There are many ways to go through the loss of someone you love.
All of them are painful, and none of them will ever quite work. Not completely. Because when a loved one passes over, the part of you that you kept in them dies too. It's like having a piece of your soul torn from the marrow, leaving a scar that will never heal. And goodness knows the soul of one particular boy genius was in a bad enough state as things were.
The way Artemis Fowl was coping was simple. Not at all.
Ever since Angeline Fowl had passed away, two weeks ago, the young genius had spoken to nobody. He had eaten only on the point of starvation, sneaking down to the kitchen while everyone else slept. His bedroom door was locked and silence radiated from within. Artemis hadn't even attended the funeral, a solemn, quiet ceremony in the Fowl family graveyard.
Nobody in the Fowl household had seen hide nor tail of him since fourteen days ago. Juliet, Butler and Mr. Fowl, along with Myles and Beckett, all assumed he was in a state of comatose depression, and, knowing Artemis, decided to leave him alone for a while.
Goodness knows, the last thing Artemis wanted, sly, sarcastic, genius Artemis, was to talk about his feelings.
In the kitchen, a worried Artemis Fowl Senior was holding a conversation with an equally worried (but in a slightly more menacing way) Butler.
"You look worried, sir" Butler noted, pointing out the obscenely obvious.
Mr Fowl shot him his famous glare. Apparently that was another thing the criminal mastermind had passed on to his son.
"Yes. I am worried. About Artemis."
"I'm sure he'll be fine, sir. You know Artemis, he, well, doesn't really appreciate heart-to-heart chats about grief, and so forth. He just needs time-"
"You are missing the point, my friend. It is not Artemis's mental well-being I am concerned with. It is the fact that yes, I do know my son. And I know him well enough to say, Artemis would not spend two weeks of his valuable time doing nothing-"
"But sir-"
"No, not even grieving, Butler. Artemis does not wallow in misery. He builds a bridge across it. He's up to something."
Ironically, or perhaps not, given that this is Artemis Fowl we are dealing with, at that very moment two floors up, the boy genius was up to something. Something that would change the world.