Every time she pictured the goddess of love trying to seduce her follower earlier in the day,
A string inside Artemis's mind called reason came very close to snapping.
After all, this was someone who, the moment her beloved sacred deer, in its wild state, let out a cry of pain from an injury, immediately went berserk and nearly destroyed her half-brother, the great hero Heracles.
When it came to someone Artemis had genuinely accepted, someone who had begun to occupy a real place in her heart,
Her protectiveness was fierce and absolute.
Thinking about Aphrodite using her beauty to try and draw Night in, Artemis couldn't help thinking about all those male gods who couldn't resist and ended up groveling at Aphrodite's feet.
This was exactly why she feared love so much.
Men were simply not reliable.
She didn't want to see Night be the same.
What Artemis didn't notice was that if this had been before,
Even if she knew Aphrodite was trying to tempt one of her followers, she would not have intervened but would have given her followers the opportunity to choose for themselves.
After all, Artemis never cared whether people liked her or not.
As long as she felt she was the most beautiful, that was enough for her.
Why try to keep someone who can't be kept?
If they wanted to leave, they could leave; she didn't care at all.
Artemis had always been that confident, that radiant, that bold and composed.
Not to the point of being completely self-absorbed,
But she had always been indifferent to other gods, and when it came to the one the male gods called the most beautiful goddess of all, the goddess of love and beauty, let them say what they liked.
What did any man's opinion have to do with her?
Even Hippolytus was the same.
At first, the moon goddess didn't care about him at all. If the god of love hadn't intervened, the moon goddess wouldn't have appeared to revive him and take him as her follower.
(Ok, now it's getting annoying, so I won't use Hippolytus' name to make a comparison....)
But right now Artemis found herself hesitating, feeling a faint restlessness she hadn't recognized in herself, not wanting to hear Night say the same thing those disgusting male gods always said.
Things like Aphrodite being more beautiful, being the most beautiful goddess in all of Greece.
And on Night's side, hearing Artemis's question, he answered almost entirely on instinct without stopping to think: "Of course, it's you. My pure and perfect queen."
Perhaps it was years of experience from his time on modern earth, where a man learned to recognize a loaded question for what it was.
The survival instinct of a man kicked in without hesitation.
Even though he and the moon goddess had no particular relationship beyond what they had.
And after he finished saying this, Night, who gradually reacted, did not hesitate either.
He turned around to look at his goddess, and up close, he was struck again by Artemis's natural and unpolished beauty.
It had to be said, Artemis was not one bit inferior to Aphrodite.
It's just that their qualities were very different.
Hm...it's a matter of choice.
Pure type, seductive type
(Of course, if it's Aphrodite from Greek Myth, with her stories... well, let's not go there. Here Aphrodite is a whi.. cough beautiful goddess, who had never loved a man, sucked a man, fucked a man ah..)
And Artemis's standing as a true virgin goddess, which was truly rare in all of Greece, made her incomparably more appealing than someone who was the opposite.
Having just seen the face of the renowned goddess of love and beauty that very afternoon, and thinking about how he nearly ended up in the same category as all those male gods and mortals, Night felt really relieved at the sight of Artemis.
His spirit, which had something close to a cleanliness fixation, felt almost purified.
Looking at the goddess bathed in moonlight, radiating that immaculate and sacred quality,
The scene froze in his eyes like a great painting, something he didn't want to break.
He almost wished time would stay in this moment forever.
Night wouldn't deny that for a brief instant, he did have such a thought in his mind.
And who wouldn't?
Quietly taking in this beautiful sight, letting this unguarded moment of beauty continue, letting himself simply appreciate it.
He thought of a line from a certain work about a day of divine wrath.
And said this: "Stay, time, for you are more splendid than all things else."
On the surface it spoke of time.
In truth, it spoke of the scene in front of him in this moment.
When you look at a view, the person inside the view looks back at you.
Hearing those words, with the wisdom of a god, how could she not understand their meaning in an instant?
Artemis felt something stir in her chest, and before she could say anything,
Night had already read the moment perfectly and bowed his head slightly in a small gesture of respect, just before reaching the edge of what might have caused her discomfort.
