#Artemis has an extremely strong sense of storge and puts the wellbeing of those she protects over all

[gingermintpepper]

Brother II

“Artie,” he says, and he’s got that sparkle in his eye that means she ought to start picking out hunting wolves from the twenty-three hundred that roam their island, “I have a date.”  He’s in satin and goat-skin today, hair done up in little jewelled cuffs and smelling like the belladonna that only grows in central valley.  There’s no violet in his hair,  no rose, no poplar, no heliotrope Just laurel. Plain, dead laurel bound tight on myrtle branch and more telling than she ought to be. He’s smiling too - or at least he was up until she let the space between her response settle its weight on his shoulders, a boulder as Sisyphean as the conversation they’re about to have Because it’s always the same with him no matter how many times she tells him to cut his losses and just take a vow.

Instead of the berating she has cocked and loaded behind the bow of her lips, their mother’s voice cuts in an arrow all its own,  “That’s wonderful, Phoebus! Who's the lucky youth?”  But Apollo doesn’t take the bait, gold eyes dissecting when he catches her gaze The question he never gets a chance to ask burning through her like fire in her veins long after their mother takes his hand and leads him away so she can humour his insanity.

Extracts from the Greenhouse Floor.