Atalanta vs. Love

This short story is my version of the myth of Atalanta and Hippomenes, written for the April Fools Day Story Contest 2024. It is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of the characters to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

This story contains very little erotica.

Much thanks to one of my all time favorite writers, the legendary onehitwanda for her inspiration and feedback!

Hope you enjoy the story!

Atalanta Versus Love

Long ago, an Arcadian man left a baby girl in a wild mountain valley because he had wanted a boy. He left her there for the wolves, but for whatever reason, the Fates decided that it would instead be Apollo, on an early morning stroll, who would find her by a creek, bawling her eyes out.

Struck by the similarity of the baby girl to his sister Artemis in her brown eyes and her curly chestnut hair, he was compelled to help this infant girl. So, he called upon a mother bear and asked her for a favor.

"You want me to do what now?" The bear asked, fixated with horror at the very sight and smell of the pink human thing.

"Take care of her. Give her a home. Raise her as one of your own."

The bear groaned. "You're asking me to raise one of those deranged bear killers? Look, Apollo, I like you, but I can barely manage two cubs of my own let alone a human... thing. I must refuse."

"Who provides you and your cubs wild honey and berries to eat? Streams full of fish? Pleasant summers and short winters? Take care of the child, mother bear, or perhaps my berry bushes and my streams won't be so productive this year."

"Fine," mother bear grumbled. "I'll take care of the child. But she better not turn out to be just another bear killer."

"I swear to my father Zeus that if you raise her well, she will not." Then he bounced the baby in his arms and tickled her fat baby chin and cooed, "You're not a bear killer are you, you little thing? No... you're just a pudgy widdle --"

"Just give me the child," growled mother bear.

Apollo laughed and handed the baby over.

"What is her name? And what god does she honor?" asked the bear.

Apollo pondered the questions for a moment, and decided that the child should be named Atalanta, which means 'indomitable,' in the ancient Arcadian language, and that as a child of the wilderness, she shall honor his sister, Artemis.

"The Goddess of the Hunt? Great. That won't go wrong for me at all," the bear replied flatly. Nonetheless, she accepted the child. What choice did she have? She needed Apollo's honey and berries. She needed all the help she could get. Being a single mother wasn't easy. She sure as Erebus wasn't going to try at being a single mother without the favor of the Gods.

"Well, there we have it. Thank you, mama bear," said Apollo with a gracious bow. Then, he turned to the infant and with a gleaming grin said, "You are fierce and tenacious. You are a daughter of the forest and a follower of the moon goddess. Never be with a man, or you will lose your way."

***

The bear upheld her end of the deal. She resisted all temptation to eat the child Atalanta, and instead raised her as one of her own.

With bears for siblings, and the deep woods and the sun-drenched hills to roam, and honey and berries and stream trout for her sustenance, Atalanta grew up to be a tall, beautiful woman endowed with muscle-corded legs, arms as taut as marble, thick hair that flowed like a mare's mane as she ran, and in her heart the spirit of a bear. She had a wild, natural beauty just like her goddess.

Because of her beauty, many men sought her hand for marriage, but she made a promise to her bear mother to keep to Apollo's accord so that she would remain wild and free and not beholden to the ways of man. But that did not mean the men did not stop trying. What is man, after all, if not the most stubborn of creatures?

Over the years she resisted all men who sought her, but after a time, she grew so tired by their relentless effort that after a little too much wine at the local taverna one day, she pronounced to the crowd, "By the grace of Artemis, I will only marry the man that can beat me in a footrace. So have it. Race me, men of Arcadia, and take your chance at the prize of my hand in marriage. But be warned: he who fails, shall be struck by an arrow from my goddess to die like a boar."

She sat smugly, rather proud of herself for rustling up such a clever idea to get the village men off her case. At first, it seemed to work. A silence fell across the taverna, and the men all looked at one another, to see what idiot would be foolish enough to risk his life for a chance at her hand in marriage.

Then there he was. The idiot that would answer. In the silence rose a voice, not a manly voice, but a boyish voice that rang shrilly. "I'll race you."

All turned to find at the bar, a traveler in a dusty white tunic who looked in every part as delicate as the voice that came from him.

