Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1: DEJÀ VU

“Artemis. Don’t you think it’s a bit too much to ask, oui?”

Those lips she loved to kiss were curled in a contemptuous grimace, and the voice that came out of them was icy, yet Artemis wasn’t worried at all. To understand Minerva Paradizo, one had to listen at her eyes, not at her words. And above that upturned nose, behind a pair of half-lenses, those beryllium shards were neither contemptuous nor icy. They said: yes, and they also said: but, entertain me.

And Artemis was happy to oblige. As she herself had pointed out a few months earlier, Minerva was arrogant. As she herself had pointed out a few weeks earlier, Artemis loved her arrogance. Condescension wouldn’t have been as much fun.

Artemis had been preparing for so long to ask her (five minutes). She had known the chances of her saying no were high (unlikely, but it could cost her a bit). And she had grinned at the feeling of déjà vu when diananonfoeminanomen (1) had written to athenenoctua (2) to discuss a personal matter (that was how it had all started).

Artemis had been preparing for so long to ask her (five minutes). Five minutes wasted, because as soon as athenenoctua is calling had appeared on the monitor and diananonfoeminanomen had joined the conversation, she had discovered that her microphone had been muted.

Artemis had shot the webcam her most offended glare... which had not been that much. There was a smile threatening to curl her lips. It was no use, and she had known it all too well. Minerva would have read her eyes just like Artemis could read hers. And her mismatched eyes couldn’t have been more telling if Artemis had stood up and curtsied to the camera.

The number of people who could hope to stand up to Artemis, above or below the surface, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. And only one of them could see her concede with so much grace. Because Artemis loved her arrogance. She loved watching her win, the grin on her lips, so similar to her own. Getting into her system just to have the first word was a mastermove. One that Artemis could only bow to.

How exactly she had done it, that was another matter. Artemis supposed she could backtrace her steps, but she wasn’t sure. It would be easy to label both her and Minerva as genii – and she knew many made that mistake – when in fact, for all the overlapping they had, their talents were quite distinct. Artemis was multifaceted: Jerbal Argon, the LEP psychologist tasked with profiling her when the People had decided to mindwipe her, had compared her to Leonardo da Vinci – a comment that had tickled her ego amidst all the nonsense. For Artemis, there was essentially no knowledge that wasn’t worth knowing. Minerva, on the other hand, was far less eclectic: she had a predetermined range of interests that were worthy of her attention, and she rarely deviated from them. She was perfectly capable of deciding that an entire field of knowledge was not for her and ignoring it accordingly. Oh, sure, she would end up learing it anyway – eidetic memory, just like Artemis’ – but it would never get more than a shrug from her.

That was just the beginning. Where Artemis was more than content with locking herself up in her lab, Minerva wasn’t above getting her hands dirty. Where Artemis was always looking for a practical application for her discoveries, Minerva loved science for its own sake. And of course, being the exceptional people they were, both had so many exceptions to those rules that to the most all of this appeared as little more than mere coincidences.

One of the fields in which Minerva excelled was hacking, something Artemis had suspected ever since she had seen her realizing that the feeds Foaly was showing her were fake. On one hand, Artemis could have obiected that one didn’t need to be a computer genius – or even a genius, for that matter – to figure out that there was no army when she could just stick her head out the window (in case you're wondering if Artemis had restrained herself from informing Foaly that she thought his plan was pretty idiotic, the answer is no); on the other, someone very, very clever had deleted all information about the girl and her family from the internet, and there weren’t many alternatives. Confirmation had come from Taipei 101.

“Give it to me.”

Artemis had turned, surprised. Not something that happened often, even if it definetely had happened often than before since that damned puberty had begun and her interlocutor was a pretty girl like Minerva Paradizo. The truth was that, between the urge of awakening the demon warlocks, the intromission of Kong’s men and the bomb strapped to Holly’s wrist, she had forgotten about her for a moment. It had helped that in the last few minutes Minerva had done her best to make herself as inconspicuous as possible, as if she wanted to conceal the role she had played in that affair. Now, however, she had taken a step forward and Artemis had had no difficulty in reading her body language: shoulders back, head held straight, a face that – although distressed – was full of determination.

Eight minutes, a voice in her head had reminded her.

But perhaps it was because Artemis well understood the desire to redeem herself after a mistake; perhaps it was because she had asked herself what she would have done if it had been her, the one with a bomb strapped to her arm; perhaps it was simply because – after all – Minerva was a beautiful girl and Artemis a fourteen-year-old with her mind clouded by hormones. Whatever it was, she had signaled for Holly to come closer.

Minerva had wasted no time. Using a key as lever, she had torn apart the panel and, ignoring the rest of the components, she had headed straight for the timer. Her slender fingers had reached into the bowels of the device, ripped out a cable, and connected it to the PDA she had fished out of her pocket. Amazing that Kong hadn’t thought to confiscate it. On the other hand, that man was cleary an idiot.

