The above picture is my callagraphy work of this Chapter

 

The thirty spokes unite in the one nave; but it is on the empty space of the axle,

that the use of the wheel depends. Clay is fashioned into vessels, but it is on their empty hollowness, that their use depends. The door and windows are cut out from the walls to form an apartment, but it is on the empty space within the house, that its use depends.

Therefore, what the use value we get from existence is created by nonexistence and existence together.

 

Let us drown ourselves in the ocean of nonexistence and come out cloaked with the garment of divine existence.

 

Ft. DeSoto Park was astonishingly beautiful yesterday with two parent oystercatchers with their two babies running about & a great variety of other birds nesting. The dolphins were wonderful and I had a close encounter with a manatee approaching the beach.

 

Today was equally amazing as I watched the red moon sink into the Gulf of Mexico in the dark predawn sky with Jupiter shining bright overhead. I had not planned to watch the moonset but circumstances placed me on the beach in the darkness and there was the moon shining bright approaching the horizon.

 

I really cannot offer any sort of interpretation or justification for my life. I wake up in the morning and discover a brand new unique living Universe outside filled with life in a perpetual state of transformation.

 

I love it, too. I love it all. I love everything. I love the darkness and the daylight, the dawn and the dusk, the beginning and the end, life and death and eternity and nonexistence.

 

I haven't run out of time. I ran out of time a long time ago.

Heterosexual masculinity has often seemed to me a great renunciation, a repudiation not only of the myriad things that men are not supposed to like, but even a plethora of things that they are not supposed even to notice. Many of the gay men I knew noticed, and one of the pleasures of conversation with gay friends was an acute awareness of emotional, aesthetic, and political phenomena, an ability to weigh minute things and evaluate nuances and fine degrees of differentiation.

 

These men knew that words could be festive, recreational, medicinal, that banter and flirtation and extravagance, that humor and wryness and anecdotes of the absurd were pleasures worth pursuing. They knew that talk wasn’t, as many straight men seemed to assume, just transactional, a way to dump or extract information or instructions. It could be play, riffing on ideas and tones; it could give encouragement and affection; and it could invite people to be themselves and to know themselves in order to be known. There were so many kinds of love at work: the love of vivid and exact description, which was sometimes poetic, sometimes skewering wit, sometimes deep insight, and of exchanges that wove connections between speakers and ideas.

 

Recollections of My Nonexistence :: by Rebecca Solnit

At the end of each working day the salary men go out on the town. Dinner is taken with their peers rather than their family. These are horizontal groupings. (Why not go home?)

  

CREATIVITY WORKSHOP (HOMEWORK 2)

 

7 days-Being

 

MFA2Henry Fong (09420819)

 

Be-ing (Noun)

 

-the fact of existing; existence (as opposed to nonexistence).

-Conscious, mortal existence; life: Our being is as an instantaneous flash of light in the midst of eternal night.

-Substance or nature: of such a being as to arouse fear.

-Something that exists: inanimate beings.

-A human being: person: the most beautiful being you could imagine.

 

Liv+ing (Adjective)

 

-having life; being alive; not dead: living persons.

-In actual existence or use; extant.

-Active or thriving; vigorous; strong: a living faith.

 

Liv+ing (Noun)

 

-the act or condition of a person or thing that lives.

-The means of maintaining life; livelihood.

-A particular manner, state, or status of life.

  

No matter in any circumstances, anyone in any nations at any time owns their 7 days being until dead. It is undoubtedly passively active way to make a living.

 

SHE makes her own living, being herself in her own style, attitude, gets use to be active Hongkonger.

 

Being →Living→ Acting→ Culturing→ A society→ A Country→ A Nation→ Live as a human being→ Being

       

Tokyo that he looked to for inspiration. He just made the skyscrapers a bit larger and improved the communications a bit! His street diners and markets were just a straight copy from Japan.

 

It was with regards to gardens that I first came across the term. Sabi is associated with the beauty of silence and old age.

 

The roseate spoonbill says, "Dying on a cross might save a human soul -- if humans actually possessed souls -- but it hasn't served to teach peace to the human species or save the human species from self-extermination."

