Artemis had crumbled under the pressures of failure...once. The misstep of grandiosity had caused a nervous breakdown--coming off the curtails of a cad Orion--supplying a gaslit narrative, offering the option that she cower to a friend; female and large...trespassing upon Artemis’s home and life without precaution or threat of bare judgements. His refusal to take sides when weighing criminality to the pros of social confirmation biases had been a telling sign of a commitment to a cheek and jowl situationship; held together by dangerous threads and shallow personalities...Artemis wounded on a sideline--her ego drowning in the implications and worry of the inheritance of a selfish disease scarily rearing its head from time to time. She had been sickened with worry and confusion, wondering why his caring was aimed towards anyone and everyone else...fully unaware that fate would paint her blacked-out rage to corroborate line-by-line as a struggling alcoholic.

It had been easier to paint her as unsteady, paranoid...incapable of deserving the decency of boundaries when asking a stranger--to not impeded upon her privacy at every turn...especially without the presence of Orion or the common gesture of a knock. She chalked up failures--to be placed gently away in tidy boxes of emotions; the pile of undressed concerns eventually tipping over with the added layer of intense Government contracts and looming deadlines. Artemis was so tired of letting everyone down--eventually turning about face, and standing directly in front of a mirror; still unaware the spine deformities stood present in a grinning reflection. Artemis had decided to call out for help, telling professionals how swells of endless tears had consumed spare moments of the day: cursing her with extreme anguish and represses sorrows overflowing with indulgence. Artemis had grown so weary of crying--that an abused and neglected body had finally responded with a polite “no thank you.” There was nowhere else to turn--a mortal body didn’t care about star-bound ambitions. A Trail of Tears added ruses to the copious amounts of pain--her “hurt”, as the Kind-Hearted Hunters labelled it: from the burdens carried as orphan--the guilt in inconveniencing all of society...had finally taken its toll. The world had never cared to disagree with assertion of presence being anything shy of uncomfortable to gaze upon--she was left to believe God had abandoned her at birth--the actions of an unforgiving world...agreeing with Hera’s antics that there was no rest offered to the wicked. She felt unworthy of repentance, completely undeserving of love most days--her sins outweighing the sum of mankind’s threshold for atonement...the price she paid for being born in a world that disliked orphans to an uncaring and elaborate extent. Artemis’s eyes were swollen--puffy like the aging Mechanical Boar, her nose running profusely: the forbidden qualities allotted to a childhood built upon optics and illusions...forever chained to the mirroring expectations for any persons born with a title, or self-claiming to be a Royal.

Artemis was left at the mercy of medical professionals under lock and key--dragging her feet in shame: choosing to admit defeat, and signing as a emergency patient under the name Baker. The moment of solitude offered clarity--a furthering range of healing for herself and the homies from behind the medical bars she called doors. An eclectic group of citizens; free-falling in a moment of deep suffering had gathered in a circle...helping Artemis cultivate learned skills in listening--to offer advice without the unfair judgement of others. For the first time in her pathetic life...the colour of her skin no longer mattered in chaotic surroundings--she was at ease to explain the heartbreak caused by a lifetime of physical and emotional trauma. Despite the yelling and clamoring of citizens running full speed into the padded walls; Artemis held her head high. She was exactly where she needed to be; the harms callously stricken by the outside world--no longer pretended to care about self-inflicted wounds...the memory of a bottle of medication spilling upon thin tile had captured the pain caused each time people called her smile unblemished; despite the decades of abuse it hid. The abrasive words of the Indigenous Warriors couldn’t reach her--whilst surrounded by others adapting and adjusting to uncomfortable truths...she was shrouded with grace. Left alone to admire her own face; to build freeing emotions...to express the unfair nature when being held to highest of standards, for a community that so often made mockery in the status of the title Royal.

