I see colors.

I know, I know, almost everyone can see colors. But I'm not talking about being able to tell a shirt is green or red.

I'm talking about colors.

My name is Piper McLean. I'm a daughter of Aphrodite, which means I can sense emotions to some extent.

But I can also see them.

Each cabin, different children of different gods, tend to have similar colors.

The Ares cabin is a dark blood red.

Hecate's children sport either royal purple or bright, poisonous green.

The children of Hermes have a dusty brown or a dark gold.

The Demeter cabin has a grassy green, sort of like the open field between the volleyball courts and the arena.

I see the emotions behind the colors. Bright flares of happiness, trailing tendrils that show someone's love reaching out, darkness creeping in with anger.

I always smile when I see Travis and Katie talking, their colors are so pretty together. Gold on green, swirling around them like a mist. They're mad for each other, but won't say anything.

The colors can be painful to watch sometimes. There's so many people here. Most of the time I try to shut them down.

But they can't be ignored all the time, and I wouldn't want to.

You see, some people have more specific colors. The Athena cabin's don't match, each child has a different pastel color that forms large gears which grind over their head when they're thinking hard.

The Apollo cabin doesn't have a specific color either. Theirs stretch from the palest yellow to a dark red to purples to blues. All the colors of the sky, sunsets and clouds and bright lights.

There's a boy in the Nike cabin whose color is completely white. I have no clue why, but he seems different from his siblings so it might have something to do with that.

Nico's is black, dark as night and the shadows he uses to get around. Instead of getting darker when he's angry, it usually gets lighter, something I've puzzled over for a long time.

Thalia's puzzling too, but mesmerizing at the same time. Silver and blue twined together to form a new color. 

I've noticed that the Hunt all have silver in their colors, making some of the most interesting hues I've seen.

But not all the colors are happy.

Some people, the ones who survived both wars, their colors have changed.

Clarisse's is a darker red than her siblings, with black flecks. She's missing her friends, and she opened up a little when I explained that I could see her pain. She told me about Silena, how much she misses her.

I see what my friends feel.

I see my friends when they're happy.

Frank talks to Hazel and his color just pops bright. 

His color is bright red. It's usually stuttery at first, like he's glitching. 

I've assumed that's his nervousness.

Hazel's color is gold. Whenever Frank talks to her, it pulls his glitchy strands, straightening them and entwining with them.

Their colors go together well. 

My color is pink. 

I see it when I think about how much people mean to me. 

It sort of floats around me, like little clouds.

When Jason and I are together, we make a cotton candy storm. He makes clouds too, bright blue ones that match his eyes.

I've tried to explain the colors to him but he doesn't get it because he can't see them.

Seeing others' colors is fun.

But it makes me sort of sad sometimes.

Leo's color is really dim, and mostly grey.

It flares sometimes, like a fire.

But I barely ever see it.

He's sad. 

His fire was dampened, and he has trouble building it back up.

Since he found Calypso it's gotten better.

Their colors are beautiful.

Calypso has a dark green color, like healthy plants.

Leo's is dark orange.

The flames and plants don't seem to match well at first glance, but when I look closer at them, I see that they are actually intertwined perfectly, like a painting of a sunset on a field.

But seeing Leo's sadness isn't the worst part of seeing colors.

I have a friend who went through this really awful experience. It had to have been traumatizing, I can tell.

How? 

His color is gone.

As you may have guessed, the friend I'm talking about is Percy Jackson. He and his girlfriend went to the Greek version of Hell.

I can see his color.

It used to be really pretty.

Sea green swirls that twisted around his body and formed little waves against his head, like they were breaking on rocks.

I remember seeing it when it started.

He was tense. We didn't know where his girlfriend was and we were trying to find her.

His color changed. 

The green swirls slowed, grey lines struck out from them.

After he got back from Tartarus, I haven't seen his color change.

It's grey, as bleak as the sky when it rains.

Annabeth's color is another story.

Her color has always been a pretty light yellow color. Cranking above her head in gears, darkening when she was angry, it intrigued me how much more hers changed from everyone else's.

Then she fell into Tartarus.

I cried when I saw her color afterward.

the yellow is sickly now. 

Like the bile of sickness, a cancerous color that hurts to look at.

When she and Percy are together, I can see their colors fixing themselves.

Slowly, they're working their way back to normal.

But it will never be quite the same.

Sometimes when I see the pain of others, I don't want to see the colors anymore.

It hurts, seeing greys and sad, dull colors instead of the lively ones that should come from teenagers.

But I always come back to the colors. 

They're intriguing, impossible, inexplicable. 

And they're beautiful. Even the dark, sad ones.

Because they represent life. They represent a gorgeous, dangerous, fickle life that every person leads and no two colors are quite the same.

I always find that when I think about this, and I'm truly content, my chest glows lightly.

I've seen it in others too. 

Percy and Annabeth, curled up on the beach glowing a dark sea green and pale yellow, respectively.

Jason's chest when he and Thalia and I are together. 

Katie's bosom glowing green and Travis's gold when they're bickering over some trivial thing, because they know that this will always happen and it is as it should.

I look out on the world now.

And do you know what I see?

I will tell you, Dear Reader.

I see colors.