"And who are you, boy, with those slender legs and soft muscles, to think that you can beat me in a race?" Atalanta asked.

The man stood and said, "I am Hippomenes, and though I may not look it, I am fast."

Atalanta burst out in laughter. The village men of the taverna laughed too, knowing the meagerness of the poor man's chances.

After she had stopped laughing, she wiped the tears from her cheeks and replied with a somber voice, "are you willing to bet your life on it?"

This Hippomenes, who looked like a child given an older brother's tunic, and whose face was soft and pretty like a maiden's beneath his dusty-brown short-cropped hair, nodded, and replied, "name the time and place, and I'll be there."

Atalanta first reacted with anger at this stranger's arrogance -- to think that he could beat her who had spent her days running with antelopes and horses? But the anger soon turned to admiration for his boldness, and then finally to remorse, as she realized that he may know nothing of the name Atalanta to believe that he could come even close to beating her in a race. He must not know the certainty of the doom to which he subscribed, but to refuse him the race after blustering in front of all the village folk and the huntress above would certainly reflect poorly on her character. She had no choice but to accept the man's challenge.

"Very well. Tomorrow at sundown, we meet where the road starts at the hill above the vineyards," she said. "There we will have our race."

"I'll see you there," Hippomenes replied, too enthusiastically for Atalanta's conscience.

***

The following day, as the sun sank into a windless sea to cast a rosy twilight, while the red clay earth still gave off the heat of a dry Arcadian summer day, Atalanta found waiting at the top of the vineyard hill the dauntless Hippomenes and most of the village. Hippomenes, standing erect, looked as sure as ever.

Atalanta spent the better part of the day contemplating the race, not because she worried about losing, but because she had been moved by Hippomenes' eagerness to race her in the face of death. Just a fool or a man with a death wish, she had told herself, but she could not help but wonder if there was something more than that. A courage there that she certainly never found among the villagers, and that she could not deny was praiseworthy. So taken by the delicate-skinned Hippomenes that the previous night, she lamented to her goddess for dooming a soul with such virtue. But her goddess, glowing between the sailing clouds that night, who listened to her uncharacteristic lamentation with confusion, offered her no pity in return. "You made an offer, and it was accepted. Be a woman of your word now lest you be dogged forever by men," said Artemis.

It was with a heavy heart that she agreed with her goddess, and with a heavy heart that she found the maiden-faced young Hippomenes awaiting her arrival above the vineyards where the road began.

"Are you ready, Hippomenes?" Atalanta said, using his name because at least the soon-to-perish, whether unwittingly or not, deserve the respect of being called by his first name.

Hippomenes nodded. "Ready as I'll ever be," he replied with an anxious smile. His eyes were beautiful, soulful, and innocent, and because of that, Atalanta could not look into them.

"Then we'll start here," she said as she drew a line in the red dirt with her foot. "The rules are simple: We race to the main gate of the village by the sea, then back to this line. The first to cross shall be the winner."

"And the luckiest man alive," Hippomenes replied, drawing laughter from the onlooking villagers and even a smirk from Atalanta.

"We shall see," Atalanta said, and with that, she doffed her tunic and her sandals, not to be lightened, but to run as she always ran in the wilderness. She did not mind the gawping stares of virile eyes upon her naked body. For all their staring they can never possess her. For her, it was a natural state and to run as such -- to feel the rushing wind against her skin was akin to breathing the cleanest air or feeling the vigor of her heartbeat.

She took her mark, and Hippomenes followed suit. The village mayor came to their front and raised a hand and dropped it to start the race to a rambunctious cheer.

Hippomenes started strong, sprinting faster than Atalanta expected. But then, all manner of creatures have the capacity to perform incredible feats when their lives are on the line.

He pulled ahead, but this did not worry Atalanta. In fact, though she trailed him, she maintained pace without drawing a harder breath than she might have while resting in bed, and she did not come even close to drawing a sweat. After a while, and after considering that to give the man false hope was cruel, she quickened her pace and came alongside him. "Not bad," she said to him, "but I'm afraid you're going to have to be much faster than that if you think you can beat me," and then she took off sprinting to demonstrate the fruitlessness of his effort.

