Artemis hated the way she felt isolated whenever she smiled, as her emotions overflowed with  ticks that suggested that she somehow didn’t belong in her own skin.She would turn over in her sleep: unsure of which way to lean as she wept in and throughout the night. Always returning to the room where it had all started. Always running away from the inevitable and knowing she had no control. It were the same rattling of echoes she felt deep within in her bones. Artemis waited in anticipation for whenever her friends were ready to be near: pouncing her with hugs and calling her a grandma lovingly. Her Indigenous Warrior friends would always be able to bring out the youthful spirit in Artemis. She loved her friends, but often felt alone in missing her friend Buckles and often sat in melancholy in the center of all the action. Artemis hated being in the world without him, and she resented having to tell them as to why she couldn’t bring herself to smile in the winter. She lived in the beautiful silence, filled with dreams of being swallowed by the night skies, screaming for the impact to put her out of her misery already. The lust for death, sought out and eventually obtained by rigging one’s own parachute. Artemis dreamt of this option, as a romantic farewell to all that she could have been. What else is a man to do when given a death warrant? Is it possible that the fear of death and the deletion of one’s legacy are powerful constructs upon themselves, as to drive man to seek all that is defined by glory? There were no dreams of such beauty or relief in her life, and no viable solutions as to how to tame her meandering thoughts: only the feeling of drifting along in the world. Artemis was always out of place somehow. She were too broken to Love.

Artemis had easily grown to fear people. She had seen what they had done to her favourite artist, Tim. She often hid her cascading thoughts, fantasizing aboot her own death. It had been one of the reasons why she had taken an absence from the stages she loved: they had torn him into pieces alive. He had taken his own life to end chronic pain, and to rest...the same predispositions as Artemis, and she had used his death to find joy in existing once more. She wept with the crowds of thousands that still flocked to see his face and sway in the direction of an empty stage. They had done this, and now Tim was gone and they were left with empty stadiums filled with tears and regrets. Artemis wasn’t allowed to take her sadness out on all those around her, as part of her culture and a promise to a few dead-eyed savages. Instead, she took lessons from all those she had never gotten a chance to meet. She was defined by music and comedy, and had spent ions traveling to those she had loved and lost: A smiling Robin and an artist named Avicii. Both men had fell ill to their own spirit, as the strength of their body had been compromised with sickness: both men, stolen lights from a dark world. A harrowing sadness that many knew. Artemis knew them as her equals in light and joy: teaching her personally, how to be silly and creative. Their deaths had given her medicine in the form of words, as Artemis finally began openly informing others of her chronic pain. She had finally been safe enough in life to be able to admit that something was wrong, and without the loss of those she respected she’d have never thought twice of putting others out with her medical updates. The two men would be deemed immortal with their own right, and earn their place on Mt. Olympus simply by uniting the world with laughter and Love.

Artemis would miss them and revisit them in song or gold portrait. Studying their trades until she felt confident and worthy enough of the name Ms. Paint. She hadn’t written for financial compensation, but slowly began to understand that her words in ink were more personable than her odd crooked smile.  She had won a few writing things her and there, and it were always so confusing for her to gain appraisal after the fact. Artemis would always have happy tears freely falling, whenever people forced her into the present: acknowledged her in the moment and forcing herself to accept that she were indeed real to the touch. Such beautiful compliments of applause and song would often make her eyes swell, as they masked the confusion and horror in her eyes. She’d find the time to irritated in being caught off guard, and the general anxiety that comes when you don’t know what to do with your hands all of a sudden. Artemis hated that her  cognitive skills seemed to go out the window, whenever she was in the middle of audience as herself. She would live a mellow life where she had to cry naked in pain, as others helped her use the bathroom or silently dress her: and the other days where Artemis were deemed indestructible to the eyes of the world. Artemis had been beaten into the form of a monster, as she dared standing upright in a world never meant for her. Such tragedy, were the trials and tribulations meant only for the Indigenous Warrior Gods. Artemis had been a spoke in a very intricate wheel, and had been reincarnated thousands of times over, only to try and gain a better understanding of humanism. Her name had brought her to phases of remembrance until she caught herself annoyed with the folklore she were still responsible for. Elders blamed Artemis for earthquakes and tsunamis, and taught children in the original Yurok teachings that she were quirky and carried odd luck. They had always been sent to summer camps, meant to prepare them with cultural practices to uphold their spirits. The practice of culture of preservation and resilience had prevailed at the end of their colonization. Genocide was no match Love.