“Artemis, six minutes,” Holly had whispered, but Artemis had barely heard her. She knew a genius at work when she saw one, and it was clear from the confidence with which she moved that Minerva was sure of what she was doing.

The flipside, well, was that absolutely nothing was happening. Minerva typed. The timer ticked down at an unnatural pace, at least to Artemis’ eyes. Nothing else. Her eyes – and, she was sure, everyone else’s in the room – darted between the rapidly decaying red numbers and fingers moving almost as fast.

“Two minutes…” Holly’s voice was tinged with desperation, and Artemis had felt the doubt creep into his mind, too. What did she really know about Minerva? She was a genius who managed to catch a demon with less information than Artemis had had when she had kidnapped Holly. She was smart, funny, and very pretty. But Artemis knew her own skills and limits. Minerva’s were an enigma. She had to admit that, with her glasses askew, her curls plastered to her face, and a trickle of sweat running from her forehead to the corner of her eye, she didn’t inspire much confidence.

Artemis had opened her mouth to say something – what, for once, she didn’t even know. Maybe “I’d like to thank you all,” as if she was on Hollywood’s red carpet. Not really original, but soon there would be no one left to hold that against her – when Minerva exaled. A moment later, the bomb slid across the linoleum toward her.

Artemis’ first instinct was to jump back. Laughable, really, because it certainly wouldn’t have been enough to save herself from the bomb, nor was the distance between it and Minerva enough to keep the other girl safe from the explosion. It would only have made her look ridiculous, so she had suppressed her instinct and lowered her gaze.

The timer now read 23 hours and 59 minutes. Next to her, Holly had whistled, and Butler had also raised his eyebrows, impressed. It was enough to take it to the nearest building and defuse it. Enough, if necessity arose, to just drop it in the ocean, where it couldn’t hurt anyone.

Artemis had shifted her gaze from the bomb to Minerva, who had a satisfied smile on her lips. A smile she knew well, the smile that accompained at task succesfully completed. “Thank you,” Artemis had said.

Minerva had snapped out of it, her smile disappearing faster than a mouse in its bolthole. “It’s not much. That timer is well known in geological surveys. And construction. I guess that’s how they got it into the building.”

Artemis had said the exact same thing earlier on, but she avoided pointing it out. In the confusion, it was entirely possible that Minerva had missed it and come to the same conclusion on her own (they had known each other since just a few hours, and it wasn’t even the first time it had happened). Plus, she didn’t exactly look like she was ready to compete in wits with her, at the moment. Even with her awful social skills, Artemis could see that: her immediate usefulness exhausted, Minerva’s only desire seemed to be to disappear again.

Artemis wanted to say something. That it hadn’t been her fault. That in her place she would have done the same. That she’d seen her stand between N°1 and Kong’s men, and that had to mean something.

But there had been no time. Even with the bomb temporarily out of the equation, there were footsteps and voices coming from the stairs. N°1 and Qwan had to disappear before the existence of the People became public knowledge.

“I’ll call you,” she had said, and Minerva leaning out with Butler to watch them disappear into the sky was the last thing she saw.

In the end, it hadn’t been the bomb that had doomed them. It had been Holly’s wings, which hadn’t held up to the combined weight of Artemis and the two demons. The girl was still thinking about the two figures standing out against the broken window, as she reached out to remove N°1’s bracelet.

And Minerva had waited for that phone call for three long years.

“Artemis.” A French accented voice had jolted her out of her memories. She had moved her eyes to the monitor, where Minerva’s index finger, bent in a hook, filled half the screen: “Come here.”

And Artemis had grinned, because she had spent forty-five minutes facing the mirror, and she was glad the other had noticed. Minerva’s methods might be questionable, but she had her priorities straight, and Artemis agreed with her: what she had to tell her could very well wait.

The first time she had ever tried to put on makeup at Fowl Manor, she’d waited until one of the rare instances when she knew it would be deserted, Butler included. She had double-locked the door, checked the handle for safety, and even then a creak had been enough to make her jump in her seat, nearly spilling eyeshadow all over herself. She had waited for two minutes in complete silence, her heart pounding and her ears cocked, before calling herself an idiot. Fowl Manor was old, creaks were normal. She had only noticed because she had been on alert. Even so, she had stopped shaking only when she had wiped her face with makeup remover. Of course, she’d made a mess of it. Never mind. Genius was also admitting when it was time to fall back to fight another day.

The second time there had been no suspicious noises, and Artemis had been able to recreate a good approximation of the makeup Minerva had applied to her in that hotel room. And then she had hidden her face in her hands and burst into tears, without even knowing why she was doing it, when the truth was that the face that had looked back at her from the mirror was perfect, it was hers, and that tore her apart from the inside. Artemis knew who she was: a girl.