But before she could get too far, something sailed across her eyesight, glinting golden in the setting sun. As soon her mind had comprehended the peculiar thing to be an apple, she felt a sudden ravenous desire to seek out the fruit where it fell in a thicket of tall wild wheat.

Her feet took her off the road. She dove into the thicket and crawled like a hound sniffing after its quarry. "That apple!" she muttered, pushing aside the wheatgrass. "Where is that apple! I must have it!"

When she found the glimmering prize, she swiped it and clutched it to her heart.

"Ah-ha! Sweet thing, I have you!" she cried, then took a large bite from the ripe fruit. How beautiful the taste. How it filled her up and gave her a feeling of satisfaction and wholeness that she had never felt before! So joyous was the feeling that she laughed and cried and took another bite before she swallowed the first. When she finally did swallow, her mood shifted as if a storm cloud had just blotted out a bright sun. She blinked once, twice, then, when the spell had completely faded, found the bobbing shape of Hippomenes not larger than a tiny dot on the road ahead, already near the gate of the sea village.

"That damn cheat!" she raged realizing that she had been bewitched by the golden apple, and that it could only have belonged to her dastardly competitor.

She tossed the apple aside and took off sprinting as fast as her legs could take her. She was huffing now, her nostrils flaring like a galloping mare's. Her eyes sharpened into a glare, fixed on the sight of that bastard who had tricked her into chasing after what was most certainly a witch-hexed apple.

He had touched the gate and had started back towards the finish line by the time she had finally caught up with him. When she did, she snarled at him, "I'll teach you to mess with me, little man! Once I've crossed that finish line, I shall take great pleasure in giving a cheat like you his just deserts!"

"Cheat? How am I a cheat? You said nothing about apples in your rules!" Hippomenes replied, breathing hard. "Speaking of which..."

He reached into his tunic and, to Atalanta's great chagrin, pulled out another apple and held it up for her eyes to feast on. "What do you think of this apple?"

Immediately she felt the bewitching effects the apple had on her. Her eyes could not tear away, and neither could her heart, which swelled with more of the same emotions that she could not understand, except in the sense that they were surely caused by a powerful hex.

"Oh no you don't!" she growled, putting in a burst of speed to sprint past her devious rival. Hippomenes threw the apple across her sight with greater strength than last time. The apple disappeared into a wild rosemary bramble far from the path. Atalanta, despite her best effort to restrain herself, could not help but dive after it.

She cursed aloud while she searched for it and cried once she found it and bit into it to taste juices as sweet as any nectar of the gods. A spring flood of good feelings rushed into her every being. Good feelings she had never before felt in all her time as a wild, free woman. At the same time, her mind roiled in disgust for indulging in this luxury while her very freedom was at stake. "Why am I letting that ass win!" she sobbed, as she took another huge chomp into the golden apple.

She swallowed, and the bewitching haze again lifted. Angrily, she tossed the apple aside and jolted into a mad sprint. She put every effort and every ounce of energy into her legs. Her hair flew in the wind. Her thighs rippled with immense strength as she bounded like an antelope. Her lungs burned. Tears streaked across her face. She had to win. She had no choice. It was Apollo himself who had whispered in her ear that to be with a man would be to lose her way. She was running for her way of life. Her very identity.

Hippomenes was already at the final bend before the last straight into the vineyards. The villagers cheered raucously when they saw that it was he that had appeared first. But Atalanta was close behind and picking up speed with every bound while Hippomenes labored to put one foot in front of the other. The villagers quickly went quiet when they saw her coming up the road, seeing that every one of her leaping bounds was worth five of his padded steps. She flew faster than the wind. She flew like Hermes.

When Hippomenes saw her coming up on his tail, his eyes went wide with fear. The last fifty paces or so was up a steep hill and having already expended most of his energy to run, his feet were clumsy. He slipped on the loose dirt as he tried picking up speed. He yelped out of fear and scrambled madly to the finish line. He clawed and kicked at the dirt.

