There wasn’t a single word to recapitulate the collective of fearful emotions captured in the fleeting moments of free falling through the night sky. Artemis felt her recalcitrant heart aching, with the endless suffering of heartbreak given to those cantankerous enough to take a leap of faith in oneself as a single individual. To remain mistreated by a lover...is to forfeit the edification of a genuine smile.

The same amount of pitiable understanding can be given to those that claim "I hate you all"... like the little-bitch-boy Phillip. A man with no interest in upholding a social contract with civilization. Artemis refused to be doomed to such vile incompleteness, and she took pride in the fragments of hopefulness found unearthed by chance, and the occasional forced smile.

The world had wanted to believe in her so much. Too much. It was felt in the impact of reality. Artemis had fallen loftily from a door frame, her rounded nose upturned towards the night sky. It’d be hard to hold in one’s laughter, in viewership of such ungraceful landings. Artemis sat up with a groan and widened eyes, as she began fetching up vomit from the bellows of her soul. Loud growling announced her skills in purging demons and sensitive tonsils. Motion sickness proved to be most annoying trait of the mortals...it was so silly to think that her equilibrium could fall victim to negligible winds. Her coarse hair expressed another story all on its own. Detailing a frantic depiction of events, a gusty adventure where Artemis was casually bitch-slapped by wind, and laying face down in open fields, and fighting a spell of bafflement. She wanted to cast a venerable light on her unkempt life, to purge the harmless extol that festered beneath critical thinking and the loneliness that came with being surrounded by morons. Her overt equanimity was never lost with those that took passions reading. Unpalatable pain, had coffered her expectations...providing opulent shelter for the words free of artificial intellect. Artemis was able to speak of atrocities with an obstinate opinion, and hide casually behind an unforgiving smile.

Artemis lay on the thinning foliage: a stitch in a handful of disrupted muscles left her body to absorb the impact. Outside of the constant fatigue, she was endlessly fighting with a profound thirst: unquenchable and shameless. Artemis scanned her terrain rushed in slight worry...feeling as though the untimely arrival of her sibling Athena was inevitable; left imagining her glaring down at her, with crossed arms and an eyebrow raised. There was nothing shy of devastating than the opinion crafted by a misunderstood scene. Artemis was unable to defend her sobriety, with an interminable pose of holding oneself up on all fours. The gasps of an inconvenient tale: one of a sibling vomiting up their past lives in what can only be described as the most pallid of positions. "Why are you like this?". Artemis would laugh at her annoyance and lack of lecture, but remained consistent in her surprise by a sibling that often fled like the wind, and returned with nourishment and supplies. Words weren’t really her strong suit, but Artemis remained adamant in coddling Athena’s weakness for comedy. Artemis was forever an ally, for daring to produce a speck of light...in the darkness of those cursed with polarizing mood-swings. Artemis knew that her sister had grown to love the goofiness plastered across a youthful and inexhaustible smile.

Had the reader not heard of the specific rules in an ancient game that imprisoned them all to the planet? The game played adrift within an abandoned orbit. Artemis had seen all that was needed to cast her vote on extinction. The world had found ways to round her opinion, with each public ridicule as to how and why she deserved the sticks that held her upright. They had begrudgingly distorted their own reality to be more meaningful by chasing her down; specifically to laugh and jeer in her direction. She was forever fragmentary by way of the orphaned past: a suffering child...famed for being Ruth-less.

Artemis had no issue with holding her breath, or taking light steps over marble. The interminable determination of a dross-drenched idea, gave Artemis an ashen-ed place in society: holding tight curls and ruby lips...and discussing prized ensconce for self-accomplishments. To remain ardent in the study of man and the field of psychology would result in a retirement plan of distributing death in an ominous house that stood isolated with an endless brick-lain tunnel. There were endless daydreams in which she had walked the twelve steps, ate with a young gentleman, and remained impartial to theories of happenstance. There was a dearth amount of particles in hope left for the citizens sentenced to a walk into The Abyss. Her own childhood memories lay down the imbued stones of judgement, and a judicial occupation that left Artemis displaying a riveted grin that cast doubt in her personages of a chronic sufferer. The abolition of hope had gifted Artemis with the ability remain disturbingly reasonable, accommodating and ruthless.

The gifts of Zues’s incalculable lightning lay waste to a frail timeline; to a hopeless story, tied together by concomitant criminals and all those chained to their own personal form of Hades. The true hell of other people. The unmentionables were left recreating their crimes through a simulation of the human experience. The demarcated character had been drafted by personality archetypes too evil to detail. She had been given the task of judging the souls of all those committed to a future permeated in a toxic state of dissolution. Assigned to be a kind flame guarding them through the deepest of woes as a fair demi-God. Her role as hero had meant a preconception earned by trauma and dubious trials. Artemis had rose to occasion, entering a gladiator ring with monsters and beasts, and growling with triumph....holding a steady step and shielding herself from the light of freedom. The world was forever afraid of the blood spatter that trailed across her wizened smile.

Artemis had been cast down to a doomed planet, plunging into the depths of Hades and forced to scour the land for a baby missing to time and infamy. Such would be an unlucky soul, to be struck by a Hauptmann-filled verdicts...one that was simmered down to a harsh and "unlucky" bout with fate. The life of a seemingly innocent man was held in less-priority to the sacrosanct penalties needed to sustain Democratic order. Heaven forbid...the golden boy should take flight and land safely into a foreign world of just accountability. Artemis had seen accounts of a vile man, hiding behind the role of loving father...hurling objects at his own offspring...despite the documented fact that the bow-kneed, curl-topped baby; walked around with a brittle skeleton. There was no proof that the child would have ever survived his father, only a ladder, a corpse, and a man too insecure to hold blame for his actions. The primordial event of observing a father and son interacting had been a great moment to jump off of; for instances of future time travel adventure...had Artemis ever needed prophetic notes or datum to travel across temporal spaces. She’d be able to easily hide such a timeline, dimension, or universe in plain sight...behind a bleeding door and the thinly etched warning displaying the horrific words: the ruthless.

Artemis believed that some beasts deserved to be put down for their crimes, and even scoffed at the idea that a few inmates may take little comfort in a handful of moments drowning in their deserved suffering, as they slipped away into the painful darkness gazing up at her determined face. The scent of death would always subsist within each blade of grass, a wave of red death left the world stale and colorless. A small army had found Artemis, yawning and weeping...telling tales of dead infants and the trials of being born sovereign and surrounded by an enemy army: famed for being perverse and ruthless.

The youth were left at the mercy of a virus that mutated faster than it could be identified or controlled; too tardy to care that they had missed a window of opportunity. The wheel of time had began to slow its pace, accommodating the sleepy citizens until they were too rested and lucid to mistreat. The tax-payers that refused to cover their snotty noses, but complained of a slow reboot of society. It became apparent which hadn’t had death creep into their homes. The selfish sickness blustered past those without compromised immune systems, and swallowed the weak with one lick. Ruby red waves of death devastated the planet and gifted the citizens with isolated deaths, a mass only strangers yelling bedside mannerisms. Nobody liked to think of the moments that their loved ones passed: drowning in body fluids, bombarded by imprisoning lights and guarded by the eyes of concerned strangers. Their last view was of that of a professional hiding their war-torn expressions, shielding themselves from the unknown. The predictable path of a plague had given the world less, and less reasons to smile.

Artemis had walked up upon the semi-hidden rituals of the citizens voicing their concerns to a public court, and took a seat in the backside of the room. She began to fight back tears, when hearing a boy standing patiently with the surname Knox; reluctantly shared his story. A young lad had hailed from the county of Rutherford...swaying gently with anxiety, as he stood in professional and formidable attire and dawned a cloth over his mouth and nose. Everyone was upset that he held the audacity to express his concern for the lack of airflow in the crowded courtroom. He had only come to express his grief in missing a deceased grandmother: a public servant that had taught children with little compensation, in a demanding occupation that provided inadequate medical coverage. The mere thoughts of his trembling voice burrowed a theorem of awareness, a soft reminder that the selfishness of the citizens was ever-present. Civilization had managed to prevail... misinformation was chaotic and annoyingly efficient. The primitive factors that were nothing mild of savagery, were now now rebranded as patriotic and ruthless.

Artemis cast a remarkably average looking woman’s face as the totem for the reigning chapter: ready to tie herself to the citizen forever, the mythical “Karen”, deemed unbeatable due its many faces: categorized as the smallest form of Titan. A threat to society, was a threat to society. Artemis challenged the woman to a duel in court, if she were ever to refute the artistic choices that were personally executed by the intentional choices made. Artemis had found her face randomly, sitting dead-center in the public eye: The woman claimed to be “offended” that the world could care less about seeing her own offspring beaming at the world. She claimed it was a crime against humanity to hide her child’s exhausted smile.

Artemis remained bored by idiots, and unable to sleuth at any extremity. This limit was bound by mild assumption(s) that her shields and golden web were to be vetted at the drop of a cap. She wasn’t supposed to declare war on citizens. Artemis wore a Blue Crest of Hope: hopelessly, committed to protecting the citizens from themselves. She was armed only with the proof of burdened sciences, and the heaps of data that became more accurate by the day. Artemis saw untapped potential with opaque moral, blanketed by a state of dissolution that kept them all warm. The self mutilation of eye gouging had left entire droves of citizens to haunt the common state...there was no hope for those that fled or caused havoc at the behest of a conman with an entertaining face. Artemis was forever left sighing deeply, walking behind a Mechanical Boar on warpath without a trail. The man was forever spreading selfish rhetoric, and spitting over the crowds of people...ready to die at the hand of a leader too old to care. They were pathetically desperate to bring forth his shrill voice, and lopsided smile.

Artemis had spent her night walking through the dreams of the citizens and sitting on their chests as they flailed around in confusion. She had wanted them to suffer the same symptoms of agoraphobia that held down each and every breath. The Viking sat pigeon-toed at the end of the bed...holding dull banter as to her short temper, and overweening in his posture...his striking gaze held a mixed expression of accomplished amalgamation felt through her successes. He had callously pissed her off by jeering off an ancient name: Hotarubi. They were forever hiding behind meaningless conversations that walked in circles, or skirting the gaze of the other....each mumbling or debating the other with a flirtatious smile.

They were entangled by task oriented work, wandering through dreams and weighing intentions with a futuristic device that splayed out the dreaming participants location in thought. A single feather was all that was needed to weigh ones sins. Artemis had chosen to hold out her small hand over the mouth of the sleeping person, compensating for the response of confusion that came from being awoke by a stranger. Part of time travel involved moving through permeable spaces of thought and banal listless bliss-es. The oversight of the patient waking up, had brought on a few ripples here and there...but nothing that could deteriorate the clock hands that ticked and toked gently across a mahogany inlay face of a resin protected device. Disruption of dreams, brought out the true self of the most wicked, and separated them from those left victim to circumstances of those marked ruthless.

The apex of morality could be shaped by the love of ones reflection. She had married the first man to fan a flame of "fun" to her "firm" personality. The expectations of a wife had held a stranger hostage by those too lazy to seek negation or professional help. Crippling expectations of people often proved the true intent of the apologetic: Artemis had witness the reactions of women altering into their demanded personas. She had been strung along by a man with a huge stride, and seething languish for his "lost" wife. She was tethered to the false image of two separate men, in a pragmatic theorem simulated to doused in the chaos of the time old tale of choosing between a Prince & Lover.

The spectrum of mild anxiety became a baseline of commonality...whenever she was surrounded by matching appurtenances. Her steely opinions could dissipate the most vibrant or atrocious colors, and blossomed a budding idea: delicate and defensive from the world. The calm nature of a violent woman was rarefied in its daunting task of burrowing anguish beneath snarls and grins. The loss of ones ability to care was considered to be a female paroxysm that was inconsiderate of all events in question. Artemis had found abstraction as a solution that were earned when looking danger directly in the face.

Artemis called her tapestries a battlefield, propositional to the modern times; decadent, her amendable words wielded as weapons to defend introspection. The Gods of Olympus hid behind layers of Theatai and invisible shields. Forgotten and ever present. She was subsequently the last of the Indigenous Warriors; standing in dereliction to their culture and facing the fog of Genocide...head-on; without the need to coalesce or consult elderly councils. Artemis and her fellow Warriors had stumbled into a simulation lacking laudable absolution. A musty air that reeked of iron had tipped her off to an artificial environment, and a strange luminous laughter in the darkness had kept her feet trailing along the soils. Artemis was forever torn between the guilt of letting go of a one-sided love and a para social relationship with a stranger that yet to see her face.

Artemis was forever painted as a Goddess walking over corpses, a grinning woman without a single secret or foe to worry over. The entrails of her epic tale did a fair depiction in rendering her to be understanding in patience and kind in her intentions. Artemis was a harbinger of death, an anathema to all women: A girl angered that she was born without a loving mother...forever confused, as to why her life had been cast so unfavorable in deserving love. Artemis was forever upset that her life die had been cast as “ruth-less”.