The third time there had been tears too. But tears of joy. She hadn’t come down for dinner that day, claiming of being indisposed. She didn’t need anything to eat, anyway: she had never felt so full of energy. She had removed her makeup in the dark, so as not to see herself without it, and had gone to bed with her heart fluttering pleasantly inside her chest.

Since then, things had gotten easier, especially after her coming out to Butler and Juliet. Now it was enough for her parents and the twins to get out of the way. When they were alone in the house, her two bodyguards called her by female pronouns, and Juliet insisted on assisting her during her makeup sessions, even though her style was completely different from Artemis’. Butler had also shown up once or twice, and it had seemed to her that his gaze, as she carefully applied eyeshadow, had actually softened. This had left her freer to experiment, too, as when Juliet had helped her put on a corset (Juliet, that it is necessary to tighten the laces until my insides squeeze out is a misconcept! I’m surprised that you, of all people, don’t know that!), an experience she would never repeat (she would definitely do it again).

But it was Minerva’s judgment, the one that mattered most, a judgment that had made her use – for the first time in her life – her cell phone camera to send photo after photo for her approval, basking in each of her enthusiastic comments. Hearing it from her voice, however, was another thing.

Bent over the screen, she had willingly submitted to the exam, tilting her head first to the right and then to the left, up or down and adjusting the lamp as she was asked. All this while green eyes – the eyes of a scientist – dissected her, until it had seemed to her that the warmth of the lamp was that of Minerva’s body, until it had seemed to her that the fingers touching her were her girlfriend’s. Until it had seemed to her that Minerva was there beside her, until Minerva had called herself satisfied.

So?, Artemis had spelled.

Minerva had tapped her lower lip with her index finger: “Hmm. You have to understand that in order to formulate a reliable review, I’d need to be there with you, oui? But...” She was enjoying prolonging the wait, Artemis knew that. When she wanted to, Minerva could be as mischievous as her. “...Twenty out of twenty (3). And nothing less.”

Artemis had been glad that the blush hid the red she felt warming her cheeks. She had looked down: good, the microphone was back. “You don’t have to lie just to make me feel better, you know.”

Minerva’s eyes had replaced her index finger on the screen, four or five times their real size: “You think I am lying?”, she had said, a note in her voice that would have sent shivers down the back of anyone but Artemis. “Look at me in the eyes and, as the scientist you are – that we both are – tell me if I’m lying.”

That was something Artemis really loved about her. True, she might have been raised to take her father’s place at the head of the Fowl empire, but – in her heart – Artemis was a scientist. Theorems and data were languages she was fluent in. And Minerva wasn’t one to just make assertions: that, anyone could do. No, Minerva brought the evidence for what she said and then dared Artemis to contradict her. She pointed Occam’s razor at her throat.

And Artemis had cut herself on it. She had bled on the blade, and every drop had been examined under the microscope. Minerva was a genius. A skilled liar. And her love for her was undeniable. Yet she had never lied to her, and Artemis knew her well. She knew her intimately. There was no sign of lies in her voice nor in her eyes. No, that Minerva was lying was an idea that required too many leaps of logic. And entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (4). The bottom line was that, as unlikely as it seemed, Minerva was telling the truth – or at least what she believed it was the truth. That, Occam’s razor could not discern, but experience came in, and experience told her that Minerva’s truths had an habit to turn out to be so. She had once said that Artemis’ eyes saw further than anyone else’s, but she had been wrong. It was Minerva, the far seer, the one who saw things no one else did. Not even her, Artemis.

“No, you’re not lying,” she acknowledged. “Now, please explain.”

Minerva had adjusted the glasses on her nose. “Explain? What’s there to explain, when the images speak for themselves? You know me, Artemis. We’ve spent basically every waking moment together for three months, n’est-ce pas? And you’ve seen how often I do it rough. Eyeliner and eyeshadow, hair pulled back so it doesn’t get in my eyes, a touch of gloss if I really want to overdo it. And you know why eyeliner and eyeshadow?”

With a small nod, Artemis had signaled her to go on. It was true that with eyeliner and eyeshadow – both rigorously dark – Minerva’s pale green eyes looked even bigger, brighter. But she didn’t need it: even without makeup, she was beautiful. The eyes are the windows to the soul, the saying went, and there had to be something else behind it.

“As you know, I am almost identical to the woman to whom I owe my mitochondrial DNA,” Minerva had begun. Artemis was used to those periphrases, which slipped out of her mouth without her even stopping to think at them. On Minerva’s lips, the word mother was a curse. “What I’ve never told you is what makes us different: she carries the FOXC2 gene. She has purple eyes, while mine come from father’s side of the family.”

