Shit. Artemis stood in the pain of the antecedent chaos wrapping itself around her frail ankles like blistering flames. Such dire uncertainty left her thoughts to fall into disarray, terrorized by the iniquitous situation of a house turning to ash right before her. The extravagant aching found only with those surviving the loss of another, needing to wake up to reality but tempted by leisure of a curse of longing to fall deep into slumber. Artemis drifted between a less-than extraordinary life, struggling to uphold the harrowing weight of earning wages and achieving a scholastic dream.

Her life was defined by a fine red thread, trailing hitherto and flippantly into the abysses of their known universe. Artemis had set foot into a race against time, where her only opponent was a sibling named Athena. Their polarity in personalities would keep the world spinning, teetering by the comedy of an empathic youngest sibling and the endless disappointment of a first born. Artemis dawned a confused lurid grin, and Athena captured an officious snarl that brought men to their knees. Together, both siblings were forever unattainable to the offerings of romantic partners; as their trauma created a barrier of aberration that often proved impenetrable to the shallow goals of their many, many suitors. The two women stood locked in a contest weaving unsavory tapestries; serving as truthful penal of their woeful lives and allowing them the right to cast social critiques over all that they had barely survived, freely.

Artemis would plummet between nightmares anchored in the soils of the Redwood trees and I life as a burnt out laborer. The ancient lore of the Yurok Tribe taught of a cave, mystical in its healing, an aphorism for the travels of human consciousness. Their neolithic annihilation gave birth to the word Genocide...a fact meant to be buried in time. Answers were only given to the beholder of free and radical thinking and was tucked away on Federal property, reserved only to marked sovereign citizens. Only those of a direct bloodline could enter and exit freely.

Nightmares were gifts from the past, an experience locked away in an simulation were everyone accepted their role in the pending apocalypse. The dreams of dead-eyed savages lining up shadows at the mercy of their weapons, and the odium that fired into the masses...slaughtering strangers with strange smiles plastered across their face was now her reality. The familiar indicators lacked in her surroundings, as it was unexpected to find Artemis in white leather, surrounded by an army of giants. There was only one world where she was blessed with a life focused in living for her own health, and to attain purpose in life...freely.

The winding paths, left Artemis with only the option to draw a weapon coated in gold and to defend the daily waves of moods and exhaustion with words meant to cast reason into any disaster. She had only wanted a chance to add a splash of color in a bleak world. There seemed to a be a delicate balancing act in separating the two worlds. It was difficult to find comfort in the current company of those holding stiffened and uncanny Burke-like grins. Her heart would flutter and pound, confused by the ethereal memories of animus gifted by such average citizen...in arrogant repute to communal offerings of nutrients, shelter, and geological advice. She recalled the annoyance in losing a bet as to whether the settlers would prove her wrong in being "the worst kind of people". Artemis had bet on their failure: believing they’d always find new ways to claim themselves the victim, beleaguered by their own patriotic dream.

The settlers had hidden behind the theory of a "core of discovery", and floated across the great waters with miraculous luck. Proceeding to pillar violence that brought forth new words to describe and justify the existence of incest, torture, rape, and Genocide. Their compiled gratuitous gluttony for a fast fortune had turned them against a quiet village, and their lust for blood allowed the momentary lack of enforced polity them the right to butcher anyone that stood in their path. They had fled religious terrorism, and sought asylum from a Nation that was intrinsic in their beliefs of the value of human life. Artemis was trapped in a moment in which no excuses could nullify the actions of these visitors. Their empty formula for success held the base substance of violence, and was strengthened by their excuses that substantiated their inherent right to murder freely.

Artemis looked over in fear, only to see her idiot cousin, standing in a colorful shawl and yelling appraisals of her derogated victory. Her words were hollow and scripted as she made eye-contact with the men that accidentally aimed in her direction, the wrath of a traitor exceeded past culture. The woman held the laughter of a banshee, threatening and rich with opprobrium. The gentrification of their culture was gaitered by the imbecility of a lone woman and a single night, robbed of right to sleep peacefully within the confines of their own homes. They’d become slaves to primitivism, assimilation practices and the tedium of living "freely".

