Artemis (shaftsofgold) wrote in nevermore_logs, @ 2020-08-14 21:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | artemis |
WHO Artemis
WHERE Inwood Hill Park
WHEN The Ides of August (Thursday August 13)
WHAT Nemoralia
WARNINGS None
It felt odd, to spend Nemoralia in the city. Ordinarily, Artemis would take to the mountains, to the high-flung lakes where the forest grew dense to the water’s edge, the ones campers shunned as too remote and impassable. Sometimes a nymph for company, or a fellow goddess. Sometimes, rarely, a mortal girl whose soul thrummed with the beat of the wild. Sometimes it was her alone – she, and the dog-star above and the hard earth below and the infinite voices of the grove all around – and that was fitting enough, too, for as Diana she had ever walked that twisting path betwixt the mysteries of the heavens and the mysteries of the underworld. They would climb beneath the beating sun until their sweat-drenched hair clung to their cheeks and their muscles burned with the exertion, and the swim that awaited them would be all the sweeter for it. They would bathe together, weave wreaths of wildflowers and wind them through each other’s hair, and they would greet the rising moon with torches burning. This was how it was in Rome, at Lake Nemi where the rites began. The hunt was paused, women and slaves relieved of their daily duties. They came in procession to her grove with offerings of fruit and of clay, honoured the hunting hounds with bright garlands, washed their hair and decked it in flowers, and set the night aglow with torches. The mountains called to her today. But Artemis, who bucked reflexively against words like compromise and commitment, could at least begrudgingly acknowledge the existence of consequences. She had a class to teach in the afternoon – only her third so far – and even she could recognise it wouldn’t reflect well on her if she played hooky only one week in to go skinny dipping in the Adirondacks. She’d chosen this direction, and she wanted to give it a proper shot before she went and blew it all up again. So Artemis had turned her eyes from the mountains this morning, had settled for the mundane ritual of a shower over the sacred one of the lake. She’d taken her morning run through the old growth trees of Inwood Hill Park, then on a whim she’d swung by Daphne’s plant nursery. No wildflowers for her today, but flowers grown by a nymph’s hand were a worthy substitute. She’d insisted on braiding them through Daphne’s hair as well – red amaranth and golden poppy for herself, blushing gladioli and crocus for her friend – and had laughed aloud when yellow pollen had spilled across the nymph’s cheek like a second scattering of freckles and set them both sneezing. The girls in her junior class had oohed admiringly over her hair, crowding her with questions of why and how and could they touch them? Fortunately Daphne, who was far better than Artemis at thinking of these things, had equipped her with sprays of nonallergenic blossoms for each kid to take home – if they worked hard today, Artemis informed them, letting the smallest edge of the She-Bear into her voice and sending them scattering to their places. She liked them – her little arktoi, as she was already beginning to think of them. They were bright and curious and brimming with the impatience of youth that Artemis couldn’t help but relate to. Some had been herded in by parents desperate for an hour to themselves, and some had bounded into the first class chattering eagerly about Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel (girl heroes, she gathered, had been the focus of the centre’s promotional push). One girl in the middle-schoolers’ class had set her jaw and copied each stance with a grim determination that made Artemis resolve to keep a particular eye out for her. But in this room, they were all her cubs, and she found herself delighting in both their attentive focus and their moments of pure undisciplined wildness. By evening, her curls were all a tangle, flowers askew, but Artemis wore them proudly. Inwood Hill Park didn’t have a lake, but it held the last remnant of Manhattan Island’s wild salt marshes and that, too, seemed a reasonable (fuck you, you’ll never get her to say it out loud) compromise. The hounds, she discovered, were waiting for her. Mostly strays, from the look of them; a couple of pups trailing leashes, heedless of the approaching shouts of owners who couldn’t comprehend why they’d suddenly bolted; there was even a single rangy coyote crouched in the reeds. One by one, Artemis plucked the flowers from her hair, adorned each of the dogs in turn and tore them off bits of the steak sandwich she’d intended for her own dinner. The moon rose, and Artemis lit the candle she’d brought with her. It cast a feeble light, but it didn’t burn alone. She felt those other fires, scattered and far between, but fuelled by a pure faith that washed over her like a dip in a mountain lake after a long climb. Their rites were new, the words different, but the name they called upon was the same — Diana Nemorensis. Diana Triformis. Diana. Artemis shook the last of the petals from her hair and closed her eyes. The mountains still called. But the mountains were patient. They could wait. Perhaps she could, too. At least for a time. |