The psychology behind it was basic, but Artemis had been careful not to interrupt her. They both knew that Minerva could have simply said “FOXC2” and Artemis would have understood anyway. She was giving her the full speech for a reason.

“When I put on eyeliner and eyeshadow, it’s because I want everyone to look at my eyes, see that they’re green, and that I’m not her. If it weren’t for that, I think I could easily do without makeup. But you?” She smiled. “How long have you been in front of the mirror?”

It wasn’t like Artemis to lose sight of the clock. As long as she wasn’t spending her time with Minerva, that is. “Fourty-five minutes.”

“Fourty-five minutes. Mon Dieu. Don’t you see, Artemis? You put into your makeup the same meticulous care, the same focused attention, the same perfection you use for everything else that matters to you. And believe me – I swear! – it shows. Therefore: twenty out of twenty, and nothing less.”

Artemis had opened her mouth to protest again, but this time Minerva didn’t bother to mute her microphone. She had simply spoken before the other could. “Nothing less, I said. Remember how it ended the last time you questioned my judgment on your appearance, oui?”

Artemis felt a smile creep across her lips. “Yes. I remember it having ended up quite well. And we may soon have a chance for an encore.”

Minerva leaned over the monitor. They both knew Artemis was not one to talk nonsense. Saying they would soon have a chance for a encore implied being alone in a hotel room, away from prying eyes.

“Interesting. Tell me more.”

Artemis had allowed herself a grin, even though there was very little fun in her situation: “Interesting? Let’s see if you still think so after you know what it is. But first, tell me, are you free on the 26th and 27th of this month?”

Both her voice and her words had suggested that Minerva should check her calendar and pretend she was already busy. And they both knew that was exactly what she would have done, if anyone else had asked. But Artemis was different, and she had nodded

“Because my mother – and judging by Minerva’s look, that said it all: who would suggest something out of their comfort zone but Angeline Fowl? – has decided to take the twins to France for Christmas.”

Minerva was, after all, a genius. Her face hadn’t even gone through surprise. It had settled straight away to horror.

“...to Disneyland.”

Minerva had spared her from beating around the bush and asking why she was telling her. That would have been an insult to both their intelligence: “Artemis. Don’t you think it’s a bit too much to ask, oui?”

Those lips she loved to kiss were curled in a contemptuous grimace, and the voice that came out of them was icy, yet Artemis wasn’t worried at all. To understand Minerva Paradizo, one had to listen at her eyes, not at her words. And above that upturned nose, behind a pair of half-lenses, those beryllium shards were neither contemptuous nor icy. They said: yes, and they also said: but, entertain me. So Artemis had simply gave the webcam her sharpest smile.

To her credit, Minerva pretended to think about it. She pretended to think about it for a long time. Artemis knew that, in a ranking of places she disliked the most, Disneyland would end up – if not first – at least on the podium. And, after looking up the website, she couldn’t even blame her.

Eventually, however, the girl gave in: “So be it. How may I look at myself should I leave my fiancée all alone in that hell? You know, my father will be positively beside himself. He’s been trying to drag me there for years, oui.”

This, was what Artemis, who was leaning against the back of her chair, had expected. It was then that the unexpected happened. Minerva’s air of martyrdom was replaced by a grin that Artemis knew well. A grin that, when it was on her lips, she was used to have it described as vampire-like: “The 26th and 27th, you said?”

Artemis bent over the monitor. They both knew Minerva was not one to talk nonsense.

“The idea is that after that they’ll go back to Fowl Manor, while I’ll follow you to Geneva… if you’ll still want me around, that is.”

The other girl waved it away: “Of course I’ll still want you around. But if they think we’ll just let ourselves be dragged off to Disneyland, they’re sorely mistaken. Disneyland, eh? Even as adults, they like to treat us like little girls. All right, then, on the first day we’ll behave like good little girls, to please them. Because complacency breeds arrogance. And then this’s what we’ll do on the 27th…”

Artemis had been preparing for so long to ask her (five minutes). She had known the chances of her saying no were high (unlikely, but it could cost her a bit). And she had grinned at the feeling of déjà vu when diananonfoeminanomen had written to athenenoctua to discuss a personal matter (that was how it had all started).

There were some pretty big differences. Her heart pounded in her chest just from the pleasure of talking to Minerva; she had no need to ask Butler to re-wax the floor, and if there were tea stains on her desk, she hadn’t noticed. Above all, it was a different Artemis, the one sitting in front of the monitor. An Artemis with long hair and makeup on her face. An Artemis with an electrum ring on the ring finger of her left hand.

But both this Artemis and the one who had invited Minerva to Fowl Manor last summer would have reacted to the girl’s proposal in the same way, with a grin she was used to have it described as vampire-like and saying: “Let’s do this.”

