PROLOGUE
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Doctor Anthony MacGregor sighed as he motioned to his fellows around him. "Call it. 6:45 AM, Thursday, August seventeenth, Nineteen sixty-seven."
Flipping a switch to turn of the still shrilly wailing machines, he shook his head. It never got easier, but he did learn to hide it better. After all, the death of an infant is never an easy thing to bear, no matter how premature.
Alyssa, his nurse, stepped up to him. "Do you want to tell the parents, or should I?"
He took a deep, shuddering breath, and regarded her. "No... no, I'll do it. Then I'm going home, opening up a nice bottle of brandy, and getting rip roaring drunk."
Turning, he stormed off to the ICU waiting room, to inform Doctors Sam and Ellen Lane that their daughter, little Lois, had passed on from complications due to her five week premature birth several months before.
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Many other events that to native eyes would seem more momentous occurred within weeks of that day. One was the arrival of a joyous bundle to Doctor Thomas and Martha Wayne, their firstborn, Bruce. Another was the day an eccentric scientist pulled the last survivor of Mars to Earth, where said Martian decided to try to blend in for a while. And yet another was the first time when Lex Luthor realized just how much power money had when he convinced one first grade bully to protect him from another for a mere pittance - five dollars a day, not even pocket change.
But one that was possibly more important happened in a place unseen by the eyes of the outside world, on an island lost to even myth. The island of Themiscrya, home of the Amazon Nation.
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Queen Hippolyta gazed at her secret labor, knowing that her subjects would not understand the longing that had nearly overwhelmed her some years before. After Herakles and Theseus had led the Athenians into conquering them, a handful had escaped, only to be shipwrecked on an island lost to all charts. Here, their patrons Artemis and Athena appeared to them, telling them that they had been chosen to live on this island forever. Others would join them from time to time, those women either lost at sea, or slain at sea by men, reborn into the physically perfect bodies of Amazons. No man had ever set foot on Themiscrya, and none ever shall by the goddesses' decree. However, as one not reborn but in her true, original body, Hippolyta longed for what she never had before - a daughter.
On a plinth before her sat her masterwork - a clay sculpture of a baby girl, perfect in every detail. Months upon months of work with a fine reed had erased even the fingerprints pressed into the soft clay, and replaced them with details as accurate as even tiny pores. This was no stylized representation, or crude mannequin, no more perfect manifestation could be made if a real child had been used to make its mold. Yet it also bore distinct features recognizable to the trained eye - the nose, eyes, cheeks, and jaw of she who crafted it.
As she carefully smoothed out the last tiny fingernail, she sighed. She knew she was too old to play with dolls, which is what this would only ever be, but she could not resist the urge to create it. Now, only one step remained - to place the clay into the fire, to be sealed as ceramic. Looking up from the crude wooden seat she rested in, a far cry from her throne several floors above, a heartfelt plea escaped her lips. "Please, Athena. I beg you, Artemis. Let this be as my daughter, that my agony might be abated!" she exclaimed in a long-lost dialect of Greek.
After a moment, during which she determined her wish was unheard, her head dropped to her chest, and a single tear fell, to splash against the eye of her creation. She then stood ramrod straight, with the pride of millenia radiating from her. She lifted the metal pan that separated the plinth and the sculpture, and carried it to the crude kiln she had built when she started this over a year before. It burned brightly, yet she did not wince; the heat was enormous, yet she did not turn away. Instead, she thrust the pan into the fire, that it might do what it must.
"Hippolyta, remove the pan from the kiln!"
The voice startled her, but by the wild tone she knew instantly who it must have been. Moving with a grace and speed unheard of, she clutched the handle of the pan and drew it forth. It had only been a moment, surely the clay had not yet hardened?
To her amazement, there was no clay upon the pan. Instead, two blue eyes stared up at her, blinking, before a yawn broke open the tiny, perfectly formed mouth. Slightly chubby arms and legs stretched, and though the pan was searingly hot, the now fully living baby showed no discomfort at the heat.
"Thank you, Artemis!" whispered the queen of all Amazons, as she carefully set the pan back upon the plinth, and lifted the child gently into my arms. "The Romans called you Diana... and so, my own daughter shall be named so.
"And she is a wonder, my little Diana."
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Looking down from Olympus, two impossibly perfect women watched, and pondered. One with dark brown hair, tied back by a vine from the wilds, looked to the other, with perfectly arrayed ebony hair. "She is our Champion... but was this reward for her service proper?" she asked.
The black haired one, slightly taller than her companion, smiled. "It was more than proper. We even gained permission from that which stands above even us to use the soul of the first girl-child to leave the mortal sphere once she placed the simulacrum in the fire as the soul of... Diana."
Unsure, the first one asked. "And what shall become of her? She has immortal flesh, and an immortal soul. Will she remain an infant forever?"
"No, Artemis, she shall not. All souls are immortal, and some are reborn through other agencies. Diana shall grow strong and tall, and as beautiful as either of us." She waved her hand, and the image of Themiscrya faded. "She shall be as swift as you, and as skilled as I. The rest of the Twelve shall each give her gifts, and with these she shall be a Champion, not just for us, but for all that remain of Olympus. And she shall not be limited to Themiscrya, but shall take her courage, honor, and other virtues to stand in the World of Men."
"Phah," spat Artemis. "Men are crude, and they enslave their women."
"Perhaps that was once true, but behold, here. On this once empty land stands a great nation, now. It is embroiled in unrest, but that unrest is the birthing pains of a more enlightened time. Already their women are given an equal voice in their government, a vote in their national senate. They do not allow kings to rule, but choose one of their own number, balanced by other forces, to guide and lead for a time. Perhaps when Diana has reached her maturity, they will even have a woman chosen as one of those leaders - for nothing in their laws forbid it, and they rapidly understand the meaning of their Founders' own words."
"Perhaps, Athena... perhaps."
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