Chapter Text
Darkness painted the sky. Stars shimmered overhead. The moon shone its beams down, a crescent hung on an invisible string.
A night like any other.
He should have gone inside, heeding his mother’s call to curfew.
The warmth inside the small cottage usually called to him, beckoning him to enter and whispering promises of comfort that chased away the cold in the air.
But the stars, the sky was moving.
A shape, hidden against the backdrop of light and darkness, lumbered across the horizon.
Gargantuan, bigger than the mountains and almost covering every inch of the distant sky.
It seemed to sense him as it turned its head - slowly, ever so slowly, yet too quickly for its size - and…
He stared, held in place by those twin pools of bottomless depths.
His mind span and his eyes couldn’t even blink, caught like a small mouse staring into a serpent's gaze.
“Apollo!”
He startled, whipping his head around to see his mother by the open door. She had a frown on her face with those eyes again, the ones he often saw whenever he or his sister would do something she disagreed with or thought dangerous.
Blinking, he turned back and the thing - whatever it was - had vanished.
But he was certain he had seen something.
A gentle hand upon his head, stroking his hair as his mother knelt down in front of him.
“Are you okay, sweetie?”
He nodded, at a loss for words and mind still reeling.
“Mama?”
His sister called from the cottage.
“We’ll be right there, Artemis,” his mother replied.
“Okay,” she shrugged - he could tell she did.
Her hand held his as she led him into the warmth he had forgotten was calling.
He cast a glance over his shoulder, back to that dark expanse where he could have sworn something had passed by.
What was that?