Alright, hello readers! This was something I thought of, and I started scribbling and BAM it is on the Internet!

This story is rated T because a lot of why the Hunters are Hunters is because of the mistreatment they, amongst other women because the world was brutal to them before, endured during their lives- whenever that was. That treatment may or may not include violence; so just eyes open for that. It's also in chronological order of time. We start in the antiquity, then we get to the Middle Age, colonisation of America and so forth. So bear with me, here. Also; Zoë Nightshade is in this because she's been with the Hunters for longer than anybody. But she doesn't speak with her 'thou' and 'thy'. Why? Because this starts in Ancient Greece. Assume this dialogue is in reality Ancient Greek, and Zoë cares about that language enough to keep up with it.

Enjoy!

PS- For this particular chapter... I'm not the best poet, so amplify quality by 5,7.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunters of Artemis, the PJO world and any characters that may come from it; which include Artemis, Zoë Nightshade, and Phoebe.

Elissa of Amnissos

16th Century BC

Elissa raised the stick from the sand and looked back at what it'd left.

"Not bad," someone said behind her. "Not bad at all." She spun around to see Nikon behind her, his golden hair held back by a leather headband, and for once he wore his sandals.

"Thank you," she told him. He sat down next to her.

"The hand is crooked. On the right. But other than that it's beautiful." He said.

"I wish I could put it on a vase," she told him. He squeezed her shoulder.

"It deserves to be on a vase." He said. "But you know that won't happen."

Elissa rolled her eyes. Yes she knew. She knew full well, and she felt like kicking someone in the shins for each time she was reminded.

"Or maybe on a tablet. I could even carve it in wood. Draw it on papyrus."

"Stop torturing yourself with that," Nikon said. "Just because your pictures come to life doesn't mean that your dreams will."

"I wish they would."

"Wishing angers our parents." Nikon said. "They want you to marry."

"I know, but I want marriage and dreams come true. Wouldn't it be amazing, that? Having everything you want? Some people do. Father and Mother did. You did."

"That's different," Nikon said. "I'm a carpenter."

"It's what you wanted. I want to be a poet. I want to be an artist."

"You mayn't." Nikon said. "It's the order of things."

"Order and chaos go hand in hand; one will eventually trip the other, who will eat a mouthful of sand." Elissa said softly, in a sing-song voice.

"That was pretty; but poems like that won't be remembered. Not poems from the lips of a girl."

"It isn't fair. I have things to say; ideas to speak. Why is it assumed only old men with beards look at life?" Elissa said, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Because it's assumed that little girls live it," Nikon said. He ruffled her hair, and she caught his hand before he ruined her braid.

"I have to go home; father needs help with the carpentry. He's not as strong as he was, or still thinks he is."

"Age took his strength, but not his soul." Elissa whispered. Nikon ruffled her hair again.

"Don't stay out alone too long," he said before jogging back into the seaside village. She looked up at the sea. At the little lines in the waves. At the different shades of blue that the ocean faded in an out of.

"How can something so beautiful, take lives in such gruesome ways, when all it does is give us plentiful, of food to live and fuel our freedom craze?" She whispered. She wrote that in the sand next to the picture she'd already drawn.

"Maybe if I marry an artist he'll let my work be put under his name," Elissa whispered out loud. "At least someone will hear. At least it won't completely disappear. The name will be false and the praise misguided, but I am ready to engage in this deal one-sided."

No; not even. An artist would stand for himself.

She sighed.

Often when Elissa of Amnissos sighs; amazing, brilliant things happen. Emotion happens.

"Beautiful- even my husband said so!" One woman said.

"Writing in the sand…" Another said. Elissa straightened up. The market had never been social for her; she'd always been too busy watching the colours and stands and people. She listened too; women bargaining, talking to each other, laughing, gossiping, calling out to children and husbands…

"What?" She asked the woman. She was an old woman that lost all her children in childbirth and who dressed in chitons too short since her husband had passed away, and she had nothing of her own. People had started referring to her simply as Poor Pandora.

"The fishermen were going out to the boats when they found writing in the sand. Beautiful poems; arranged into words like nothing they'd seen from this village before." Poor Pandora said.

"What did they say?" Elissa said, scrambling in her memory. Had she erased the words last night? She always did; but had she maybe just this once…

"Oh- it's absolutely lovely," another named Rhoda said. "My husband memorised it nearly immediately, with the memory he has… Mentor?" She called. "Mentor- what was that poem?"

