Naturally, the Olympian huntress claimed an early advantage. Her keen senses guided her deftly over the tricky terrain, which she shortly abandoned to leap for a low-hanging branch. She swung about and vaulted upward, landing upon a higher point and launching herself forward from there. Silver eyes as sharp as a falcon’s remained adamantly trained on the ground below where a suitable target would surely present itself.

Apollo, meanwhile, adopted a more relaxed pace once he had separated from his sister, bounding about with long, graceful strides. All the while, he kept his smirk, and he soon enough began to hum to the rhythm of his steps. He altogether lacked the hunter’s focus for which his sister was famous. Possessed by his purpose, he needed it not.

"What to take, what to take?" he muttered to himself in a sing-songy tone. "A hawk? A snake? No, that would be absurd. Something fiercer than a bird…An overreaching bear."

High-riding Helios glanced down with interest as the siblings hunted, guiding his chariot steadily across the firmament. The burning vehicle painted the sky orange as the hours wore on.

Stalking through the forest with all the cunning and focus of a hungry lioness, Artemis passed over one potential target after another in search of the perfect victim. It was always a challenge for her to overcome the disparity in the roles she occupied: at once the Goddess of the Hunt and a lover of nature, she never failed to share the agony each animal she slayed experienced as it breathed its last. It was all she could do to try to make their endings quick.

She nocked an arrow and drew it back, taking aim at a great boar grazing idly in the distance. A great boar would do, would it not? What quarry could her brother have found that could be more terrible? She was The Huntress, and he was just an overzealous artist who occasionally picked up the bow. The contest was a farce from its inception. She was going to win, and once she did, she would have peace.

"How do you choose your prey?"

Orion’s words passed through her thoughts, and with them, the memory of their first encounter came rushing back to her. It had been a clear day like the one she now enjoyed, and another frivolous jaunt through the forest had come to an end when the nature-loving goddess had felt the shift from protector to predator. She never really knew when it would come over her, nor could she fully comprehend why it was that she could not control the urge. But, when the shift came, all the beasts of the land and sky could feel it, and none would abide her presence until they felt it had passed.

None but The Hunter, who targeted her just as she targeted him when the two had happened upon one another. Arrows drawn back, the goddess and the halfblood stared fiercely into each other’s eyes and endured a long silence until, at last, Orion spoke.

"How do you choose your targets?" he’d asked.

"I chase the strongest," she’d answered.

The smirk she now found so fetching had been like poison to her at the time, and she’d met it with a snarl. "And when you’ve found it, do you always hesitate so?" he asked. At the question, Artemis had lowered her bow and turned her back to him. Her mind, then torn from the hunt, granted greater fluency to her tongue. "You think too highly of yourself, hunter," she’d said. "The hunting of men is the province of savages."

His arrow then facing the forest floor, the hunter smiled. "Mastery of the hunt is reserved for he who recognizes that the divide between man and beast is not set in stone. The greatest quarry is the beast that knows well your heart and mind. The master never hunts a stranger."

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Eyes narrowed, Artemis lowered her bow. She had never run with this boar before. It was not her perfect prey.