second best ›› castle & artemis
castlexarcadia
Artemis knew it even days before their meeting. It was strange how the air almost churned with his presence; how he could be sensed from so far away, as if his very blood was calling her. She had found herself more prone than usual to stay close to the Towers. Her hunting trips were cut short to avoid losing track of that soft tingling sensation at the base of her neck, telling her that someone of her own blood was awfully close. She knew wasn’t strong enough to be her brother, no, it was a mere fragment of the force that held Leto’s twins together. Maybe that knowledge was what kept the goddess from searching for the newly arrived demigod by her own. She was fairly certain the child of Apollo would come to her sooner or later either way. It was far from a surprise that their first meeting should be during her archery class. Her brother had not been granted the title god of archery for nothing.
The goddess had thought she would be prepared for the encounter, but still her stomach lurched at the sight of him. It had not been difficult to single out her brother’s child among the other demigods moving across the fields. The short boy was far from a spitting image of his father (and the pink hair gave her quite a surprise), but he radiated something that was so familiar to her. It was a faint notion of secret languages and laughing brawls, arrows flying in pairs and the constant movements of a floating island.
She shook the brown locks irritatedly as her eyes once agin was drawn towards pink hair and a short stature. It wasn’t her brother, she reminded herself, as if it wasn’t painfully obvious to her already. The boy hadn’t given the slightest sign of recognizing her, as she knew Apollo himself would have done, even though he now was only meters from the perimeter of the archery field. The huntress took a deep breath, trying to coax her expression into something not too strained before walking over to the demigod with quick steps.
”Are you here for archery?” The familiarity of his face was almost soothing to her, even though her head was working overtime trying to differentiate this demigod from his father. ”I am Artemis, the teacher,” the goddess added. A hand reached out for the boy to shake. The greeting came as a surprise even to herself, handshaking not being in her usual repertoire of introductions.