Notes: Written for Aish Sheva's birthday earlier this month. Some content might raise an eyebrow. Please use your discretion.

Awakening by Neko Kuroban

Dedicated to Aish Sheva

Once again, Artemis disappears without so much as a word of warning.

Over the course of the next month, Zoë contemplates the possibility of finding a single tear in the ocean. Perhaps then she will be able to cease missing her curious, bright-eyed maiden! She is not upset — not exactly, because she knows that Artemis will always return (to her, she likes to think), but it feels as if a cloud of poison has settled into her heart.

Zoë completes her duties, perfectly and precisely without a single complaint, if only because that is who she is. (In all honesty, perhaps this is the problem: She loses herself within Artemis. Once alone, she finds herself again — and, once she uncovers her own identity layer by layer, she is forced to admit that all she wants is to again be lost inside of another girl's divinity.)

It is a late summer afternoon. The sunlight is gold and slanted, dancing on the river's surface, and Zoë sits in the sweet-smelling grass, occupying herself by honing a weapon that could already part flesh at the lightest touch.

Callisto has just finished cleaning a dyed afghan, obviously a gift for someone. It is something she has woven herself, a warped pattern of blues and indigos and violets. She had taken it off the wooden frame just that morning and brought it to the river's edge, rinsing it to remove the excess dye and treating it with lye for cleanliness and rose water for scent. She is laying it out on a broad stone, combing the fringe with her fingers so that it lies flat.

The silence between them is neither easy nor strained.

Artemis returns without fanfare (and, for Zoë, it is as if the daylight becomes brighter, shadows dispelled) but with all of the usual bravada, her silver-blue eyes bright and her hair, red-gold in the dying sunlight, streaming behind her. The first thing she does is to embrace Callisto, flinging her arms around her, and Zoë's hands clench in her lap until her fingernails bite into her palms.

(Later, Zoë will regret not taking her into her own arms first.)

"You've come back!" Callisto kisses Artemis on the forehead, unmeditated and impulsive.

(Later, Zoë will discover that her nails have raised crimson crescents in her skin. In hindsight, she thinks this is the point where blood was drawn.)

"I've missed you, darling," Callisto confides, leaning forward as if to divulge a secret. "I swear to you — if I had a flower for every time I thought of you, the garden I presented you with would be radiant indeed." She chases the words with peals of silvered laughter, airy and perfect.

(Later, Callisto will find Zoë to apologize — just as she always does. As always, Zoë will ignore her. In the morning, dawn will come blood-red, and she will force her lips into the first feigned, trivial smile of the day and insist — even to herself — that everything is fine.)

"Can distance truly separate friends?" Artemis is nothing but intensity, nothing but radiance and shadow. "If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?" As she speaks, her head is tilted up towards Callisto.

Her gaze, however, is locked on Zoë.

(And that is what Zoë will remember most about this moment.)