Blood seeped from the brims of her pages. She was either lummox or a bonified genius, either way...the book was a gift for the future version of herself. It was book...thrown into a fire, retrieved by only those with matching ethos. What could proposition a reader to continue onward into a battle that held no promise of deliverance? Artemis felt self-doubt cascade over her thoughts...she assumed they were no better than Orion, excited to embrace her in his hands...eager for a formidable excuse to abandon her at any moment. The book was simply a scripted concept of a blueprint for immortality. The words needed to be downloaded behind a mechanical smile, the furrowed worries hidden behind a helpful face.

The demanding faults of mankind, seemed to be all that could come from such charred ashes. Western civilization was forever associated with overkill and flamboyancy: the term "real" could label each citizen with simple terms. Benson would always be dear to a micro metropolis drenched with moody spirits, and the occasional battle with lava. The community was committed to zero errors, knowing a natural disaster proved the vitriol unforgiving nature of an unknown enemy. Confusion had advanced the localized offices until they had all stumbled upon the opportunity to hold passionate chambered debates with rapid fire; hazed in speech, yet, authentic with mea culpa and a beaming face.

One day...a kind Viking had found her weeping upon the floor of a circus tent; tucked away in a cupboard. She had met him with a label of unsuredness upon his wrinkled forehead. Artemis looked up at him in awe, his boyish choice in weapon was amusing to her: she refused to learn the rules of a pastime that celebrated corruption, and barely noticed his prods of encouragement. He was strange in conviction, and annoyingly attractive to look at: Artemis was often off put by his need to posturize in response to her sarcastic temerity. The man held expected repore in his grumbling tone, striking a glare at her and seeming unimpressed by a passing stranger. Artemis was openly impressed that he was so agile for his age: but was easily bored by his imperiousness. Forever startled by his ability to startle her with a booming voice filled with commands to exercise with precision or commitment. She would clap alongside enunciated applause, "bro, announce yoself...please!"Artemis was convinced he would wake up; unsure and excited by the thought of new ways in which to start conflict with her. It was pretty rare that she were to greet him with anything other than a welcoming grin splashed across her face.

Artemis had grown weakened by dehydration, she fought the slight worry that the stage of hallucinations and fainting spells were rearing. The atmosphere was pervaded by a musty, congested odor...it smothered all reasonability from the citizens and left accountability to be thrown to a polis of public opinion. The high reaching walls were plastered with stripes, waving nightmarish around her, as though the winds of change protested. Artemis was surrounded by dead-eyed savages foaming at the mouth and moshing in their perpetual state of pained panic. Time seemed to morph, easily manipulating a blank canvased human. Guilt was dragging her to the ground by way searing pain, bound by an unbreakable spell of just delivery. Even with an otherwise propositional stance and a female moaning in the pure agony of rocky muscles...the Viking looked perturbed by her disruption to his schedule. His coldness and socially awkward demeanor was often mistaken for being shamelessly devoted through his own criticisms. Artemis wouldn’t/couldn’t tell him shit, even if she was injured and dying. Not because of the arguments that’d ensue...but because she couldn’t stand to see worry be rushed away and buried beneath his lithe face.

Artemis was systematically upset by his choices, and in return...he was annoyed by her choice in loving others. They found themselves as two auspicious people of the opposite sex: separated by age, and the unattainable expectations of one another. He found vitality in her humor, and she found admiration in his ability to remain grumpy and spry. Their choice in twining as best friends was undeniable, because each mirrored the others posture by accident. Their encounter acted as a timeline indicator of youthful devotion and a change in self expression. There was no need for matching outfits...when both could wield a look of firm disappointment in sync at any distance: complete with crossed arms and a stern and somewhat understanding face.

Artemis had the audacity to tell others to fuck off, bugger off, whatever it took to make herself comfortable...whereas the Viking had always taken the opposition in tactics. It was his tenuous personality, that had made him susceptible to awful company by those that noted his dilatory need of people. Artemis had assumed his fear of the unknown had made him cautious when attempting to delve into her unpredictable thoughts on a random Wednesday. Maybe he was a simp to the idea that Artemis was tangentially crafted by her chaotic environment. More often than not...the Viking took delight in observing Artemis clamor in a bid for war, with crazed hair flailing in the wind and a snarl up her timeworn face.

Artemis had admittedly stumbled in her heartbreak, ostensibly dropping a orange sphere at the mere sight of the Viking. She had came to halt, stopping to observe him collecting and wearing a necklace that bore a shell. Her intuition to run had kicked in, the effectual necklace had given her more than enough reasons to begin crafting a thinly threaded path. The likes where Artemis had gracefully fell into the arms of a stoic man that seemed to have forgotten his worries of his past lives. The man had been busy kneeling, peering past a stubbornly planted foot: impediment trickling upon the soils...as the world waited for him to return to his own choices to willingly marry. Artemis had seen his burrowed dissatisfaction in life, and separated herself from Orion: strolling down an endless hallway of horrors. She had secretly wanted a break from being held accountable for his cruelty and emblematic misery. She had prematurely crafted a safe haven for a wife filled without regrets or anodyne to spar in marriage. The need to craft a nest of antipathy, in a rushed response to a broken home, and noticed that her struggles had made for a decent character to mask the depths of despair of women everywhere. To be reasonable and female, to individuate from the battered and neglected archaism traditions of a wife: had painted her to be seen as bitter and ruthless.

The trance of Orion’s own beauty had captivated him deeply...for he was entranced, and somehow incensed by the fact that no word existed to describe such beauty, as the one cast below the waters calm surface. The rival spell of his self-affection was broken after a strange and clumsy woman fell into his arms by drunken accident: resulted in him glaring downwards upon her lost-looking doe eyes. Clarion, was a love filled with expectations and unending admiration. He allowed himself to take pride her gamine and genial existence as an extension of himself. Artemis wondered what vicissitudes had occurred: when had her husband began believing that she leeched off his vigor? Artemis had no way to articulate the value of time. It was easier for him to be negligent and incommunicado from their relationship, instead of admitting his loathing upfront. The art of disappearing into the night had made the man to appear forever uncaring, unattainable, immature and ruthless.

Artemis held steadfast to a dream where the two had inadvertently sealed their vows with a meaningful kiss. The mere memory would pull tears of embarrassment from the basin of her hardened heart. The piecemeal of such bliss-filled nightly adventures gave way to curses of sleep: where vestiges of heartbreak choose to mend itself with adolescent closure cast without expression. The culmination of dreampt memories or hypothetical adventures of being swept off her feet and dashed to a reserved room; left Artemis waking up with blush-dusted cheeks and a broad grin that remained fixed confidently over her face.

Artemis had awaken in a dream: wrapped in his arms as he knelt on one knee. She rolled away from his grasp intentionally, protecting an orange rock and hedging clumsily; hyper aware to idea that a Prince with fluted voice may be in the vicinity of their control room. Artemis protected her heart with a defensive gesture of comfortable insecurity. Each raised arm was as though spelling out the wrathful words, “I wish I had never met you.”: swatting away at suitors endlessly. The entrails of her common sense began taking over after years of mistreatment and confusion. Orion’s choice to kneel was meant to prove his desperate longing to acquiesce to norms social norms. Artemis had released the harmful and enchanting words that were often followed by a separation or divorce: delicate words that casually destroyed worlds. The authenticity of which; could only be matched by sundered efforts. Orion could care less about the pain it caused her to be without the promise of his arrival in front of a vacant door jamb. He was anchored to his discomfiting aggress, and cloaked by his own longing to hide away his face.

The man returned to gazing at his invisible pond and occasionally stood upright without proposition. The dearth of predictability made him to be quite a spectacle when applied to a wandering map. Women flocked in droves to attempt to distract a married man. Many were rejected or ignored, left to explain their childish longing to their own husbands or boyfriends. Many a lady would drop their happy scripts, in the attempt to fill an occupied role...and had the audacity to call Artemis unlikable, for her need to grin and bear the responsibility of deprecating women. At the end of the day, nothing came in the way of a spurious homewrecker...there was no cut-and-dry way to combat such whorish women. All Artemis could do was shift her weight, bury her impatience, and burrow the execrable spells of disappointment in such unclassy women. At the end of the day...nobody cared about how much effort it had taken Jakie to hold a elegant smile over a defeated face.

Artemis noticed Orion only towered over her, but found it interesting that he sought after the chance to catch the eye of a woman famous for showcasing her sex life to the public, and declaring the temperature of concepts and inanimate objects. Artemis preferred to state she worked at the Benson; unable to admit disparity in dowry. She was the polar opposite of the heiress, and her sprawled legs...offering tickets of admission to a pleasurable night alone...in a city named after lust. Artemis had shrugged in boredom for the most part: noting specifically, that the straggly woman and Orion had comparably the same face.

Artemis had no fight to declare against someone with a less"prudish" comfort range, even in her dreams and nightmares. Dreams of of blonde woman towering over them had often followed Artemis. It seemed that the thin woman could appear from thin air, casually judging Artemis for her choices in pleasuring an estranged husband upon prideful knees. Orion had loved many aspects of Artemis, but she was unable to reciprocate his expectations to be everything. The woman began to lecture as to how crude she thought their passion was, and Artemis was forever unphased. A majority of women judged the healthy sex life of a married couple...were often the same ones that hung out with Hannah, and called themselves "pearly things"...those too dried up themselves to perform up to par with their own expectations. Artemis was surrounded by the most lewd and raunchy types of women, so it wasn’t worth her time to lose focus on a the insecurity of female jealously. It was always worth the argument, to watch as women would contort their expressions in the attempt to appear easy going or flirtatious at the sight of Orion’s bored and emotionless face.

The flat-chested woman in pink had scoffed that Artemis chose to love her husband according to his own requests. There was nothing wrong with wanting to invite the public into ones bedroom in their timeline, Only the truest of Fans...would seek the snippets of such vulnerable moments. The strangely uncanny and business savvy woman had made the most of such public revenge, forming solidity with herself at an impressionable age. The woman with garish love of youthful colors had become infamous with the simple tact of using generational wealth to monetize her own face.

Orion’s hypothetical hall pass to their vows had been a fashionable, frail, and sluggishly monotone person. The scripting that held them hostage to a simulation required the balance of zero errors to that of zero harm. An heiress could find a seat upon a knee, but would be forever blind to love; because Orion liked the idea of a treasure more valuable than any woman. Even when he were livid, he’d forget of her lean presence; giving scene to the task of dumping the blonde woman on the floor with abruptness. Youthful boredom left him longing to peer closer at the reflection laying beside him. Guilt flowed through his veins, a spell of tedium kept him bothered by the memories of Suzume. Artemis had noted the drastic flash in expression at her entrance, a point worth abstraction and easy confirmation. His absence in her life usually served as the primary evidence of Orion’s husbandly disdain for her conflicted face.

Artemis stood swaying, holding a line next to a man kneeling, blindfolded and moving through the memories of his beautiful seedful youth. The bratty woman had grown weary of being ignored for a pleb orphan, and began stripping him of the fine-linens she had purchased. The man rarely believed the truths being given...even the bare proof that one woman’s concept of love was only that of transactions and one-dimensional reflections. There was nothing to gain by presenting an absent husband with a worried face.

Artemis had felt an impatient Viking usher her along from observing the shallow pair, thwarting her entertainment with a gentle poke as if to pester and reprimand the nosiness. The boyish lad snickered, tapping at Artemis like a dead bird as he giggled and jabbed at her. Artemis grabbed the stick at last, and mumbled the false word "Bruh"...directed by a strict glare and quick clasping of a bat. The tips of her fingers traced over a strange etching along the base of his "hook": the carving was done with her own handwriting. It only displayed the propositional and ambiguous hint-in-word...Pelican. Artemis collected her woefulness from the cold floor at last, unplugging the black winding snakes leading down her frail back. She was finally ready to let go of her childish crush on an unattainable man; needing to detach from the galling expectations he held reserved just for her. She was reborn into a simulation: cast as a single-woman, youthful, sober and ruthless.

Artemis’s lucidity had interrupted a fate of coalesce and tragic heartbreak. She walked hurriedly over to a table strewn with invisible buttons and levers. Small hands tinkering and tattering over worn caps and alphabets. "I have to go back in." Artemis altered a secret that was disclosed in the initial pages, and stood in front of hims: impatient to be launched into the oblivion. The successful development and release of a blue bird that reigned oppression gave her pinpoint in his world and cast her into am unstable timeline of denounement. A dimension where the Indigenous Warrior Genocide had occurred...a moment in history where the citizens walked along side those fated with graceful extinction. The manifestation of a single word marked the true intentions of the citizens, and forever painted them as historically apathetic, uneducated, and undeniably ruthless.