It was obvious that the woman was made privy to information that presupposed the events. There was an arrogant confidence splashed across her suppressed smile expressing a new found virulence. Their Tribe was victim to the emissary of a prideful woman, trading coordinates for the promise of safety. Artemis had once warned her Tribe of this individuals obsession with stratum and other peoples husbands, but her pithy was deemed spiteful due to a familial blood tie. Artemis began sprinting, needing to create distance between herself and a loser cousin...fixated on earning rank through espoused methods. There was no way to brace for the impact; no realistic way to combat for the tedium of another’s dream.

The midnight air held the shrill threat "don’t let her get away!". The fear of a single moment born in a nightmare had set Artemis upon a path of promising vignettes and exegesis odes. The trail of artistic fecundity had allowed Artemis to object to a flanking army wielding a single book and violent-laced words. She recalled moments arguing in front of a war council: condemning her cousins illusory notion that assimilation was the only option. Artemis had debated the frail nonsequitors, and politely excused the woman holding a sojourn position. Artemis had rolled back her eyes in response to the exiting temper tantrum...knowing her cousin’s vacuous strategy was half baked and lacking structure. Their Tribe was at a stand-off as to what was agreeable, acceptable from those that had washed ashore in search of their religious dream.

Artemis was slapped back into reality, a seething pain began to tremble down her spine. The fulmination of horror and endless pain came crashing over her body. Her frizzy hair swept over her skin caked with blood and ashes and lay across the sweat of her forehead, whilst knobbly knees buckled under the teachings of forced acculturation. Artemis hung her head low to accommodate the indomitable battle, unable to spurn the blood-soaked soils with volcanic rage. There was no word at the time to express the failure weighing on her mind: the horrors of a leader defeated and without resolve. Artemis began to observe her surroundings, wallowing screams emerged from the bellows of her soul. The anguish caused scars to be drawn into the wind, slashing wounds in the trees surrounding the massacre. Artemis would spend the majority of her real life, fighting off neurosis of nightmares, and reminding herself that the things found in the depths of her subconscious were beaded seedlings of past lives...strung along and reasoned with by a reoccurring dream.

Artemis looked up at the “visitors”, tilting her head up silently with the aid of a captor; if only to gain better view of a traitor dawning a colorful robs. The booming voice of their captors was febrile, Artemis wondered if they called him a childish name like Timmy because his eyes often wickedly thrashed around in glee. His thoughts and intentions were churning in the open at a great magnitude, much like the unforgiving and unaccountable ocean. They seemed to be under the impression that the colorful robe dawned by their "insider" woman was ennobled in title for some reason, and Artemis felt the guile-filled girl basking in the false image of martyrdom. It had been a small stone to a plan paved to excuse the pathetic longing survived in loving another person’s husband freely.

Her cousin was throwing around the words of a combatant, attempting to hide the intentions of coincided goals towards eradicating an entire village. Artemis said nothing. Her fight was with the man that had thrown torches into their sleeping village...her fight was with the men that had ravaged women and children in the middle of the night as they fled or attempted to evacuate the site. Even now, her captor had no idea that Artemis’s publicly nominated role as a War Chief gave the ability to rule full judgements and hold executions freely.

Artemis held her snarl low; refusing to look up at the men laughing at her plight. The night had been filled with a platitude of pale-driven chaos and unspeakable horrors, those that pretended to honor the Rights of the First Occupant...guided by a woman with oily blackened hair, longing to repudiate with her culture. Her antipathy for family and friends led to the pillaging of her own home, reducing the risk of aspersion of any survivors altogether. True dread was coming to terms that ones’ own family member would go to such tragic lengths to bestow herself with a new life, one where the woman could thrive and acclimatize freely.

Artemis felt her blurry vision grasp for a point-of-focus. Her eyes darted across the land, she grasped onto lush needles and maroon branches. To be a small spine alone a shelf of imagination was all she asked from the world. Before birth an ominous voice The sensation of failing to uphold the onerous title as a protector of her Peoples had left Artemis staring at her hands with rumination to the invisible blood that dripped endlessly over each knuckle. These were the same hands that had once crowned herself at the rise of each sun, deemed merciful when she’d made the original mistake of allowing settlers the right to wander around the land freely.