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(1) Latin for “Artemis is not a female name.”

(2) Binomial name of the little owl, sacred to Athena/Minerva

(3) Top marks in French universities, equivalent to "summa cum laude".

(4) Latin for: “Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity”. Phrasing of Occam’s Razor, or principle of parsimony, that suggest chosing between a set of explanations the one requiring the least amount of elements to work.
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Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: HELL AND HEAVEN

“E come li stornei ne portan l’ali / nel freddo tempo, a schiera larga e piena / così quel fiato li spiriti mali / di qua, di là, di giù, di sù li mena (1).”

Minerva grinned. As a scientist, she thought herself an atheist, and there wasn’t better evidence against the existence of God than that on December 26th the sun was shining over Disneyland. Her and Artemis’ presence should have called forth rain, storms, hurricanes. If there were a God, the mere fact that they had set foot in Disneyland should have torn the very fabric of reality apart.

Some would have argued that this was precisely what was happening. All of France, and probably a couple of neighboring countries, seemed to have chosen that day to crowd the park, and yet their little group had managed to carve out a space for themselves. Black jacket, black shirt, black tie, black pants, and black shoes, Artemis was a creature of darkness, and even though this was wonderland, no princess could dispel it with her touch. Had she even managed to get past the hulking bodyguard in tow, or Minerva herself for that matter. To the passer-by, with her silver fur coat, matching fur hat (both fake) and golden hair falling down her shoulders, she looked like she belonged at Disneyland far more than her partner, but one look at her eyes would have dispelled any doubts. Those green irises were as cold as Cocytus.

“This must be hell. Hell. Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’intrate (2),” Artemis had declared as they passed under the archway. In fact, Juliet, Beau, and the twins seemed to be the only ones genuinely enjoying the experience. For Butler, the thought of being exposed and squeezed into such small spaces as they were must have been a veritable nightmare, and the fact that he didn’t flinch at every turn only spoke volumes about how deep Madame Ko’s training ran. Bahind the mirrored lenses, his eyes were no doubt scanning the crowd for suspicious activity. Of which there was no shortage: they were in Disneyland, after all. At least, Minerva thought, the glasses her and Artemis had provided him were easing his job a tiny bit. As for herself, she agreed wholeheartedly with her girlfriend. Unlike Artemis, this wasn’t her first time at Disneyland. Even though her previous experience was twelve years in the past, it had left her a pretty good idea of what it entailed, and it ranked just slightly higher than having a tooth removed without anesthesia.

If Artemis hadn’t already guessed the reason for her loathing (in addition, of course, to all the others Minerva didn’t need to list down because they agreed upon them), she would have as soon as a mouse with a bow on her head and a polka-dotted skirt bounced under their eyes, and the back she was circling with her arm stiffened under the fur coat, and Beau chuckled before Minerva silenced him with one look and mumbled: “Elena vedi, per cui tanto reo / tempo si volse (3).” And even those who hadn’t immediately recognized the quote – that is, all the present company but one – realized from her voice that shortening Minerva’s name would be a fatal mistake.

Why had she agreed to be there, if she hated Disneyland so much? The answer would have been clear if anyone could have gotten past Butler’s guard and close enough to her and Artemis to hear their words. From their position under a carousel – which apparently consisted of whizzing around at a speed of 48,3 km/h (basic mental arithmetic, for the two of them) on chairs dangling from a chain, in defiance of the most basic instincts of self-preservation, and about which Minerva reserved the same judgment that Artemis had expressed – one rested her head on the other’s.

The hypothetical passer-by would then have seen a small, sweet smile appear on Artemis’ lips, and all the clouds that stormed in her mismatched eyes suddenly clear.

“The last time I was in an amusement park I almost died,” she whispered, with just a hint of sarcasm in her voice. “Forgive me if I’m ruining the mood.”

“Hush,” Minerva silenced her. “Your feelings are perfectly legit. My reasons for hating this place less so, yet this doesn’t stop me from hating it. And the only way you could ruin the mood – mine, at least – is by not being here by my side, oui? Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona, / mi prese del costei piacer sì forte, / che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona (4).”

It was Artemis’ turn, to rest her head on Minerva’s shoulder. They were together, and that was all that mattered. Because even Hell is bearable, when Paradise holds you close.

Freedom, at last! “Farewell, happy fields / Where joy for ever dwells! (5)”, quoted Artemis as Disneyland vanished from the rear window. No more bright colors, no more uncanny buildings or shady figures in rubber costumes. The French countryside passed by the window: vineyards, farms, trees. And it was a cultivated nature, one that thrived of men’s labor. Not a wild and gloomy moor lit by the eldritch moon, but trees arranged in small orchards or lined up in rows, like soldiers marching to the rhytm of La Marseillaise. Had them been veiled in mist, they might had very well appareared ghostly, but under the sun their coat was pure gold. It was a nature that sparkled in Artemis’ heart the desire to roll up her sleeves, grab a palette and paint, surrounded by the buzzing of industrious bees (well, perhaps not in December, but still) and the chirping of birds and other rural noises that normally she wouldn’t have cared about.