Artemis would remember fondly what lessons the summer camps provided her, wandering around and picking huckleberries and carving Redwood canoes as a carefree child. She had been sent with a purpose that consumed her day: calling her ungrateful, whenever she forgot to smile. A habit she had instilled to prove she were unarmed, and of no threat to the pathetic patriotic dream she lived in. It had been a nervous tick invented by her to survive. Listening skills, were attributed to Orion, whereas her tone or glare had been a weapon she gained from her experience under infatuation of  the Viking. The strange ability to hold herself truthful and honest-like were traits brought out naturally whenever she saw Joel, and a trait she had almost abandoned with the loss of Buckles. Such a diverse group of men, had each volunteered in lending a hand in her Odyssey to flip an apple inside out. Artemis had done it successfully, as she left the room walking backwards up a hill without taking step to either the right or left. Her odd way of thinking had forced her to write down her dreams, and in turn...she created a zero point in which to form a bootstrap theory around. She had snapped a band in time, that rippled a sound within the cave she stood in. Her one action had set an ominous tone that filled her with warmth for a fleeting moment. She had drawn a spider in the void of space and named it after her eldest sibling: Athena. A woman too scorn and  bitter to Love.

Her sister had deserved the world and all the stars that gathered around her: simply because she continued to stand with her head held high each morning. Such a brave woman to have survived multiple gang rapes and still find a single muscle to smile without malicious intent. Athena owed the world nothing, as it had never met her with anything other than darkness and evil. Such horror stories were those that made Artemis sick in the night: feeling weak in knowing she hadn’t survived as much trauma to all those around her, but still managing to cry as though she had. Such poetic stories meant to teach Artemis and the two sisters how to find one another across time: their matching anger burning deep within their chests, as they were forced to be apart and still try to find meaning. It were a curse that had began long before this time: but had began to churn and burn darker shades of ugly charcoal until Artemis gently ashed-out her invisible fire, and her only extinguisher being her own swirling tears. Artemis was no longer able to defend the existence of man to the Gods of Olympus, as they had once wished them extinct by the hand of her verdict. She had spared them simply to observe how they would treat the Indigenous Warriors generations later. Artemis had witnessed it all, and her bipartisan view had been given to the people to sway. Instead they placed a bounty on her head, as they wished to illegally sterilized her and all those that wore feathers with seriousness. Another lifetime ago, the ball had been set into motion, with the arrival of the cursed game: Custer’s Revenge. A game that requires the real sacrifice of women: in order for others to play it. The game mirrored all she had known and seen into existence, spanning across dimensions: her way to connect gamers and readers alike to her own discomforts of what it meant to be alive in the non-zero. A game meant to Artemis that her anger was intentional, and that the dead-eyed savages that smiled her directions had been masking their hate for her existence. She’d just picture theses slobs with their holiday food dribbling from their mouths as they spoke, and she wondered why they found it easier to hide behind their privilege, rather than to defend their children that marched the streets in protest. These people had no concept of Love. 

Artemis had spent lifetimes searching for the cursed game, as she needed it to remind those working under the Blue Shield of Hope that mankind held unsurmountable potential. She watched, as they squirmed and asked her to cut the reel short, and used the moment to emphasize her feelings of violation whenever the dead-eyed savages wore her religious attire and mocked her whole being. They had heard her, and they had seen what she had meant in her shame of history. Artemis had cast a curse simply by explaining and showing twenty seconds of gameplay. The game depicted her past life, where she had been tied up to a pole: helpless, while white men endlessly raped her. They coward under the rain showers of arrows sent by her Peoples to defend her, ready to own her body with wee dicks out as they ran. They had coveted her strapped body despite the many warnings, and Artemis had vowed revenge for it. Such vapid hatred and disgusting tastes, were the ones found in the gaming community: their crime for having forgetting that there were other people in the world. They had solely forgotten that there were other people living within their screens: existing in their static as immortals. Such small ideas were the ones that had originally gotten her Peoples killed: a direct causation from enlightening a few washed ashore strangers, pale like death. Their vast knowledge of their numbers and stars now erased: met with murder and rape instead of intellectual conversation. A poetic attest to the beginning problems with all that follows: patriarchal governments, man-splaining, and now...general inequality. Forever fighting for science and facts: condemned as witches by the grandparents and parents that now walked next to Artemis. Straight up chillin’ in an afterlife that is neither considered heaven or Hell.

