SEIL

"Artemis! Come quick, now. The female fox, Solki, has found a child, a member of mortal bare-folk." Gurn, a member of Wolf, my best friend called to me. I was quite startled.

"How? Where?"

"We suspect Zeus. There was lightning near where the child was found. The leaders of dogs agreed to let you decide on keeping the child. Are you coming?"

I nodded. The wolf led me from my tree, the tallest tree, across the river, to Solki's den. The good vixen stood waiting for me.

"Finally, you're here. Artemis! Here is the child. I found her a mile off. It's a female mortal. I'm sorry I didn't come sooner."

"That's all right," I smiled, "Oh. She is beautiful. Gurn, go tell Dog Leaders that she will stay to be raised as dog." Gurn raced off, fast as possible, without asking questions. I bent down to pick up the girl.

I took out my dagger and slit my hand, without so much as a wince. I needed blood for her tribal marks. I made three fingerprints on each of her cheeks, in an arch shape, that meant dog. Then, quickly, before my immortality healed my wound, I once more covered my finger with blood. I made an upside-down crescent on her forehead.

"She is to be raised dog under my protection. I am a goddess and so those marks of blood shall forevermore be engraved on her head. Her name will be Seil. Because we know Zeus gave her." I gave her back to Solki. Seil was the Dog Word for lightning, an appropriate name for the girl, being the circumstances.

Fifteen years later in Olympia Forest. Seil had become a hunter, warrior, and dog at heart. I was her protector, watching, helping, and teaching, always. Skilled with knives, daggers, and arrows, she was unstoppable. In the trees, she hid stalking prey. I was determined to get Zeus to grant immortality to this "Goddess who was dog" as I affectionately called her. I fought with her for practicing, once she even almost won…

"Seil," I often said to her, "you have truly made Solki proud, me proud, Gurn proud." Her real parents, would they be proud too? I thought about that a lot as well.

My brother continued to pop in and out, visit animals and I, brood at Daphne's tree, and he taught bits to the girl also.

By night I am the moon goddess, watching mortals, I sit on my white crescent palace, a place where only I can go. That much I have learned from Apollo's unfortunate disaster, where his son drove his special sun chariot. So I live two lives. But always do I protect Seil, as if she were my own daughter. Daughter. I am incapable of love, that is my gift from my father. But then what is this new protective feeling I have over Seil? Is it that I love her as my own daughter? Could that be a weakness? What would happen if my "daughter" was played to an enemy's advantage?

"Artemis?" she called to me abruptly through such thoughts, "I just had a vision, as though the fates called to me."

"What? Really? Tell me!" I was startled.