And then Paris’ skyline appeared in the windshield in all its dazzling magnificence. Perhaps the Eiffel Tower was no longer the tallest building in the world, as it had been when it was built, but it was still the most unmistakable. It was not Artemis' first time in Paris (rather, at that point she could very well consider herself a regular) and she knew very well that a book should not be judged by its cover, that for instance the city was polluted as hell, and yet – however unbeknownst to her the reason was – just seeing the rive droite and the rive gauche, the Louvre Pyramid and the spire of Notre-Dame filled her with raw, pure emotion. Perhaps it was the freedom that came from leaving her parents, their demands and that hideous amusement park behind. Or perhaps it was Minerva at her side, giving a new palette to everything like only she could, with her golden curls and green eyes, so tall and elegant in her silver coat. Minerva, who had suggested a place Artemis had never been to, and one she wished to see, too. Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds / Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things (6). If the sun shining over Disneyland the day before had been a mockery, now the sky was blue for just the two of them.

A smile bent Artemis’ lips when she saw the names of Cuvier and Buffon on the street signs. She exchanged a glance with Minerva: there would come a day when their names would be spoken in the same way. They sat on a bench in the Jardin des Plantes, side by side near the statue of a prehistoric proboscidean, a squat beast that actually looked more like a tapir than an elephant. But one day in its future, it would have. There, they were alone and no one spared a look for the couple when a familiar trousse appeared from Minerva’s bag. There was no need for words, while Artemis shrugged off her coat and pulled her hair clean from her face. They both knew Minerva would be faster.

As Minerva had noticed the first time she had put her hands on her, Artemis had a beautiful skin. She wasn’t surprised when the other girl didn’t troubled herself with foundation. Her cheeks were already flushed from the cold, but a touch of blush made sure they stayed that way. Once again a pink that looked red on her lips, and again black on her lids, against which the blue and hazel of her mismatched eyes shone. The transformation took less than five minutes, and when Artemis looked at herself in the mirror Minerva handed her, she felt like she could breath once again.

In the company of Minerva, she could be herself.

And when they entered the museum and the smell – old wood and dust, and an undertone of lemon from whatever they used to clean the cabinets – hit her nose, despite her allergy protesting, she took a deep breath and felt at home. Disneyland? No. An old museum, among old bones, Minerva’s arm around her waist, that was where she belonged. A science that they could understand, measure, dissect, and a love that defied any word. That, were Artemis and Minerva.

And then they were inside, and the art nouveau architecture juxtaposed with the skeletons was art by itself, as was the nature that had created the cathedrals of ribs they walked under as they passed through the cetaceans section, or the tiny phalanges of a pygmy shrew, fixed to the support because a sigh would be enough to lose them forever, in the dust of the floor.

And the companionship she was in, turned the entire experience from wonderful to absolutely amazing. Artemis couldn’t think of anyone she knew who wouldn’t have stiffled a yawn after a while, but Minerva’s eyes were as bright as her own. Who else amog her peers would have leaned over to have a closer look at the jaws of the Tyrannosaurus rex, curved like the head of an axe, and extimated the tremendous force they would have exerted when the animal was alive? Who else would have challenged her to list the differences between the skulls of a thylacine and that of a wolf, when convergent evolution had made them so similar (7)? Who else would have guessed why she had chuckled at the worn label of the Irish elk and at the fact that the brochure they had picked up at the entrance pompously suggested that the name giant deer was more accurate (8), or why over the skull of the Mosasaurus she had hummed fifteen men on a dead man's chest, yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum (9)? Who else would have understood why she was so amazed to see Père David's deer displayed as if it were just another animal, because that it had been when the skeleton had been collected, not yet extinct in nature?

And then they went out of the museum and inside the grande galerie de l'Évolution, and Artemis thought that if the galerie de Paléontologie et d'Anatomie comparée – with its dusty bones, the skeletons almost cluttered together, and the frail-looking cabinets, which seemed to be thought for the use of a just few naturalists and not for the everyday public – was a satisfaction of Artemis' aesthetic taste, then the grande galerie de l'Évolution – big and spaced, all pale wood and glass cases – was of Minerva's. She knew that the other girl was thinking the same thing, and that she was smiling at her because perhaps in their concept the two museums were different, but the function was the same: to show to the public the magnificence of nature. And, in truth, didn’t a taxidermied animal pop up here and there in the galerie de Paléontologie et d'Anatomie comparée too, and weren’t there bones in the grande galerie de l'Évolution too, hanging skeletons of cetaceans and models explaining how taxidermy worked, and weren’t they both part of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle? Just as Minerva’s hair were be blond and Artemis’ raven, Minerva was tall and statuesque and Artemis thin and petite, and a passer-by would have deemed them oh so different, but in their eyes there was the same light and they were two halves that had become one once again.

