Molly has a book on Greek Mythology that she picked out herself when she was four years old. It was the first thing she ever really purchased on her own - brand new, but in the sale bin at the local bookstore. It cost her eight crumpled dollar bills, pocket lint, and two quarters.
She still has the book. It's the first one she ever read, pictures making up for the narrative she was missing in the words. She picked it because it was vibrant. Lifelike. Chilling.
She picked it because of the girl on the cover. The one with the dress made of stars and the bow in her hands and the doe by her side. The goddess called Artemis, daughter of Zeus and a human woman, protector of girls and the forest and the night sky. Molly's mother scoffs at her obsession with the book, tells her it's a waste of time. Other girls her age are out doing more important things - socializing, learning how to be girls as if there's only one correct way to go about that sort of thing.
Molly's mother nearly confiscates the book, but her father talks her out of it. Says it's best to leave it be. Their daughter will grow out of this soon enough.
Twelve years later, Molly leaves home for camp, suitcase tucked under her arm and her book of myths slipped quietly into her backpack.
The goddess Artemis wears no flowing gown of nebulae, no crown forged by the light of a thousand stars. The goddess Artemis isn't even much of a goddess at all - she's trapped in human form when Molly meets her, a girl named Diane who's every bit as grumpy and messy and, well, a teenager that Molly never imagined Artemis would be. Diane's annoying as hell. She picks fights, she's never there for camp activities. She's just plain mean.
They meet at archery practice - they're the only two who signed up for it.
Not that the others weren't interested, of course. But it was either this or moose-riding for today, and a shocking amount of people chose the moose. Even their counselor is missing in action, and Molly hopes that she's joined her friends at the moose stables and isn't lost somewhere too deep for them to find her, surrounded by trees and vines. Diane and Molly help themselves to their own bows and quivers of arrows. Diane notches one immediately and just starts to shoot.
"You're supposed to be hitting the targets," Molly says, after the twentieth time Diane pierces camp property and tree bark.
"I'm supposed to be anywhere but here," Diane says. She's trying to sound cool. "This is just a distraction."
Molly's dealt with pissed of teenagers before, and she's frequently been one herself. She pieces the girl's story together quickly and without much context at all: parents fighting, kids in the way. Better to get them out of the house and deal with this problem with just the adults. Kids aren't dumb, though, and they know what's going on. Cue Diane. Or maybe it's even simpler than that - maybe Diane's the source of the problem, a role Molly seems to be getting more and more familiar with. Maybe her parents sent her away to what they thought was going to be some young women's preparatory academy. Maybe they got the same flier as Molly's parents.Molly remembers that flier, remembers reading a brochure describing anything but the camp she's at now. Her grip tightens around the thin wooden shaft of the arrow in her hand and she pierces the bleeding red center of a target before she's even aware of what she's doing.
She thinks she understands where Diane's coming from. Knows that rage.
Anywhere but here, Molly remembers many days later as she watches Zeus appear from the sky to pick up his two warring children. Who'd've thought Diane meant Mount Olympus.
When Diane comes back Molly thinks she recognizes a bit of herself inside of this goddess. This girl (because that's all she is - a girl) who's not really much different than her. It's in the way Molly flinches at every sound the floorboards make as her friends creak their way around the cabin, silence muffled by socks but the impact just the same. She can't help it; it's just instinct, side effect of never knowing when someone's going to snap and start to scream at you over nothing in particular at all. Diane stays over some nights, no matter how much she pretends to hate it. Hate them. The Roanokes lent her their spare bunk after Diane came back to find Barney in her old bed, something that the Zodiacs felt bad for but couldn’t reverse. And then Diane kept coming back. Again, again, again.
The first night Diane ends up sleeping the Roanoke cabin, it's freezing. Colder than summers should ever get - the sort of cold that has Diane wondering if her cousin Persephone went down to visit her boyfriend a bit early this year. Diane hates the Roanokes and she hates their fucking cabin, with its endless chatter and hijinks. She misses the Zodiacs even though she saw them moments ago. She's had enough of all these extroverts. Mal, who wants to show her a song she's been working on, Jo, who needs help with an experiment, April, who swears that if she doesn't tell someone about the plot of the newest Mermaid Lemonade Stand book she will die here and now. Even the kid (Riley?) who in theory should be completely exhausted from the day's activities won't stop giving Diane puppy dog eyes and asking Diane to please go out looking for her friend dinosaur with her.
Molly's the only one not trying to engage Diane in any sort of conversation. Diane, naturally, asks if she can sit with Molly in her bunk, reading old paperbacks and trying to figure out what the fuck a rainbow loom's supposed to be.
(She's pretty sure it's her old friend Iris's newest Ponzi scheme, but she's giving it the benefit of the doubt.)
Diane isn't expecting to bond with Molly, not by a long shot. The most they've interacted was the day they were forced to be bathroom buddies, and if Diane's being honest, she doesn't remember much about the encounter except how she was scared this girl had rabies because she was letting a feral raccoon nest in her hair, and let's be real, that's a solid fear to have when you find out the only person between you and death by dinosaur is the girl whose fur hat ends up being alive.
