Stay Your Thanks Awhile, And Pay Them When You Part...

Artemis charged and reared intently in the reeling starscape. Her great white steed pounded out thunderous hoof beats in the far blue ether as she poured nightshine over Austin with the silver throb of her wild hunters gaze. Relentlessly she twirled and dashed, arms lifted above her ebony hair in savage homage to the sinful passing of another sacred night. Soon, she would pass governance over this half of the world to her brother and his garish blaze. How this passing ravaged her heart, and how her dance exploded with the madness of grief.

"Debouched fool!! Lounging lazily in his glorious throne with that pathetic harum of harpies paying lipservice to the notion of his greatness!! HA!! How I love to scatter them with the fury of my approach!!"

All at once, she stayed her frenzy, halting suddenly with the onset of heartwarmth and nurturing concern. Below her, one of her children raced in a steel carriage toward the uttermost west. At once she knew his mind, as it was close to hers, and subject to the same whims.

There was melancholy, distilled potently into the lining of his spine and tickling his nerves with numbing sorrow. There was reflection, confused and alive, massaging the workings of his mind and confounding him with a decided lack of answers. There was hope, spirited and free, tiptoeing and spinning lightly along his heartstrings. But most of all there was thanksgiving, welled in the depths of his stomach, nourishing every fiber of his being.

His time in Austin was well spent, she reflected, feeling somewhat guilty over the tortures she outsourced from Apollo, fully aware that she couldn't very well punish the presence of herself in others. He has learned much here, and inches all the while closer to full knowledge of his own small place in the tides of time...

"Apollo, may you light his way safely home," she whispered to the far golden glow gathering in the east.

With that, she spurred her steed forth in a great and terrible leap, moving from her stillness with suddenness of a lightning bolt. Artemis charged laughing into the eastern sunrise, elated at the prospect of terrifying those silly fire sprites..