Artemis offered the same due respect to her new neighbors--the services of consuming grief and sorrow without threat of discipline had been more appreciated when surrounded by those brave enough to seek help in moments of hopelessness. An elderly man: lost and alone, explained that his dairy farm had been confiscated through acts of piracy--the failure of losing generations of hard work had caused a fracture in his professionalism, the criminal act had broken down the entirety of his identity. His organic fields were tied to a precious piece of land; a manifested destiny that slipped from his grasps when surrounding lands were purchased by a face-less conglomerate that knowingly and willingly poisoned the citizens--his art in regulation and care had been reduced to the role of a senile old man. His legacy dismantled in a moment; telling off a group of men in immaculate threads to vacate private property...to fuck off (so to speak), or risk the consequences in his private right to bear arms. Artemis devoured the story...asking what happened next on the edge of a plush seat forgetting the world around them--her excitement spilling over in the words "Hell yeah", stopping shy of kicking over a circle of chairs and yelling "merica"...bringing some form of comfort to a man--unaware, that she took immense pride in the citizens in such grand moments. Very few, understood the importance of the Indigenous Warriors sacrifices in forfeiting such rights...in honorable trade to preserve a single amendment at any cost. The world rarely acknowledged the Indigenous Warriors plight, let alone their ability to see far into the future. People had died to earn the Nations current citizens the common yet, advantageous rights to fight and defend their family, property, and the impending dooms that came with the endless greed--backed by tyrannical rule. Most of all--Artemis wanted to breathe life into a man...fighting a thankless battle alone against an army of hundreds of thousands...his kind fury pets moseying back-and-forth with curiosity on well-manicured lawns; a lone Warrior defending his own honor and family legacy. His story wandered on; completely unaware of Artemis’s weapon of choice...a dull blade--polished relentlessly at the hand of a lost and forgotten Royal.

He had one more battle in him: Artemis could sense it. All that was needed was an ally to confirm the misgivings fortune provided--to the losers that turned over harvested land for mere pounds shillings; eventually leaving the man on an island of deceit surrounded by the enemy. They had brought every piece of land around him--as if to say "come on out...you’re surrounded". The man had stepped out on a wooden porch to face his fate with determined glare--a weapon caulked as he provided fair-warning. The pirates attired in black-and-white threads resorted to swallowing up his grassy organic lawns: infiltrating and needling his emotions--“accidentally” breaking his fences with the habitual intent to destroy the earnings of a poor elderly man minding his own. The crew of thugs left their cushy offices, armed with grins and a handful of papers; horny to further criminalize an elder--by painting him senile with the witnesses of local authorities, but falling short of total victory...to the idea and notion that he would remain silent in the aftermath of their crooked campaign. Artemis watched as his eyes lowered; there had been a saddened shame in such an epic defeat...she knew the God-less losers had used predatory tactics and painted some random law-abiding citizen with the same discriminatory paints and tones of all those “they feared”. It had been so strange to witness his sorrow in a moment where nothing made sense to him, but the larger picture had been set out--legible for the world to witness...like a series of awful and unavoidable scenarios to someone that had been born to sit atop a throne of a similar crumbling legacy. Artemis said little--finally agreeing that the elder had done everything within his powers to do the right thing a majority of his rural life; outside of this defining instance. The cost of suffering meant nothing to most leaders, but that was the differences between a modern patriarchy and her born role as a de-crowned, and defamed Royal.

The criminals had surrounded him in broad daylight--brazen with an ink’d weapon: watching in entertainment days prior...sitting afar, as the feeble man scurried to mend the starkly cut fences as neighboring cattle innocently infiltrated the premises. The man was left to be swallowed alive by debt--agitated by months of labors thrown upon his booming shoulders in the span of weeks. The larger goal was to absorb the “seized property”--to remove the issue provided by a lone citizen; with the narrative he was a threat to the neighboring properties, and himself...knowing he was a recent widow that lived alone. They had decided to poke a wounded bear; and rounded up localized idiot authorities, to stand as witness to his mental decline...claiming they were "scared and afraid" for their safety when offering money to man living in isolation. They claimed concerns for public safety were due to his threatening demeanor--slamming down a receiver and calling around for legal representation...his time burdened and spread thin by tedious labors, whilst posh men with manicures sneered behind the scenes; sitting atop a sandy throne of lies and claiming him inferior to the community on a whole...like any other royal.

Instead of holding a weapon to the back-side of his neck...they told him to sign on a dotted line instead of asking or providing flexible reigns: his simple concerns as to what would become of his pet cattle were painted as hostile, unreasonable beyond-all-comprehension and he was left with only the bartered options of forty-eight hours left in his home, or nothing. The legal criminals had rolled up in overpriced chariots the next day--tidy and petulant: completely out of place in a stampede of dust and hand-worked fields...needing to “tie up loose-ends”, before the elderly man had proper representation or relative step-in. They had deciding that homeless-ness was more than he had deserved. They came in droves...armed with witnesses to observe their crafts in the manipulation of reality: the services of public protection authorities--rendered as a weapon, his praise for law and order...corroded by their need to stand behind chariot doors with weapons drawn, as cuckholds to crime when he had respectfully paid-taxes and lamented praise and admiration for their profession at one point. He felt her sorrow reaching out in a thankless world--forced to take a deep breath as he walked through the front doors; a legacy of hardworking farmers pressing his reluctant steps one foot in front of the other as he inched closer to fate. His kingdom of grassy plains suddenly painted patriotic and gold--easily worth dying for...if it meant his families legacy felt and ended as one fit for a royal.

