I probably ought to go back and do some explaining. My name is Apollo, and I'm one of the twelve gods of Olympus. Artemis – my elder twin, as she never lets me forget – is also an Olympian. Our father is, of course, the god Zeus. As for what Hermes said – yes, I've chased a few women in my time, but I'm not as bad as him and nowhere near as bad as my father. The whole incident with Daphne was no fault of mine anyway.
My sister, Artemis, on the other hand, is one of the three maiden goddesses – arguably, the most famous of them at that. She decided this at the age of three, and therefore asked Zeus to make her immune to Eros's arrows.
Ever since, she's spent most of her time running around the woods in a short tunic, with the nymphs and dogs, hunting. Any man who has crossed her has met a painful end. Take Acteaon, for example – no, I mean it, take him. He got lost in the woods and accidentally stumbled across my sister bathing. She turned him into a stag and let him get ripped apart by his own dogs, taking no notice of the fact that he was my grandson and that I was not impressed. She doesn't pay attention to anybody's opinion – especially mine, trust me. Her temper is famous around Olympus, and I'm normally on the receiving end; when we argue, she calls me a rampaging idiot and I call her a stuck-up ice maiden – neither name fully deserved, I might add.
Except she's been acting strangely recently. I'm used to hearing stories about her nymphs and other followers, only she's been mentioning one of them more than usual recently. His name? Orion.
This Orion isn't exactly Mr Perfect, either. He's mortal, for a start, but got mixed up in the affairs (hah) of the Gods some time ago. He fell in love with a mortal princess, Merope, then one night he got drunk and tried to rape her. He was caught, and blinded, but Hephaestus took pity on him and helped him – he walked East until the rays of the sun healed him. As I'm God of the sun and of healing, this was how I met him. I didn't think any more of it – for a while.
My sister met him after he startled some of her nymphs while blundering around the forest like a typical mortal. The seven nymphs, the Pleides as they were called, worked themselves into a state running away from the nosy hunter and called for Artemis to help. She obliged in the only way that she really could at the time – she turned them into stars and placed them in the sky. That's now the constellation that you mortals now call the Seven Sisters got there.
This was all perfectly normal behaviour by all concerned – until my sister actually forgave Orion for scaring her nymphs. He'd be about the first person ever that she has forgiven, but maybe she was just having one of her once-in-a-century good days. He is a good hunter, that I must admit, and they have since become hunting companions; he is now one of her followers.
Maybe I'm assuming things, but it does seem to be when she's meeting up with him that she takes all of this trouble over her appearance. Maybe my sister did take that vow of hers to be a maiden forever, and maybe she is immune to Eros's arrows – but Eros is only responsible for one-way love, rather than mutual love. Anteros is responsible for that – and as far as I can recall, nothing was said about his arrows when Zeus made the promise.
And forever is a very long time.