SAMANTHA MALLINGER - ARTEMIS

Samantha Mallinger currently works full-time in a retail store in her home state of Iowa. She dreams of one day being a full-fledged writer that will change the world of symbolism within her stories. In order to do that, she went to Buena Vista University and received a bachelor degree in history with minors in psychology and sociology before she started attending Full Sail University to get a bachelor degree in creative writing.

ARTEMIS

​She could be in the Olympics for her archer, never misses a target. The wind could be against her and her arrow still hits the target, but she doesn’t want to be in the Olympics. She avoids anything Olympian since that one event that happened in her life, many years ago. So many years ago that the memory shouldn’t be clear and vivid within her dreams that haunts her every time that she goes to sleep. Three people know the truth. One is herself. One who is dead, never to return back to life, no matter how much she prays and plead. The third and final one that knows the truth is her brother. The brother that she shared their mother’s womb with, her younger twin brother is the culprit. He’s the one who took away her happiness and started rumors, just like their Aunt Demeter.
            Rumors that held little truth to them, rumors that were nothing more but lies. Lies! People wrote down lies about her life and the event. How little do the mortal people know about the truth behind all the myths and legends surrounding her heritage and she’s not the only victim. Like the rumors that surround THAT event. The event that took away her happiness, her love for a mortal man that not even her older sister Aphrodite – the goddess of love and beauty – couldn’t even replace within her. A love that only one other couple has experienced, their own relationship image destroyed by a mother unwillingly to let go of her daughter to someone who treats her like a queen.
            Images of the event flashed through her mind, reminding her of the horror. She was standing there, standing right next to Orion. He was a mortal, a hunter like herself, but soon he was going to be a god. They were on the hunt, just a simple hunt, to enjoy each other’s company, otherwise known as a date in this modern world. Her twin brother stood in front of them, holding onto his bow with an arrow in place, getting ready to aim for his own prey. Her brother took aim and before she could respond, before Orion could respond; her brother shot his arrow at Orion. The arrow penetrated Orion’s chest, like one of their own hunting arrows going into a stag cleanly.
            She remembers screaming after Orion collapsed onto the ground. She tried to save him from her Uncle Hades and Aunt/Cousin Persephone; she tried to prevent Orion from going into the River Styx. It would all end in pain and heartbreak. Hades and Persephone, they didn’t want to take Orion, but they had no choice. He would have died from the poison that the tip of the arrow was laced with. Persephone was there, trying to comfort her, saying she knows the pain that she’s going through when she has to leave her husband behind to return to her mother. She scoffs at that, Hades is still alive, still treating Persephone like a queen, but she…she has no one. Her Orion is gone, only visible within the starry night sky, when it is her time to look over the mortals at night.
            Since that incident, she is anything but formal with her brother. She’s polite to him at the mandatory gatherings and looks the other direction if he’s nearby. He isn’t allowed to visit her outside of business discussion and even then she’s not the perfect host to him. She has kept to her vow of not ever forgiving him and she’s crude to all of his lovers. Why should he get to enjoy a woman’s company who he enjoys but takes away the one man’s company that she enjoyed?
            She walked out into her balcony looking up at the star filled sky, the half-moon slowing rising as it was becoming her turn to shine. She won’t rise up to the sky until the sun is all the way down. She’s acting childish for so many centuries but she doesn’t care.
 
Silvery wisps of a glowing blue light shimmered next to her, one of the glowing particles moving around her hand until it reaches her palm, causing her to squeeze gently. “Hello, Orion.”
 
It was nothing more but a small whisper into the evening sky, to the mortals, an imaginary breeze. To her, it was everything. “Hello, Artemis.”