The lying legal-tenders had needed him out of the way to achieve financial gains--the bottom-line had always been about the promised loot of bonuses and a monopoly on diary stocks. The shitty legal team had been so eager to take turns putting a Chief Executive Officers dick into their slobbering mouths--to turn a backside ready for a faceless bull to rear them anally...moaning of their deep desires to poison whole families if it meant success was driven deeper. Artemis’s ability to paint a puckered and ring-worm infested spade, as a tore-up, bleeding spade...wasn’t really considered decorous to some....but it didn’t matter--since her life had been reduced to a lower cased r--her existence dehumanized to harsh lines of a slur and an ugly cartoon most days; the alternative to carrying a title of caring, cultured sat bitter in the minds of readers living outside of the comforts of reality. Artemis had said less in moments where others honored her existence by sharing struggles, her judgements spared from focusing on a weird inbred legacy of a family within a family--Royals had retreated from her land many moons ago...their customs were bizarre and unfathomable when arguing due-respect given to overlords that buried a genome within a single family tree. She had no argument to the settlers that drew faces of disbelief when hearing her rants about a soon-to-King; yelling from the rooftops...his honest wishes to insert himself as a bound wad of cotton into the vaginal cavity of a mistress...before the added dimension of his parents being cousins on both sides...the world still managing to cling and clamor unto the outmoded commodity of property being passed down in the title of a family crested as polished, extravagant beyond all words....Royal.

The enemy had stormed his property in the heat of the day; surrounding the front and back porch at the heels of his unpaid shift...yelling into unapologetic winds, for him to come outside from a safe distance with undo caution...lights blaring, sirens screaming in the background; the once respected farmer of a local town--reduced to the commands of surrender...told to get upon his knees and disengage. He had only wanted to sell dairy locally...saddened that his late-wife loved quality products: more than these men had ever loved their own families. She wondered if his wife had looked out for his safety upon that day; sighing deeply when listening to a man finding his admittance to sins for condemning her nagging, as it was now something he deeply missed in times of trial...in moments of hind sight. Artemis had tucked his helpless story away in her wounded heart--having forgotten they had landed in the same mental prison for a handful of minutes...she had been lost in the throws of his recollection of battle. It had been a wake-call to herself...that some people didn’t deserve the mask of a beast or pale-monster; she had struggled with harboring contention for those with dead-eyes up until the discomfort of the mid-twenties passed--her mind fully-forming and rounding itself out with help of brave citizens such as this farmer. They had both known what it meant to be criminalized without due-cause, hands tied behind their backs and escorted to the same building at the same time...Artemis fleeing from the persecutions cast upon a stolen childhood, and the farmer drowning in debts and misrepresentation of character. In all reality...he had been a bigger man than those serving in armed forces, larger in bravery than Artemis whenever spells of self-pity reduced her to the unpredictable sicknesses of an alcoholic.

Artemis never learned his name; it hadn’t mattered. He identified as a third generation farmer--his family taking refuge after the feat of surviving a West pointed trail of opportunity. He was so much more important that a name common and booming...Artemis wondered if grief had been stowed away and released in a moment of true anguish as a shinning trophy to the bravery learned while cowering behind a feisty wife. He would circle back upon the topic of longing, sitting alone in a sea of strangers--Artemis sensing his desire to sort through the madness of it all; analyzing each step upon a wooden deck whilst hiding behind the seal painted by Gilbert, knowing that sharing such a hopeless tale would’ve been the last thing his deceased wife expected...but hoping; it may mean something to his remaining family and the slew of randoms passively listening to a tale. He hadn’t suffered from the epidemic of loneliness--he had succumb to sketchy strangers setting his life in flames overnight...laying prey to retaliatory siege by evil entities; hiding behind desks and probably-illegal tactics, like fucking cowards. Artemis thanking him for sharing--contemplating the consequences of caring for things marked off by others as inconsequential for decades. She had wanted to reach out in that moment of silence; to hug him only once, if it meant the swells of tears holding themselves back could shake themselves loose upon a tired shoulder...but the punishments of silly-jail kept them miles apart. He hadn’t believed her personal tales in triumph, at first--the surrounding of baby-proofed rooms made it easy to disregard her verbalized hopes of aiming for the stars...when his blissful blanket of peace was the image of a sturdy home sitting idol; now painted as memory of grassy knolls--without the avoided moment of bloodshed. To be bipartisan to the struggles of neighbors with a kind ear...was the least of her duties while serving as a domestic/foreign Royal.