Too much would ruin it.
Given Artemis's nature, a single beautiful instant could touch somewhere deep inside her heart, but anything too direct afterward would trigger the fear of commitment that had always lived beneath the surface of her consciousness, a fierce resistance to any clear sign of affection or interest from another.
When she saw Night bow his head, Artemis felt a quiet sense of relief for some reason she couldn't explain.
She really didn't know how to respond to him just now.
She almost had the urge to turn and flee again.
She looked at Night with narrowed eyes, thinking.
This had happened twice now.
No, perhaps more than that.
Always caught off guard. Always pure and unintentional compliments.
Was it deliberate or accidental?
This person shouldn't have any impure thoughts about her, should he?
She thought back to Night's complete indifference toward Aphrodite earlier and his lack of any competitive interest in Helen, the most celebrated human beauty in all of Greece.
Thinking about it, Artemis decided she was probably overthinking it.
Even at her most self-assured, she wasn't arrogant enough to believe her charm far exceeded both of them.
If Night were to hear what she was thinking, he would merely sigh.
'Goddess, you're not overthinking.
Don't you know your own charm?'
Let's not talk about Aphrodite; even putting aside her character, he didn't find Artemis any less charming than the Goddess of Love.
As for Helen, the most beautiful woman in the mortal world, one thing he hadn't seen her so he didn't know how beautiful she was.
Although he had seen other heroes' reactions after it was announced that the winner would get Helen, those lustful perverts who think with their lower bodies and fuck anything they can find, could they be counted as critiques?
And no matter how beautiful she was, could she be more beautiful than a goddess?
Not to mention...that woman was trouble.
Don't you see this Trojan war?
At least Artemis and even Aphrodite, charming and coveted as they are, have the power to defend themselves; what about her?
Anyone could covet her...look at that pitiful King of Sparta; no one's even asking him before thinking about his wife as a trophy.
And Helen herself was truly pitiful, to be played by the Goddess of Beauty and then given to a prince as a prize.
If he got involved with such a woman, he might go bald in worry.
And as mentioned before, Night liked his hair a lot.
Even putting aside the troubles and green hats they might bring, was Artemis, the chaste goddess, with such beauty and purity, any less charming than the two of them?
Of course, he wouldn't say so much to her face; who knows whether this goddess would blast him in bashfulness?
.
.
.
After that, Night and Artemis talked through the night.
Time passed without them noticing, and a certain sun god who had been watching this direction the whole time grew increasingly grim, his expression dark enough to drip.
"Why aren't they done yet?"
Just as Apollo was reaching the point where he nearly couldn't hold himself back and was thinking about transforming into the role of a certain divine enforcer to come and break things up by force,
Artemis finally came out.
She left shortly after.
But even then Apollo's expression didn't improve much.
Because he saw Artemis's face was slightly dazed, her thoughts seemed elsewhere for a moment, and just before she fully left, she seemed to remember something and murmured something quietly.
He was too far away and didn't dare expose himself by using his divine power to listen in.
He simply watched her lips and tried to read the words.
Something about "time"? Something about "splendor"?
What did that even mean?
But that unusual state, different from her normal self, he had seen it once before.
This wasn't good.
The illness seemed to be getting worse.
All Apollo could think about was how Night kept doing this, how he kept leaving Artemis looking like this.
What was strange was that Artemis still hadn't done anything about it.
Any male who had shown even a hint of inappropriate interest in the past would have had her bow aimed at him immediately.
What Apollo didn't know was that Artemis, on the other side, had her hand pressed against one cheek without realizing it.
Thinking about what her follower said.
Was it the moonlight he was praising?
Or something else?
The splendor that made him wish time would stop in that moment.
Could it have been her?
And that thought, which she felt she had absolutely no right to be having, made the moon goddess flush, certain she was reading too much into it.
Artemis was deeply conflicted, caught between hoping she was the splendor he saw and hoping she wasn't.
That strange scene, aside from the sun god Apollo, was also witnessed entirely by a single owl hidden in the night and the branches of a tree.
Everyone else was living at their own pace, untouched by any of it.
Time moved forward to the next day.
.
.
.
(End of the Chapter)