Atalanta beamed, knowing now with all certainty that she would catch her prey. Overwhelming relief filled her. Joy filled her now that she had certain victory within her reach. In fact, after that short streak of utter terror, so much joy had rushed into her to replace it, that no room was left in her mind for the possibility that if this cheat Hippomenes had two golden apples, he might have a third. She was hit with that ugly realization only when he reached into his tunic and pulled it out.

"No!" She cried as she immediately felt the irresistible pull of the apple. "Sweet goddess, nooo!"

Hippomenes heaved the apple down the steep hill. It tumbled and bounced. She dove atop it before it could get away from her and cradled it to her bosom as if it were the most cherished treasure she had ever held in her hands. A smile came to her face while tears streamed from her eyes. She watched with futility as Hippomenes clambered to his feet and limped the final few paces to collapse across the finish line. Atalanta's heart clanged with grief, but once more, she could not help but bite into that lush, beautiful fruit. Little chunks of apple flew out of her mouth as she sobbed whilst the villagers threw a celebration for their new hero. They lifted him up into the air and splashed wine on him. Atalanta looked to the setting sun while she chewed that apple, and saw Apollo there shaking his head, and then to the rising moon and saw Artemis there giving her a shrug. So, that was it. The Fates had decided. All she had left to do now was to accept their ugly decision.

She walked glumly to the celebrating villagers, where Hippomenes was being tossed into the air, to watch his glee. When they finally let him down, he went to her and gave her a smile and, bowing, offered his hand.

Atalanta glowered at him and at the offered hand. "Well done," she said. "You have played the game unfairly, but you bested me. I must be a woman of my words, so here I am now, as your bride."

She put her anger-trembling hand into his, and he pulled her towards him and replied, "As I am a traveler, my home is not near, so take me to yours, my lovely wife, to drink sweet mead and so that we may consummate our lifelong bond beneath the honeymoon."

A pale moroseness drew upon Atalanta's face as she contemplated her new life with this small man who had bested her. To be his wife, to be obedient, to be shackled to marriage when her heart and soul burned for the rush of wind in her hair, the far horizon, and dangerous adventures. It was too much sadness to bear. She, Atalanta the indomitable, who had traveled the high seas with Jason and his famous Argonauts, hunted the dreaded Calydonian boar alongside Meleager, defeated King Peleus, father of Achilles in a wrestling match, and with her own bare hands slew the brutal centaurs Rhoecus and Hylaeus. But lest she spurn the moon goddess, she had no choice but to accept whatever the Fates decide, which was to be wed to this conniving nobody named Hippomenes.

Reluctantly, she consented, and took him beyond the sheep-grazed hills and beyond the stone pines and the tall cypress to her home in the granite mountains that overlooked the placid sea of Myrto.

***

The moon rose full and early and spilt its silver gleam upon the plumy clouds above her mountain home.

Despite the immense fortune she had garnered from her many adventures abroad, her home was nothing more than a humble hut made of stone she had taken from the hillside, and thatched straws she had collected from the fields. A simple peasant's hut, which was more than enough for a wild woman who spent most of her dawns and dusks and the times between enjoying the divine splendors of the earth's natural treasures. A hut that would be her's no more, as it turned out, for as soon as they are fully wed, Hippomenes would take her to whatever gloomy Erebus he is from.

Without a word spoken between them, she led Hippomenes into her home and poured him a cup of mead, and none for herself.

"Will you not drink with me?" Hippomenes said, his voice, Atalanta noted curiously, steps higher in pitch than before. More effeminate it seemed, and carried in it, none of the rodomontade of a victor, but all of the nervousness of a sheep who had found himself a guest in a wolf's lair. But it really did not matter to her how he intoned his voice -- she was his captive regardless. She pushed the mead cup into his chest and wryly responded,

"I am obligated to wed you. I am not obligated to drink with you."

"But I would like it very much if you were to drink with me...," Hippomenes murmured before taking a timid sip.

Atalanta grimaced, but poured herself a cup, and for a while they drank sitting beside one another on the stone steps where a cool breeze from the sea touched them pleasantly.

Hippomenes asked for another when he was done with his first, and drank that quickly, and then another.