Artemis had believed in his patriotic dreams of being left-the-fuck-alone...free to milk curious oversized pets and offer localized business and fair-trade wasn’t a whole lot to ask from a world spinning on the hoarded wealth of ten, or less individuals. She settled for a poem--if only to reach past the pages, and warmly hug a man that had lost everything in a single day...to say the words needed to be said, and offer an olive branch to a elderly man; too stubborn to make eye-contact when he had done nothing wrong outside of possibly taking the stubbornness of his wife for granted. "Thank you sir, I never left your side..." Artemis had hoped he had retired and moved away...but the clock of mortality offered the reasoning to believe he had passed already--his battle ink’d for eternity; meant to open the pages of a story dawning on the horizons of unchecked-balances to power. The Mechanical Boar had emboldened those inflicting pain on elders and private business owners with ease, but he had somehow taken illegal stock in the enemies swallowing up the land under the radar...until a veil of secrecy was no longer needed for her stand beneath. Interesting. Her love of Justice had picked up steam following a slew of nights filled with force-fed sedatives and decent-enough company that stood guard and provided decent-enough rest...her distrust of people renewing a strange new thirst for blood: barred from understanding the added curses provided by living as an active and still in-denial alcoholic.

Artemis had thought of the elderly man she had met in white-boxes in odd moments: who had he been when his wife was alive, and he hadn’t thought twice of those fated to land in places of medical murder and negligence. He hadn’t any reason to cross the idea of attending such a place--even in mourning. Many citizens had crash landed in such institutions and agitated the "professionals" shoveling sedatives into countless mouths...telling them to ignore real problems that remained upon out-patient care. Artemis was helpless without her title of Doctor: forever chained and forbidden from hugging the citizens that lamented their sins in proper moments. A men in black-and-white threads had seized a farmers land--reporting to curious companies...that a passionate need to defend livelihood and property: could serve as a potential issue in the future of purchasing land. They had a third-party declared ally: painting his senile yelling as unhinged...unmanageable, crazy as a female, as it were painted in Western society. The man had been condemned for acting as a senile elder--fighting a young mans battle: useless to a labor field that passionately criminalized the old. His colorful retorts to their gentle threats positioned as hysteria to the professional opinion of leveraged banks--the farmer had held the line, when a Mechanical Boar had began a lopsided raid on tariffs during his first reign. The greed of the banks didn’t see the art of coming-out-even and payment plans falling under the lines of successful as enough...when a gaggle of lawyers offered sound investments in what was expected to be growing market. They had discarded generations of hard work--and bought a bill of false goods, expecting payouts when a lone massive farm was to be replace the work of honorable labor. Artemis hoped their whole community collapsed; if only to prove the point that those that betrayed a citizen fucking sucked. They sucked at their jobs, and sucked at being decent people. The farmer explained his need to find legal representation following three days of mandated rest: the person scribbling notes down “in his defense” seemed sketch out of the corner of her vision...tending to emotions, and less to the structure of a clear story. He had only wanted to see if what they were doing was legal--and Artemis mumbled crazily...."that doesn’t fucking seem legal" when hearing a story about strangers impacting the operations of a family own business. The things he had so easily taken advantage of--the misgiving of truths laying beneath the endless trials of any-other person of color...now bled past her pages, consuming the land until a single farmer had seen the light she provided the darkening skies: Artemis sat patiently and at attention...busy avoiding the process of grief, and skirting around the deserved title of alcoholic.

He had lost hours-upon-hours of manual labor: fixing the issues of others crimes, finding the time to settle into the title of widow as he mended snipped wire and gave the benefit of doubt to those that had knowingly hoisted stresses upon him. The man was deeply ashamed that the young men that “served him Justice and legal threats”--looked just like him...pale and privileged: an entire community turned against him for minding his own solitude. Artemis nodded; without the need to talk shit to a man suffering in deafening silence--his disbelief in a common practice caused a shock to the reality had always known. He seemed preoccupied sorting out a timeline; staring at a sowed seed of evil...a greedily watered sprout--wondering out loud...how they had gone from a simple decline-in-offer: to openly harassing him during business hours and into the dead of night...pushing him to the ledge of sanity, for property where they had no intent on paying state-taxes on. A silent observer in charge of their freedom agreed his story was overbearing in details...his moment of declaration over at the dictation of another uncaring stranger: her words of discouragement jarring and hollow like the criminals that had returned to his property wearing meticulous suits. She interrupted to state his time in sharing was almost up, claiming...there must have been a reason for their presence and choice to have him institutionalized--her menial bills paid by keeping the peace at all costs...silver and brass keys of freedom clinging and clanging in the background. That’s how he had come to meet Artemis: taking the time to finish his story when they had been left alone for recreational time--she had stood out in a sea of madness, as the only one sane enough to care about issues that impacted community and operations. He had seen her eyes swelling with tears for another; his grief was palpable--one elongated sequence describing a single awful winter where he had mistepped by presenting the world with tempered anger, for only a moment. A familiar lack of eye-contact held the same level of shameless guilt as Orion--he seemed nervous in her presence, for whatever reason. Even if he hadn’t hurt anyone...the farmer had been ready to face the fate of death to achieve a goal, if only for the day...if only for a night. Mind you--the elderly man hadn’t the slightest clue, as to her credentials in analyzing the mortal mind...let alone her pride in-title-and birth right, as a failed Royal.