A simulation apparatus had held her old friend hostage: forgetful and subordinate to a script that was incomplete. Without the sworn testimony stating the viewership of a red box, floating over an ocean: Artemis was sent back in time to gift the citizens with ancient knowledge. She had been anchored to time, to follow behind a pale and aging warrior...staring longingly at the ground in order to avoid the pressures of accepting the fact that Artemis had simply evaporated from his life. Thirty moments could capture the entirety of her affect of a conflicted man, barred by emotion; cursed with stubbornness, and a skill in a remaining without apologetically...silently ruthless.

Artemis and the Viking found themselves surrounded by a thickened layer of people crowding the brims of a tent. They had been joined by a gaggle of citizens in blue hats and boasting of a forgetful elder: primed for his chiefdom role. Artemis was thrown into the moment with a light whack upon her lower back. She looked around mildly confused, unsure of when the Viking had positioned himself behind her and why she’d ever agree to such a physically taxing caveat. The theory that elders were stealth by the nature of age had left him with the talent of tracking Artemis on a random Monday or Wednesday, if only to demand apologies for daring to exist. She took the garish device away from the Viking at last...stammering backwards and yelling “Eyeesh”. The bratty side of Artemis took over and she decided that thunk-ing him upon his weakened leg could be "fair enough". Artemis found herself forgiving whenever observing his jackal-like snickering; his laughter was confusing. It seemed only fitting that he continue on with his static-filled role of being cast as the Sheppard. He could always remain both impartial, and introverted with his passions in portraying a persona of self-aggrandizing humility. Artemis had only known him for being an agitating thorn in her side, plucked and defensively ruthless.

Artemis held out the sick in a way that made her appear more menacing than necessary: dragging and obscure twig like an oversized bat along a checkered-patterned floor, and accepting that proliferation in public acceptance could be nudged. Artemis nothing more than a product of her environment. She took steps around the statue of a beautiful man, taunting him with probative words: "we’re trapped in the pages of a script. I’ma need you to look alive old man." He was unaware that she began flexing her sublime skills in dancing, and humming tunes about the winter holidays. Her laughter and thrill in jolliness left merriness in the air, and eventually the Viking would return to his pensive stares...secretly searching for her concerned face.

The man would rather kneel to no woman...than to admit that Artemis was his first best friend. Nothing could tarnish her pride in the fact that existing, had set his expectations too high and out of reach for any other woman to rival. His aging anticipation would always turn into disgruntled bombastic brooding, and knowing the exemption of patience had meant their friendship was considered profound and admirable. There would be no reason to set a home ablaze...such a crass gesture was left up to the pixie siren Ariana. Artemis could paint a boundary of the vast difference between a girlish loser avoiding the cruelty of time, and that of an educated woman; known for their integrity and talents in flourishing by evolving into someone famed for becoming professionally ruthless.

Orion would sense their comradely with ease at any distance, as though her vanishing self-doubt was blaring horn. Such would be the desperation of a separated husband...animated by the spare expectations of a stranger yelling aimlessly at "his wife". Not for longing, but for the discrepant curiosity as to the framework of their friendship. The coloration in comparisons from the Viking to the Prince were both threats in relation to their proximity to her cursed doorframe. Combativeness, bravado and a firm set of boundaries kept Artemis tethered to the exasperated looking stranger and rendered her invisible to a Prince left entertaining five friends...and Choi. Artemis had handed the Viking a scale, and asking him to compare Orion to a Prince without biases. She relied on the augury of Orion’s selective memory to craft a glitch, and to place public levity to the reality of his choices. The charm of a Prince with graceful hair was left being guided authoritatively through crowds that separated and silenced themselves by the command of his wrists. She would always manage to be sitting center rows, giggling behind a raised palm as his laughter took center a stage. His charm would always bring prurient rose-dusted cheeks to arise across Artemis’s royal face.

The aimless Prince wandered around a simulated room...in which his friends presented him with endless stories splashing over pages and kept him preoccupied. He was hostage to one’s own choices in friendships. Orion would hate that his mere existence meant that Artemis had hidden away a key. A detailed description given by a Prince, download first hand from the memory given by another man. Artemis had no control over how another person perceived her, let alone his friends ability to paint such a intricate portrait. She had only set the stages for a nightmarish situation of needing the help of another man...in the hopes of breathing life and enthusiam into ones own wife. It seemed like a mean stint; recruiting help in detailing every last freckle. The unnamed shame of witnessing another man recalling the mundane details to a small army of men, and then needing his help to rectify through testimony...the fact that he had never cared as much to even look blissfully upon Artemis’s longing face.

Time became as space mark for all things important. Artemis could disassociate herself from the spilling of patriarchal chalices with a nod and a tilt. She recalled a poem, of a girl twirling a sac...blood of a newborn strewn across her face. Artemis had stumbled upon this lured beast in the darkness of her dreams...knowing that the voting citizen had been the point of continuation in which the dimensions all shared. The choice to suffocate a baby and hold it over a container; Lexi’s intent being cast by method of discard. The retrieval of a red box, held captive Artemis’s imagination...as a pure depiction of a life half empty. The Sufferer alone, would lure out a Mechanical Boar...stammering across multiple timelines in disbelief that anyone would even dare to gaze upon a boxes non-classified contents. Artemis had only handed off a box to a greedy man; wholly unprepared to hold a baby with air in its lungs. Much like the rolling thunder of Hades, the choices of man were predictable, and disturbingly ruthless.

Artemis awoke to see Orion on a witness stand, looking at worn down flooring whilst cramped into a wooden cubicle. Artemis ripped away at the wall of static and yelled in his defense, her small fist caused little ripples and few promises of words of helpfulness. Artemis began pacing, holding council; noting his ability to be lazy, sloppy, and occasionally cruel. None of those attributes were specifically illegal...with most of the traits impeded his ability to fall out of concordat with common law. Nothing would make him comparable to the selfishness of Scott: A man caught in his net of lies along the bay. Scott would forever walk across a bridge dripping with blood, and attempt to appeal his sentence of death...forever guilty, sadistic and ruthless.

Artemis was ripped from one dream to another, yanked from a hallway of despair, and awaking in a house strewn with black and white tiles. She knelt in confusion to a heavy drawling tugging at the brims of her lace veil. A wedding was being held up by a childish boy pouting on the trim of her big day; Athenas child by design. He was such a good kid, that she knew the reasoning deserved a moment to riffle through...his opinion was valued to his efforts in life. His version of suffering was so unpredictable, but nothing could come between Artemis and a boy born to two monsters...Artemis free’d him from his blame for sharing Fernandos build, grace, and face.

It was so hard to differentiate the genome from the person, a small nephew could prove the biggest of points. He was the pebble in a shoe...the stumble on the way to the altar. The self doubt born by PSTD, gifted by Athena. Artemis had prioritized raising him for the safe of the common wealth, a civil obligation in a world dead-set on asphyxiating itself. Artemis faced each day as though it was as purposful as a day of marriage, she had a love for life that extended far past the chargrin of a shame-filled smile that accompanied any woman dafft enough to wed a tall man, famed for being romantically ruthless.

Artemis found herself in the moment of fault...her entire wedding ceremony held its breath as she chose to whisper anxiously and momentarily accommodate a childish boy crossing his legs in a Warrior fashion, and looking sullen. “I love you, but I need you to understand the importance of telling the truth.” The boy sat on the edges of her dress needing to display his back and add to the theatrical dismay; he seemed so lost and forgotten by the world...left in a trance of daydreams. He reminded her so much the sibling she left unknowingly sitting by a grey rock; tending to a spare candle without flame. Artemis had traded a lost cause, for a couragous nephew that held unlimited potential, an athletic build, and his fathers dimpled face.

Artemis had intentionally avoided pressuring the young nephew from participating in all things that may result in traumatic head injuries: needing to strip away introduction to unbriddled violence to an already unpredictable lad. The simulation itself began at his hand, the fine details of her story had bundled into a mound of wooling material, the forgiving auntie who could see the world in the same static-filled greays. This had been the world where Artemis recalled a healthy baby, gazing up with focus and a softened laughter. He was alert for a baby, seemingly ready for battle...prepared to look darkness in the face.

His "Tia Tila", had vowed to never abandon him...as long as he chose to abide by the entirety of the laws that held the citizens equal. "I am so glad to see ya, I couldn’t start this show without you kid." She had wanted to prove his intention to seek help with managing his chemical fluxuation, noting that his hippocampus seemed to be overlooked due to the "Aaron-glossed" smirk drawn casually over his face.

She taught him the craft of wording, secretly hoping he’d opt into hiding in plain sight as a vicious defender of Justice. Artemis had promised him travels around the world to taste culinary art and keep him happy and plump in spirit. She had walked him into the office of a Doctor they had yet to meet, and explained that they were there because Artemis was sick in her heart, and held an unbreakable curse that turned given and gifted words hollow. The likelihood of shared characteristics wasn’t surprising, and she emphasized that the manageability aspect was important; in relation to the timing. To normalize the diagnosis and prepare proper strategies, regimen and introduction to psychological sciences could ease an already anxious adolescent into putting such things into motion. Artemis began structuring a securtiy net, knowing it’d be the easiest to simply embrace his natural capabilities in being introverted and apathetically ruthless.

Artemis prepared a triangulated conversation of adults to happen with the child: explaining that they had traveled far to seek out a specific room of healing...one, in which Artemis wasn’t most likely the smartest person in the room. She’d explain her diagnosis of that of a “Community Siren’’, and observe as he shut down emotionally; due to the association to a third-party diognosis of being cast into the role of sociopath. Artemis would stand up, and announce that she was unable to love him on days where he was unaware of his surroundings: afraid of where his mind wandered off to when he had fleeting daydreams. The words would most likely sting the heart of the young boy, resulting in the action of eye-contact avoidance. It often pained Artemis to break his spell in believing that he didn’t deserve the right to even look upon her welcoming face.

There was such a large deviation between nurtured and circumstances. Her nephew was born into a mindful state of suffering, whereas, some citizens fell into the life of a sufferer by way of circumstance. Such an individual lived on the corner of THERAC and twenty-fifth street. Their contract in painting a device with optimistic green, and breathing life into a blueprint was a pretty sweet gig for a hobbiest. Artemis wondered if their sleep was tortured due to the deaths that had rung out from deep within the machine. A broken heart, imploding organs spilled over the brims of the metal frame; it was a curse of negligence in the proposal of operations, and written pleadings for fail-safes. Artemis wondered if the suffering engineer of glowing words and spells... understood the gravity of layering paint over primer. It was common practice to lay down bare pigments to protect delicate wood, in oder to polish and refine a stained piece...operations would shift to aggress the stripping away of everything...moving past common sense, and sanding beyond the primer that had once been useful. There could be no way that such an individual had been filled with the thought or worry of housekeeping...that would prove to be the most unhelpful piece of their invention. The Overflow of optimism in medicine, had resulted in unclaimed blood seeping slowly over the hands of an unknown citizen.

Prompt critical was an awful state of mind to live in. Her nephew had been born in a state of such critical distress, and needing validation through routine and presence was efficient and meaningful as a way to handle his expectations on life. Artemis knew he was valuable to the citizens, able to describe great violence and endure the ugliness that was piled on by the criminals that were imprisoned on their land. Artemis would drag the boy to her wedding, and watch as he led the citizens to her chamber of death: a beautiful room: one, where Artemis could watch life slip from the eyes of the beasts that purposely slaughtered others with gusto. Artemis had crafted her sins to be held dear and near to her chest, in the hopes that her nephew would find insight to the wickedness that flitted through their thoughts: needing him to find solicitous calling in life. She had noted his burrowed lonliness and their similar minutiae in personalities: famed for a quiet gaze, and a boastful smile that was marked as ruthless.

Artemis often armed herself with rude words like: “there’s nothing wrong with him”, and “don’t talk to him like that...please.” His eyes often held back tears, and Artemis was left clamoring to reach for him; locked away in a mental room of docility. Artemis was left to remind him that he was allowed to feel things...even if the emotion was anger. They had been thrown into a timeline where male toxicity reigned superior and dominated the land: Artemis had found him pouting that his mother had loved his sisters more than he she had ever cared for him. She found the words to express such realistic worry, and found herself unable to make apologies for Athena and her choices in being a rude mother. Artemis called her an abusive parent, but the world had irrespectively given her the excuses a plenty: those left only for those parents with waving emotions. Whatever excuse, her maternal expressions of love extended past the normal range of what one could collect and claim as cold, calculated and ruthless.

