Beauty day (private)

Today was spa day, as Cleopatra had decided. She had one of those at least once every week and insisted that all her friends took part. They sat on the porch in deckchairs wearing fluffy bathrobes, painted each other's nails and took turns in the hammock. Cleopatra had pulled her hair back, a sweet-smelling coconut mask on her face and two cucumber slices on her eyes.

"So I walked over to her and was like, oh no you didn't b!tch," Cecily was saying while giving Daryl a manicure. "And I ripped her weave off right there and then." All the girls gasped and giggled, exchanging whispers.

"What did she say?" Gianna eagerly asked.

"Well she was mortified of course," Cecily said with a smug little smirk. "Especially since her crush was right next to us."

"Oh nooooo," the girls exclaimed.

With her mask on, Cleopatra could neither speak nor see, but it was okay. She liked listening to her girls, letting them talk amongst themselves.

Elise disliked gossip as a general rule of thumb. She didn't see why someone else's business should become hers unless it directly affected her. Your life should be your life, and you shouldn't have to worry about a bunch of people laughing over it. Or you know, a bunch of Aphrodite girls. These girls who sat on the porch once a week really irked her above all else in that regard.

Gossip was one thing. People were curious about other people's lives, and they wanted to know and talk about it. Elise herself was guilty of that, as would anybody else. Gossip in itself, despite how annoying it could be, could be relatively harmless. But it became an entirely different thing once you started praising others for acting like a jackass and laughing at others for their misfortunes. Elise usually steered clear of these girls for that reason, but she just happened to find herself passing by the front of their cabin to hear that gem of a story.

That's not anything to be proud of, she immediately thought, internally scoffing with an involuntary roll of her eyes. Even if she didn't try to be vocal about it, she supposed her distaste for them really showed. On the bright side, when she thought about it - would she really care if they saw that?

"You're such a sass master," Natasha said with an envious little sigh. "I wish I could --"

"Hey look, isn't that Elise?"

"Nice love handles, carb-@ss!"

Elise was definitely not fat, but for the model-like children of Aphrodite, anything that wasn't XS was a disgrace. Her eyeroll had certainly not escaped Daryl, a gorgeous Californian girl with a long mane of blonde hair and perfect make-up, who was now giggling the loudest.

Elise sighed as the girls called her out. She really didn't want to deal with their Fiddlesticks.. But she was already in it - she'd really rather not give them the satisfaction of thinking she had nothing to say and would just submissively run off.

Turning to them for a moment, Elise folded her arms, seeming to be utterly unimpressed. Immediately she calmly retorted. "Keep talking Natasha, maybe someday you'll manage to say something intelligent," she smiled sweetly. "After all, someone has to be tough enough to do some actual work, might as well be me, right? The gods know you won't be of help there."

Elise honestly wasn't a mean person. She tried her best to be nice to everybody. But whenever she was challenged she found that she didn't easily back down. She'd done it before with Boy Scouts, other campers, and she'd do the same with these girls it seemed. At least until one side got to frustrated with the other or deemed they weren't worth their time. Even if children of Aphrodite had her in looks, Elise felt she could definitely beat them out in words.

Already agitated, she quickly turned her attention to Daryl - obviously laughing at her. She wanted to go after her too - to show her that she wasn't as amazing as she thought, but Elise decided against it. At least for now. She wasn't here to pick fights for the sake of picking fights. She was better than that. She'd just take anything they threw at her and see if she could throw something else back.

Man, who knew children of Aphrodite could so easily trigger her?

"Maybe if you keep talking you'll end up saying something actually witty, not just a Tumblr comeback," Gianna called and all the girls giggled.

Amused, Cleopatra daintily peeled the cucumber slices off her eyelids and started wiping the mask off her face while her girls kept making fun of Elise.

"Oh here, let me help you," Natasha immediately offered and started wiping it for her.

"I'm afraid if I do it'll go past your educational level," Elise said flatly. "Although if you actually use the internet I'm afraid it doesn't even extend that far," she continued, referring to the fact that it's usage attracted monsters.

Sighing, Elise turned to Cleopatra, whom she was never quite sure where they stood at any one given time. Their interactions had their ups and downs. Although this time, she wasn't holding her breath. "Cleo, care to call off your war dogs please? I could be doing some actual work right about now back in my cabin."

