Title: Artemis
Author: SMARTALIENQT
Summary: A vignette I wrote for English class. Artemis contemplates her life, or lack thereof, after the Trojan Wars. Post-Iliad, AU, OOC, minor Apollo-bashing and references to Shakespeare. By SMARTALIENQT
Disclaimer: If I actually owned the rights to the Greek myths, I would be dead right now. And since I'm not some undead Greek teen, I think I'll be safe from the copyright people, don't you?
Artemis
I look at the world. It looks back at me. Nothing's special about the world. The world, they say, as if it's something to be proud of, as if it's the only world. Only world, lonely world. Bloody war-torn dirt-ridden world.
I have no feelings. I am a moon, cold, impassive, uncaring moon. A moon, for many planets have moons, circling always in their dreary orbits, watching the world at night. I forget, for I like to forget the Trojans and the Greeks, Odysseus and Paris, Hector and Agamemnon. Swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon. Did he know how true he was? No, mortals never are.
I have never seen the sun. Apollo, my brother, of course, I have seen him, but never have I seen the trees lit by gold, the shadows dancing beside golden streams of water and light. Silver I have seen, but never had I seen gold until the battlefield. Apollo talked me into it. He likes Hector for some reason, I don't know, but have you noticed goddesses are always faithful to their males, even their brothers? I joined the Trojans, and they sent me gifts, both sides, sacrifices and prayers, but I could only answer to prayers of the Trojans. They didn't know whose side I was on. No good anyway. Betrayal, loss, treachery even among gods happened then. Brother dearest, coward, liar, he left the Trojans to their fate. Hera boxed my ears with my own bow and Achilles desecrated the body of his only true opponent, killed when the sun abandoned him. Swear not by the sun, the wavering sun, should your love prove just as fickle. Like sister, like brother. That golden light was the only good thing about that entire episode.
I'm watching the stars go by. I am bored with casting my feeble glow, so weak compared to Apollo's mighty golden light. I want to spread out, hunt more than the immortal animals that I hunt in the heavens. That is what the mortals think I do, and so I do it. Image, image. They think the gods are engaged in eternal pleasure, with nectar and ambrosia, deciding mortal affairs with the flick of a wrist-and they do. The stories just never mention that, when you cannot rest, sleep, shuffle off this mortal coil (for you are not mortal), life, even an immortal life, is as feeble and weak as the light of a moon.