Artemis had lost her need to craft or edit her work, and she caught herself speechless in the audacity of the citizens in mourning. It had been the perpetual weight of her Odyssey that had expressed Artemis’s disdain for all things unjust. She’d crack her neck softly from side to side and gaze downward at her golden threads of words and limerick as streams of news whizzed by her flower-laced hair. Artemis had caught a Boar by presenting him with a magical apple. It had given him a chance to see his future and fall within a trance of his own simulation, as he had only been instructed to never take a bite of the static filled apple. Artemis had left the Boar in a room with the lure and bait, and shrugged in disappointment as she heard the crisp crunch of a teeth breaking a fruits surface just as the door closed behind her. The cursed apple burst open with Matmos that began oozing in the petite hands of the egregious Boar. The small seedlings of the apple began to glow with a white fluorescence and began to stiffly fold into the small shapes of paper birds that came to life and took flight. The saliva of the Boar had caused the birds to chirp and tweet his crimes, and thus set forth the predestined fate of Artemis cursing all of mankind with simply an apple. Without totem of a printed book, Artemis and her fellow Indigenous Warriors remained trapped in limbo. Tattooed with their prisoner of war numbers that forced them to remain restricted from entering the next life, as they were cast into purgatory with their Titan beasts and gladiators to re-run history on its course. Artemis had accidentally cast them to Hades to retrieve a Boar and his pale minion, and fell ill in mind over lifetimes. She had made the continual folly of replacing her thoughts and morals to forget the door she had labeled Hades, as she had fell under the default probability of believing it had originally labelled: Hell.

Artemis would simply shrug her shoulders at the things she couldn’t change: always proud of herself when she had “done the thing”, where she won all the awards: always trying to change or correct the things she didn’t like aboot herself. Her Father, had worked contingently to teach her proper self-ness, mumbling to worry aboot herself whenever she felt her beady eyes were restless. Such oneness is the key to her success now: always worrying aboot only herself until it bothered her too much to do nothing. Saying to herself, “ I can’t be that guy that does nothing”. A curse of heroism embedded into her genes: reactivated by her Father as child whenever he spoke to her. She were smiling in pride to have a brave Papa that others openly admired, and she’d laugh to herself thinking of him telling her to find her own accomplishments, whenever his own friends tried to brag to her of his might. She’d know he were right: she hadn’t done anything, and so she shrugged in indifference to the things he had already achieved: she’d been a loser from day one. Artemis begin crying, knowing it was a curse to feel so much intensity in knowing one is alone and insignificant in the universe. There was so much to be done and so few helpful people to do the work. Artemis was always a piece of their conversations for this reason, as men would congregate with her Papa and judge her whether her character were fit for at least a presidential candidacy bid. Her silly smile had been cast by their seriousness, as it help her defend the dire weight she felt from his tone in such cordial admiration. Luckily that the uneasy feeling left soon after she met her lifelong friend Shruj: a tall man with strong principals: a sharp kid in a tie always cool and collected: like Obama. Instead of rebelling these expectations: she would always shrug her shoulders for knowing it weren’t out of the realm of possibilities since she were already addicted to books. Shruj and Philpott(s) always approved of her need to sit in the dark by static filled music and screens: the three were always pretty unfazed by their peers. Her papa would always scan her reactions as she somehow always stood: the only guy at the club still without cigar, but always at the head of the table smiling. He had been the one who had gotten her into gaming: so she couldn’t be mad at him ever. Instead they’d always bicker as to what he’d done: annoyed her Papa always fixed her flower crown and tangled heap. Her famed wilting ponytail always lying slightly askew and frizzy: leaving Artemis to waste her day away, warding off the randoms admiring their cuteness as a disarrayed team. Artemis would be left with no other option than to ask what her Papa had done her hair that day, as she wondered why people kept asking questions as to who her personal stylist was. Watching as he tried holding back his laughter and she brushed her tangled wires away with no avail: rolling her eyes in boredom to his inability to answer her directly. She were always distracted by the sparkles and ruffles of the finer things, but too lazy to do the girly work: too bored to pick out a military uniform. She had grown scared picking between her famine or masculine side each morning: choosing instead only a lab coat and the goals of earning a blue jumpsuit. She selected a place filled with facts and data unending: powered only by the inspiration brought forth by all the diverse people of the world: watching as only a few wished for a better future. An abandoned home she now missed: a place where there was only room for facts, solutions, and Love.