"Hmm?" A man said looking up uninterested. "Oh.

A bird on a branch

A songbird on a branch

He sings a song and people look and see

People look and see what that songbird can be

I sit in my home

I sit alone in my home

I, surrounded by people is still, I alone

I sing a song but people turn their heads

They cover their ears and shroud their hearts in darkness

They refuse to hear what song I have to sing

I have a song to sing

Yet nobody to hear

I wish I had wings

Like the songbird that they look and see

Elissa turned pale.

"I know, it's amazing," Rhoda said. "You can go see yourself."

Elissa dropped the basket and ran out of town.

"Elissa!" Nikon ran after her, since he was the one keeping an eye on her while she was out.

She saw people gathered around the rock she usually sat on and look at the drawing on the ground, the words written over and over.

No… This was bad. This was horrible. This was…

"Amazing," Old Man Proteus said. He said that he'd been there since the village was founded, and he was so wrinkled and knowledgeable people didn't know whether to believe him or not. "It's amazing."

This was what she'd always wanted. People reading her words and knowing them and calling them beautiful…

Maybe they wouldn't praise her; but her words were part of her. And if they praised that… Elissa felt good.

I look at the sea every day of every year

And then I look at your eyes

The difference is so thin I nearly shed a tear

For the sea is my prize

But it shifts so often and violently you cannot grasp it

You can try and try, and you might succeed a bit

But it will be short-lived, for the sea always shakes you away

And since you are the sea; I know my heart is astray

Trying to touch something with which it will only succeed a bit

It was dark. She took a torch and gingerly walked out of her parents' house. Luckily it was on the outskirts of the village and it was easy to get back to the rock. The big rock in the beachside where she always sat, always wrote… She planted the torch in the ground and kicked the sand flat again. She sat down on the rock and thought. She looked at the stars.

Star bright, above my head

You're not worth the tears I shed

When you disappear under the sky's new dress

And when sun and white clouds are to what I address,

Yet my heart yearns for you to rise

For when you do; I can show what I have to the world's dark eyes

For now a month she had done this. She had written poems in the sand and people would run out in the morning to check for them and memorise them and tell them to their friends. She drew sometimes, and people would admire them. A little boy hopping down the road and talking about night birds had made Elissa's day, since it was her latest fascination, and the latest thing her words spoke of. They all fumbled around her and spoke of his talent and she stood behind them, nodding and awing so nobody would know. Her mother had even said that if the poet was within age of marriage, Elissa would find him most suitable. She'd bit the inside of her cheek not to laugh.

I wear a mask

But I am unafraid of my face

I wear a mask

But I am unafraid of my face

I am but fearful of what you would say if you saw

The face given to me by the gods united with the fate I chase

You wonder but you shouldn't

You ask questions but you should have answers

You look but you don't see

I am right in front of you

The poet that came to be

You just refuse to even think

That maybe I'm more than I can be

"Stop!" Someone yelled. Elissa turned around, nearly knocking the torch down. She saw a few boys, maybe fourteen, fifteen years old coming at her. "What are you doing to the poem?" One said.

"I…"

"Erasing it, are you?" One said looming over her menacingly. Elissa's heartbeat accelerated so fast it hurt. Bad things happened in situations like this, she knew it. She heard the stories. It was why she wasn't allowed to go out alone when the village slept and its streets were deserted.

"Sabotaging it? Just because you don't enjoy it doesn't mean that we don't!" One said.

"I… I…"

Elissa was lost for words for once.

"Damn you to Hades," one boy said, raising his hand.

Elissa was curled in a ball when she woke up. She climbed off her bed. She tried to lay a fingertip on her eye and she winced the second she did.

She hoped there was no mark. No blood, no scratch from their nails, no ugly black and blue skin… If there was her mother would yell and freak. Her mother would yell and freak anyways of course; once those boys told the villagers about Elissa sabotaging their beautiful poems… As if nobody had noticed her love for words, or how she walked about humming them, and rhyming her sentences.

So she snuck out of the house. She shouldn't have; it was against belief and improper; but she couldn't have Nikon or Father with her now. She just walked down the street in a rage, and fled to the seaside.

"Why is it you demand the truth, and deny it while it's in your hand…? Why is it you beg for a roof, and then complain night and day when it's anywhere under grand..? Why is it you chase perfection, when you chase it away at the first occasion..?" She muttered angrily.