Artemis sat side-by-side and listened to the words allowed, wondering how many unresolved battles he demanded a wife to yield in life--fight alone and taking on double the wounds...on their shared behalf. Where had his wife found such tenacity...to be so uncomfortable with the truth? Such were the stories that touched Artemis’s heart: offering up the courage to be herself in moments of conflict and discomfort...paying the steepest of consequences for a fiery rage, and accepting that many apologies were less-than-useless when the lowest payment of admittance to wrongdoing--had been sufficient enough most days. There was an obvious reason the citizens had seen her as “other”, and why his black and white picture had been more painful without the presence of a single person of color to pin his discomfort on. Yet there they were--equal to the same mistreatment and perpetuated to move into overlapping criminal circumstances. He had once considered his wife to be sinful in the songs of unrelenting bellatores: Artemis standing in the same white-box as him...an ORATORES to a world riddled in corruption...his useless title of laboratores: pulling away at the fringes of the hand-crafted rug he stood upon. A life and purpose--serving the people with standing attendance--no matter the location, made her stand out in a ocean of unwell citizens. They had each done nothing wrong...he had been tricked, and Artemis had sought out help; when sleep slipped from her grasps...an angry stomach shutting down and a spine aching in agreement to the need for rest--both patients refusing to hold the title victim...when the world refused to acknowledge their unfair circumstances first. Artemis took pride in how often men asked for help: telling the elderly man to keep his head down and play a game of privatized check-and-balances, for the sake of legacy; to take well-earned rest--in the chances his story could be heard by someone capable of helping past soft words and kind smiles. She had no reason to ask if he had voted for the self-inflicted wound he mended...his stunted education seemed punishment enough. Her hands had been so tied-up, wallowing in self-pity...avoiding the fate gifted by an absent mother and father who had giddily discarded Artemis as an infant--to pursue separate but eerily similar lives as a pathetic alcoholic.

Artemis had used this short story to build up to what was on her mind--to hold the paranoid breaths taken when citizens acted weird as she passed, yelling about being captured on film, or pushing away hands and moving a man-made comet closer with each gesture. They deserved the suffering heading in their direction--Artemis had nothing to do with their privileges to information. She had thought that the citizens had learned a lesson--she had given them fair-warning to the consequences of breaking a third wall, that only those labelled as children had deserved the rights to explain and gesture the rules of her simulated game were meant to set her mind free and offer a machine an endless amount of faces to condemn in time-loop--someone had to play the role of suffering peasants in a bronze age...claiming no wrong-doing or sins when their newborns died from fevers and influenza--Artemis sitting-tight and recalling their call-to-action in stalking a stranger and the feeble attempts to predict and dictate her story. They would pay greatly for the strange smirks and nods pointing in her direction; eyes bulging in delight...neurotic like Dianne cornered by things considered insignificant--until true Justice gave way to stability and long-term initiatives to the actions unable to be undone by those that interjected self-importance upon a life and timeline of nakedly afraid Royal.