Artemis had found this hideaway of knowledge unending: safe hiding and fighting for science with Ph.D. Young, Kristen, and Michelle, as her future leading commanders. She laughed as she met each one over and over again, glad that her smile finally came naturally: allowed to breath with ease and live as an honest man in the moment. Artemis would teach her scholars the importance of self-efficacy and accountability: proud she were part of such a fine potential crew: being able to smile and say with honesty “At NASA we wear blue”: watching as their eyes saw blue for the first time in amazement. They enjoyed the many portraits of Roro RedSteer observing her future offices at the Blue Shield of Hope as a fat baby. Bored by what little resources they had, but gesturing the workers into motion with her cuteness and baby sighs, until the stars lit up the ceiling once more. Artemis called Roro the boss-man, because she had roared the loudest, and hugged the softest. The gentle brown baby was a marvel of a human already, and a true leader sent to her Peoples from the stars. A small bundle of growing curiosity that epitomized the feelings of Love.

Artemis feared leaving such valuable and nonverbal people behind, as they still refused to understand what it meant to be on this particular rock: flying through space on a dirt clod. Mere parasites to a self-defending planet. The young and old alike were scrambling to catch up with one another in a tech race that would never actually end: running themselves ragged for minor upgrades and gimmicks to stay relevant to consumers. To this concept, Artemis would always gift her scholars the importance of teaching: first understanding that their own elders were people, as they bravely proved each time they had to ask their children for assistance with their Golden Shields or Apples. Needing her teenagers to understand that their generation had been raised to be hindered from asking for assistance. She let them feel their own well earned respect to their past: hidden in their personal memories, as she waited for them to upgrade their systems to register the new bit of empathy she chucked at their heads. She only wished to calm the raging waters that endlessly clashed directly at one another: knowing somehow that she had to find a way to redirect the misplaced anger forced upon these elders drowning in static. Artemis would always mediate a lecture and apply it to home, and hope her students took her as seriously as she had taken them. Trying to be the adult she had always needed as a kid, but never found. She sent her wee Aggies on their way: always smiling and laughing when they returned to her side to ask for help: proving that they had somehow heard the lesson she had taught: Love.

Artemis needed to know she had attempted to change the world: a small feat she did once and nobody seemed to care. Something that made her mad still: a minor feud with the Smithsonian over a supersonic rocket. She had been the first of the Universities to design, launch and retrieve her rocket successfully enough that it could be relaunched: attempting to advance reusable ships. Artemis and a small fleet of Indigenous Warriors had been the first team assembled to fulfill the task of being of a minority representation and breaking the sound barrier: a team made mostly of scholarly mothers and women. They had done it after two designs and zero test-flights in full-scale. Taking female delight in solving the issues of the flight pattern by suggesting trimming the tip and base of the rocket to save in weight. The Indigenous Warrior men would occasionally fall ill when they made convenient jokes on behalf of their fragile masculinity, as Artemis would later joke aboot the argument in an interview. Strictly pointing out that the women had solved an equation that size and perspective were always important. They’d ask the Smithsonian to uphold their written promise to house their rocket in the museum upon winning the competition and going mach speeds: Artemis had finally proved to herself that she had changed the world. She’d grow angry as she’d later met her mentor PhD. Herrington: who had mentioned he had his feathers and flute in the Museum after he had successfully took them to get a better view of the stars. The protected artifacts were proof that their culture had once been respected: filled with hope and Love.