And they stopped in front of the mount of African animals marching together, their heads bent to look at the audience like models on a catwalk, and this was art too, taking nature and freezing it forever in a grand pose.

And they found once again the thylacine, and with it the quagga and other animals that had disappeared because of man and of which those taxidermied remains were the only vestiges, and in the presence of Minerva prevented Artemis’ mind from lingering on the silky sifaka, just a fleeting pang of guilt, soon forgotten.

And in all of this they talked and talked and talked, hardly stopping to catch a breath. And Artemis found herself thinking, and it was not the first time, that before meeting Minerva no one had really listened to her. She had resigned to considering her voice a background noise others paid attention to only when she was saying something directly useful to them – usually, in a life or death situation – her musings on art and science unheard. She had never realized how great was in her the desire to share her knowledge with someone which could understand her. And then Minerva had came, and turned her monologues into dialogues. When they emerged from the museum, squinting against the sudden light of the sun, Artemis was smiling. And she didn’t need to look at her to know that Minerva was smiling, too.

In any other city, Artemis would have thought the little café Minerva had suggested nothing but pretentious. Padded metal chairs with legs swirling like vines? Round marble tables barely as wide as her arm? A sign so convoluted it was almost illegible? Come on. Pathetic.

But they were in Paris. What would have appeared laughable anywhere else, here it was normal. The café wasn’t trying to be something it wasn’t. It was showing the world its true face, and not caring what the world thought back. Just like Artemis, right now. Not to mention – she had to concede that – that the croque monsieur she’d been served, accompanied by sautéed asparagi, had been truly excellent. And it was no small compliment, coming from her.

Minerva pushed aside the bowl that had contained a helping of gratin dauphinois and graced her with a smile: “Do you trust me with dessert, Artemis?”

And the thing was, had it come from anyone else – with the possible exception of Butler – the offer to order for her would have immediately set the girl off. It was something more than irreconcilable culinary traditions or just well-intentioned but irritating attempts to correct a thinness that Artemis knew she couldn’t change any more than she could change the color of her eyes... right, I’d find a different example. It was that Artemis had been in control her entire life, and was hesitant at letting it to someone else.

But that was not just any random someone else, it was Minerva. Her culinary standards might not have been as high as Artemis’ own (she had never had the chance to witness it firsthand, but Butler had told her stories that Artemis had struggled to reconcile with the girl who had wished her good luck from the broken window of the Kimsichion Gallery. That was long before spending a summer with her, of course), but the girl knew her well and knew her tastes, she joked in ways befitting her intellect, and – for what concerned Artemis’ thinness – she was perhaps the only person who had never made a single comment about. Artemis had trusted that she would have never dragged her into a groggery, and she had been proved right. She could trust her with dessert, too.

And so she stood watching as the other girl whispered to the waiter something she didn’t catch, apart for: “Est-ce qu'on peut avoir une deuxième petite cuillère, s'il-vous-plaît (10)?”

She shot her a questioning look, but Minerva merely grinned mischevously and then engaged her in a debate about Anthropocene, the problems in locating the golden spike, and the demerits of basing a geological division on human activity (11). Artemis tought the People might have something to say about that.

Their pastime – because that was it, as neither of them really cared, so much so that they had started with taking sides and then convinced each other abot the merits of the contrary, and then continued arguing, because on opposite sides they still were – had been interrupted by the waiter returning with a plate of dark chocolate poured over a pear. Next to it, a scoop of ice cream – probably vanilla, given its colour – melted mixing with the chocolate and the syrup exuding from the fruit.

Artemis’ eyes widened at that sight: “Minerva, isn’t it a bit too much? Even for the two of us...”

The other girl chuckled and pushed the teaspoon torwards her: “Eat. I’ll finish the rest.”

Such an unhygienic proposal would have made the Artemis of just a year prior shudder, but that Artemis had agonized the entire summer before finally meeting his end in an hotel room (12), almost three months prior, choking under foundation and eyeliner and lipstick. She, Artemis, was the girl who had drunk from the same cup as Minerva before they even declared love.

She dug the teaspon into the white pulp, gathered a bit of melted chocolate and ice cream on top before bringing it to her lips. Swallowed.

Oh my God, but it was simply delicious! Not even too sweet, as Artemis disliked swets. The bitter taste of the dark chocolate perfectly balanced the vanilla as the sclereids (13), weakened by the cooking, dissolved under her teeth.

