It's a warm midsummer night when Artemis kisses Zoe for the first time.
Zoe immediately pulls back, blushing and spluttering and incapable of forming proper words of any kind. Her eyes flicker over her surroundings, searching for something to look at instead of Artemis, and finally settle on the clear blue waters of the lake the two girls are sitting next to.
Artemis' cheeks are tinted gold as she lowers her head.
"M-my lady," Zoe finally manages to stammer; "My oath..."
Artemis raises her chin proudly to look Zoe in the eyes.
"You forswore men for eternity, Zoe. Not women."
And then she kisses her again, but this time Zoe gives in and they both fall backwards into the lush green grass.
And so, half an hour later, Zoe finds herself lying sweaty, panting and sated in the moonlight next to Artemis in her eighteen year old form, clad in nothing but an almost transparent white dress. Zoe herself is naked, but she does not even consider covering herself up. The air is warm, her skin is burning with what's left over of her passion, and she feels no shame in baring her body to her goddess.
Artemis smiles, looking up at the night sky.
"How many stars can you count?" she asks, her voice breathy and quiet. Zoe blinks, confused, but turns her gaze towards the sky as well.
"I don't know, my lady," she answers, her voice just as quiet as Artemis', almost a whisper, barely audible above the slight noise of the wind in the tall reeds around them. "Thousands, perhaps?"
Artemis nods and smiles wider.
"Then we shall spend a thousand nights together, and only the stars will be watching. And then, we shall part."
Zoe starts smiling too, rolling over to kiss her goddess again.
It turns out her goddess is right.
They spend nine hundred and ninety nine perfect nights together, full of kisses and muffled moans and whimpers and the light of the moon and the stars above them and everything is good, everything is gorgeous and lovely and beautiful and perfect.
And then the fateful thousandth night arrives, and it comes as Zoe is lying on the floor with a festering wound marring her abdomen, and Zoe knows it's the thousandth, she knows because she's counted them all, every single one of them. And that's what she tells her lady.
"A thousand nights," she coughs out, blood spilling out of her mouth along with her words. "You said we would spend a thousand nights together. You were right. This is the thousandth night... the last one."
She turns her fading eyes towards the sky with a dying ghost of a smile on her lips.
"I can see the stars, my lady. A thousand of them," she chokes out.
And then it ends.
Artemis feels it when her heart stops beating. The goddess closes her eyes, letting a single tear leak out.
"We shall spend a thousand nights together, and only the stars will be watching," she murmurs.
Another tear escapes as she gently closes Zoe's eyes and lays a final kiss on her cold, dead lips.
"And then, we shall part."
finis.