moonlight || heroes of olympus (discontinued)

|| prologue ||

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[00|| prologue]
of love and grief

"I love you."

╚═══*.·:·.☽✧ ✦ ✧☾.·:·.*═══╝

              ARTEMIS FELL IN LOVE ONCE.

Though she vowed to be a maiden for eternity, swearing off the likes of all men, it didn't mean the goddess was incapable of feeling the emotion. Her love for her hunters was proof of that, along with the love she had for her twin, Apollo. Her love for nature as well, and the hunt. These were examples of the love she felt over her centuries of life. She was aware that there was another type of love, the kind that made mortals and gods alike in their foolishness, the kind that could demolish cities and churn storms in the seas.

Artemis was good at avoiding this love, at steering clear of mortals who could trick her into feeling such things.

Until Isabella Estrella.

Artemis first met the woman when she was on her deathbed, tears running down her face, and light leaving her sparkling eyes slowly. The goddess was drawn in by her pain, her grief, her resentment at life. Resentment at herself for killing the baby she'd just delivered. The doctors told her the child hadn't made it, a stillborn, and the woman blamed herself.

Artemis appeared to her and healed her aching heart and her dying body in a wash of silver light. She promised that it wasn't Isabella's time yet, and that she couldn't let such a beautiful soul travel to the underworld when it was so clear she had yet to really live.

It was forbidden for gods to have a life with mortals they fell in love with, but Artemis was too proud in her inability to fall in love to call it that. The other gods said love always included physical touch and kisses. She didn't have that with Isabella, so she didn't see it that way. She recruited the woman as one of her hunters, slowly falling more and more the longer the woman was by her side.

Then one day, both Zeus and Hera found out about the goddess' feelings for the woman from Aphrodite, who sensed it without even having to see her in person. A love so great it pulsed in waves around the world, shaking the ground and making the moon shine a little brighter at night. Love so potent Aphrodite knew that the earth could explode if it grew stronger.

Hera saw this as Artemis finding a way around their restrictions, and filled with both envy and anger, ordered for Isabella's death. Of course, being the queen of the heavens, she got what she wanted.

It happened during a hunt.

Artemis was notching arrow after arrow, back to back with her lover as monsters surrounded them, some of which she hadn't seen the likes of in centuries. They were deep from the pits of Tartarus, evil pungent in their forms.