Artemis had caged his “lost” Auntie in pages where he could find solid reasoning, in the words carved out of fear of abandoning Damian with Athena. His eyes reading over the such a thoughtful sentence could change everything, and she’d hoped he’d hear her small voice whimpering from deep within the pages. She hadn’t the heart to tell the young boy that his auntie Dianne had been cast as invisible or cast aside as a grew rock, forgotten on a bookshelf somewhere, and such conversations being left out; meant Artemis had contained proper boundaries. There was no reason to tell a helpless adolescent that she’d narrowly escaped punishment ruled by Dianne, as she sat on a remanding strategy...to avoid accountability of her childhood crimes in molestation and attempt of failed homicide. Childish games....brought out the wicked in most people. Artemis had dispelled the rage of a stolen childhood in black-and-white, and waited for her fate to knock upon whatever static-filled door stood dividing the siblings. Both the hunted, and the hunter were prominent for holding a broad grin, a handful of styles in laughter and a brightly shining face.

Artemis hugged the boy at last....pulling him from the floor and skirting ruffled material, choosing to update the guilt-ridden child with the situation at hand, where her husband seemed to be swallowed alive by a static-filled dream. She sat upon a branch of suredness that her nephew would find solace in seeing Artemis wedding a gentle giant; as he too, was destined to be vast in stature himself. She was unsure of how to protect him from the worlds assumption that he may be capable of violence, or of becoming the next Patriotic tragedy. She was ready to fight for his rare chance at the benefit of a doubt, protecting the child until given reasons otherwise. It was no secret that she’d work double-time, needing to relinquish sordid comparisons of his seeply felt emotions....to those of Yardley’s Ex-Boyfriend. Such parental worries were difficult for any person to face.

Artemis wrapped her arms around a nephew, lost in thought....gifting him with the same reasoning left with his eldest brother: by washing away his fears with resoluteness, and compensation for abiding by the laws that protected the citizens from one another. Athena hadn’t found the words to express her childhood anguish, and three children suffered endlessly for it. It wasn’t Artemis’s place to explain to a niece and two nephews...that Athena had survived the fate of Junko on two separate nights. Staring at a door, and longing for someone, anyone to save her from a life of an unprotected orphan. Artemis had been busy being a child, unaware of the true awfulness of the world. Artemis now had nightmares...ramming through endless doors, longing to save a woman abandoned by the world...weeping at her failures in changing the past, sobbing on behalf of a child locked away with monsters wearing the flesh of a human. Athena remained lost in thoughts, unforgiving, isolated and ruthless.

Artemis had crafted a poem depicting woman holding a scale, and leaning over a sword with insouciance. The idea of her breaking over with unhinged laughter and tears whilst holding balance of items, was easy enough to picture. She had introduced the aimless nephew to the talent of precociousness and guided him to a life of a passion with notoriety. There was no threshold to what he was capable of achieving, and she saw his temperament and love of argument; fit to be in room of marble. Psychological sciences could benefit from watching him flourish, as few Indigenous Warriors openly flaunted their fox-tails or bravely stared down their own reflections, or audaciously glared at their enemies face-to-face.

She’d forever protect him as the muse that stood etched in endless marble carvings: Artemis was destined to give him appreciation of the law, even if it was at the expense of Athenas hobby of rebellion. Artemis was more than ready to put halt to her own wedding, needing to accommodate an individual receptive of her help. The simulation was triggered by an immature boy, pouting as he searched for evidence of duplicity in Artemis creating her own family. They were left in a circumstance where Artemis was frozen in a moment of indecisiveness, hostage for almost eternity...cemented as the forgotten Gods cast in marble...transfixed in stone and designated in giving Justice a fanciful and bipartisan face.

Artemis was ripped away from the safety of her pages. The reality of her simulation had demanded that she pursue false riches, a scene where everything casually chose to go awry. Artemis had left the side of an elder struggling with mobility, only to hold an aggressive confrontation with a fellow worker: her giant enemy lacked feminine features, and flaunted the act of placing her offspring in danger "for love": frivolity and privilege flowing through the veins trapped beneath her paler skin. Artemis began to quiver down to the bones wrapped in spurs: her breath became shortened and without patience. Artemis had seen a flaw in a job meant to assist those without mobility, and despised the act of dawning a matching uniform to that of an enabling loser. It was obvious that conviviality was to be wasted on such a hopeless citizen, obese and proud of a partner...publicly registered on a list of predators. Nothing could hinder this individuals ability to flaunt a privileged induced smugness that crept from each edge of her face.

Artemis was comfortable with dissociating herself with such a foul individual, and today had marked that day when all professional cool had been thrown out a window. An uneducated, trollish woman had lashed Artemis with words and her ratty friend had forced Artemis to work without food or water for over eight hours. The opposition to the breaking of labor laws had left Artemis standing in a corner, self-reporting to a board of shadowy overlords: desperate for anyone to hear the preface of such a detrimental complaint. It was brusque, as Artemis stood tall: protected by the truth, confused as to how the laws of the land were being considered suggestions. The excrable actions of her cohort were given value, due to the pale color of each of their face.

Had Artemis not agreed to a life with more regulations and steps proceeding those found in most jobs? The last she had checked: she had signed papers committing to the safety of all those located in a building that was paid for by the citizens. The slave-driving individuals hiding beneath the shadows of vague contracts and walls of static could care less. They had made-up deadlines to appease. Artemis began to boom her voice, noticing that a few shadows momentarily leaned over to hear the testimony of a petite laborer. She stood in silence, observing as their whispering turned into counsel and disgruntled agreement. They bombarded her with silence, testing whether the laborer could chose livelihood over a life of casual criminality. Nothing could prepare a citizen for the thankless gig...in which labor laws were colloquially tossed aside: a company where employees were forced to work without payment, and a smile was always expected to be cemented upon ones miserable face.

Artemis opted out of her duties, crafting a letter with forfeiting arms. The time out allowed for space for weeping in the failures she had allowed to occur. It was just another room where pain was brought on by caring about people too much. The citizens could care less about her curses in drowning with anxiety in a sea of people, there had been a reason few citizens wanted to do such a grueling task. The act of corporate greed was masked by the title of assisting the handicap, unfairly compensating hard workers and remaining silently complicit in observing as higher positions took advantage of individuals working towards citizenship. A truth that most citizens didn’t dare to face.

Those that had offered opportunity and structure, could barely afford to pay fair-wages to all those ready to physically accommodate endless citizens on their adventures. Artemis had hidden away tears when they had demanded reasoning around "recent performance": the interrogation was evidence that they were disgruntled that their "projections in efficiency" had been effected by her time management. There were questions to be answered. They openly called people "chairs" and the act of assisting "missions", as though they were paid for the task of moving a piece of furniture from A to B. Each pale leader would demean humans behind their pained backs...all while holding a purge-ready face.

Artemis drew an ugly frown and clenched a jaw, correcting their bottom-line with words meant to be quoted to a jury and judge. Her throne on wheels tucked into the back of her thoughts. A confusing smile stood in place of an angry tone, as she defensively explained the honor in assisting a frail citizen... that had lapped the sun over ninety times. The shrugs of some losers too lazy to do such a meaningful task themselves, and too overpaid to care; left Artemis with only the option of formal complaints to a bureau of labor and industries. She shrugged with a wicked grin...these strangers would have to pay for breaking the law, and their canvassed efforts in being shitty and unprofessional people. Even in partial defeat; Artemis was defensive in retreat...kneeling over; unable to leave her troops in trenches without the blanket of truth protecting them from a slew of lazy unaccountable losers that claimed to be productive and ruthless.

She would sprint home, sniffling back tears and pretending to take relief in hiding the trauma laying beneath robes of devotion. The instinct to sprint back to the Redwoods and report to Tribal Offices consumed her. A displaced Artemis would take both knees, and bow before an interchanging council meant to address emergency circumstances. "They are abusing vulnerable and hardworking people at PDX". Sobriety meant nothing in the company of those with pale skin and dead eyes; it was only a mediation tactic to explain circumstances in the eyes of the Indigenous Warriors. Artemis hung her head...cursed with cold feet, from two consecutive winters without access to proper. Nothing could contest with the evidence shown in the reconfiguration of her worn out and defeated face.

"I keep trying to find a place to call home, an occupation that was meaningful...a mere reason to try." Such simple words could destroy the mightiest of men, her once dismal flowing through tears and tedium in the inability to properly lie. The disentangled truth rang heavily in the chambers of those professionals left drowning publicly; those barely functioning with depression. The memory of standing along the backside of her front door weeping openly; undamming the horrific emotions of insecurity that sloshed along the basin of swirling random thoughts. Artemis was too broken to care, knowing the world had tested every particle of her character. "Why am I like this?!". The world had declared her to be indestructible, worthless, and a female cast as the lead role; unprotected, unlovable, and ruthless.

The coalition of Indigenous Warriors were left in a room to discuss aid to assist her living situation, and gift the rewards meant to encourage a citizen thriving in foreign jurisdiction. It was far-and-in-between...that they would agree upon her many requests towards living assistance, and each time her hopes would dwindle with understanding. There was never to be a promise to those that went out on a limb, and detached from Tribal Territories to try one’s hand at being professionally ruthless.

Artemis had spent her life crawling to an invisible finish-line: occupations were often high risk, and offering low reward. The laps of many Christmas seasons had left her at the doorstep of distant relatives and strangers. Nothing could take away the memory of sitting in disbelief to a verdict of aid distribution. The Indigenous Warriors had done their best to reward her as a scholar trying to draft a beautiful life. Artemis readied for disappointment, comfortable with the idea of her plea of disparity being abandoned with few words. She cleared her voice, telling a kind messenger apologies for the lack of communication. Artemis was able explain her silent tears; filled with disbelief, thankful for news and admitting to the injuries that had taken a toll on her body and mind. Artemis was grateful beyond words, laughing and returning to labor without complaint. "I can do this!" Tree months of comfortable living, and the promise of a warm home would forever bring tears of happiness to her war-torn face.

They had finally seen the smoke-signal set aflame by her Kind-Hearted Hunters, and rewarded her with provisions: the rations were so scarce, rounds of eligibility and need-to-need basis often left Artemis on the fringes of Tribal priority. It was noted that she was without spouse, child, beast to nurture, and the lack-of-dependants meant that she was last mouth to feed because of it. One woman with the last name Scott, had listened to Artemis shyly weep and bore forth the good news that she had finally been one of the Indigenous Warrior deemed worthy of the right to properly rest. They laughed over the mountains of papers: resulting in a stranger gifting Artemis with sleep with abdicating guilt. It had been such tell-tale moment, a scene of a woman sitting in disbelief to her momentary luck. The gift of tentative aid would cause waves of tears to fall gracefully down her bewildered face.

Artemis was a nobody; a person wondering aimlessly, and worth less than the minimum, evidently. She was wrapped in a calming toned teal blanket that held a quarter of the year’s worth of fortune, and left with words meant to protect them both from a world that despised their barely-surviving culture. Her Tribe had heard her whispers of reluctance and self-doubt: they too were concerned that Artemis had been pulled and stretched too thin between two separate worlds. Her voice wouldn’t reveal the depths of the dysmorphia that had slowly began to rob friendly expressions from her flinty face.

Artemis awoke facing a jury of citizens discussing education practices. She positioned the woman that bore a resemblance to a famous beast named Roz; to sit and take the minutes for the important message she had to deliver. Artemis cleared her throat, and stared down at the blank pages filled with many, many emotions she had pent up and mulled over as she rolled around on the floor. “We allowed the citizens to rob us of our crops, and when that wasn’t enough...they stole our land. They demanded that my grandparents, and great grandparents kneel on both knees as they forced them to suck their dicks." The crassness of such surreptitious "Traditions" could leave any citizen uncomfortable, holding an annoyed snarl upon anyone and everyone’s face.

"They murdered us in the masses, decimating an entire culture...until we were forced to call ourselves a race.” Artemis looked at the ugly woman that sitting with a pathetic little sign. The woman had gathered with teachers and parents, fretting the opinion that a crime had occurred when citizens wore clothes to trap their saliva and snot. The woman ranted that the temporary mandate without the presence of her offsprings smiles bringing unlimited light into the world. The woman cared less of the well-being in community, and health of her own children; armed and ready to ramble on about how such "oppression" had left her disconcerted by those in charge. It turns out...most educators would rather have alive students dawning cloths and shields, than to accommodate the baseless and selfish heterogeneity of an aging woman...more concerned about whether the world was forced to look at her children’s face.

Artemis waited for her to revert to being slouching over and mumbling to herself. She raised a hand to calm any buzz or murmurings; wanting to only lecture the grown citizens once. “This nation was established on privilege and the servitude of my family...how did we get here? This woman is the face of her ancestors, resembling those that offered plague-enriched blankets to my family during the blistering winters” Artemis felt the woman smacking her fruit flavored root loudly over a shoulder. The immature citizen needed every particulate of attention, and had no issue in flashing a disaffected opinion by rolling her eyes in the direction of a stranger. “This woman laughed at the death of other citizens, and all I can do...is wish this random and her family a painful and isolated death. You are defined by your actions ma’am.” Suddenly the gnawing of treats with anxious titillation was heard as a slow methodical chew of a cud. Artemis didn’t need to turn around, to know that the citizen was too dumb to understand such unapologetic and public commitments to remain ruthless.

