#No because I'm genuinely so insane over Apollo and Artemis' constant disagreement with how he approaches medicine

[gingermintpepper]

Attaching one of my favourite little dialogues to this because I'll never get to use it anywhere and I love it so, so much.

Apollo: Why did you ask to be free? Father would have granted you the sky and all its stars and yet, you chose that. Why?

Artemis: You wouldn't understand. You weren't there.

Apollo: I am asking you because I do not understand. Because I will never understand. I am not you.

Artemis: ...

Artemis: ... I asked because I knew I had to. For every pair joined together in love, for every work of Hera or Aphrodite there are twice as many like Mother - violent, anguished, ashamed. Alone. The pain of childbirth, the emptiness of rejection, the slow suffocation of death promised to any woman left behind by man and any women who wish to reject their fates as wives, as mothers - I wanted to be that different path. I knew I was destined to carve a different path.

Apollo: Then you know what I felt when I saw them. Those people dying in the streets, their bodies piled high in their shallow graves.

Artemis: Apollo...

Apollo: I am not Prometheus, Artemis. I did not create humans. My instrument is not the needle or the hammer, it is the bow. If clever Prometheus were still afoot, perhaps he could cast a glance at a human and tell him what was wrong and know exactly how to fix it. But I cannot. And humans cannot either. So we must learn. Even if it means breaking a body down one drop of blood at a time, I must learn.

Artemis: And why must it be you?! You who are already set to master so many heavy things - Ares is the Lord of Blood, let him do it!

Apollo: If Ares sheds blood, someone must be there to replenish it. And if I alone can See the disasters that will befall us, who better to learn what must be done to heal the damages they will cause?

Artemis: ...I don't like this.

Apollo: I know.

Artemis: I don't want you in anymore pain, Apollo.

Apollo: I know.

Artemis: But you will do it anyway, won't you?

Apollo: I must.

So, one of the most interesting things that's come from my recent exercises in writing the Olympians as young deities is all of the very fun and somewhat painful conversations that come from the young deities acquiring and consequently settling into their domains.

Apollo and Artemis especially have been really fascinating under the microscope. They start off identically, with extremely similar interests and similar domains over the hunt and wilderness. They spend their days under the stars and foraging for fruit and dancing and singing in the fields, two rustic god-children exploring and learning together. Then Apollo goes off on his own to slay Python.

Now, a lot of things change when Apollo kills Python. That is the act which transforms the bow from a tool of survival and sport to an instrument of murder, bloodshed and ultimately war. It is Apollo's first act of wrath which separates him from Artemis - both spiritually because she has not yet shed blood herself as a goddess and physically because it leads to his exile. Most importantly however, the slaying of Python is the act that grants Apollo his knowledge.

If violence is what first separates Apollo from Artemis then it is knowledge which keeps them apart.

This can refer to a lot of things; that Artemis continued to be at home with the wild beasts of the forests and mountains while Apollo grew to prefer the domesticated sheep and cattle, that Artemis continued to avoid mortals while Apollo grew to know their ways and endeavoured to teach them more. The point that has been the most interesting to me however has been Artemis, who remains free of slaughter, and thus remains pure and Apollo, who becomes acutely and entirely too aware of it, and thus must be constantly purified.

Apollo's infatuation with medicine specifically is the place where this becomes most apparent. When he leaves for his exile to travel as a mortal, without nectar or ambrosia, without power, Apollo is without the privileges of the divine for the very first time. He sweats, he smells, he grows weary when he travels, he grows hungry and thirsty. He experiences fatigue and nausea, the fever of sickness, the chill of infection, the delirium of poison. The blood Apollo shed does not only make him impure spiritually, it strips him of the purity of his birth and station. Likewise, medicine is not a divine practice. What use do the unkillable immortals have for something as finicky as medicine when they have nectar and ambrosia? Apollo however, knows of the pains of the flesh and the suffering of the mortal coil. He pursues medicine in all its horrors and difficulties because of the knowledge he gained with blood.

Artemis then, cannot understand the medical Apollo. When her brother returns possessed by this spectre of ill-gained knowledge, she does not recognise him. Who is this boy who scores the deer and studies the shape of their intestines before he cooks them? What good is there in rescuing a chick with a broken wing? The Apollo-of-the-Wild in her memories would have done the correct thing and left the thing for dead - let the forest take what is its due. Who is this Apollo whose hands are always stained to the wrist in the blood and gore of the living? What is his fascination with the mechanics of mortal bodies? Artemis does not know and Apollo does not tell her.

That has, by far, been my favourite effect of the whole Python watershed moment to explore recently.