Here Up High

The first thing the newborn god was aware of was the coldness around them. It chilled them to the bone and they gasped in fright, they had never felt the cold before. Next was the shock that came with that first breath as their lungs filled with that cold air. It was so strange to them, the sensation of it all. The next was the hardness of the ground bellow them, sharp pieces digging into their new flesh. Their eyes then opened and they saw for the first time, but only darkness.

“Are you awake child?”

The god turned their head towards the sound, their brain working to try and figure out what it was. “Child.” Their mouth imitated the strange sound.

The world came into focus and the god was greeted by a pale shape that their mind listed off information about. Face, god, female, kind, love, warmth, mother. “Mother?”

The god’s mother smiled and stroked their face, lifting wet hair away from their watery eyes. “You have his nose and my eyes. I shall gift you my first born with a name now, Artemis.”

Artemis’ ran over the potential meanings of their name, landing on two they could not decide between, safe and butcher. Artemis wondered if their mother had chosen it to be like that.

“Hmm, you haven’t settled on a gender yet. What shall you choose my child, boy or girl?”

Artemis stared at their mother, unsure of which to choose. Fate chose for Artemis though, as their mother began to scream in pain.

“Another? Damn you Zeus, I barely survived the first one with the goddess of childbirth locked away. I cannot live birthing another child!”

“Is there anything I can do mother?”

Artemis’ mother stared down at her child, only a few minutes old and tried to smile through the pain. “You could take on the attribute of childbirth now that the goddess has been locked away, but you would need to be female.”

“So be it.”

The child fell to the ground a nameless, genderless god without a single attribute to them and rose Artemis the goddess who helped others birth gods.

The world she had been born to was dark, but as her mother screamed in pain she noticed the world was bleeding like her mother. She briefly spared a glance behind her and the world unravelled before her, water stretched further than the eye could see. A brilliant red orb slowly climbed into the sky, painting all in the shade of newly spilled blood. Artemis shivered in fear, she had preferred the dark, with its waning moon. Everything had been steeped in shadows, it had been beautiful. She would never love the blood stained world of light. Under the gaze of Helios she once more turned to her work.

….

Leto looked down at her second child, cradled in their sister’s arms. She would take the child into her own arms, but after twelve hours of labour had left her weak and vulnerable. Barely able to keep her eyes open and she knew she wouldn’t have been able to even do that if it weren’t for Artemis. The young goddess had worked hard to bring her twin into the realm of life, she wasn’t made for the gift of helping mothers birth children, as the long difficult labour had made obvious, but she had still took it on anyway.

Leto watched as her second born opened their eyes and the first thing the child saw was their sister. Artemis froze for a second before a wide smile spread across her face, the first Leto had seen.

“Hello little god. I’m your sister, Artemis.”

The child reached up and touched their sisters’ hair, as something passed between them that Leto knew was never to be broken. Leto hoped her plans were not for nothing.

….

Leto walked several days later with her children by her side, one a girl and the other a boy. Exactly as she had planned them to be, though she would have preferred they had opposite personalities. She had planned for a fair girl, who was a lady above all others and would be delicate, the perfect damsel for her brother to save. The boy would be strong and brash, taking everything he wanted for himself but with a soft place in his heart for his dainty sister. Leto had known the second day she had mixed them up when Artemis had killed a divine deer and wolf she had found in combat near a stream. She had cooked the meat and used the hides to create crude clothing for herself and her brother.

Apollon had quickly chosen the male gender after he was named and had vowed to be everything his sister was not, so the two would be unstoppable. Leto had noticed the boy had glared at the crude clothing and had set about tailoring them to something more civilised.

Leto could work with what she had been given though, her plans would happen no matter what stood in her way. Even Hera would not stop it.

….

Zeus had finally been forced to accept his children and take them into his protection after the two had defeated all the monsters that Hera had thrown at them. The two had only become stronger because of it, Apollon gaining his silver bow from Hephaestus and Artemis discovering that her attribute as a god was the wilderness and all that within it. It was when Artemis mastered the wilds that Zeus stepped forwards and offered his protection, the girl was reaching near Olympian levels of power and her younger brother would not be far behind.

