how badly you wanted to sniff but couldn't dare let the others hear you.<br/><br/>Her mind was building faster than her hands again.  She brought the lens back up to her face, searching the crowd for more moments of personal tragedy or neglected beauty.  Vanessa lingered over the bouquet of Aphrodite's children.  It never ceased to amaze her how they managed to wear their orange camp shirts in a way that actually looked not only good but different even from each other.  Her shutter clicked to catch the twists along the waist, the knot at the hip, the way the cut fabric dangled elegantly from the chest with all the dignity of Nana's lace curtains.  Her own camp shirt was form-fitting but wrinkled along the back in a wide line from sitting most of the day.  That burn mark just under her ribs hadn't come out in the wash either.<br/><br/>It was only when the mass of half-bloods began to move that Vanessa let Niki fall to her stomach.  The camera hung heavily from its strap around her neck, like a medal or a Christmas ghost's weighted chain.  Its mass tapped against her chest and her busy mind rushed through an entire list of analogies for her camera.  As the summer nights had grown long and empty, she had began to worry if all her failings could be contributed to her father as well as her crafty skills.  Vanessa herself had always believed her tinkering was more of a product of her<em>abuelo</em>and his endless supply of fixable baubles than any real or imagined god.  Even after Vanessa had been claimed, her mother was firm in her denial.  No, she was not going to discuss her conception.  No, she had no idea what Vanessa's life would be like before she was born.  Vanessa was told, again and again on the increasingly scratchy record voice of her mom, that she had to learn to accept herself as she was, for better or worse.  Vanessa accepted staying at the camp year-round after that, despite being an adult now.<br/><br/>She wasn't the only nearly grown camper.  Her own half-brother of sorts was two years older than her.  Vincent was a very talented young man, virile and productive as a yolked bull.  His bullish imagine in Vanessa's mind was only added to by his penchant for wearing cowboy hats and boots.  He was built like one too, strong and thick.  Before she was claimed, a couple campers had accused her of admiring him, and she admitted to herself they were right.  She wasn't ogling or pining for him as she knew a few had (a few who paid nicely for pictures of his shirtless body working in the sun), but it was a pure admiration for both his form and his abilities.<br/><br/>It was these very musings on her respect and adoration for him which were disrupted as she bumbled across a depression in the dirt.  The slight hole was enough to make her lose what little balance she had, and Vanessa tumbled like a crash test dummy into another camper.<br/><br/>"<em>Ay dioses mis</em>, I'm... so sorry," she said.