She heard a thump along the lush foliage indicating the drop of body. Artemis began to mumble to herself "no, no, no" and scrambled frantically on all fours to hold tight the corpse of her favorite cousin. There was nothing but pines and soft trellises of leaves and branches, until she reached the straw-colored hair of Jessica as she lay face down. No amount of paint could capture the nugatory act of Artemis breaking her soul into two pieces instantaneously. Her pallid and war torn face was now harrowing, cemented with sorrow and confusion as she clung to her fallen family and attempted to convince herself for a mere second...that maybe all of it had been a spell of aphorism masquerading as a sick dream.

Artemis felt horror streaming along the ridges of her temples, avowedly admitting defeat with a screech meant to sum up her depredation. Her efforts to save anyone remaining in the village were paltriest at last, and the contumely captors felt it safe to cast her aside to further pillage the unraped. Such a vile, non-existent word was all she had known about the settlers and their colonized dream.

Forced etymology settled themselves as words meant for another day. The settlers had done unspeakable things to children and even infants, and relied on the excusable word "rape" to sum up a series of choices...a series of actions. They sought pity and refuge, in trade for animadversion and the chance to know of their fabled savior. It wasn’t long before the settlers let their demoniacal habits take priority. The vituperation in foreign tongues stood externally to all the Indigenous Warriors had known out of life. Their faith in humankind had made them graciously recondite of philosophy and experts of the local lands. The men surrounding them were condemning Artemis and her family for "Primitivism": deemed heathens, to be cut silently from the fabric of time. They were found guilty of high treason; refusing to secede, and whatever casualties that came from the Yurok Tribe taking on the entirety of a Guard meant to preserve National security. The pallid attempts in oppressing history could never rival the curiosity of the citizens as they flourished and began searching for such "heroics" freely.

Artemis wasn’t able to hide her contempt, having found her own cousin unlikable as a person, and unsettling in a way that seemed privy to a majority of other women. It had probably been an easy bargain, a mild plea with the obfuscated traitor for a location of a river..."in fair-trade" for a few shiny objects and the promise of the death of Artemis....simply to dispossess a man from his title of husband. Precision in partner selection and marriage in culmination to her chiefly personality would inevitably mean that her home would often be at risk for aspersion, to the armies of women that declared themselves to be "more worthy". Artemis had yet to learn of the vile traits of such a hypothetical woman...so pathetic, so desperate, as to throw herself at another’s husband freely.

Artemis scrambled to her feet, needing to flee from the parochial rapists that called themselves conquerors of land. Their contumely behavior was diametrically abrasive to all those that lived in harmony. Minus the one unlikable cousin. The price of female jealousy and lack of natural acumen had broken their known world into shards and slivers. Artemis sprinted for life, apologizing to all she left behind, without notice of the tears that cascaded down her face freely.

The Indigenous Warriors grew sick by the arrival of the massive canoes washing ashore. The word for such magnitude of boat had yet to be comprehended, and its occurrence left the land riddled with mass hysteria. Councils were gathered from four corners of the oceans West region, where neighboring Tribes ushered their confused members to admire the vast trees along the Klamath, and bring solitude to wandering minds. Many complained of their blindsidedness to see things too vast for their imagination to cojure up freely.

These visitors had traveled across the horizons of the ocean, in search of a prized river that glistened with the rays of the sun and miraculously maintained itself. Artemis began to question their motives, and took it upon herself to mislead their expedition by mindlessly picking up any rock with a glimmer. They seemed annoyed by her most useful stone, a black surface with gentle edges meant to be traded and crafted into arrows. They had a very different understanding as to what was considered valuable evidently. The incorrigible bands of men, or the "declared occupants" had insatiable needs and wants...and often took more than necessary to sustain their cushy lifestyles. Artemis had wasted entire seasons leading their finest adventurers down countless rivers...unaware as to why she began to giggle at the lengths taken to waste their time freely.

The nights were reserved for meetings with the council of Wars, predicating the visitors assumptions to further habituate property ownership, without the intentions to cultivate or work the soils themselves. The lazy men held limited capacities in strength, and their patience was wearing thinner by the day. Their council was informed that the visitors began capturing other neighboring Tribes, dragging them in chains along the peaceful brooks, beating and killing them as they pleased. Artemis began trashing their chambers, tossing leathers and hurling pelts in frustration. Her men looked on, needing her rage to subdue into a tactical move born from caring and seething despondence. The room fell quiet, knowing one-sided diplomacy was the hailing strategy of those admitting defeat. Their only option was to flee in the night, taking those they loved to "strike gold" in their last opportunity to breathe freely.

