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Rowan shrugged one shoulder from his bed at Accalia’s question. “Afraid not. As it turns out, a fight-happy child of Demeter with no talent for flower arrangements isn’t popular outside of the occasional Ares camper wanting a fight.” Probably didn’t help that Rowan had a tendency to focus almost singlemindedly on what he was doing and didn’t handle subtleties well. He’d been politely informed of missed opportunities in the past; other guys expressing jealousy over someone’s attention Rowan hadn’t even known he had.

Well, eventually he’d get lucky and meet a fighter. In fact, given the life he led, he probably stood a better chance than most.

“I did manage to get my tulip bed growing,” he added as an afterthought. It wasn’t anything impressive, given that he was doing it human-style instead of just waving his hands like his siblings, but it was something he’d done himself, to the best of his ability, and Rowan had a little pride over that.

[OoC: I am the latest later that ever did late]

She mentioned endurance, to which Rowan nodded. He wasn't really exerting the full force of his powers. By their nature, they were low-key but long-lasting, so long as he stuck to manipulating wood. It drained him to actually animate and alter plants too much, but actually changing the properties of wood was simple for him. Which was a shame, really, seeing as if he could manipulate plants the way he did nonstop and in great numbers, he would be a one-man army on the battlefield.

He nodded at her words. “People would be safer. But most of them don't want to train with me because I don't hold back well. Sometimes an Ares kid will come looking for a fight, but for the most part, no. And I don't blame them. It's not like I want to hurt anyone, I just...can't attack halfheartedly.” Growing up on a farm where you're constantly left alone to fend off monsters could instill a lack of restraint, he supposed. Besides, monsters weren't bad to fight. The problem was, the trees in the forest provided him so much wood to work with that he didn't get challenged. And Rowan was not about to deliberately underutilize his surroundings. That sounded like a horrible habit to pick up.

Oh. Daughter of Zeus. No wonder she felt large and in charge: she was. Rowan nodded. “Nice to meet you, Miss Scotts.” And that wasn't deference to Zeus talking—though, he reflected, it probably should be—Rowan was just well-mannered by upbringing. People were meant to be respected, period, where he was from, at least so long as you weren't familiar enough with them to joke around. He looked over at the dummy. His wood manipulation was sadly only combat-related. He could mend his weapons if he broke them in a fight, but he couldn't mend the dummy. “You think Chiron can get stone statues here to practice on...?”

Rowan walked over to the dummy and gripped the spear in his hand. The wood responded to his touch immediately, returning to its normal weight as he pulled it out of what was left of the training dummy. It did, however, stay as hard as steel. That was, generally speaking, always a welcome attribute for the warrior's weapons. Tough enough to face Celestial bronze, but as light as regular wood, gave him a big advantage in both speed and stamina, since he wasted less energy swinging around a lighter material. Not that Rowan needed such an advantage: having been raised on a farm, he could put in physical labor all day and come back for more in the morning.

“Do I want to know what that dummy did to you to deserve that treatment?”

Rowan blinked and turned around. A blonde girl with a sword at her hip was walking up to him, arms crossed. She was pretty, but the way she was dressed, the sheen of sweat providing evidence of training, and the aura of authority about her made far more of an impression than her looks could. This was the quiet sort of confidence that was never unfounded. And the intensity of her eyes spoke of real experience.

Rowan blinked and looked back at the broken dummy. “Oh, err...yeah, I have a hard time holding back in fights...go all out from the beginning, you know?” He shrugged, but rubbed the back of his neck. He really hadn't meant to break the dummy. “I can't go the woods for training all the time...figured I'd try the arena today.”

He moved as if to shift his spear to his right hand, then paused and held out the right instead. Rowan was very left-handed, and he always had a false start when offering handshakes before he remembered he needed to use his right for most people. “Rowan Clay, son of Demeter.”