Their quiet hushes rumbled beneath the surface as a bit more subtle, and that greatly appreciated--but also pointed out the more brazen assholes to be an insufferable depiction of any and all that overstepped basic carved into stone, to prove children knew when they were considered eligible to the rights of childhood. A world-wide phenomenon of painting adolescence with perversion had been bestowed upon the youth...where men and female teachers argued as to what constituted "old-enough" for sex, the waving standards splashing past harsh lines and amended laws--they had spun upon a moment where sick-fucks had ignored a balding pervert making remarks about a ten-year-old daughter, his wife explaining a rape in entry way of her home and having practiced the art of such a gross deal upon sitting idle while he remarked about another infant daughter; honking hypothetical tits, and the citizens giggling at his backwards-ass antics. Entertainment triumphed morals: the citizens had banned together and promoted him to Chief of the Land...claiming him to be a man of the people, a defining blood gem--his lowest quality being the title of promiscuous husband as they crowned him to be a corrupt emperor, but an emperor none-the-less. A desire to become memorable upon a timeline of war superseded all things normal--the emotions painted within the lines were less fun in comparison to watching the world implode at the hand of a senile world leader and the secondary ruling hand on non-miltarized leader with pathetic physicality--declaring an active platoon of serving citizens as obese and useless, inglorious without his command...Artemis giggling at the defamatory nature of it all; mildly entertained and equally frightened by the idea of a military directed by an active alcoholic.

Citizens had painted themselves red with dripping blood--ignoring the gaping wounds caused when they clawed out their own eyes; to hold the empty promise of being called a winner for the first and only time. Lovely. A sight like no other...I guess. Artemis’s campaign to dismantle a single island had painted a banal fate; the commonality of self-loathing had drafted a story into motion...where Artemis stood ashore from a half-sibling standing on a lone island of opinion--the sieved lakes had found the discomforted bodies buried along the way. The bottomless lies had dried up, and left a woman stricken by gluttony to covet people as property--standing near a familiar doorway Artemis had often left beneath a hatching lock. A tale of paranoia and predictable sins gifted as the unknown, and the underlining of unaddressed issues of mental health--had brought the world to a extravagant tax-funded door: Artemis knocking gently and asking if a child-boy named Andrew was home...since she had more questions-than-answers and he too; was considered royal.

There was no reason to remind the readers of what they had witnessed: there was limited ability to grandstand beyond a grave...a thoughtful Jury would see why accusations of pompous arrogance couldn’t take a perpetrator far from an island of evidence. Artemis grinning with eyes closed--laughing as people scrambled to asses the breech in security, as she avoided uncomfortable topics...to an extent. She learned gentle strengths from a slain Princess...orchestrating an entire symphony--removing herself from love-less situations when Orion sought compensation for his company whilst simultaneously stumbling into lavish rooms where children were harmed and trafficked as a hobby...their innocence coveted and bodies defiled for sport. Artemis looked past a static wall: “I’m not mad...just not understanding why people can’t fucking mind my right to privacy.” The plates she spun would collapse at a slight wince in character, reduced to a spectacle and a petulant person holding clasped hands as though to say "oh shoot"--Artemis laying chest probably barren, her body violated most likely...a discarded doll to be easily replaced by the next obsession. The readers said to themselves “I didn’t cast portraits and steal golden wreaths--I was just explaining your story...,or I didn’t mean to". Artemis began to squint her tired eyes: glaring with the same annoyance she had for prepubescent students...whenever they told half-truths and used strength to lie to themselves. "Oh, I don’t believe you." Words that meant nothing...unless projected upon the masses by a person holding a smouldering candle and a "Pretty Pretty Princess" damned for the earned title of Royal.

Artemis had a dream of the machine: watching Orion dance with another male, he had caught her eye in a dramatic dip of a sweeping forearm--she had been uncareful by the option of partner; until a paper was needing to be signed--the vows of perpetuity held as threat to her freedom. She painted herself cruel; ripping his contract up before the ink was even set--painted as ruthless for allowing a man to drag her down a wedding aisle: crawling to safety...out of fear of a sibling becoming unwell and imploding a world already on edge. She was shamelessly afraid that Dianne had been serious in the casual conversation--stating Artemis "still owed her a boyfriend": despite her status as a loving wife. Such dangerous silliness had been why she had wanted to play the game--Artemis had heard the underlining threats to out-of-pocket remarks, and seen a sibling painting feverishly a or portrait titled as Reflection of You. The sins of caring for the wrong people had been overlooked for too many years; the truths falling away like heavy petals of a rose...the rain pulling away from the roots of a weakening un-watered fragile yellow flower. Artemis was never to be respected by an person fleeing from medical diagnoses--no matter the changes to the season...no matter the amount of years: violent condemnation were seen as severe enough judgements for her sin in being born as a fellow orphan, and a loser alcoholic.