The words in her head were like orders to talk. Except they came in rhymes and variety unlike others. Elissa couldn't explain it, and she knew that someone would find her, some fisherman would spot her, and then she'd have to.

But she didn't want it. She just wanted to have her words in the sand and a pat in the back. For people to stop yelling at the sky and thanking the poet while she was at their side, or in the room… It pained her suddenly; that she was least likely to be the mysterious poet. Those boys had proved it to her.

"You speak well." Somebody said. She spun around and saw a girl dressed in silver.

"Thank you," Elissa said. The girl wore a dress far too short- shorter than Poor Pandora's. At her knee! And her sandals were men's, like what Father said the Olympians of Olympia ran with. She had weapons upon her back as well; a most particular girl overall.

"Who taught you?" She asked.

"Nobody. I watched my brother write and learnt how. The words just come in my head."

"You're a natural poet," the girl said in wonder. "What an incredible talent. It's rare. Like Homer."

"Who?"

"It doesn't matter. Have you written anything grand yet? Epics?"

"Grand… no. I've written in sand. And my words have been erased. I've written what they wanted, and they scorched my blood, sweat and tears." Elissa said.

"I don't understand poetry and metaphors and all," the girl said. "What do you mean?"

They walked down the beach –away from the village- and Elissa spoke to the girl that she didn't even know. But the girl did something only Nikon and a handful –a pinch actually- of others had; she listened.

"So let me get this straight; they don't think you've got or can have the talent, because you're a girl." She said.

"Exactly." The girl sneered.

"They haven't heard of Amazons or Atalanta or Hunters, now have they?" She sneered.

"Hunters?" Elissa asked.

"Of Artemis. The goddess hunts and we, her hunters, follow; loyal to her. She brings us to places we never thought we would go, shows us things we shouldn't be shown according to society, and lets us do things with the same limits." The girl said. "With her, anything is possible; whether a man lets you do it or not."

She thought back to the boys. Hitting her because she did something not allowed. They were accusing her of the wrong thing. They should be acknowledging her talent after years of standing next to her in the village or market and not even realising how she spoke or what she spoke of. They should have listened to her. They should have let her. They should have acknowledged what she could do; an incredible talent, like the girl had said. And last night; when they caught her; they should have caught themselves in their false tracks and begged for forgiveness.

She didn't deserve the black eye. She deserved what the girl spoke of.

"What is your name?" Elissa asked the girl.

"Cyanae," the girl said, "Cyanae of Corinth, daughter of Zeus- although it doesn't matter from where I am now."

"How many girls are like you?" Elissa asked.

"About fifteen," Cyanae said. "But there is always, always room for one more."

"May I be the one?" Elissa said. "I love my brother and family but…"

"But this is your chance to use the words you have. Not to let your talent spoil, because who knows when another one like that will come around, and I mean it…"

Elissa realised the girl didn't know her name.

"Elissa of Amnissos," she said.

Cyanae brought Elissa back to her home. It was a campsite. Silver tents were suspended around a fire where girls walked, boiling water, poking at the coals, throwing strips of meat to wolves with fur as white as it comes. They talked amongst one other and laughed.

"Cy, did you find the nearest village?" A girl wearing a kind of crown asked.

"Yes Zoë," Cyanae said. "And I found someone too. She's interested in leaving and never coming back."

The fourteen other girls gathered around to throw their names around and say hello and learn her name. It was the kind of warm welcome a rich or royal man got in the village.

"Follow Zoë; she will take you to Lady Artemis." Cyanae said. "She is our lieutnant."

"Lady Artemis was finishing a conversation with her Father and Lord; but she shan't mind meeting you at all." Zoë promised Elissa. "She likes bright minds, and she likes bringing them where they can shine. With us."

Back in the village; the rumour started that Elissa, the carpenter's daughter, had been tampering with the poet's art. As they looked or her they realised she was gone. Most of them thought 'good riddance- that was a wicked girl who didn't belong anyplace anyways!' and had no trouble sleeping at night.

But they had problems going through the day when they realised that Elissa was gone the same day their poems stopped appearing in the sand...

Next Chapter

"I know what you liked about it. People cheering your name, and calling it, and praising you. Children and grown men alike idolising you, calling themselves by your name in their games of make-belief. But I do not like it. I do not want it."