The pool was cold. It lay deep under the boughs of pines, dappled a bit with sun, but cold nonetheless, despite the torpid air. Artemis dived quickly, she of the moon and the bow, her body itself arching into a slender line like an arrow shot in the midst of the hunt. She broke the water clean, and disappeared, waning in aspect like her celestial charge, down past sand and logs and a great rock under which grandfather trout napped. Then she reappeared, white, lovely, luminous, hair slicked back, and face streaming glory. She gasped once, drew in the delicious pine-scented air, tasted it on her tongue, the taste of the forest, her forest, and keeper of all the therein.

She floated on her back, kicking slowly, watching the bits of her brother's sun through the canopy. Like a water lily she floated, white and pure on that mossy silver-green water. Ahhhh, her purity . . .

She closed her eyes as she thought of it. Her purity, her honor, her virtue. How no man would ever touch her, sully her, own her, even look upon her. How she would always be her own, to do as she willed, wild and free and forever the Huntress of the Silver Bow . . .

The Huntress felt eyes upon her. Not the eyes of an owl or a hart, but human eyes. Male eyes.

Artemis flipped up, treading water. He stood not a dozen feet from her, leaning on his bow. In the distance she heard hounds. His. A hunter, like herself. Hard muscled legs in leather, broad chest bare. Curls glistening against his neck. Lips parted slightly, a faint quiver at the sight of her. Eyes like reflections of that mossy green pool.

Those eyes . . .

She felt something stir in her, something not right for the chaste Huntress. She closed her eyes, and it only worsened. A well of emptiness opened in her, emptiness that no hunt would ever fill, nor even the moon, an empty, lonely ache that would go on forever . . .

She cried out and splashed him, and with that he transformed into a stag. She cried out again, and he bound off into the forest. His hounds picked up the scent, and Artemis listened as they brought him down and killed him.

And there in her pool she floated, the white Huntress, and her salty tears rolled off her cheek and mixed with the fresh water.

And, Dear Reader, had this dream been visited upon the woman Nikita, she would have been troubled for a while, and wondered, but soon would have rejoined the world and forgotten it. The man Michael may have puzzled it out, with time and effort. But you, Dear Reader, have it before you, to make of what you will.

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