“These citizens deserve to die, and as much as I’d love to stand outside of the white-box overflowing with corpses to give emotional aid to the overwhelmed healers...I am neither qualified, or able to be of much help." The citizens openly ignored the putrid smell of death that was seeping into the soils; they were indifferent to the modernized Neurasthenia that forced the world to stop moving. Their planet kept spinning, but the Earth itself had began to deject the parasitic citizens that had dared to thanklessly rape its soil for generations. Nature had no need to attend meetings or hold council...its silent words were incredible in strength, furtive and unbiased to the color of skin...ruthless.

The citizens grew angered by her improvised ability to obnubilate an entire room into deafening silence. Artemis took evil joy in watching their panic: they had no idea that their "elected leader" was without a single inclination as to what to do in such a compromising position. He was too busy defending the shape of his penis and attempting to control the images painted while being escorted from room-to- room, by way of a blue-winged beast. The bickering reminder of his place sitting behind a sturdy desk, could instantly bring a dissatisfied furrow to fix itself upon her deliriously tired face.

The citizens were mad at everyone, but the perverse Boar...for whatever reason. The dissimilarities to past waves of death had left the world scrambling for answers, unaware the Boar was diverting his attention to avoid the fact that there was no legally tested cure...no experiential solution, to an unknown problem. There was no word of hope or compounds ready to be approved by an accredited Administration of medicine. The loud and rusting Mechanical Boar wandered back and forth with restive annoyance, unable to give answers to the public that had so graciously voted for his orange and ashen face.

Artemis began to growl beneath agitated breath, as the citizens refused to listen. “The leader of our land is an idiot: he was given every opportunity, and even had the entirety of his life to prepare for the elected position he now claims to have earned fair-and-square. He’s Unfit, petulant and a foretoken of the state of our fragile Democracy." The citizens were indigent to her words; lost in their commitment to remain entertained watching the Boar, as he robbed the citizens in broad daylight. He tore up flooring, moved paintings too gaudy to match most classically dull motifs. The absurdity would leave Artemis sighing deeply and framing smooth hands around the scarred jawline of her face.

"Our leader has fumbled in the clutch-est of moments...he failed us.” The desolation of respect for a house painted white had paved the way for the next elected leader to flaunt his pale privilege. Artemis had been pretty honest in the past, as to her grievances for a snowy haired politician that kissed and groped citizens awkwardly. The reign of his "best friend" and the flippancy in expectations...had left the "big news" corrugated to appear obvious and urgent. Many of the citizens had shown up to cast their vote with only the hope of a break from the Mechanical Boar. The caliber in candidate was lowered; in lieu of the fact that nobody could be worse than an aging Mechanical Boar...a renegade to true patriotism...a petty criminal committed to wealth and the appearance of power. Nothing in his vocabulary suggest that the elderly man was ready for debates, summits and encounters with a murderous Prince obsessed with black liquids, crude orders and the need to cast himself as untouchable and ruthless.

“We just left a political fake-era where a man caused panic, and now we’re left congratulating this elderly man, for doing the absolute minimum on every front.” Artemis had seen the man proceeding a Mechanical Boar as he vouched and array of solutions. “I watched as he shook the hand of a murderer he claimed to despise, the evidence is irrefutable...the hypocrite hissed words of disapproval until it served his own ambitions. Can we all agree that we only chose to nominate and elect this man, as the lesser of two evils? He was given everything by nearly half the citizens, and he still managed to skirt below our expectations.” Artemis looked around to see the citizens seemed puzzled by the bipartisan nature of her political ability to be ruthless.

Artemis shrugged and shuffled over blank papers that rotated with her points and emotions "everyone hates me". The world had always been so cruel to her. The salty flavor of sordidness began to fall down her cheeks at last. She had never wanted to be a leader or outlier: nobody cared if her words were sprinkled with kindness or riddled with thoughtless bulletpoints of statistics. Both made her orphaned words seem unapologetic or ruthless.

“There are over six-hundred-thousand citizens dead as I speak, and I am afraid that this Nation is unfamiliar with the history of a "small" epidemic that had once swept away over half the original inhabitants. Maybe, you all deserve to die....maybe. I hope it wounds your families deeply for many generations to come. We are without the data to distribute medicine in small dosages, and now it’s too late: children are dying, but this fucking loser behind me...is only worried about whether we should be obligated to stare at her average-looking child’s face.”

Her words fell softly: frail with boredom, and utter exhaust. “My life has been steeped in death, and now I stand before the citizens; casually sickening them with my buried apathy, and knowing that I will always be comfortable defending their right to vote. Freedom is invaluable, but crafting obscure battles is only going to deter our efforts in avoiding a path leading to Hades door and staring death in the face."

Artemis had wasted her life away, glaring at these citizens with the intentions to let her emotions boil over: unaware that it’d be on a public platform. “I hope the citizens die off, so that our planet can thrive and evolve to be both sustainable, and efficient...to be reborn with an optimistic future. Artemis had used her platform to shame the inconsiderate and shallow citizens; seething at their porous noses dangling over cloths. Her eyes locked with beady leers and sketchy glares, her nightmare in an unending adventure had came full-circle to the worries plastered on the walls of previous chapters. “We are nowhere near net zero, and in all honesty: watching half the population die out due to their own stupidity, is theoretically the fastest way to cut our emissions.” Artemis had the gift of being able to hate all strangers equally, since her orphaned childhood had left her mind carved with the characteristics of a sociopath. "Let these fucking morons kill themselves off, and then those of us that believe in the importance of the general concept of facts and science may finally hold fair conversations." The world had chosen to stand in disbelief at her medical diagnosis in natural selection, due to the fact that a pleasant row of welcoming pearls would distract from the crass words that were abstracted from her beaming face.

“We are left with so many questions, as our tax-payer funds go towards reserving the right to travel, and the chances to yell at hourly employees; those citizens attempting to keep everyone safe and healthy.” She was ripped from a meeting without end, thrown into a cannon of sound that returned her earside of the Viking once more. She took delight in pandering to his schedule of delivering messages and gifts. They remained chained by a soft red rope dangling over her right wrist: unable to remove the static spell that held their distance. She knew the frantic script of half-hearted impotence could loosen the hold of his daze as she yammered with concern. "Someone kidnapped Sherri!". Her hands flew up with frantic worry. She knew that the Viking chose not to see the world painted in black and white. His blindness to the real world had been the reason why Artemis had walked away without explanation. Romance aside: Artemis was ok with being a pretty friend to the post man...her distant words to be delivered without delay....ruthless.

The Viking began to scowl the trails and indicating surrounding, unaware that he was still trapped in a tent of those with fragmentary morals. The profound news was meant to conclude the presuppositions that certain citizens were of more value to the world, as a gift for being born with a pale face.

Artemis laughed to herself as Scott sundered through the silly set of her fiddling with a rope and closely observing the topoligies of a weak anchoring knot that held no purpose. Scott seemed worried by the kidnapping of a young mother: he moved the bill of his hat backwards and began to specify the details of the situation implicating terror and traffic. Artemis construed the information to be less interesting than the intricate knot she meddled with. The eventless story brought her great boredom. Artemis sighed and debriefed her fellow sleuth..."She’s fine. Outside of the habitual liar part." The drab housewife had crafted trauma to explain reasons as to why she opted out of her own marriage, to relinquish all responsibilities as mother...for a dollop of attention and a chance to see her ex-lovers face.

She began to take teeth to the bound thread and holding an acrimonious conversation with her friendly partner in solving crime. “The citizens don’t know true trauma; they wept and fought viciously to find the corpse of a girl named Gabby, and remained silent when others pointed out the disparity in urgency. Where could one purchase the genuine concern for the one-thousand-and-five-hundred missing, and murdered Indigenous and First Nations women?” Artemis located a loop left for sound reasoning; a weak point in the small knot at the end of a cursed golden thread. “Our disparity is called inequality, but that implies that we were born equal. Why is my life deemed to be of less value to that of my neighbor?" The truths of a citizen torn between the love of Democracy, and the understanding that most citizens were burdened by choice to live with the melanin. It was a bleak truth that the citizens were not quite ready to face.

Artemis was bored of the citizens and their inability to care for anyone but themselves, and so she began to polish the Trident: read to hunt a Mechanical Boar. Each of the tips were capped by shapes: sacred in their meaning. Simplicity served as indicators for the trials of what was yet to come, a triangle-tip...sharp: prepared to pierce the hearts and dreams of the citizens, a sphere: smooth, convex, and a reminder to properly round out her words and emotions...strengthened enough to repel any form of litigation. Lastly, a square...solid and dependable in form, plentiful in its capability to protect a drafted theorem. It was the treasure chest, a tool invented and defined by her fantastical Odyssey: a gift for remaining secular to a false prophet and embracing the pathetic life of an unloved orphan. Artemis had all but a few pages left to dispel the delusion of the citizens, and even less time to pull herself from its blood-soaked pages. She had no intentions of being victim to a virus that took down citizens one at a time, and was without fear of isolation. The lurking death would warp the minds of the citizens that were wholly unequipped with the sentence of being locked away with their families and reflections. The deadly plague was to be the “great equalizer”, bored and stealing lives with unapologetic explanation as to its choices in standing uncontrollable, incurable and ruthless.

Artemis was cast back into a room of bickering, holding council and debate with the taxpayers “A wise scientist once said that science will always favor change, and these morons are cemented with their and proving to the statistics to this theory...that has nothing to do with me.” Artemis began to tremble with emphasized woe. “Since last week...over seven-hundred thousand citizens have died because of a name-less beast that nobody was prepared for. Why doesn’t anyone care?!” She was so tired of screaming into the void crowded by citizens and invisible trolls; exhausted by pleading with them to exercise their right to stop death in its tracks. They were too peeved by the inability to integrate their own agendas to lay in concurrence with temporary laws, and yet, Artemis was the one always attempting re route the formal judgement that may be heartless and comfortable with the title of ruthless.

There was no patients to be held for the vain citizens that refused the obscurantist cloth of their choosing. The citizens continued to scoff and giggle behind her back. They heckled her silently walking by, and stole gazes and portraits, them eventful memories...commemorating the time they stalked a stranger for clout. Gross. They would all eventually die, and the thought of their untimely death brought her vast joy. Artemis was a heretic, in a marble room meant for those defending the law. The citizens were already famous for their love of homicide and proclivity in molesting their own families. Artemis was silenced with her own judgemental gadfly to their commitment in upholding these atrocious “Traditions". They lived in the bliss of ignorance: believing that a boy named Burke hadn’t guided his petite sister to a basement to do the unspeakable. The world had curved itself around his comfortable place in society, and integrated survival phases to defend the depths of his excuses. Artemis shrugged, his indelible enthusiasm proved that his parents had always enabled and covered the bloody trails a thankless son. Privilege finally had a ghouling face.

When the world asked "why" in anguish to the torture of a small individual...Artemis correlated reasoning to be left at each opinion crafted over a handful of decades. Their denials were indicative to the priority in facts of the time, the environment of their relatives, blinding to all those ready to accept tribulation for asking the difficult and perverse questions. Mary hissed in the light of day, and snickered in the still of night: excited to have lied to the citizens...in exchange for invitations to fanciful dinners and holiday parties. They had agreed on the disturbing fact that the world was still cemented to homicides left unsolved, but there had been a cultural shift when those responsible for informing citizens...had gone out of their way to violate an already sexually assaulted corpse. They sold their souls for bizarre hearsay and plastered glossy portraits of a youthful corpse on endless surfaces...many of these scribes had astounded the citizens with their lack of integrity. This was the comparison drawn by the citizens whenever they had called Artemis ruthless?

“I’m not here to capitulate the return of my land, but to ask that these fucking losers tend to their Velkovsky-esk portrayal of history.” Artemis felt a sporadic mustering of strength wash over...meaning the Indigenous Warriors were standing guard outside of a marble chamber. Artemis had only hoped for their attendance, and sent Orion to lasso those that were ready to fight for Justice...but, only after they had been rested. Homies needed a nap. They were unarmed as per usual, but able to speak in the tongues of the citizens that held them captive the land. Artemis aimed to protect the remaining Indigenous Warriors at all cost, so she donned a badge that marked a Blue Shield of Hope, and calmly encouraged implementing the medical antibodies needed: before allowing them to be left at risk of death in the courtroom filled with ugly citizens and their selfish choices to remain inconsiderate and ruthless.

