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It was warmer. Her chariot carried no heat, the mortals believed (these days) (mostly) that her chariot was merely a reflection of her brother’s. She could see why they thought that now, driving her brother’s chariot from east to west, dawn to dusk, even as other forms of herself carried on, with her hunters, wandering nature, and doing what else she had to do now to keep her brother’s memory alive.
It was all she had left of him. One hand slipped while he was clutching onto the cliff side, and her heart had been in her throat. She’d thought surely, surely now , that their father would see, and see reason, that Zeus, the sky-father, the king of the gods, god of justice , would surely restore his son to his rightful place on Olympus, but he hadn’t. Or he had, but a millisecond too late, for she could see, for that half second when Apollo hung there, suspended for a second, not yet captures by gravity, the way that divinity had lit up his skin, ready to transform him into his true form, the way he had been born, the way that he was always supposed to be.
Had Zeus seen that his son was about to die, about to fall into Chaos, about to be dissipated to nothing, and restored him at the last second, given himself a way to clean his hands of what he had done? Or had Apollo himself done it? Brought himself back to godhood, where he was always supposed to have been the whole time? And failed.
He’d fallen, they’d all watched as his hand slipped and Chaos claimed him for herself.
Hermes had collected his winnings, and Artemis had punched him in the face, and then shot him a few times for good measure. And then she’d gone to check on her brother’s horses.
Only Helios and Apollo had driven the sun chariot successfully. Only Selene and Artemis had driven the moon chariot successfully. Helios was gone, faded. Apollo was dead. Selene hadn’t been seen for aeons, and whether she had faded when no one had bothered to notice, or was still staring at the sleeping face of Endymion, she couldn’t be sure, but for what it was worth, she knew she was on her own here.
It was lonely, tiring, and hard. She flew in the classic chariot form most of the time, like she did for her own chariot, keeping the horses in check, though they trusted her less than they had their master, and often tried to kick off their bridles, tried to run free across the sky.
She knew there would be time to go until she mastered the sun, summers of inconsistent weather until she properly understood her brother’s travel patterns, and how they affected the mortal world, but she was the only one who could do it now, and even if her brother had had another god in the wings, ready to come in and take over for him, like they had for Helios and Selene, she wasn’t sure that she would have let them.
“What’s a-” she looked again, “Dewey Decimal system?”
“It’s how they organise books here, see the number?” Athena pointed out to her, on the spine of the book. “That correlates with what the book is about, so you can go to any library, and if they have the book, it’ll be under the same code.
Ever since she’d become God of Knowledge , she’d found herself drawn more and more often into places like these. It wasn’t as if she’d never been in a library before, but it was never where she’d felt most natural - that had been in the moon chariot, or in the wild with her hunters, finding the most dangerous monsters and despatching them before they could become a problem or after they’d done that. Libraries hadn’t involved that unless she’d been scouting a girl in one to join her, or she was tracking something that had decided to hide in there. In the Byzantine Empire, there had been this man eating bookworm which had been an absolute beast to take down.
But now she wanted to be in here, to breathe in the scent of old books with pulped paper, and new books, and fresh ink, all of it ready to dispense new knowledge. Since that was what she was god of now, instead of him.
She was coming to understand that although they had been twins, there was so much of Apollo that had been a mystery to her, in the same way that she had kept moonwater and the Waystation secrets from him until he’d stumbled upon one of them and been introduced to another by Thalia Grace.
She understood it now, the grief that had enveloped her Lieutenant when her brother - their brother, if she was being Diana - after Caligula had stabbed him in the back. Because all she could see now, while she stood in a wood panelled hall, covered in bookshelves and tables to study at, benches of books that had been returned and were ready to restore to their places, what who was supposed to be there. Instead of her.
Athena put a hand on her shoulder, standing a full foot and a half above her, “I miss his loss too. You are not alone, Artemis.”
She struggled to believe her. That was the problem with being God of Truth too.
“Do you want to dance?” asked Tepsichore.
“I do not enjoy it,” she sharpened another point on a stake. The muse looked deflated, and from some sense of guilt - or maybe it was duty? - she got up, and took her hands.
Hunting required nimble feet, but it did not mean she could keep a beat, and she had never been fond of dancing. Nor did she enjoy the proximity as Euterpe strummed a lyre in a way that felt like she was tugging at her organs instead, and pulling her apart.
She sat down after three songs, and the music stopped after a little while too.
“I sing,” started Calliope. “for the glory of Phoebus Apollo.”
“No,” muttered Artemis. “No you do not.”
She hadn’t been quiet enough though, since the gentle beat to accompany the singing had stilled, and the poem, the Epic in her brother’s honour, something which might be called the Apollion or Lesterion or Phoebusi or something one day, if she didn’t kill it in the crib, stilled at its very first line.
“I do not, my lady?” These Muses had never respected her so well before. They’d known her as their fellow beloved God’s sister, feared her as an Olympian, technically acknowledged her as one of their thousands of half siblings, but they’d never loved her, as Artemis, or Diana.
She raised her hand hesitantly, then lowered it. “Please, not in my hearing. Something- something else.”
Melpomene said, “A play?”
“Sure,” she shrugged. It was more Dionysus’ area than her own, but it wasn’t about her brother, and that was the important part.
“Ismene,” started the Muse of Tragedy, drawing herself up to her full height, allowing her diadem to sparkle against the torchlight, “Mine own sister…”
When she laid out in her camp, the part of her that still ran with her hunters, guiding neither chariot, nor anything else, she let herself cry into the brushing winds against the trees, and the cries of nocturnal animals which she hadn’t been tracking that night.
“Elbow down, Kayla,” the newest of her hunters, her green haired niece corrected her stance and let her arrow fly, hitting the deer in its essential organs. She sent a blessing over it, allowing it to pass peacefully. “Well done. You shall have the first cut of the meat tonight.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
“Of course.”