Hera had hit him, as she usually did for his stupidity. Not only had he lain with a second generation titan, he had failed to murder her brats in the womb, unleashing their potential reign of terror upon the world. He had yelled back at her, that she should have followed his orders and smothered them when they were still bloody from birth. They both knew why they hadn’t directly attacked the children though, there was the risk that they would survive and come to blows with them.

They would have to refrain from trying to kill them now, they would have to control them. When Artemis was still but a toddler and had run to him crying from a beating delivered by Hera, Zeus saw his chance. He gave her a bow like her brothers, except made of gold, a following of nymphs, a golden chariot, dogs, deer and most importantly the gift to remain a virgin for as long as she wished, which happened to be forever. Zeus silently thanked Hera’s tactics of beating the girl and calling her a whore, she had not failed him, Hera never failed in playing a good villain.

….

Artemis yawned as she stretched out her true form. She and Apollon had journeyed to the mortal realm and had travelled far from earth into the depths of the universe. Here they were free to be their true selves, to wrap their coils around moons, for their limbs to rip apart stars, for their roars to shatter meteorites and for their blood to drip to stain galaxies. The power was amazing and her blood felt ablaze with it. There she was a world destroyer, but also a creator. There she was the biggest predator in the wilds. There she wasn’t a scared little girl.

….

Zeus sat upon his throne in the clouds, the eleven others thrones were empty and the silence was unnerving. He would have to fill them up soon, so that twelve gods sat in the thrones the twelve titans had built. He had a number of thrones filled already, his siblings except for Hades, two of his own children, the goddess Aphrodite and Hera’s son. There were three left now and he knew many gods had their eyes on them, but only two had the power to take the thrones, Artemis and Apollon.

The twin gods progress had been watched in detail by the pantheon, none more so than Zeus and his ever present wife, Hera. She sat beside him at that moment, perched on an arm of the throne as she stroked his hair.

“We have two daughters who we could put on the thrones, it doesn’t matter if there is one place left, they won’t take it and leave the other behind. They are too close for that.”

“It would not be wise to stick the goddess of youth and the goddess of childbirth on the throne when the goddess of the wilderness and the god of civilisation lie there in wait to take them. I won’t put our girls in danger. Have you seen their power Hera? Those two have no idea of their potential, they are like their titan grandparents and the only thing stopping them is their own stupidity. ”

“We have no choice then, we have to make them Olympians.”

“We must, but we cannot let them know their potential or let them go through with Leto’s plans. Artemis may be a virgin goddess but she is far too close to her brother for my own peace of mind.”

“Don’t worry about Leto’s plans, she failed to take into account their love for one another.”

“Is it fake or non-existent? I would argue with that.”

“No, they do love one another dearly. Not in the way we do my husband, they are strictly platonic.”

“But they are brother and sister! Surely they do not feel platonic love for one another, all brothers and sisters love as lovers.”

“Not all, I hear in other pantheons it is considered sick and unnatural.”

“What strange customs.”

“Never mind, it is to our advantage, brother.”

….

Leto stood out of the shadows for once in her life, though still hidden under the folds of her clothes. Her children were sat each on a throne of Olympus, as Leto’s own parents had. Back before Zeus had cruelly ended the golden age and locked the titans away. She saw so much of her own parents in her children, Artemis had Koios’s stocky strength, Apollon Phoebe’s willowy grace they both had Phoebe’s eyes, mossy green and endless, the same that belonged to Gaia and before her they were rumoured to belong to Khaos itself.

Leto did her bit and cheered with the rest of the pantheon as the two were crowned, one with gold and the other with silver. Zeus looked genuinely happy, Leto knew he had a soft spot in his heart for stubborn, wild, Artemis, so much like himself. Though he carried no love for Apollon, though that was most likely because he was a boy, Zeus seemed to hate all his sons, though none more than Ares.

Hera meanwhile stared down her nose in distaste, flanked on either side by a daughter, both whom seemed rather merry from avoiding the responsibility of a throne. Leto knew it was all an elaborate act, one manufactured for the good of Zeus, to make sure she was always there to play the villain of his children, so he would not have to.

Leto smiled as Hera briefly glanced her way and shivered violently. The queen of the gods wasn’t as blind as her husband then; she saw part of what Leto really was. The oblivion, the nothingness, the end of all things. Leto was powerless against the pantheon and she knew very well how frail she was, her children were not though and the child they would birth would be all that Leto needed. It would be the way to the realm that Leto ruled and it would take everyone else with them.