Artemis looked around the room, and stated wryly: “my men are at the door, and while I know that the few of you are our allied partners, we are willing to surround you in order to achieve the optimum results of not dying today. Each and every one of you in this room will eventually subjugate yourselves to advancing the sake of medical sciences...or be carried away in a bag meant for the dead.” She felt her lip curl in a wickedness that often frightened citizens with dead-eyes and pale skin. A formal decree probably irked the citizens, as they had no true understanding in formidable power of a monarchy. The protection of those serving her was no different than the rule of a Queen, famed for potentially crafting violent accidents against in-laws, and protecting a pedophile son that claimed to hard-working and politically ruthless.

She looked around a room of adversaries, surrounded with predominant unruly mothers in attendance. Maybe they had too much free time, and too little development on their freedom of thought? Their husbands would watch from afar, left to impel the fact that their wives were without armor or the ability to strategize and escape. They had met at a field of battle, strapped with paper signs, sharp tongues and gaping mouths. Many men would hold their breath, witness to the day when their wife had finally gone too far, and bearing little-to-no shame in their pacifistic need to "protect children". The men were cowards without the chance to bear arms, and the Indigenous Warriors were beyond tall and strong in stature: unarmed by way of the law, menacing in their sheer number of confident smiles. Artemis lazily raised a right hand to her forehead and turned about face...allowing the citizens to view her masked face at last. The walls shook as she saluted thrashing mumbling and grumbling that grew louder and more rambunctious. The woman began thrashing towards the exit, at the doors that guarded her from the outside world. Artemis began to laugh hysterically. “We all know that your husbands and fathers would rather stand around, and watch you die from afar...than to come and fight my men face-to-face.”

Artemis dropped her hand lazily, flitting fingers in a strict wave; the magnanimous orchestras and forbearance announced her deserved arrival...onto a stage reserved for famous authors. The universe that they had all taken for granted was forever ripped at its seams by her ability to pick at an Epoch in human history. Artemis laughed herself into a fit of exhaustion, entertained by those entrapped, as they had began to sprint towards the doors of their chambers. Such a disastours beauty, were the citizens when they were left in the throngs of hopelessness. Her community had chosen to take their final nap in a heap that sealed them away to saftey without argument. The tuckered-out Indigenous Warriors were famous for sleeping in any environment, as long as their women were safe from danger and, or, out of their direct sight. Women began to bellow, crying and pleading for a window to be cracked open: demanding the right to fresh air and becoming acquiescent to their cirucmstances; their tears became crusty and dried in splotches that worsened the appearance of an already bloated face.

Artemis stood still at her podium and felt the world slowly blur, without a focal point to counter the chaos injected into her involuted speech. “I once had a childhood where I was robbed of all fresh air. I wasted a birthday wish on the pathetic longing to change a life sentenced to futility and the lack of love. There was no Salvation to my guile wishes." Artemis had yet to have met wiith her Army of men, and loathed sharing part of her past with strangers. It was meaningless to dwell in conversations surrounding her past. She hid away the horrors of her orphanhood in a compendium of stories, unable to calculate lofty reception to stories of child abuse. The culture of the those pale and lost to their contemn vices of religious prejudice had alienated Artemis...until savagery flowed through her veins and rebranded her as abrupt and ruthless.

One day, Orion stood at her door and began to glare at her in his terse rage: Artemis began to allow herself to burst into laughter at the thought of his expectations, and took extreme measures to avoid looking up at his handsome face. His nap was cut short by his excitement to delegate tasks and join in the battle at hand. His need to feel important would always superceed his admiration for her. Artemis had wanted only to be loved by a single man, and instead the world allowed men to lasso their expectations around her world with misogynistic iconoclastic righteousness. Nothing could prepare Artemis for the slews of suitors, eager to glance at an unprotected ring finger, and introduce themselves directly to her unwed face.

Artemis awoke back in a room reserved for scholastic achievement and inflated cons...collapsing to the floor in a violent seizure: pain transcended over ever cell. She felt like a fucking loser...reaching out for a man that hated her existence on most days and mumbling incoherent sounds. The shock of immense pain had left her alone: ashamed that she had forgotten his name, and utterly afraid after proceeded to forget her own. Orion was busy escaping from a nightmare land called the Douluo Continent. She was drowning on land, and nobody cared. There was nobody to call, nothing to but wait for death to reclaim her pain. It was in that instant that she decided life was easier, less painful without a man growing weary of her hunched spine. That moment of his absence had gifted her with clarity, she had survived a curse fighting death for less than five minutes and came out the other side half-alive. From then on; there would be no childish longing for a man to sweep her to safety. No risk of heartbreak and disappointment by men that were otherwise insecure, unfaithful, or romantically cruel and ruthless.

She was perpetually alone by choice: afraid of people, as they had done nothing but harm her in the youth that shadowed in trauma. Artemis cursed herself in retaliation, allowing herself to fall from the graces of Mt. Olympus by tumbling to the depths of Hades in her love of a Poison that destroyed every particle of her life. “I’m an alcoholic, and that means I’mcapable of being just as selfish, as every citizen in this room.” She cried for the awful past that was beginning to be brought forth in small increments. “My disease is abstruse and ugly by nature, but your beliefs in spreading a disease can be stopped with each second that you breathe.” Artemis had avoided returning to the pages dripping with her hatred for the citizens that she had once pledged to protect. She was avoiding the sobering thoughts that reminded her of why she had taken great shame in being cast as the Royal Princess. There was nothing glamourous for being known only for the ability to smile and nod. She was nothing more than a figure head, chosen for having a bright and sun-filled face.

“A wise man once said: “the will of the people...determines the truth”, and I had initially thought that idea to be utter bullshit: until this pandemic unveiled the ugliness of the world. It is only my intention to craft a poem in which the citizens can see the value in that prophetically untrue saying, or risk the conciliatory truths in which we will watch the citizens decimate themselves. I ask that the world to follow my lead, and to lock away these monsters from far lands...to spare the spreading of death further. There will be no need to accommodate the beast with an ever-changing name past that of the title Delta, but we need to lock the citizens away with their choices. Let them die breathing the air they desperately demanded, and watch them perish from the safety of our static-filled shields together.” The citizens were enraged by her ability to speak to the world on their behalf, as she was a simple figurehead, a childish girl claiming to be of Royal blood. They often demanded that she and her Indigenous Warriors provide them with endless “thanks”: for having spared their lives, and yet Artemis rose up to claim a Peoples without territory to protect. Society had attempted to diminish her words from being crafted, and Artemis had revised the strengths of assimilation to fall in the favor of the Indigenous Warriors. Artemis had only wanted to save the world: to be an overlooked pebble that caused a massive ripple in time itself. The mild slaughter of the citizens at their own hands would keep the hands of her Indigenous Warriors clean, allowing her culture to be seen for their innocent virtues and assisting them in politically saving-face.

Artemis to quench her endless thirst with the taste of death. She closed her eyes, and began to inhale what little air was left: her life was at risk because of the idiots that began to claw at one another, as they attempted to flee her chamber of selfishness. Artemis would be unable to seek medical attention at a White-Box filled with medicine...because of these fucking assholes, and she was angry by the death sentence they presented her with. Artemis had nothing to do with their ignorance; the Kind-Hearted Hunters had asked her to modify her protection...in order to offset their selfishness. Like any good child, Artemis decided to listen to their worry and added extra days of quarantine into her week for good measure. She stood in the epicenter of the mouth-breathers that began to drool and foam at the mouth in their blind rage, and her laughter gave them fright. Her last ounce of humility had been cast aside. Artemis was ok with dying in a room filled with horrific monstrous citizens: if it meant she could watch them plead for a defensive liquid in their last moments. Artemis would kick away syringes of the antibodies in their last breaths...needing to collect them, unused, and readied for those that deserved the aid and protection outside of the walls of a death chamber. She allowed her Indigenous Warriors to slumber and hold down a prison of marble, as she wielded death with little care to the aftermath of what the families of the trapped citizens would say as to refute her Royal decree in being rightfully sympathetic and ruthless.

Artemis heard a booming voice from the other side of the oversized doors. It was a pale man with a lopsided Viking helmet. He pleaded for her to open the doors, and Artemis began to scream louder over the tizzy of citizens fighting amongst themselves. Artemis looked around the room, wondering if the man was there because he cared, or if he had taken the defensive position and if his baby-momma had been attending the hearing around educational precursors. Her eyes began to scan the chamber: why was he at the door at all? He had only called upon her in his weakened spirits, as though he needed her smile to uplift his moods, or the right to chose to stomp all over the few ounces of her remaining sanity. “I can’t open the door old man...this is what you wanted all along isn’t it?” Artemis had shed tears on his behalf, in the obscurity of his endless ridicule and his mean-hearted jokes. She had wasted their entire friendship blaming herself for every misstep, and he had reveled in the sight of her being left abandoned in rooms dancing by herself. Artemis was famous for being easy to love, and hard to forget, and the strange man had sent her spinning into a spell of darkness that was only broken by the somewhat loving embrace of a man named Orion. Artemis would rather die alone, than to be in the middle of the introduction of the two men that claimed to recall every wrinkle and freckle that splashed across her face.

The Viking’s booming voice would be the only thing to wake Orion from his slumber, as the only thing he hated more than his wife...was the mere idea of another man earning the right to do the same. Artemis began to cast her nose to the sky with a prolific sigh. “I’m surrounded by idiots.” She knew Orion would soon be standing up in a sleepy daze, staring at a Viking that was charging at full-speed at the chamber doors. Artemis went to quiet the man, as he deemed her irrational and compulsive in her choice to die alongside the ugliest of the citizens. “I may be irrational, but that doesn’t mean I’m not practical in my choices.” Her life was forever without, as White-Boxes had corpses slipping and sliding out from the brims of the doors: they had run out of beds to provide services in a timely manner to citizens that had medical predispositions outside of the plague. “I can’t afford to get more sick, and it’s my right to die on my own accord...please, just stop acting like you care!” Artemis felt the Vikings presence, his distrust in her choices; as she placed a hand on the door...the only thing he could ever control was her need to befriend him, and she had finally let go of a tether that was tied without reason. The whimper of his breathing meant that he understood the gravity of his hollow words...he had wasted their friendship calling her stubborn, and snickered at every chance where he had proof as to Artemis being considered unlovable. The man was only upset with himself, as he had barely answered her calls: without forsight, and assuming that she’d always throw herself at their friendship. Relying heavily on the accessibility he’d always held in viewing her friendly face.

Artemis looked around the marble room that trapped her with an untimely death: the citizens began to argue amongst themselves. She noticed one citizen, as she had been her fellow co-worker: an overweight woman with privileged entitlement and a lust for breaking the law. Artemis felt their gaze meet, knowing the woman would be the first to suggest cannibalism once the provided snacks ran-out, and sighing that such a pale female lacking in her feminism held her double-chins so high. Artemis was often revolted by the citizens’ love of gorging themselves, and this vast girl was always seeking reasons to make the citizens stare at her gaping mouth. She often reminded Artemis of her elder sister with the level of narcissistic tendencies that oozed from the rims of her mouth like thickened saliva. Artemis would shrug, and find boredom with each mean word, as she hadn’t been the one to shovel copious amounts of toxic-laced foods into the citizens mouth. Artemis was nothing short of a classy lady, and so she often stuck her nose up at the citizens and said nothing. The woman wasn’t worth the time of day, and Artemis fought the criminals’ privilege by saying absolutely nothing, and casually plastering an amiable smile upon her shining face.

Artemis was entitled in her rage, as her kingdom had been overthrown long before her birth, and the shambles of her society were left to mocked by the entirety of the world. Artemis was often standing alone in the spades of her annoyance, missing Orion and laughing at the citizens with the gleam that hid behind her stoney eyes. She awaited the arrival of Athena, bringing her beloved nieces to attain new fine-linens and marvel at the metropolis that had been robbed from them. Artemis took so much glee in the arrival of Athena, as she flitted around her flat and tidied up what little she had. Artemis recalled the kind women in a grey-box, mentioning the jealousy they held for their fellow inmate: they had seen her become so animated that Athena had posted the bail that held her trapped with the repercussions of alcoholism. They openly wished for sisters of such character and commitment, and Artemis had heard every word they gifted her with. She’d travel to the ends of the Universe for Athena, and not to repay the financial debt that was procured that day in trade for freedom: but because Athena was the other side of her coin. A person that deserved love. Artemis rarely showed that anger and distrust to the world, as well as call out her guile need to embrace the foolish plight of unworthy people. Athena had been the only mortal that held aberration for the concept that Artemis had been cast as being cold-hearted and held at arm’s-length, abandoned at birth by society-on-a-whole: willingly orphaned by two people that despised her infant face.

Artemis stood in the center of her void. It was without edges, but her rage brought the edge closer somehow. She began to dispel the frustrations that left her without merit, and began to wonder if the poems that dribbled from her dreams had meant that her pages dripped with self-abasement. One day the floor slipped away, and a whirl-wind of colors began to whiz past her. Artemis was bored of living...too lazy to die without fair-retribution. The world had asked her to disappear out of their convenience, and now she was slipping from the firm grasps of reality. Artemis was torn between the pages of her own failures, and the despotic tales of a Mechanical Boar, a man dead-set on terrorized the world. She braced for impact, staring at the static that replaced the blanket of stars that she loved so dearly. As she closed her eyes, Artemis felt the soft touch upon her hand. It was that of a young girl; clamoring for anyone to save her from the awful world...a child longing for an apology from narcissistic parents, a girlish young woman...left to be raised by the ruthless.