Image training was important for Rowan. He had not once been on a quest, or even left camp, since arriving over two years prior. He had very little to return to, and the rural area he called home was dangerous for him and others, since it was generally the larger, more dangerous monsters who stayed away from cities and populated the countryside. All he could do by going home was make his father and neighbors into targets. And while he could go into the forest to hunt real monsters, Rowan needed to train away from there as much as he could. He had far too great an advantage in forested areas, where the trees would bend to his instincts. Unlike most children of Demeter, whose domain resided in the tame plants that were grown by hand, Rowan was much more specialized. He was only able to utilize his power over plants for combat purposes, but when it came to the manipulation of wood, living or dead, he could control even the wild trees that were normally outside of Demeter's domain. The forest gave him way too much to work with.

So he was forced to combat imaginary enemies most of the time, which wasn't ideal, but it was better than nothing. Occasionally, he could get some of the other campers to fight—the Ares cabin was usually good for this—but that still left him woefully untrained against monsters.

He currently stood in the arena, eyes envisioning a massive minotaur in front of him, in place of the simple practice dummy. In his left hand, he carried a carved wooden spear, a simple, long oak branch from the forest, shaped and sharpened by his powers. He had half a dozen of them under his bed in the cabin, and despite his power over wood, they broke quite often. At his right hip, ready to be drawn by his left hand in an instant, was a white oak bokken, a Japanese-style wooden sword meant to be used in place of real swords for several forms of martial arts. It was easily the most expensive thing he'd ever owned, and he took good care of it, using it as his primary weapon these days. And strapped to his back was the hand-carved walking staff he'd brought from home, his oldest and most reliable weapon. Greek letters were carved all over the simple length of hickory wood, and perhaps because he'd had it for nearly a decade, the staff responded to his powers better than anything else. Last, there was a wooden ring around the middle finger of his right hand that could grow into a longbow at will. Dangling from his left hip was a quiver with arrows, positioned to allow Rowan to easily draw them cowboy-style into the bow.

He raised the spear over his head and took short hops forward, before converting that movement into torque by planting his feet as his arm swung forward and let the spear loose at the fake minotaur.

Harder. Heavier.

At his mental commands, the spear that he'd thrown took on new properties, becoming denser, tougher. The added weight didn't affect the flight speed or trajectory. He had aimed well and thrown hard, the body of a lifelong farmer having given him a layer of powerful muscles, particularly his arms, back and chest.

By the time the spear hit the oversized training dummy, the weight had increased by nearly a hundred pounds, and the spear was hard enough that it didn't shatter from the force of its own hit. Instead, there was a loud cracking noise as the spear landed dead-center in the chest of the dummy and snapped the pole in half with the force of impact. The dummy's head, shoulders and arms came loose with the broken portion of the pole, and it all fell over backwards rather dramatically.

See, this was why only Ares kids wanted to fight him most of the time.

Of course she wasn't going to give him details. Oh well. He should be grateful she wasn't angry with him, he supposed. Clearly, she was here, uninjured, so the monster couldn't have been that dangerous. So the Aphrodite boy was talented with the bow, eh? That was good. Rowan was pretty good with a bow himself, but it was his ability to manipulate wood that made him as dangerous as any Apollo kid, not his actual skill level with the weapon itself. When you can alter a shaft of wood to cut through the wind and strike with enough force to pierce concrete, you don't necessarily have to be able to judge wind speed or pick your targets.

Oh no.

Rowan sighed at Accalia's confession of kissing. “Here we go,” he said resignedly, plugging the ear facing toward Harper's bed with his pinky. He didn't know what was going to happen, but he suspected it would be quite loud.

Yep.

Rowan cringed a bit at Accalia's reply. Great, now he felt like a jerk. “Hey, it's fine. I wouldn't be much of a brother if I put sleep over my sister, right?” he asked, climbing out of bed and moving over to muss Accalia's hair. Despite her being the cabin leader, it was hard for Rowan not to treat the quiet girl like a younger sister. Contrast with Harper, who was more like an older sister to him, even if he had vowed never to take any of her advice ever. He had been vaguely aware that she was on a date, just something he'd picked up on unintentionally earlier in the day. But it wasn't in Rowan's nature to pry. He was a protector, yes, but overprotection was bad.

He listened while Harper informed them that Accalia had been gone for five hours, then began to press for details.

“Oh Hera above,” he said, gripping the bridge of his nose to ward off the sudden rush of stress. “I am not prepared to hear what my sister did with an Aphrodite kid for five hours.”