Atalanta vs. Love

"You want to consummate our marriage, do you not? I cannot see you doing that well if I ply you with any more drinks."

"I need it for the courage," Hippomenes replied before taking another heavy swig.

"Courage? What courage do you need," Atalanta replied. "You have me already. You've won your prize."

"But I don't want you to be my prize," Hippomenes replied quickly.

A nervous shade drew across his face. "What I mean to say," he stammered, "Is that... I don't want to marry you, Atalanta. I just wanted to..."

He sighed and put his cup down and stood to face Atalanta. His face went rosy with embarrassment. He sighed and said, quietly, "I have to admit to you something. The apples were not a part of my plan when I agreed to run against you. In fact, I had no plan. I had no idea why I accepted the challenge except to say that I was drunk and, well, a fool. A fawning fool who saw a chance to talk to you. To be near you. It was not until after I spoke that I realized the ruin that I had cursed myself to. That night, I went to a shrine of Aphrodite to curse her name for allowing foolish love to condemn me to certain death. But when I arrived at her shrine, I could not find it in me to curse her, because I still had love in my heart, and how could you curse love when you have it in your heart? And so, I simply wept, and it was my tears that beckoned Aphrodite to me.

"I explained everything to her -- my unrequitable love and its ruinous result, and I begged her to spare me from my doom. Well, she took pity on me and gave me her apples to use against you in the race. You see, it was not my clever idea. It was hers. I'm not clever. I'm a fool struck by hopeless love. But after all that, all I ever want to do, truthfully, is not to win your hand in marriage, but to have what had made me so foolish in the first place -- to have just a chance to win your heart. But now, standing here in your presence, I can see that I don't deserve you. You are beautiful, fierce, strong and I'm... well if I'm not just another hopeless romantic, then I am no one. I won't take your hand in marriage, Atalanta. I cannot do that and keep my conscience."

Growing more captivated with every passing word of Hippomenes' confession, by the end, Atalanta's heart poured over with compassion for this poor soul who wanted more than what life seemed willing to give him. Beside the joy of hearing that he would refuse to shackle her to him with marriage, she was taken aback by his soulful honesty.

"Well, noble Hippomenes, who is truly far greater than he thinks of himself to have won the favor of Aphrodite, what is it that I can give you as thanks for giving me back my freedom?" She asked softly.

"I am happy simply to have shared this moment with you." He raised his cup, "And your wonderful honey wine."

"Come now, that is not enough. Don't be so shy. Ask away, or I shall forever be indebted to you."

"Then... a kiss."

"A kiss? Only a kiss?"

"That is all I ask, and I shall be on my way."

"Very well. Then that is what I will give you. Come here," Atalanta said, offering her hand.

Atalanta, for all her travels with men of all manners, had never once given a kiss. She had never had an interest in kissing a man, nor did she have interest in love or things of love. Even the pleasure derived from love was not more than a thing that other people sought. Why bother, when she could derive the same pleasure on her own? But a kiss was a simple thing that meant nothing to her, obviously meant much to Hippomenes. So, a kiss she will give in gratitude.

Hippomenes took Atalanta's hand. She pulled him to her. She held his face with both hands and brought her lips to his to kiss him. The kiss was first a light touch, a brush of hesitant lip against lip. Atalanta, a hard woman, who enjoyed the vigor of a hard life, shivered from the soft touch which was foreign to her. Her whole body trembled in a way it had never trembled before.

She saw that Hippomenes' eyes were shut, so she shut her eyes, and pressed her lips harder against his and shuddered an unintended sigh into that kiss. And when the kiss was over, Atalanta kept her face hovering close to Hippomenes' as if to keep close to a warm fire on a bitter cold night, not understanding why she desired to. It was only a simple kiss of gratitude, wasn't it? Why then, was her heart beating so rapidly?

Hippomenes' eyes stayed shut for a moment after the kiss, a serene look of utter ecstasy on his face and when he opened his eyes, he formed a startled expression to see that Atalanta was still so near.

