Section IV – The First Bonds
Artemis Alone
The forest was silver that night. Branches gleamed like pale steel, and every breath carried the cool clarity of moonlight. Percy walked with quiet steps, Kaal circling overhead in silence, black flames trailing like falling stars.
Artemis emerged from the trees, bow slung across her shoulder. Her Hunt had dispersed hours ago, leaving her alone—though she told herself it was not loneliness, but necessity.
"You walk as though you own this place," she said, voice sharp.
Percy glanced at her, then at the wolves at her heels. "Not own. Share."
Her lips curved, but it was not quite a smile. "Few men share. They take."
"I am not a man," Percy answered softly. "Not as you mean it."
The silence that followed was heavy, but not hostile. She studied him—the way he touched bark without claiming it, the way animals approached him as though he were simply another creature of the wild.
They hunted together that night. At first in silence—two predators moving as shadows—but when Percy stilled time itself to save a wounded doe from a fatal arrow, Artemis turned on him.
"You stole my kill," she hissed.
"I gave her another season," Percy replied. "Life is worth more than victory."
Her anger cooled, replaced by something far more dangerous: curiosity. No hunter she had known would choose mercy over triumph.
Later, when they sat by a fire of silver sparks, Artemis caught herself watching the way the flames danced in his eyes. She told herself it was nothing. She did not notice when her vow began to tremble.
Athena Alone
Athens was loud that day—markets bustling, philosophers shouting over one another, merchants haggling like crows. Yet within her temple it was still, cool as water, scented faintly with olive oil and stone.
Percy stood before a scroll, reading lines she had written centuries before. Not with reverence—no, with familiarity, as if the words were already his.
"You read like someone who already knows the ending," Athena said from the shadows.
"Endings are my domain," Percy replied without turning.
That sparked the debate. They argued across tablets and diagrams, her owl flitting between them like a wary judge. She tested him with paradoxes—Achilles and the tortoise, the ship rebuilt plank by plank, the river no man steps in twice. Each one he unraveled with patience, sometimes with silence that left her unsettled.
Hours passed. Scrolls scattered. At last Athena leaned back, breathless not from defeat, but from exhilaration.
"You are dangerous," she admitted. "Not because you are stronger, but because you are not bound by what binds us all."
"And you," Percy said, his voice steady, "are dangerous because you see it."
She should have dismissed him. Banished him from her temple. Instead, she offered him wine and olives. The first time she had shared a meal with anyone in centuries.
That night, when she dreamed, it was not of thrones or scrolls. It was of a hand reaching across the table, steady as time, warm as earth.
Two Solitudes Drawn
Artemis in her silver woods.
Athena in her marble halls.
Both found themselves thinking of him in moments of stillness. A word, a glance, a silence that lingered too long. They were goddesses of vow and reason, yet something inside them had shifted—quietly, inexorably.
Artemis felt her hunts grow hollow without him at her side.
Athena found her scrolls dull without his patient voice countering hers.
Neither would admit it aloud.
Not yet.
But both, in their solitude, had begun to long.