The raccoon's up here with them, now, and Diane's trying not to be weird about it. She's trying to remember what she knows about Molly, anything other than the fact that she's good at archery and probably somewhat feral. Diane draws a blank.She knows that Molly's really pretty. That she has kind eyes and a bright smile and hair as vibrant as the first dandelions of summer. She knows that she regrets every time she's been shitty to Molly, because Molly's crazy, but she's a good person, under all of that. She knows that she wishes she could go back in time and undo every shitty thing she ever did to Molly. She knows that Molly's letting her share the top bunk, which has got to be uncomfortable for her except for whatever reason Molly lets it slide.
So Diane doesn't sleep in the spare bed that night. She shares with Molly. And then she comes back, and she does it again. And again, and again, and again, until every night is like this and they're whispering stories to each other under blankets and Jen doesn't even blink when Diane comes to the Roanoke cabin at sunset in her pajamas, just rolls her eyes and mutters about teenagers and puppy love.
Molly shares her bed with Diane, tonight. Top bunk, so freaking impractical. Diane says it helps her feel closer to the stars.
Diane’s galaxy orbits Molly.
Diane takes Molly outside one night, just them. Pretends it’s because she can’t sleep. She says that she’s having a hard time getting rest after a long day of being chased by strange monsters and learning how to make pinch pots. She doesn’t mention that gods technically don’t need to sleep - especially the goddess of the night.
Her socks are wet in the dewy grass, and sometimes she crushes a twig underfoot, never realizing it until she hears the faint snap. She's too busy feeling Molly's hand in hers, calloused from archery and too many near-death experiences. Diane wants to hold her hand forever. She can't.
They end up in a clearing out by the Roswell cabin, where the grass is so soft it's as good as any sleeping bag.
“Aren’t they pretty?” Molly says, staring up at the stars. The fireflies are out with them, dancing lazily past their eyes, building their own galaxies. Diane’s looking at Molly again, and she looks so happy, a sort of happiness Diane wishes came easier for her. A sort of happiness worth protecting.
“They have names,” Diane says. She’s trying to sound cool, again.
(She’s not sure if it’s working.)
“Yeah.” Diane looks over at her again, and Molly’s looking back, now, waiting. Diane sits up, bracing herself with one hand. She uses the other to point at the sky. "That set over there? They're called the Seven Sisters, and they've been dancing for eternity. And right above us, that's a mother bear and her cub - they're Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. And that's Sirius, the dog star, and there's..." she trails off.
Molly gasps softly. Torn apart by the magnitude of it all. "Dang. Did... did you name all of them yourself?"
"Er, actually. No." Diane looks up at the sky, staring at the stars she painted there. "I just threw together whatever looked best, whatever made the most sense to me. There wasn't a plan. You were the ones who gave the stars names, who drew the lines between them."
Diane's hands were never calloused before she was human. She never really understood the work it took, the way your hands must build up immunity to the whip of the bowstring, the way a god needn't worry about such frivolous things, but a human girl must train for them, must work so hard to get there.
Molly's hands were soft at the start of the summer. Diane remembers that. She remembers being stuck with that one Roanoke who seemed just a bit more unhinged than the rest of them, had to be her "bathroom buddy" or some such adjacent nonsense, right before raptors attacked and they all almost died.
"But we didn't," Molly says, whenever she remembers it. Talons, teeth, gleaming golden eyes. "We're okay. It's okay."
"Kids don't die at normal summer camps. There aren't gods at normal summer camps, fighting wars with each other over stupid things," Diane says. Her voice is bitter. "Kids play tag and sing too many stupid songs and eat a couple marshmallows that fell on the ground and are maybe sorta covered in dirt. Kids are kids."
"But we're not kids, are we? We never were."
Diane shakes her head. "No. No, that's not it."
"Maybe we were kids, at some point. But we were never allowed to be."
Sometimes, Molly feels like the nights are going to swallow her whole as she sits in her bunk with the goddess of the moon fast asleep in her arms. Sometimes, Molly can't sleep at all, too busy trying to find a name for whatever's going on between them. This isn't how she thought her first relationship would go - conversations about philosophy and trauma, holding on to a Greek goddess like a lifeline. She's not even sure she can call it a relationship. She loves Diane, she feels it in everything she does. It's insufferable. But she doesn't even know if Diane feels the same.
She's a goddess in a human body. She's lived through the Beginning and she'll survive the End. Molly knows this.
Diane rouses from her sleep, shaking from a nightmare. "Hold onto me," and it's not as loud or assertive as most of Diane's words. It's a question. Scared. Cold.
"And never let go," Molly finishes. Her arms are tight around Diane, holding her close, making her feel so utterly alive. Mortal in that she can feel her heart beating faster, a falcon's wings gliding closer to the ground with every second, but she thinks that's okay. She thinks being mortal isn't the worst thing to have happened to her.
She thinks it's kind of scary that she thinks that, now.