Artemis felt a crash of reality break her torpidity within an instant. A small voice said “auntie”, causing her spell of rage to break, replaced with the worry left from her own childhood. The child explained symptoms of being washed over by endless darkness and her body seizing beyond control, as well confining her strange fear...of an unpredictable sister, a berry-like child with perversion-riddled stares. The emptiness and affect of the wickedness in doing nothing at times, and too much at others; reminded Artemis of Dianne. It gave her no joy to know that acts of rape and docile violence could transpire over lifetimes and skip households. Her niece was concerned that nobody would hear her complaints, due to the fact that the sibling was the youngest, the last, crowned with red curls, painted gold, and presenting an innocent-enough looking face.

Artemis heard the prosaic doubt within her concerns: grabbing her hand and pulling the worrying woman close for a vast hug: protecting her from the things she knew to be true and forever unacknowledged. It was the only way to show non-judgemental gratitude for the strength expressed in sharing. She held her niece, applying admiration for reporting behavioral issues beyond their control...needing protection from a jejune mother. Artemis began to guide her through life, arms splayed with the defensive posture of weilding loaded weapons. Walking away was the first option, attacking with diligence was the second option. Artemis had turned her pleasant demeanor into that of an insipid parent, ready to protect three cubs in need of a gaurdian that was considerate, caring, and ruthless.

Artemis took a deep breath and thought to herself, “just be the adult you had wished for as a teenager”: she held back tears, helpless in knowing the depths of the adolscent woe and her niece’s specific battle with depression. Artemis held her soft hand, casually hiding the complex facets of the information given. How long had she been free falling through the chaos alone? She chose to coddle the young girl, slowly tilted her own head downward to collect speed and loosening grip, they were falling through the depths of endless night sky together. Artemis needed to garner enough speed to lead the trajectory of her body to be the jumping off point for another...if only to cushion the blow of impact for her niece. Artemis felt her crazy hair whipping around, thrashing violently in the wind: her niece was often silent and supplicant to her mothers well-hidden choice to do the bare minimum, and gleam...whenever people talked of her duties of being a mother. The woman hid behind closed doors: telling her children to walk-away, demanding that they shut-up, and to get the fuck out of her face.

Artemis held back tears, Athena had a way of perforating ones spirit and testing ones character. The haunting words seeping outwards toward the surface, where they left Artemis somnolent, indifferent to Athena as a person. The flippancy Artemis had endured as a child, gave birth to a love of Justice, and the need to be the leader that was always vacant from her own life. The realization that Athena had deflected her childish behaviors to children undeserving of her loathing, often left a blank or acrimonious stare to become transparent over Artemis’s worried face.

“I got ya kid.” The poor child had been born to an awful family, and left abandoned on the same dirty river that Artemis had once been bunted over its rolling cliffs. Artemis was nothing more than a human punching-bag to her sister during their youth, and she’d forgiven Athena’s non-existent apology upon the birth of the celestial twins. The punches were scars lain as exculpatory evidence to the fury of Athena, but they were so outdated they’d lost their emotional damage, and Artemis was comfortable in healing the contention the raped woman held towards a younger sibling. Artemis knew that Athena would always turn the world over in search of her, destroy all those that wished harm upon her...as she was unable to vindicate violent actions of others. The growl of Athena preparing for battle often brought awkward smile to Artemis’s face.

She fought off the endless nightmares of demotion in rankings, left abandoned as a captain with no soldiers to bow or commend the efforts. Artemis was left to be chastised for holding a thankless position. The outre’ nature of her smile made the success she harvested to be antical, and it was overshadowed by all those with natural talent or qualities. It had led Artemis to step forward and take on the impossible task of inverting a static-filled apple, and attend a hunt in killing a blood-thirsty Mechanical Boar. A man with an orange tuft of hair, forever fighting the beastly desires toward his own daughter, dawning leathery face.

Artemis had found out that men from neighboring galaxies were lining up for the task, to take booty in prized loot, specifically the award of taking the hand in marriage of the daughter of Zues. Artemis overheard their rote in battle strategy, before the information fully dawned on her...that the prize was her own hand in marriage being offered as tribute, and not Athenas. The diaspera of time and cultures would wash the memory of all those participating, and Artemis was included in order to keep bias out of the equation. Her credo in fairness wouldn’t be compromised by posturing, or the pathetic needs she held in pursuing Orion and his glaring face.

Artemis volunteered to earn rights to her own person hood, attending to a game of tapestry and horrific monsters. The audacious will of a woman led to a dangerous trail, inside an abandoned cave and into a forgotten game; played only by desperate politicians and lost children. She watched as the men forgot the details of the race, and married themselves off in their own forgetfulness. Each had lost touch with the importance of literature, free-thought and the pricelessness of craft; in inking one’s imagination onto pages. Artemis had preempted an epic battle by separating the lazy from the stratigically ruthless.

She took vast joy in watching the competitors reflect and bluster in their theories of a simulation built entirely around opulence and intentions. The lack of depth in theory left citizens open to the idea, but underwhelmed by the folderol of the concept. A majority of the men had romanticized their expectations of her, and awoke with clean-slates, no proof of affiliation or reminders of task. Each would find her and temporarily bemuse themselves with her exterior beauty. Her sigh and need to accommodate the feelings of others left Artemis coined with the nickname “Helen of Troy”. Thirty thousand years would pass before there’d be a need to excise a tournament known as the Games of the Gods: for the sole purpose of wedding the forgotten Goddess known only for a dancing brow, and confused smile that hid half of her face.

Athena was born to sufferer, a poor stranger left to collect the pieces of her messy life: an ally in war, but hiding behind detractors of judgement towards a younger sibling and her choice to remain single and motherless. It left Artemis muted, and unvalued as a woman in times of arguments. Artemis commended her niece, having witnessed her threatened Athena’s ego through yelling, questioning the methods in her parenting and accusing Athena of favoritism. The woman hated public humiliation, as they had been abused as children and such dramatic and some heart-felt anguish had never been a right given during their own upbringing. Artemis felt her eyes widen in confusion and concern, as Athena began to whisper angrily at her daughter: asking her to walk away. The brave girl stood up, towering over her mother and armed with the truth: demanding her mother see her as a person, if only for a moment. Artemis was only afraid of the fact that her anger was masked by her uncanny ability to draw expressions from a dead father that seemed to haunt Athena through genetics. Her niece was wholly unaware that she wandered through life...flaunting the mask of known pedophile, and Artemis had worked relentlessly to adjust the comfort settings to such profane facts. There was nobody at fault, as the strong-willed niece bore such an array of dissimilarities in character to her dead father, and Artemis was the last person to condemn another for dawning their parents face.

Athena avoided looking at the face of a man she had once loved, and Artemis avoided pointing out that she’d been groomed to love him at the blossoming age of seventeen. There was no world where a thirty-eight year old citizen could have anything in common with a teenage Athena. The bond between sisters was cast, after Artemis took it upon herself to declare him a pedophile on paper. They had lost time, they had lost sanity arguing on the topic, but Artemis had taken it upon herself to report his misdeeds to the authorities to protect a toddler niece and nephew. It was within her rights as a citizen to place boundaries that isolated her from Athena and her choice in men, and the formal report reflected that Artemis was done with men acting like they were entitled to her body. Artemis had abandoned the two children, leaving them in the protection of a pedophile and a woman wallowing in self-pity. The act had left her unapologetic, unprotected by the truth that she had fought off his physical attack and sexual advances...unafraid and ruthless.

Artemis excused herself from a long table in a swift moment, leaving Athena to tend to the favorite child. The light rain accompanied a frazzled teenager down unending streets: needing her to love the city and its organized chaos, and expressing the value of persons and place. The city loved every part of her that day...whereas, Artemis had always loved her: she was dedicated to the idea that the child wouldn’t ever fail in succeeding in fighting her curse of pushing a heavy boulder up a mountain with every sunrise. Artemis felt saddened, knowing that the conversation of her death was soon to occur and worried that her own passing would mean that her beloved niece would take responsibility for the invisible crown that was nestled softly over her curls. The smart young lady would probably only find solitude in knowing she’d inherited Artemis’s love of chaos. Proximity to Athena and her version of love, had left the two women to become grey in their dedication to a relationship with Athena...knowing full-and-well of her skills in gaslighting and memory. The malignant existence had made her triumphant, unbeatable, and unmistakably ruthless.

Artemis had returned to a life of privilege, routine, and gave her niece all she could to normalize the life of a person with endless sadness. The dark consumed this child at odd times of the day, mid-conversations and throughout her dreams. She began to flourish, as a woman, a heretic to Athena’s unacquainted rage. Artemis felt her vocals shake in fear of Athena, and recalled the silence oppressed deep within her chest, recalling the series of anxiety attacks that had befallen her young mind when she had been left standing in an empty home: holding two babies and apologizing for the fact that they were cursed to be alone... forever forgotten in perpetuate to Athena’s’ many, many moods. Artemis felt her body aching, unable to put the two babies down...in the culminated worry that they’d walk away in abandonment. Artemis no longer had to hide away stories of negligence, and once again Athena had abandoned the child in her arms without permission. The discarding of a child longing to be heard, needing to be seen as an entity separate from the action of her parents. Artemis expressed the art of dawning fine-linens, and preparing oneself to be self-sufficient. They took turns sleeping on the floor, and jammed ten years of talk-therapy into the span of a whole moon. She used their time together to stare up at the content countenance, as they sipped teas from abroad. Artemis knew she’d always hate her niece’s father, but remained vocally grateful for the chance to love a child with such an honest face.

Artemis grasped her wrists, and held her in a tight embrace: she knew the girl hadn’t any idea that her auntie had wasted the last years of her life scripting and ochastrating a future of equality. Artemis would dedicate her life attempting to expartiate the cruelty she’d once dealt her favorite beast named Emillio. Artemis had no issue telling the world that she was not deserving of the beauty in their world. Artemis was unworthy of the fur-balls that roamed the land, she had harmed the helpless in a rage-blackout: telling herself that it didn’t matter because she had been alone. Nobody had cared for her life and safety, why would they care about an animal unsure of his own name. In all reality, she was nothing more than a child, confused as to why the world cared for the protection of beasts more than children. Jealous of the rights given to runts and litters. The world had worked so hard to punish her existence to one of self-erasure, and in turn...she had attempted to pass the same imponderable punishment to everyone and fucking everything around her. They had beaten, raped, and abandoned her soon after birth, and had the audacity to pretend to be conflicted as to their inaction and how that was projected into Artemis’s defensiveness and need to remain ruthless.

The swelling of disappointment became one of shared confusion, as Artemis asked her Kind-Hearted Hunters if she were daft in accumulating unaddressed trauma. She said words as to how inconsiderate Athena had been, leaving her child alone in a massive world as punishment for expressing feelings. Artemis was left organizing the shards of pieces of her own narcissistic mask, knowing the world could care less about her meticulously kept life. Artemis lay on the cold floor: reminding her niece that she would always be deserving of her own privacy, and the fine-linens she adored with dancing eyes, and reminding her that the disparate woman was born lonely by virtue. Nobody liked those born to lead...specifically those with ovaries. Their defeatist ability to exist in Athena’s world meant that the profundity hidden behind their smile would bring fear into the hearts of many men. Artemis knew that the world often feared women that were able to similtantiously weep and smile, as long as tears would stream relentlessly down their splendid face.

Artemis tucked in her baby girl, using silly songs and her Chandler-like paws to pat the child’s blanket heaps softly. She gave her insights of a grown woman, and the kind ear of an adult ready to destroy generational barriers. She wept in her absence, missing the baby that had grown to fulfill her aphrodite-like curses. Artemis was left alone with a nest meant to house one, but warmer when there was the chance for her to study and assist those in need. She had slept within a deep slumber, and caught her niece by her frail wrists of an unending nightmare: the weight of the small woman was overwhelming. Artemis looked over the edges of a steel deck and reached overboard, her long hair whipping in the wind and her voice carrying on as the child was clinging onto the hand of her elder brother for dear life. Together there was nothing the three weren’t prepared to risk...they had been born to accommodate a drowning woman and her love of men. Athenas choices alone would always leave her in free-fall, whereas Artemis and her niece and nephews were a unit. Protected by love, guided by worry, and able to stare at death blankly in its face.

