There was a day during which a man awoke to a sheaf of seven arrows perched on the side of his bed.
Sunshine trailed lazily over their tails, and although he searched, there had been no bow in sight; it was a gift from the gods, of course. The arrows were adorned with silky patterns, waves of emerald-green and swirls of midnight-blue, each unique and its own unrivalled masterpiece. Mid the coming days, the man shedded his sweat on the upkeep of the town's altar, which became distrustful once left to its own devices. Then, after work, he daydreamed as he twirled a newly-chosen arrow. When he washed himself, he would play with its fan in an outdoor bassin, tearing off bits of its plumage into the lacquered gates of evening water. Tantamount to sleeping fairies the feathers floated in the lights of fireflies.
Such were tokens, he mused, given to him for certainly something - his deeds, or mayhaps a thing unknowable. In a mirror of polished bronze he would trace his chest with their points, curious as to the pain such weapons could pronounce in correct conditions. If pressed enough, the wooden bars echoed steady beatings of his own heart into his fingertips, like tiny pulsations of the hearts of beings he could not see or understand.
Seven days after the apparition of the pouch, there was still no bow for me to comment on. The afternoon gloomed with the lurking heat of approaching thunder. Once more, the gift and the man brushed into the woodland which housed the creek. He rid himself of clothes, and soon all hassle pertaining to the deific dissolved as his body donned the ripples ruminating at his entrance. The quiver lay untouched atop the mossy shore. Waterbugs skittered by mid his scrubs. Lillies roused from their sleep.
All souls felt, for a moment coalescent, the urgent incarnation of an invading presence: there was singing - the reflection of a glassy moon on translucent fabric, like the moon had suddenly become a being, and that being was wading her feet through the summer greenery of the stream.
The gloom paused with bated breath. Clouds bloomed to reveal constellations the man had never seen, and, right then, Artemis and her maids graced the water, which lay undisturbed as though no goddess had just entered its depths to freshen her skin. A crown of mistletoe rested on her head; she was nude. At the scene the man gazed as if it were a painting: its demiurge bearing the starring role, her likewise scintillating women, the clearing, hushed politely in their wake, and the nighttime critters, the only ones left murmuring a distant tune. The missing curvebow glistened, as though it had only just been birthed, across Artemis' back, thin and pearly, like a wound of milky blood, throbbing with draughts of wind.
Artemis turned to face the man: the colour of her eyes was indescribable, as any effort to do so would greatly take away from this magnificent creation of the Cosmos - more intricately drawn than any divine imagery. A smile inked a wreath across her cheeks.
The man knew then that he was not a man, but something else entirely.
Crickets trilled more urgently as her mouth opened to produce a voice akin to the brass ravaging of duelling blades, to sprouts reaching roots into unknown worlds of beasts.
'Look, a deer has lost his way over to the path.' - like ripening of citrus pulps, salt crystals chiming at the roaring seaside, subtle tinglings of wild magic.
It was not the words who created - the deed had already been long done, when the man-cum-symphony had found a sheaf of seven arrows lodged carefully beside his bed.
Dawned then a thought to move, so he washed past the golden jugs held by nymphs laughing thrice as much as the divinity. Water edged the dirt as his hooves trudged out from the belly of the current. The deer trotted onwards, blissfully leaving a fretful life forgotten, into a hallway kingdom ruled by Earth and Sky: a reality uncovered under a cacophony of stars.
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