She had decided the witnessing of watching the citizens borrow her wreath had been enough of a lesson for the cruel citizens--Dianne needed to be seen for The Glory of terror projected in the past; archived in a few handfuls of arguments...to be witness to a woman snarling and shaking a head in disbelief at the earned threat of death, and reforming back into a pleasant figure in the span of seconds when it all came crashing down in a moment. Maybe the citizens hadn’t respected her title in the foolish assumption that their genome could master the device--maybe they were under the impression that it was meant to be tourist attraction, and not a scientific process...meant to capture the moments of a citizen--lacking in stress management and coping skills. Artemis shook a disappointing head towards the readers actions: why hadn’t they just let her do science in peace? Artemis had woken up with a little mercy in her laughter--giving the impression she’d deluded rage to warming simmer. She had: until some dead-eyed savage made a fucking fool of herself--calling attentions to every single person breaking and bending their spines; veering paths to extremes...dedicated to the craft of stalking...horny to capture the images of a stranger whose body they felt entitled to. Artemis painted a pale woman that wore a pink shirt--stout and average: "Average as fuck", as would the saying from the teenage murderer Mackenzie--her voice Shirilla than most; her intent to cause tragedy crafted by a negligent mother--their crimes caught early-on enough to mitigate potential damage to society on a whole. The citizens were to be defined by just another yucky face in her garden of roses. Artemis was afraid to be so angry: in the same capacity as her fears to loving a person too-stupid and shameless to build boundaries out of the immature fear of looking mean--recklessness had little perks when given to an unworthy leader. The passing lady had carved out Artemis’s anger; by being unmemorable in appearance..."slyly" turning her head to an extreme and aiming lenses downward when realizing how small her target had been. That day...Artemis had almost fainted on a bridge: her loss of self-control in anger finally taking hold of weakening lungs--she had wanted to be home, and away from the grossness of it all. Artemis knew her mind was still tired; recovering from a stroll alongside the brink of insanity--her body aching from detoxing from poison, a temporary embarrassing curse that had been a very shallow price to pay in exchange for a liver and clear vision: she had used pages-upon-pages to distract and deflect the rages that boiled over from the broken-down excuses used by those suffering from the excruciating curses of a recovering alcoholic.

Artemis had warned the reader countless times--painted them a very specific picture even. Yet, they couldn’t do this one fucking thing for themselves: the Indigenous Warriors were dehumanized as a hobby daily, and a simulation with a cracked screen-play proved that. They had thought her to be too-daft to catch on...too stupid to point out the obvious--much like Orion’s needs that remained unsatiated, when a trail of bodies and lake filled with lies seemed improbable. She began to sway, sipping fermented iced drinks with bubbles--her choseness had nothing to do with anything in both worlds. The device she had called the “dream-machine”--being too scary for words to explain, remained without name: its final product unbound and hopelessly tossed aside due to her skin color and religious righteousness. Artemis had wasted her life, offering up a spine to be crushed; trying to protect the citizens from themselves. She sighed with indifference at last: the sin that had weighed down her soul the most with endless hatred had won, a book appearing from thin-air, Artemis weeping in a forest alone swiping a rejecting left hand over the citizens at last--they had refused her kind-enough warning to get the fuck outta her face...one too many times. That was before the added disrespect that they had snickered and made weird faces in her presence; despite a title of public-figure...despite a life of suffering, and added to the annoyance that she had never been considered an ally to their battles; forever disarmed in the face of danger...forced to take verbal lashings when fucking faceless losers like Becky threw out callous words--asking why a Princess refused to step into trenches of protest where she was already unwelcome. Neither enemy, but also not worth caring for: offended that Artemis had pointed out rape, pedophiles and orphan were words to describe rare actions...to downplay the art of dehumanization--the gifts brought over by criminals seeking fortitude on stolen land...there was no solid ground of reasoning without the matching base-line of due respect given to any other politician or royal.

Artemis had been pushing away the men that claimed they loved her up until now--her heart racing and aching in fear after seeing Orion’s eyes light up with the general not-so-secret confession of having sisters. He would never be the prize he claimed to want, because he just didn’t fucking care to respect himself like that--it was more fun watch people deteriorate and dismantle their lives to suit him. Artemis had seen the writings on a wall, sloppily falling to the floor--he had wanted a woman to pity, to be spinning sun leading her way through the abyss. They had very different opinions as to the costs of passion--Artemis taking up battle after battle; climbing higher and higher although she was afraid of heights, and Orion dragging her down with a yanking thud from time-to-time in moments of deep insecurity. Artemis has walked off to enjoy a life as a single-lady; brimmed with solitude over the generic title of wife and potential homicide victim whatever female felt entitled to her crowned. Gluttony had been considered a sin, for the depth of hurt it posed upon entire communities--she had just been a lady on a jogging trail; abandoned at birth...a body decaying and plucked apart by wild animals sauntering by. Artemis had decided the citizens were a hopeless cause...in the same way she cared for Orion: his insignificance confined to a single book, her opinion finally swayed--standing in defiance to a cursed ring...his jokes of marriage were just that. Dianne’s two-or-three jokes of leaving Artemis upon a trail--exposed and considered missing...were just that. She needing the citizens to be held at the same standard of suffering--if only for the duration of an awful book: chained to a timeline that lasted for eternity...her words of warning written with blood, disregarded until the world looked up to witness first-hand...the earned death sentence of an entire planet, crafted by their own summoning in mockery...hands flopping, eyes shifting; to take pleasure in the life of a stranger--sipping wines and stalking a person...already grappling with the rare recovery of a not-incarcerated alcoholic.