Artemis was wondering why her shoulders ached...why her heart thumped without purpose: having known that her sister would always drop-kick her children from her nest. Athena would cast aside every human on the planet... if it meant that the one child with flamed-hair would be more comfortable. “I got you, just hang on babies”. Artemis caught her niece weeping in the silence, and wondered if she was caught worrying for her brother: lost in whether to hate him for his sins, or to pity herself. The nightmare of exile had left them clinging to one another, unable to forgive Athena for her actions...unwilling to let her hid behind the excuses of a victim that steadily resorted to violence, negligence, and words painted with intentions that were colored the hue of hopelessness. The survival skills honed by existing next to Athena had left the family of four with only the option to remain ruthless.

Artemis corrected her niece in strange ways...reminding her of a father that may have been a decent father, but was a fucking awful person in the grand schme of things. The world was a more beautiful place due to his untimely death. Artemis had no shame in loving his status of being deceased, and she hid away her hatred for the child molester in odd nooks and corners of her heart. Artemis had spent years reprogramming herself to love her eldest nephew that was strangely honest-to-a-fault, and one day she found herself able to position herself to grab his free hand, forgiving him for his deviousness and asking if he’d learned his lesson. He had only learned the extremity of the laws, by standing alone and unprotected in front of a judge with an unfamiliar face.

Artemis was left falling through the darkness, clinging to two children and attempting to keep her cool as to what to do next. She held preponderance that rivaled her sister Athena’s “love” for her own offspring. Artemis wasn’t in competition for maternal instincts, but she had already developed skills and emotional connection to the two half-twins as a youth. “I got you...just hold on a little longer babies”. Artemis would observe them trying to ask for help, and know that Athena had taught them that “asking” was seen as “begging”, and that sadness was seen as weakness. They were not allowed to have woes in a world that had never pitied Athena...her struggles were the only ones that mattered in “her world”. Artemis was alone her whole life, and one day...two babies had appeared to ask endless questions and tussle her hair. Her tears were stunted by their need to care for her pain, and their love of love. They were two children that were born with an absent mother, and a deceased father that was worth more to the world dead than alive. She had no apologies in her disdain for the small and insignificant man that had attempted to assault her as a youth, and uttered hatred for him after learning he had assaulted her niece as a toddler. Artemis recalled Athena raising a brow as she began slamming things, stating her desire to kill him. His existence in her world was the primary reason that Artemis had crowned herself with unapologetic tones, riddled with boredom. Artemis shrugged at the idea that she’d be famed for being kind and ruthless.

Artemis blinked with soporific eyelids, and caught herself standing in an abandoned cave. Her sister Athena was holding out an apple-shapped prop by the stem, as if she were presenting Rita’s decapitated head, and asking Artemis to wake up with a tone of urgency. Artemis saw the wide chest of Orion in front of her at last, her arm draped over his tall shoulder and his face turned away from her in shame. He had no idea of the turmoil she had survived to meet him, or the heartache she had endured to have the courage to introduce herself. He would never care, as his world evolved around the idea that people were pawns for him to use and discard: it seemed that Artemis was pathetic enough to label herself as a pawn in his life. He’d always find excuses to create distance from her, as though his bittered absence was something she deserved to face.

Artemis had given up, pulling herself back into a simulation to hold friendly banter with a Viking that had given Artemis a soft glow: she’d often blush to honor the childish crush she held for him, and present him with un-blanketed daydreams on occasions such as his birthday or the anniversary of the agreement in being one anothers best friend. The secrets of a lady, left hidden in pages where she was allowed to exist without unfair judgement. The pair were just two hard-working people with the mentality of Akichita: tethered by their similarities in personality. They had met as single individuals, and cultivated their amassed admiration for one another in a way that couldn’t be hidden from the guile expressions that were splayen over each face.

Artemis awoke to stare at the bare ink’d chest of her husband standing directly in front of her, and the voice of Athena expressing the obvious that there was a man in their presence. “Perseus is here”, the harrowing words left Artemis confused, as a sudden burst of fear rattled down her spine. She took a gaze up towards the man that towered over her: she had always called him Orion, as that had been the name of his presence in her endless dreams and nightmares. She knew his ever-changing name was the least of her worries, as she had spent eternity searching the stars and galaxies for his stark nose and conventionally handsome face.

The man held the mighty talents of Horus, and the selfishness of Narcissus. Artemis was cursed to be the last person to come to his mind, as he assumed she’d always belong to him. It’d literally take him chasing her through the memories she hid away from him, and observing the charm of a Viking first hand...for him to understand that his wife was admired by other men. Artemis had a problem of mirroring the expectations others dealt her, and surpassing them with flying colors and slight effort. It led to a pale man with striking eyes to lean forward in curiosity whenever she entered a room, and a man with art plastered across his chest clamoring to draw her nearer to his heart. Artemis was admired by many men, and loved by none. The fortitude of her existence was to be demanded for balance in the universe. Her laughter brought forth chaos with every step: wielding an aura of estranged apathy that left her labelled as the ruthless.

Artemis had never wasted so many moons on a single poem, but she had no retort to the slowed-nature of her heart-felt words. Time was at her beck-and-call. She tilted her head with quizzical boredom, as citizens continued to wave their ugly hairy hands in her direction, watching their antagonized need to feel important, explaining her choices to pull a hand away from an apple presented to her. She hated every-other citizen that flashed their ugly snouts in her direction. The world had the audacity to accuse her of being struck with vanity, all whilst these fucking useless citizens would cast their spit and viral-ridden breath in direction of strangers in their selfishness? It seemed unfair, and she couldn’t actually be condemn them as fucking losers with too much privilege and time on their hands. They loved stalking strangers, dipping into the frame of her sight, and pretending their entrance into her scene would change all that had already been done. Plenty of women had stomped on the hearts of men, hunting down a wife to flaunt in front of her husband out of boredom. Artemis had only needed to follow the abashed gaze of women glancing over her broadened shoulders...watching as they pulled away from whatever poor man was left unable to distract a whore on a mission. Many women blushed, pulled away their hands, hid their rings, or flaunted by...left to the truths of their own actions in preverse peacocking... with the obvious intent to bed a married man. Such vile observations were the reason why Artemis stuck up her nose in the presence of women, or pointed her nose downward towards endless pages. All she felt was pity, for the slew of recumbent men left to witness lust wash over their significant others face.

The blind study provided by a childish game was often broken to bits, and it gave her delayed pride, as she wished the bystanders with painful arthritis in their near future. The disease of obesity left her to stare without concern...she watched them snarl and laugh: jauntily calling her pathetic. Nothing but painful and lonely deaths would follow their own actions, just as it had when they chose to spread a virus. She shrugged, bored of those that slowed or parked their chariots in front of her: capturing their horrifically dull profiles in the absurd fear that they would be forgotten to time. Artemis was nothing more than the standard angered woman; molded and abused by the citizens for sport. There was no real comfort for a standard human with ambitions, so she resulted in configuring an insincere smile that remained plastered across her vengeful face.

Artemis had left to attend a cage with a broken door, lassoing monsters and labeling beasts in her quest to meet a Prince in white linens and unknown language. She had found the last of the last, a fucking futile criminal hidden in a classroom meant for the greatest of minds. He was pacing outside of a house that said one,one,two, two. He held tight to a spud in one hand and a knife in the other. Artemis was both horrified to see the man revert into a child...calling out for his daddy to deliver him away from his school in a feminine looking chariot painted white. His sunken eyes were dead, but his words expressed his intent to flee from the slaughter he’d left spilling over the berm of a massive house...the blood of four innocent-enough citizens were gifted to a man due to his pale skin and ocean-filled eyes. Reasonable doubt was all that he had in his possession, so she guided him to a cage and allowed him to argue and prove his innocence. She wandered off to compare his picture to that of the Viking, and felt relief that their chins were vastly different. There was nothing to stop her from reporting that his family hid between her river and mountain, in a territory protected by two steers in red harnesses and roofed by a winged animal flaunting its freedom. The Viking had stubble and a squared out chin, whereas Michael Jr.’s son was childish and round. It was obvious to Artemis, that the accused murderer was guided by his own self-hatred...having lost copious amounts of weight, and stating alarming "jokes" that couldn’t be separated from his average-looking face. No amount of woods could hide him from the citizens and their campaign for Justice, and no amount of privilege could distract from his ugly smirk as he yammered about his enthusiasm to be exonerated. Artemis decided it was best to gouge out his eyes, leaving him blind to the evidence and the weight of public opinion. There was nothing to be said to a beast sickened by a new body, and an insatiable desire to act on his daydreams of mangiare se stessi. The idea of watching the once obese citizen flail and being found guilty brought tear-riddled laughter into her life. His crimes were barbaric and sloppy..whereas Artemis was famed for being precise and ruthless.

Artemis was weary from reliving the trauma of her own best friend being stabbed in his sleep by a coward, and found herself advocating for the authorities, patience, and fear...that reminded the citizens that they’d only get the one chance to try the fucking loser accused of trespassing, robbery, and viciously slaughtering four citizens to prove his "edgy" fauter. It brought her immense pain to sleuth through files and pictures, informing an inquisitive woman named Trisha of the unmitigated pain that followed the path of the selfish. It seemed that the single event led the citizens to her door, longing to ask for advice, or to observe what the trauma had done to her life personally. Few dared to mention the metamorphosis of her sullen face.

Artemis found herself holding onto two babies, now adults: clinging to them in the darkness as they drifted into the unknown. She yelled at her niece to let go of her brother’s hand, and was answered with the objection of silence. The young girl had probably thought that Artemis was angered by the things he had done to destroy their family. Her distrust in men had nothing to do with her nephews ability to take judicial accountability in his youth. She felt them weighing her arms down as her body anchored to her niece, and fumbling to try and grasp a nephew. The circuity of their friendship was the only thing could build enough momentum to toss the two struggling to hang on. Even at the brink of failure, Artemis was unable to let the worry leak over the the forefront of her face.

Artemis recalled a memory from a past life, where she had been given details of a mission first hand. Instead of allowing herself to be besieged by questions and doubting crew members, she began to sprint from the deck of a metal ship and cast herself into the sky. There was nothing afoul by the sound of her confident boots hitting the floor heavily and with purpose. Artemis dove head first into the darkness with joy, laughing that her niece and nephews had followed suit without question, and that her soldiers would understand the assignment soon after. She knew the half-twins would always leap without looking, knowing it was safer than being left to be tended by a mother that had a misconstrued understanding of what it meant to be ruthless.

Their home was wherever they needed her to be...because she loved them beyond all words. More than all the collective stars dancing worry free in sky above. Artemis felt her breath catch shallowly in her chest, and she clasped onto their hands with desperation. The half-twins wouldn’t have a clue as to her plans, but Artemis was secretly garnering enough momentum to cast the two upwards with what little weight she had. Their younger brother needed their help, and she couldn’t be the one to fix such a dire situation. Their laughter in thrill gave her focus, and their need to love her...gave strength to the morbid insinuations left by her plan. One winter day, Artemis began to stir, she had too little time left with the kids...she was left deciding between struggling alone, and preparing them for their citizenship as productive members of a crumbling Polis. Artemis felt their drag being taken advantage of by the gravity that was strengthening by the minute. She used the moves she had been paid to learn and charter to audiences, twirling in one last gesture. Swinging her arms loftily backwards-and-forth in a clapping motion. She had been born to cheer on the three, and decided that she’d be their leader...cheering them on from afar. She’d distract them with wound-up words and booming suggestions..."you’re gonna do great!", as she prepared them for a world that was populated by the lazy, the violent, and the least threatening of personality types...the self-acclaiming ruthless.

They began to ask what she was doing, as they took turns falling faster: Artemis began to smile wickedly, dutifully preparing a final trick. Arching her back and diving backwards head-first, as she threw the two children upwards into the night sky to join the stars. They had only needed one person to give them an unbiased chance to survive the darkness that promised to swallow them whole. She heard them screaming her name in fear of the idea of their lives continuing on in her absence, and so she gifted the children with a final poem that recalled her admiration. She hated their father and his rapist/pedophile lifestyle, but she was beyond thankful for the existence of her niece and nephew. Athena would be bored by the idea that her sister had the audacity to leave her life prematurely, and annoyed that Artemis had prepared her own children with a safety net that included mental health services and the financial security that’d stand in moratorium to the auntie that they’d eventually lose to inevitable violence. Artemis knew time lay at the fate of Dianne or the impending seizures that stole her humanity little-by-little. She had taught her babies that they were loved beyond all words, and left them with a manuscript filled with her laughter and smiles...in the growing probability that she’d die before they figured out where Artemis had hid away the hatred she held for the unlovable citizens that plagued their land. She feared no man...not their violent father, not their unwell mother...and that trait alone would teach the two how to present the world with a charming, dishonest, and kindly smile that would distract from the forgotten childhoods that were robbed by all those that were unequivocal in their evil abilities to remain impartial, unhelpful, and ruthless.

Next Chapter: *[ ] Artemis and the Void*