Diana sank into one of the old and comfortable chairs that were dotted around the library with a sigh of relief. Her muscles ached from the hours of training Phitha had mercilessly put her through; her mind hurt from the thousand and one things Arabella had been teaching them in mathematics; and she dreaded going home to her mother for dinner. Closing her eyes, Diana pressed two fingers to her temples and gently massaged them in small circles. Her mother had been increasingly vocal in her feelings for her decision to go to school. Hippolyta believed her daughter could have got the same, if not better, education from private tutors. Plus she would be at home more.
Diana understood her mother's love, and she returned the emotion with all her heart. But at times her mother could be overbearing to the point of suffocation. She was assured that all mothers were like that – it was simply the way of things. Yet there was something always at the back of her mind that niggled at her. There was something more when it came to the Queen of the Amazon's....
"The Iliad? That's a bit old fashioned, don't you think?" the question broke Diana out of her thoughts with a jolt. Opening her eyes she looked up at the unfamiliar face. The woman laughed at Diana's dumbfounded expression.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insult your abysmal taste in literature. My name's Kasia," Diana gripped the other woman's forearm in the handshake of the Amazon's and managed to pull herself together enough to make her lips take on the shape of a smile.
"It is I who should be sorry, I was miles away," shaking her head as if to clear it of cobwebs, she looked down at the book in her lap. "It's one of my favourite, I used to pretend to be Odysseus when I was a little girl." This time she didn't have to remind her lips what to do. She regarded the memories with a deep fondness.
"The child who simply did not know any better, but you should," Kasia's eyes sparkled as she poured into the settee opposite Diana, who found her eyes wondering along the soft curves of her new companion's form. Dragging her eyes back to Kasia's beautiful hazel gaze, she quirked an eyebrow.
"I think you'll find that Homer is considered one of our greatest poets."
"Perhaps," a dainty shrug of the shoulders, "a lifetime ago anyway."
"But, the story of Troy! One of the greatest Greek victories against some of the greatest Trojan warri-"
"All over a nice pair of tits. It's all very old fashioned, don't you think?"
"That was merely a convenient reason to start a war. The real story is entirely about Achilles – Homer even says so in his opening lines. It is how he develops: his wrath makes the reader hate him, and then feel pity for him, and finally it allows us to accept him as a hero again. Surely the real message of the story is one of development; Achilles' development."
The two quietly regarded one another for a moment.
"An interesting perspective," Kasia conceded after a while, sitting up and leaning forward. "Not one I would expect from the Warrior Princess." An ugly anger rose in Diana.
"And I suppose you believe I am just a mindless warrior?"
"Is that not what you are?" Diana's eyes pinned Kasia's gaze like a cat's would pin a mouse.
"The warrior is merely one part of me."
Diana looked up when she felt the warmth of Kasia's hands over her own.
"Then I think," she said in a voice that made Diana want to bathe in the sunshine of her words, "I should like to see the rest of you."
The words caused a small flicker of fire to stir in the depths of Diana's heart.
e[V>I
YOU ARE READING
Wonder Woman: The Birth of a Legend
Fanfiction"There are many myths that surrounds Wonder Woman's birth, her early life, and how she came to us at a time we so desperately needed her. But whenever I ask she simply smiles and asks which story I would like her to tell. I don't think us mortals wi...