They see themselves in stories, in stars. Molly's always been afraid of becoming Narcissus, cruel and self-absorbed, a bedtime story children should be warned against.
Diane thinks it's not so bad to be remembered poorly. She's terrified of not being remembered at all.
“You’re the goddess of archery,” Molly says, as if that makes everything better. “You protect women and girls, you move the stars into place every night, you built the forests and rivers as sanctuaries for everything living and lost. How could they ever forget you?”
“People love forgetting,” Diane says. “Mortals and gods alike.”
“People don’t forget gods,” Molly says. It’s a promise, one she etches into Diane’s arms with every second her nails bite deeper in their grip. “People don’t forget stories.”
“That isn’t comforting.” Diane rolls out of Molly’s arms, bumping into the wooden rail of the top bunk, jamming splinters into her arm.
Molly sits up, looks down at her. Through the window, the moon forms a halo behind her head. “Why?”
“Stories are ink on paper,” Diane says. “Even if they’re written in stone, they all crumble eventually."
“Stories are more than that,” Molly says. “Stories are living and breathing and they outlive all of us. Stories are the oldest gods, and they’re going to outlive you.”
Diane doesn’t say anything else. She looks through the window at the stars she created and wonders how she ever forgot they were there. She shakes the thought away, in that manner she gets rid of every uncomfortable thing. She thinks that maybe she should let herself be uncomfortable again. She thinks that maybe all being mortal is is being uncomfortable, sometimes, until you end up in someone’s arms once more.
“Am I just a story to you?” Diane asks. “If I’m written in your book.”
Molly thinks on the question a second longer than she should, winding the blankets in her hands like thread in a maze, hoping they’ll magically lead her home.
“If you are a story,” Molly says, her voice quiet and her words strong. “I’m going to tell you as long as I can.”
They meet in front of the archery fields every morning before everyone else wakes up, and they practice their shooting. Diane forgot what it was like to hold a bow in your hand. She hadn’t been on earth in so long, caught up in Athena’s endless drama and Aphrodite’s countless significant others calling her up for moral support, and Apollo’s vanity and her stepmother’s faux-wise words and her father’s endless absence. But Diane loves that feeling of the bow in her hands, of the strings as they snap. The way her mortal arms have become strong enough to endure it.
Molly says it reminds her of music, of playing the guitar the way Mal taught her, even if she never truly picked it up. Diane hates music - it’s her brother’s forte, not her own, and she’s always made a point to despise her brother. But Molly’s right, in a way. The bow is an instrument of destruction. It’s a graceful weapon, but it’s a weapon.
Diane brushes the thought aside for later. Focuses on Molly’s bubbling laugh and the way her hair shines in the sunlight of early dawn. Sometimes Diane thinks that Molly is built from every shattered sun, ever fragment of the universe that was too brilliant to be held in the sky. Sometimes, Diane thinks they're both immortal, if they just work hard enough.
“Have you ever died?” Molly asks Diane. They’re skipping out on another capture the flag game, but it’s not like they’re missing anything. Their cabins are going to fight with each other on and on, and some forest creatures are going to show up and trash everything in the end, and everyone’s going to escape miraculously. They’re all going to pretend it never happened and go back to making art out of perler beads and macaroni, and Jen won’t even realize Molly’s gone until it’s time for the Roanokes to meet up with her again. Diane doesn’t have a counselor at all. The two girls find no harm in skipping activities today, especially when the stream they walk along is so interesting, and Molly's having fun standing within it, staying dry by hopping from rock to rock. Diane walks parallel to her on the bank, holding Molly's hand in her own, holding Molly steady as the current threatens to pull her in.
“What do you mean?” Diane asks. She doesn’t say, “Gods don’t die.”
Diane’s never been one for lying. She’s just good at avoiding the subject.
“Do you die. Have you died before.” Molly hops to another stone, and nearly loses her balance, but manages to gain it again before Diane feels the need to step in.
“I can’t imagine living but never dying.”
“Have you ever died before?” Asks Diane.
“No,” says Molly. “But I will. That’s all a part of the deal, isn’t it?”
They're silent the entire way back to camp.
"This is your book about me?" Diane asks, sitting in Molly's bunk with her after the entire world is dark again and everyone else is gone except them.
"Well. You and your family," Molly says, blushing. "Sorry. That's probably weird."
"Eh. Mortals have been telling our stories for centuries. Gives you something interesting to do."
They sit together, huddled closer than before. Molly realizes she has her arm around Diane. She wondered when that happened, and when Diane started to feel so comfortable being this close to her.
"I don't look anything like this," Diane snorts.
Molly's eyes fall on the page in front of them. It's the art for the goddess Artemis, accompanying stories about her and the huntresses, their struggles with the gods, their troubles with Orion. Molly remembers being a kid, wanting to rip that picture out of the book and hang it up on her wall, display it everywhere, back when she thought the most incredible thing in the world was a story about a young woman who designed the night sky.
"That's okay," Molly says. Her voice is so quiet in the darkness it's barely even there, but it doesn't matter. Diane's close enough to hear every word. "This is just a story. And besides - I think the real you's better."
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