Not that she has expected otherwise: trusting Minerva meant leaps into the unknown, but never falls. That girl showed her the crossroads, hands held together to let her know that she was by her side, but then it was Artemis’ to decide. Even closing her eyes and letting Minerva guide her, it was still her choice to make. Some might have wondered what difference it made, being not able to grasp the subiety. But many of those roads, were paths her girlfriend has already taken. With her scouting ahead, Artemis know she would never stumble and hurt herself along the way, and she could afford to try roads she would have never dared before. And even when the path was really uncharted – hic sunt leones (14), as it reads on medieval maps – well, the oldest and strongest kind fear might very well be fear of the unknown, but with Minerva by her side, it was the unknow that had to fear them, and not the other way around. And every step, every choice, took her a bit further away from the empty corpse she had left behind in that hotel room, like a snake shedding its old skin.

Because the Artemis of a year prior had been nothing more than some skin stretched over a wooden frame, and not even one of the grand mounts she and Minerva had admired at the grande galerie de l’Évolution. No, that Artemis had been prepared by some unqualified taxidermist who had never seen a human in all their life, and now the skin stretched and dropped in all the wrong places, grotesque copy of a human being. Each and every time she saw that body in the mirror, Artemis felt the bile rising in her throat. How can you all not see it’s so fake?, she wanted to scream.

But now, she was with Minerva, and with Minerva there was no need to scream, to whisper or even to think. Minerva Γλαυκῶπις, with sharp owl eyes. Minerva who, when she asked her: “What is it?”, it wasn’t because she didn’t already know, but just to give her the chance to speak aloud.

Artemis smiled her small, sweet smile that was for Minerva and only for Minerva: “I was thinking of that restaurant in Barcelona. The very first time we met.”

Yes, Minerva already knew, and so she indulged Artemis the times when she hanged fire: “Oh, that. You know, I did my best not to show it, but I was quite jittery. You kept glancing at me and I was afraid that somehow you had got me, n'est-ce pas?”

Artemis chuckled: “I was glancing at you because you were beautiful.”

“Flatterer.”

“No, I’m serious. Ask Butler.”

“Perhaps I will, then.” Her voice was playful, green eyes twinkling under dark lashes. Her left hand supported the head, the right hand rested loosely on the table. Artemis reached out and took it in hers.

It was such a small thing, but it meant more than enough for the two of them. Why let the world know that they loved each other, when that intimate touch was so much valuable?

“I was thinking about my parents”, said Artemis. “About Disneyland. And how false my life was. For a few days or a thousand years, you can live in wonderland, but sooner or later you have to open your eyes. This...”, and with a flick of her wrist she encompassed their table, the cafè, the museums and – more than anything else, Minerva sitting in front of her. Minerva, with her green eyes, with her golden curls, with her smile, with her genius.

“...this is real life.”

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(1) Italian for: “And as wings of starlings carry them / in the cold season, in a large and full flock, / so that wind carries the cursed souls / hither, thither, down, up.” (Dante, Inferno, V, 40-43)

(2) Italian for: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” (Dante, Inferno, III, 9)

(3) Italian for: “See Helen, for whose sake/ so long a time war rolled by.” (Dante, Inferno, 63-64)... basically, how to call someone a cunt (troia in Italian, it means Troy), but with style.

(4) Italian for: “Love, which from loving spares no one that’s loved / caught me so strongly in my longing for her / that, as you can see, it still not leaves me” (Dante, Inferno, V, 103-105). Minerva adapts the quote to the fact that Artemis is a girl by converting it into femmine (originally it’s “his love”).

(5) John Milton, Paradise Lost, I, 249-250

(6) John Milton, Paradise Lost, II, 624-625

(7) an evil, evil trick of comparative anatomy tests. Despite being a marsupial far removed from the wolf, the thylacine has evolved a surprisingly similar skull.

(8) Artemis is chuckling because Megaloceros giganteus is not closely related to either the elk or the red deer, but rather with the fallow deer, making both the label and the brochure wrong.

(9) Artemis is quoting the sea song from R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island. This requires a bit of explanation: the first remains of the sea lizard Mosasaurus were discovered near Maastricht (Netherlands). The story (probably fake and or exagerated) tells that the fossil was hidden to protect them from the French Army, but suddenly “rediscovered” once twelve soldiers offered 600 bottles of wine for it. Not fifteen but twelve, not rum but wine, not a dead man but a fossil: still, close enough.

(10) French for: “May I have a second teaspoon too, please?”

(11) A proposed geological age based upon human activity. One of the problem with it is where to place the golden spike that points out the begin of the strata, since human activity is not the same around the globe.

(12) See Fools’ Paradise – If I was your vampire

(13) Those hard grains sometimes found in pear pulp, technically small lignified corpuscles.

(14) Latin for: “Here be lions.”

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