"You had no right to stab him!" Edith yelled hysterically. "No right! I told you no hunting David!"
Artemis rolled her eyes as the palace paramedics carried him to the infirmary. "A and b." She replied.
"Huh?" Edith asked, taken aback.
Artemis gave her friend a smirk. "A) I didn't stab him. I impaled him. B) I didn't hunt him! Hunting requires even a slight challenge. He didn't even try to move."
"You're impossible!" Edith groaned. As frustrated as she was with her friends impulsive behavior, she still leaned on her.
"I hit no vital organs. He'll live, sadly." Artemis said, trying not to laugh at her dark joke.
Edith snapped her fingers and pointed at the large driftwood double doors. "Go."
"To my room? Okay," Artemis went to leave but Edith grabbed her forearm. She tore the circlet off her friends head, although it remained a headpiece.
"Infirmary. You have to apologize for injuring him. That's an order."
Artemis grudgingly nodded, and swam out of the dining room. As she swam down the halways, she admired the beautiful tapestries that had all the Atlantic Kingdom's history. And staring at the woven stories, she thought of her home. She thought of the magnificent creatures she hunted and the first thirteen years spent with her father and half brother Triton.
"Circlet? I know you stabbed him," Julius told her.
Julius was the head of the palace guards, and definitely the biggest prick of them all. Apart from being a total woman abuser, he was extremely egocentric.
"Edith took it already," she deadpanned. "Now let me through so I can apologize."
Julius contemplated this for a minute, and then smirked. "I think I should check you."
Artemis rolled her eyes in disgust. "Go feel up some shellfish, its about the same. Now let me through."
"I'd be nicer if I were you," he replied curtly; opening the infirmary doors.
"And I'd be less of an ass." Artemis replied. "You just watch, one of these days your ego is going to get you stabbed in the back."
Artemis entered the infirmary, where David lay sipping a thick yellow liquid, listening to a quartet that was playing somewhere below.
When he caught sight of her, he quickly placed his pillow across his chest.
"Relax, I don't have weapons." She gestured towards her hair and then sat on the edge of the bed.
"You made a dagger out of a silver tiara. You'll probably pull out a musket from a hair clip." Artemis gave a small smile and stole David's glass of yellow syrup. "That's mine."
"You can't drink all this, you'd die if you did. " She said, finishing the glass. "Also, my circlet can only turn into a dagger or a bow."
David removed the pillow, revealing a heavily bandaged chest. "Okay. Well I don't trust you. But without it my back hurts."
"They bandaged you up real heavily." Artemis noted. The infirmary was quiet, except for the beautiful tune coming in through the window.
And for a long time, it stayed quiet. Above them the chandelier cast beautiful colors across the room. Broken shells of varying colors decorated the glass bubbles that contained fire.
"Were related." Artemis said finally, her crimson tail now a thousand shades. The scales sparkling in shades of red and purples and pink.
"How? You're a fi- mermaid." David corrected himself.
"My dads Posiedon. Somewhere along the line you have a demigod. Probably your dad, maybe your mom."
"So like, were cousins?" David asked, looking at her translucent red flipper in which her tail ended.
"Something like that." She replied quietly.
Once more the room was filled with silence, the songs changing to an upbeat jig.
"How can I breathe underwater?" David asked.
Artemis looked at him for a minute and then her face split into a wide smile, and she laughed. She let out a whole and genuine laugh.
"You have been underwater for a whole day, and you're just barely asking that?" She placed her hands across has abdomen as she laughed hysterically. "You're kidding right?"
David shook his head and waited to see if she could answer the question.
"You're a legacy of Poseidon. A demigod of his can control the water. You can just breathe in it."
David pursed his lips. He was linked to a god, and all he could do was breathe under the water? Wow.
"So you can control the water?" He asked.
Artemis shook her head no. "Why not?"
"All you ever do is ask questions, why?" David opened his mouth to answer but Artemis stopped him. "That was rhetorical. I honestly don't care. But anyways story time."
"Okay," David replied, and waited for her to speak.
"So yeah, I could control water. But then I turned nine, and Artemis showed up. Like the real one, and she offered to let me become one of her hunters. The deal was, I be her lieutenant. So you know, be a bachlorette, hunt, spread the art of archery, and empower women. And the deal is, when I can kill 'it' I can ditch the tail and gain immortality and be a true Hunter of Artemis."
She listened to the music for a minute. "And I know what you're thinking, 'why not stay a mermaid?'; You're also probably thinking 'why would you want to be a Hunter?'; And I get why you'd question it. But the thing is, my mom was a Hunter. Well she got knocked up with Poseidon, and Artemis also protects kids, so she let her live. My mom was gonna die for breaking her oath, so as an apology she named me after the Artemis. And I honestly feel like my mom got what she deserved. But I also feel like my dad should be punished. He literally proves that men are evil."
"I'm not evil." David interjected.
"Course you're not. Well anyways, I wanted to make up for both my parents mistakes, so now I'm the Ambassador of Artemis."
"That doesn't explain why you hate me," David pointed out.
"That's easy," Artemis said with a smile. "You're a boy." And then she took her leave.