Artemis landed back in recent memories: turning her head slowly to see her cousin casually interjecting herself into a meeting with the drawn out excuse of catering to elders. Something wasn’t/hadn’t ever sat right about her ability to be everywhere when things were awful, and nowhere when help was actually needed. Crooked. The cousins beady eyes, and need to clear her throat and pull attention forced others to be polite enough to usher her along to the point...if only to get rid of the ill-intended company without guilt. Very few felt comfortable with taking advice from a non-leader, wickedly taking dalliances with nepotism and opportunistic endeavors at first chance. Even the advice given was done with malice, because the individual thrived on calumny opposition and cast endless drama freely.

Artemis banished the power-hungry relative from attending any council gatherings, with a democratic vote backing the decision: they had all grown weary over the erratic behavior, and attuned to her ploys dripping with jealousy. The council had witnessed one-too-many arrogated arguments, where the woman lacked common boundaries, and grew embarrassed on behalf of her nonentity and blatant display of scorned affirmation for Artemis’s husband. The indomitable will of a woman ridiculed for callous longing of another’s partner had caught up to her. Turns out, not many people felt comfortable in supporting her romantic dream.

The woman was utterly insane, and Artemis had set out to prove it with a simulation invented to duplicate the past. She had done so by placing herself, and her awful family in a room filled with glowing crowns and standing cubicles, and allowed their memories and intentions to be implanted directly into their dreams: needing evidence that the insipid woman had willingly alienated herself from everyone...in the hopes of feigning guilt and gathering attention to procure unavailable men freely.

Compromise of reason had brought Artemis to her knees...captured by a traitor and her band of "merry men". The destruction of cultural filiation was broken off in a single night. The prosperous had occurred, and the civilized Tribes were disarmed, captured to be raped, or left supine in shallow mass graves. Forgotten to time. Their existence was forever altered to adhere to those that settled and pillaged freely.

Artemis landed in the middle of her forest: kneeling over lush needles and clenching to lime-colored clovers. She began to walk and stumble drunkly through the forest, until sheer exhaustion eroded her vitiated spirit to survive. Forgetfulness had plagued her thoughts, and all that was given as a clue were a few decorated leathers and a handful of feathers. The simulation had revved up a scene where an intricate trail led the way by use of intention and ethos. She had struggled to gain sturdy strides, too lost in a dangerous simulation where Artemis had forgotten the useless talents she prized whenever she drank firey-water freely.

Artemis recalled landing gently in the arms of a kind woman known for her maternal instincts, she was armored with beautiful skin that was boldly reminiscent of the midnight skies. Invisible chains of guilt-welded renunciation held her hostage to one of the settlers...a man with a boyish voice named Timmy. It broke Artemis to listen to her tale of horrors, as the woman recalled a home filled with "discipline" aimed at children. Artemis had been the victim to such an extreme and religious upbringing, so it ruptured her heart to witness as the firm-but-soft vocals shook whenever her empathy took control of her recounts. The quivering in her voice, brought Artemis comfort in expounding the trauma holding her back from her success. The two women were destined to be imputed in their ability to tell the disturbing truth freely.

Artemis hugged the cushion of a warm chest quite frequently...needing to recall the valor in those that cared for children. The poor woman no longer held Joy in her eyes: they were darkened in transitory spells of terror, and pleading with Artemis to listen to her words of desperation every fall. She coddled Artemis near her chest, weeping in silent: needing to rectitude the shame that burdened both of their hearts, the kind woman resulted in wiping away the tears of a starved and exhausted child, as she pleading for Artemis to stand up. Such women were protectors of children even in their passing, unforgiving in their duty to protect the innocent that were so easily harmed or even robbed of life freely.