Athena had once ran away from the Mechanical Boar and his gang, a victim that had survived gang-rape in deep-isolation--her mind chained to a fostering guardian for eternity....when her spirit remained lost and spiteful past life itself. To the world: they were just three miserable sisters...barely functioning past "troubled pasts"...to Artemis; they were three cherished yet-forgotten sisters, brought back to life through hundreds of years of reincarnation--Athena releasing a Mechanical Boar onto a timeline. The spell of "rule-of-law for thee, but none for me..." barreling past a gated-off dimension. Dianne had wandered off early on; to find love or means of luxury, or whichever served her best that day. The rare day Dianne claimed to be capable and the only one able of fixing something herself; would be the day Hades froze over. She seemed dedicated to keeping her hands clean at any cost...to dangle a moment of irreparable harms as slim occurrence to be weighed alongside a lifetime of normality...to paint Artemis as the most prone to sin, egregious in her flaws of being born with poison in her blood: premature and struggling to survive since day one...and then choosing to hold an unflattering label of alcoholic.

Artemis dedicated her menial life to hunting down a slew of Boars--caught in the crossfires of mistrust, catching strays and bottoming out excuses until a Mechanical Boar began rusting and breaking down in an unforgiving atmosphere. She had promised him immortality; opting out of the supposed solution of assassination after seeing a wounded ear grow back...dark magic protecting a legacy that would live infamy. Upon tracking and observing a oddly silent Mechanical Boar: two "assassination attempts"...and his lack of complaints that followed...Artemis began walking with a head held low. To be a person set-up for failure over and over again: gave Artemis an eagle-eyed vision...when seeing the unbridled confidence of a person playing make-believe and painting a sloppy narrative; when knowing they’re set up for success...at any cost, and at the allowances given by the tax-payers. They had wanted to play a sick game, and win sick prizes: Artemis had simply been a woman with a box of tools...fixing things as they broke; pondering to herself what the foolish citizens saw in the God-less man...claiming to be worthy of the title royal.

A kind citizen had once helped Artemis stitch up her broken heart--her emotions controlled by failures in avenues of underpaid jobs where she was overqualified and undervalued. She couldn’t picture the opportunity to grow a career upon the two dregrees collecting dust and crippling intersts debts, and yet had found pride in having sought God in moment where she remained stable-footed before the crumbling of society. There was no despiration or plea for change in her prayer, just the longing of community and a place to be in the upcoming winters. Artemis had taken pride in presence of faces heart-shaped with thining hairlines; to see familiarity in things ridiculed by the Indigenous Warriors...her forehead defined, but no longer unique--her small hunched stature lining out in rows of the Congregation Beth Israel. Reminded of how many people had died to bring Artemis into this world; how many had walked through fires so that she may slouch over a walking device in the face of physical defeat, and yet she doubted her worthiness to repent on an evening of Yom Kippur. Great grandparents had immigrated past a statue of inspiration, and abandoned Artemis on the steps of an orphanage...no one caring to look for a sexually assaulted infant that remained sobbing through the night. Her sins of violence outweighed the capcity for good--she felt so unworthy of wasting Gods time with prayers, undeserving of the elected Traditional role of a war-bonnet wearing Royal.

She returned home; preparing a feast before a day of fasting...bison kept iron flowing through dark veins. Artemis had left a service early; needing to fufill basic obligations of personal hygine and home-upkeep in preperation for another week of mindless labor. She teetered between sadness and content; the options of employment kept her cup of sanity running over--Artemis never knew what it meant to have God watching out for her, let alone having the citizens believe in what was left of a broken childhood. A citizen had spoken softly past a static wall; tucking her into bed and reminding the entire world that "people who have been protected their whole lives...get to build early, and people that have had to protect themselves...build later, but deeper." They were words given to heal the broken heart of an orphan, and not forcing disparaging judgement on Artemis’s personalized struggles as a mending alcoholic.

Next Chapter: *[ L ] Artemis and Dat Stick*