For a moment they stayed standing there, close enough to feel each other's breaths, and hear it over the sound of the summer crickets and the whisper of wind through the pine, neither willing to say a word to break the surprising intimacy of the moment. But their eyes spoke all the words required to come to an understanding that another kiss was in order. So, they kissed again, and this time, Atalanta let the kiss touch her heart without inhibition. She needed to, if only to understand why her heart should be touched so wondrously by such a thing as a kiss.

She shuddered. She leaned into it. She held Hippomenes and felt like never letting go. Never, in all her adventures, had she ever felt a single spark of desire for a man -- and she had been in the company of the most heroic of men. Yet now, here with this delicate Hippomenes, she felt more than just a spark of desire. She felt a raging wildfire grow enough to take her breath away. Her heart wrenched as if she had just dove off a cliff into the sea. Her blood rushed as if she had just climbed the tallest peak. Her mind swam with swirling ecstasy, as if she had had her fill of the finest wine. And this kiss tasted better than the finest of wines. For the life of her, she could not understand why.

"What is this?" Atalanta murmured breathlessly and drunkenly after letting end the second kiss.

"What is what?" Hippomenes murmured back, equally breathless, and drunk.

"This sudden desire I have for you. What cruel curse has Aphrodite struck me with to make me lose my way with you?"

Hippomenes' eyes lit up with surprised joy upon hearing those words ushered from Atalanta's mouth.

"You desire... me?" Hippomenes breathed.

"I cannot lie. I do. Why? I cannot say, except that you must have conspired with the love goddess."

"I swear I have not."

"Then there is something else. Never have I desired a man, so it seems that once again, you have conquered me with your tricks."

Hippomenes laughed, gave a coy look and replied, "Well you are wrong on one account and perhaps correct on another. It is not a man that you desire..."

Then Hippomenes took two steps back from Atalanta, and, shivering from trepidation, pulled his tunic off his shoulders and let it fall to the floor to unveil what he, or rather, she meant by her statement. For beneath the tunic was a breast band strapped tightly around breasts, and covering her loins, a loincloth clearly conforming not to a man's bulge, but a woman's mound.

"You're a woman," Atalanta gasped.

"And my true name is Hippomenē," replied the blushing cross-dressed woman.

"But... Why do you lie?"

"Because I seek to be an adventurer, and most women, that is to say, women not named Atalanta, are very much discouraged from adventure. A prohibition I could not abide by. I yearn for adventure. I yearn to see the world. So, I disguise myself as a man."

Atalanta smiled and nodded. "I understand," she replied. "Even 'Atalanta the indomitable' must constantly prove her worth."

"But that is why I admire you. That is why I had fallen so madly for you," Hippomenē replied. "You are unafraid to show the world who you are. You prove that even a woman can be counted in the pantheon of heroes. You are what I strive to be! Only... I am not strong like you. And I am not so brave."

"You are much braver than you give yourself credit for," Atalanta replied. "And there are many forms of strength. You have shown me that today."

Hippomenē blushed. "You do not know what you do to my heart with your words," she said.

"Neither do you mine with your touch."

But a shade fell across Atalanta's face, and in her heart came grief. "I find you beautiful. I find myself desiring you as you do me... but...," she sighed. "I'm afraid of letting you satisfy my desire, as I am afraid of what that desire might turn into."

Hippomenē cocked her head in confusion. "What is it that you are afraid your desire might turn into?"

"...Love."

Hippomenē clutched her breast and trembled at the very word. With a tremulous voice, she asked, "And why must you be afraid of love?"

"It is something that Apollo warned of, which is that I would lose my way if I were to be with a --," she stopped, realizing that what she was about to finish saying would sound incredibly silly given the revelation about the object of her desire, but she finished saying it anyway: "-- a man..."

Hippomenē raised an eyebrow. Her lips drew into a smile. "Might I remind you -- I am no man."