Artemis eventually stumbled on her way, wandering along a badly formulated path where a beast named Timmy hunched over a shadow and remained mumbling to himself. He cackled under his breath, and hacked away at something that lay upon the forest flooring. "I can’t help you man...": the man was talking to a heap that lay at his feet, and yelling aggressively at an ambiguous-looking lump. Artemis approached the man, and felt her heart begin to ache, as the pile of cloth came into focus, and formed the shape of a small child. Artemis had heard stories of the man that held title of a violator and father. A childish man famed for his talents in deriding moral values, and utilizing pages as a tendered brick. His chest swelled with excuses, and his vocal tone changed whenever challenged with obloquy authority. He was a caged beast, left with an entire terrain to hunt as he pleased...choosing to slaughter his toddler, and four other children to display his birthed curse of being painted in gold: believing his mental variance and fecundity had meant it were his "God-given" right to murder and lug around the corpses of his own children freely.

Artemis hadn’t understood the mounting warnings of his unbridled temper, raising her brows in observation to him smiling and methodically decapitating one of his own children. The man began to pull a dull-blade across the leg of his son: annoyed that the child dared to be difficult even in death. Artemis tapped his slouched shoulder, and he turned around in embarrassment that he hadn’t sensed her presence behind him up until then...so preoccupied with carving up his own child. His face changed drastically, as he sputtered excuses of being afraid of the dead child he had fought and mightily conquered. "I was scared...I was in fear for my life!" The man stood up in confusion, and realized Artemis was alert to his ichthyphagous and barbaric avarice. His ugly face scrunched up, and he cast empty glares attempting to gain understanding of his "situation". He lunged slowly at Artemis. He continued to breathe heavily: she were a loose end in his plot to seek narcissistic supply. A frantic fight ensued, as he may have felt his narrative of meagre victimization, fall flat upon arrival. Artemis began bristling past his attacks, smiling and ripping out clumps of his thinning hair: snatching at his widows peak with her wee fists. The man stood in incendiary determination: ambitious to eradicate an inviolable stranger that had dared to walk up to him undetected so freely.

The exertions of the scuffle brought forth a woman from the darkness. As always...Timmy’s mother came to his aid: yelling hollow demands that Artemis should let her son go unscathed, for worry of his potential. Timmy was the golden boy of his family, shitting gold and bending facts: named after his father, as a direct result of the lack of originality found within his "culture". Their settlement seemed more concerned about how their "family values", were on full-display for the courts of public opinion and on display for the entirety of the world to witness. His mum accused Artemis for her tact in provocation, and attempted to shield his "infractions" by listing his accomplishments as virtuous efforts. The woman truly believed her ill-minded son deserved to roam and reside with the other non-murderous citizens freely.

Artemis had already known such seditious lack-of-equity, as her own cousin had always prodded the public with unwarranted opinions and often sided with those with pale skin to appease her own agenda. It had resulted in the childish woman announcing her predilection in allegiance with silent judgement and vile words. Her cousins preservation in "self" would always outweigh and prove incompatible with the demands of preservation in their shared culture. The settlers had rewarded her with the false-hopes of fortune: if she guided them to a river, and handed over the hidden leader that was forever cursed to be an orphan. The apathetic, displaced woman gleefully lead them to a village where they were sound asleep, dreaming freely.

Like the warring personalities found in all families, Artemis was often muffled for opinions on the evils of aesthetic desires opening the door to the ethical delusions given to those laying waste to unbridled gluttony. She was sentenced to a tour of the Perils of the Soul, a trail marked with Monsters and masked Sirens. The pathos of a hero was all Artemis had, and her brevity all that she wore; she was a forgotten Goddess standing in plain sight. She was often found holding clumsy poses, juggled misfitting robes and vases of disconsolate tears. Cleaving a dimension laying in plain sight had allowed Artemis to breathe life into a story, an epic Odyssey on the ascension of a amoral individual tasked to disparage bones fusing together by way of walking into oblivion. Few would bet their finances on an orphan, holding a crown powered by Zeus’s lightning and the warning of posthumous glitches. The cleaving of life from simulation held promising modalities and potentials in compressing a phase of life into mere days, denuded by only the brave ready to face the contemporaneity of their daily choices. She lead the way down a dark path, where men were free to roam the world and breathe their air for reward in killing their own offspring, spouses, and neighbors freely.

Next Chapter: *[ II ] Artemis and the Argonauts*