Cleopatra waited until Natasha had cleaned her face for her before turning her large green eyes to Elise. "Well darling, no one's holding you back. Oh, Cecily, dear? For the pedicure, I want the yellow Gucci one, not the red Guerlain."

"Oh... sorry." Cecily quickly screwed the vial of nail polish close and selected another one.

Elise initially thought she was being blown off, but nodded with a sigh. Whether she intended it or not, Cleo did just divert all of the other girls' attention away from her and back onto herself. She could at least be thankful for that much, however small the gesture might be.

"Yea, I know. Just... hard to focus when you're riled up," she huffed, calming down. "My bad, I got ahead of myself there," she said, attempting to apologize, hoping they'd accept it and just move past this.

OOC: Time skip?

OOC: Sure thing.

It was around 5pm that day when Cleopatra turned up at the Athena cabin. Her skin was glowing from the recent treatments and her nails were filed, painted, and glittered. Knocking on the door twice, she waited for someone to open up.
The girls and her had finished about thirty minutes ago, most of them having to go to lessons whilst others were chasing after two Hermes girls who had stolen their make-up. Which was pretty good timing, as Cleopatra's spring holidays were coming to an end and she still had soooooo much homework to do. Oh look, someone finally got the door!

Elise had been sitting at her work space when she had heard a knock at the door. Too bad too - she had been really into what she was doing. She had been looking into some of the ancient landmarks of Greece, like the Statue of Zeus on Olympus or the Colossus of Rhodes, and was wondering if any traces of them were still around. True, both were supposedly destroyed, but there could always be traces or representations of them scattered about. After all, everyone thought the Athena Parthenos was long gone, and look how that turned out. Anything was possible.

Stretching as she got up, Elise put a paper in her book to keep her place, and then placed the book on the map in turn to prevent it from rolling up. Opening the door, she gave a confused look at the girl standing before her.

"Cleo?" She asked, looking around to see if any of her girls were with her. "Is this about earlier, or do you need something?"

Cleopatra screwed up her face. "I don't get anywhere with my maths homework. Mind helping me out?" she asked, drawing her folders and books out of her Gucci handbag.

Elise blinked a few times at the abruptness of her request to aid her with her math work before realizing exactly what was going on. This wasn't about apologizing or making amends or even coming back to make fun of her. This was just her looking for a way out of her work.

Whatever. Elise had had kids come up to her for help with their work before, she supposed Cleo wasn't any different. "Uh... well what exactly are you studying in your class right now?" She asked, trying to pin down what she needed to work on.

"Algebra," Cleopatra said, opening her textbook. "Okay I know it's in Spanish but I can translate it." There were things like imaginary numbers, find the constant x, parabolas, etc, all things that Elise probably already mastered at age 6 but made absolutely no sense in Cleopatra's mind.

Elise's strong area was in History, but she'd also be lying if she said she didn't know this as well. Giving a light sigh she nodded, inviting her inside quickly."Set up your stuff on one of the tables real fast, just don't go over anybody's work that's already there."

It wasn't the first time she was entering the Athena cabin, and it hadn't much changed since last time. Cleopatra walked in as if she owned the place and sat down at the first free table, dropping her books on it. "It's due for the first Monday too," she complained, rearranging her hair into a glamorous bun.

Elise gave a slight sigh, walking over to her work space before making a few marks onto the map she had laid out, folding it up and leaving it under the book she had been reading. Grabbing her chair, she walked over to the table Cleo had sat her stuff down at. Glancing down at the books she'd dropped, she ran off to the corner of the room and picked up a small whiteboard. She was sure her brother wouldn't mind. Probably. "Alright, I just want to be clear here right way. I'll help you figure out how to do your work, but I won't do it for you, alright?" She asked, sitting down next to her. While it may not have been Cleo, this had happened before, and she didn't want it to happen again.

Ah. There went her plan. Well damn.

"Of course, I'm not one of those people," she sweetly lied with a pretty eye roll. Opening her book at the correct page, she translated the first exercise, which was about calculating an imaginary number. "Alright, I have no clue how that works," she giggled once she was done.

"Well..." Elise sighed, scanning the paper. "First off look at the example problem, then try to apply that to the rest of them. So for example on number one..." She started, trailing off as to slowly walk her through the steps in solving the first problem.

"Remember, the pieces are already there in every other part of the problem, you just need to see what makes sense with it all."