Artemis would need this information to strike a glare of change: offended she being denied an honor that she literally given her blood and tears for.  She was fed up by the ways of the oppressive excuses forever given by the white man and his Government. She would finally get word back as to the retraction of their contest winnings, but only after she had used their cultural insensitivity to gain a lead in a prominent essay contest. She had wrote a small and wine-emboldened essay in which Artemis shrugged and expressed that their continual racism fueled her fire at the end of the day. Artemis had finally found a small spark of inspiration in her failures, and explained that she was tired of women of colour being forced to accept their predestined roles as Hidden Figures. The world had saw her for a fleeting moment, as her words had cast a spell in retaliation to their facade. They knew her name on a public scale, and adjudicated in accepting that she were very, very real. Artemis had began to smile in daft madness, as she hid her confusion and isolation with rude glances and odd laughter-filled conversations. She’d use interviews to describe her daily battles in the States. Artemis had became a public figure in her own right, and never needed a mask of falsity to hide her insecurities from the world. Her smile proved that she survived beyond the capacity of most known physical pain. Her brazen grin being invaluable in surviving upon the land known as Hell. 

Growing animated in describing her essay, in which she described how the Smithsonian would want their dicks sucked by way of public liking on their blue platforms. Needing extra attention from the citizens on a day of female empowerment: proud they objected the Boar and his message of hate on a day of pink hats. They didn’t like her cynicism when she asked about the tax dollars being used for their egos in posts: asking why they didn’t even bother to update what information they already had: (understanding that their one job was to function as an archive). She thanked them for the fake representation in using the memorial building to protest oppression, as they oppressed those they memorialized. Confused from the start: why they had dared call her an “Indian” in large font on their building: bemused when they passively told her making US aeronautical history somehow wasn’t enough for them. They stated they didn’t have the room or dusty corner to toss the rocket, and Artemis offered them streaming information to display instead. They had made a severe error in judgement by stating that they weren’t “taking artifacts of that nature at the current time” to Artemis, and forgetting that she were an archived living relic herself. Artemis simply asked why they dwelled on their sorrow and horrific suffering, and why she wasn’t deemed worthy enough to be given the dignity to represent the present as an influential scholar living in two worlds. The Smithsonian museum had only wanted her corpse to parade aboot the land and place behind a glass case to immortalize her in the past, just as they had done with Thorpe. The disgusting qualities of fetishization and eugenics was all the dead-eyed savages had to offer Artemis, and they often hid it under the label of patriotic Love. 

Little did they know...Artemis fancied her some fuckin’ fine arts and literature: always ready to draw her silver sword and bitch aboot some real shit she couldn’t change. Scribbling down stories in gold ink, and secretly wishing to find the time to finish writing her book. She had only became noted for her mighty silver sword after proving her dexterity in a single enraged essay. Her skillful draw had finally been needed outside of archery.  Artemis knew deep within her bones, that she were considered useless flesh to the dead-eyed savages. A human prop needed to turn a profit in their museums, or pity with indifference to history. Once again: Artemis were an unwed woman, strapped to a pole, cursed in watching as the world raped her body and her culture every fucking day. She now resisted bringing back the scalping practices whenever she saw randoms that had the audacity to wear her religious attire out of boredom. Such issues of her culture were whirlwinds of displaced victimization and blame when others Indigenous Warriors held heavier hearts than hers: for lesser reasons they were often too scared to speak of. Artemis were always mildly agitated in a sense, and fatigued by all those she had already met: unsure of what the true message of all this bloodshed and bullshit had been for. She may have once defeated a bitch-ass general, but she was left with the memories of a past life walking through blood-soaked soils. The same polluted smell of death that now crept the bay and East in a chill snap. Artemis hid from these dreams of piled bodies and graphic details of frozen blood. Artemis understood that Justice often came at a huge cost, and sleep had been her sacrifice. She were always stuck being stretched across two worlds: no person or place to call home, and always wishing for deep slumber. She had no reason to defend the fact that this situation were straight fucked: according to what history had written thus far. Artemis proved to be a lone survivor and was told to shut up when she attempted to announce her acclimated sense for exceptionalism. The lack of admiration in the world-altering feat had forced her into a spell of ungrateful disparity, and it had caused Artemis to surrender her weapons at the hand of reality. Artemis flipped off the buildings of invaluable libraries, and the Boar with the same level of exhaust. The bitter anger that engulfed her interest had left Artemis wandering forever in a loop of her own simulated version of Hell.

Next Chapter: *[ XXX ] Artemis and the Questionable Queen*