Atalanta smiled too, and her heart began to race with more than an uninhibited excitement, but a newfound feeling of freedom, knowing that with Hippomenē, who she found herself hopelessly falling for, she could allow herself to fall freely.

She took a step to Hippomenē, grabbed her by the waist and pulled her in to kiss her without shame. Then, without patience, dragged the elated Hippomenē into her hut to lay on a bed of soft straw and thick blankets, where they continued kissing.

Atalanta threw off her tunic to be naked, and Hippomenē untied her breast band and her loincloth to be naked with her and they moved their bodies against each other's, and Atalanta, her whole body swirling with ecstasy, moved her hands against Hippomenē's breasts, to feel their wonderful shape, and kissed her nipples until they were hard and sucked on them to make her moan and writhe with pleasure, and then, she allowed Hippomenē to do the same to her, to warm her breasts with a sucking mouth, and to leave wetness behind to cool in the soft sea-breeze.

"Am I your first woman?" Hippomenē asked breathlessly.

"You are my first anything," Atalanta muttered.

"Then I will show you everything."

Hippomenē beckoned Atalanta to lay down, then went down on her. She pulled apart Atalanta's timid legs, and put her tongue between her thighs, and used her tongue as well as her fingers to deliver a majestic pleasure that Atalanta had, in all her travels, never experienced, and when she was done, beckoned Atalanta to do the same to her, in the tender way that she showed how -- with a playful tongue between her velvet folds, and around her pink bud.

Hippomenē's cries echoed off the granite peaks above them. Wolves and owls must have heard her and thought that some new wild beast was among them. But no, it was only the sound of love's latest victory.

***

Hippomenē stayed with Atalanta that night, and for months after that, and years. Just as Hippomenē had taught Atalanta love, Atalanta taught Hippomenē the way of the wilderness, and to run swiftly, and to fight with dauntless heroism. Thereafter, they went on many great adventures together far beyond the hills and forests of Arcadia. Those are tales for another time, but there is still one story left to tell for now, which is that of the final fate that their love had wrought for them.

On a stormy night on an island somewhere in the Aegean Sea, Atalanta and Hippomenē took shelter from the whipping rain in a temple of Zeus. On the marble steps before Zeus's statue, their love for each other filled them with wild desire, as it often does, and they made passionate love to each other in as many ways as can be conceived, and for as many times as possible before the morning light reached them.

Artemis visited them the following day to say, "So... Hera came to me last night. She was quite cross at what you did in my father's temple. She did not tell me what exactly she witnessed, only that it was a desecration most unholy. I'm not going to ask, but suffice it to say, I've rarely seen her so cross. In fact, she had charged me with killing the both of you. But I am quite fond of you two, and so are Apollo and Aphrodite. They would never forgive me if I were to carry out Hera's orders, so, I will spare you. Of course, I cannot let you two roam free while Hera is ever watchful, and I suppose it would be too much for me to ask you to stay in hiding forever, so here's what I can do..."

Artemis glanced over her shoulder and up to the heavens to make sure Hera wasn't watching, then whispered to them, "I can have you escape that ox-eyed woman's gaze by turning you into lions."

Atalanta and Hippomenē agreed to her plan, so, with a snap of her fingers, Artemis transformed them into strong and graceful lions so that they may be free to roam, and free to love.

The End

Please let me know what you think with a rating and a comment below! If you enjoyed it, you owe me a golden apple :P

Here are some songs I like:

Mikrokosmos - BTS

Anna Sun - WALK THE MOON

Peloa - Khruangbin

I Chose You - Mario Biondi

2516 - Luna Li

I Wanna Be Your Lover - Prince

Horizon - Ryo Fukui

Fast Car - Tracy Chapman (the version she sung with Luke Combs at the Grammy Awards made me bawl)

I Won't Say (I'm in Love) - Susan Egan (Disney's Hercules may or may not have been an inspiration for my story)