 

Jesus Christ answered, "It seemed a good idea at the time. Though admittedly I tried really hard to avoid that fate on the night before it happened. Prayed to God. God didn't answer. Died on a cross. Forsaken by God."

 

I console Jesus Christ, "You can hardly blame God for doing nothing since God's nonexistence precludes him from getting involved in any human's problems, even such a remarkable human as Jesus Christ cannot be rescued by a nonexistent God."

 

God speaks out from Heaven, "Sorry, humankind. You've spent thousands of years begging for my help and I haven't answered. All such hopes & prayers are wasted on me because I have failed to exist and that is the greatest sort of failure a God could ever commit. Now the human species is headed to self-extermination and the Earth will suffer a little trouble and I am still not available to help you. Nor, I admit, would I save the human species even if I could. Jesus Christ may have been sinless but the human species is not."

 

I look up at the sun and ask it what it plans to do. The sun answers, "I will keep on rising and I will keep on shining. With or without humankind. It doesn't matter in the least."

"James Tillich for President"

Old buildings are also accredited with wabi-sabi.

 

To the angel I said, "I was fully prepared to observe the total annihilation of Pinellas county in a major hurricane and then the cold front came and pushed the hurricane to annihilate Miami and the East Coast instead."

 

The angel said, "God works in mysterious ways!"

 

I answered the angel, "God doesn't work at all. Where has God been over the last 10,000 years? For every catastrophe God allegedly averted there must have been at least a thousand that God allowed to happen. If that isn't evidence enough against God, did you here the story of what happened to God's beloved Son when he went on vacation in Jerusalem?"

 

The angel said, "You cannot blame a nonexistent God for failure to perform. God's nonexistence is therefore proof of God's innocence."

 

***

 

That's not going to help Miami at all ... no more so than hopes & prayers have ever helped anyone.

Heterosexual masculinity has often seemed to me a great renunciation, a repudiation not only of the myriad things that men are not supposed to like, but even a plethora of things that they are not supposed even to notice. Many of the gay men I knew noticed, and one of the pleasures of conversation with gay friends was an acute awareness of emotional, aesthetic, and political phenomena, an ability to weigh minute things and evaluate nuances and fine degrees of differentiation.

 

These men knew that words could be festive, recreational, medicinal, that banter and flirtation and extravagance, that humor and wryness and anecdotes of the absurd were pleasures worth pursuing. They knew that talk wasn’t, as many straight men seemed to assume, just transactional, a way to dump or extract information or instructions. It could be play, riffing on ideas and tones; it could give encouragement and affection; and it could invite people to be themselves and to know themselves in order to be known. There were so many kinds of love at work: the love of vivid and exact description, which was sometimes poetic, sometimes skewering wit, sometimes deep insight, and of exchanges that wove connections between speakers and ideas.

 

Recollections of My Nonexistence :: by Rebecca Solnit

DSC02647

ARTIFICIAL HEARTS is a bewitching collection of young adult short stories, ranging from science fiction to fantasy, all featuring a lesbian heroine. This collection is part of Project Unicorn, a fiction project that seeks to address the near nonexistence of lesbian main characters in young adult fiction by giving them their own stories.

 

www.smashwords.com/books/view/277279

Fish and vegetable tempura. Ye canny whack it! Bril!

The bright blue moon, partially shaded by the Earth -- the only living planet in the Universe and the most beautiful planet in the Universe -- rests on top of the cattle egret's bill.

 

The cattle egret's claim to the Earth is greater than humankind's. All of humankind's claims upon the Earth have been voided and vacated. It doesn't matter in the least that humans are willing to defend such claims by violence (as humankind is a perpetually violent destructive animal and incurably so) since all of humankind's weapons shall soon enough attain the harmless state of no longer having an animal to operate them in anger.

 

Peace comes to the Earth the moment that humankind is gone from the Earth ... and not a minute sooner. You can either have a living planet or you can have humankind ... and as it turns out, the Universe has chosen the living Earth over humankind.

 

I'd tell the humans that the species might as well slow down and relax and take a vacation from all of its sins but I know that humans are an altogether helpless animal. Certainly humans will continue to fight wars and hate their neighbors and fill the Earth with hatred and despair until the very last day of humankind's existence.

 

When God was informed of this, in God's own despair God chose nonexistence and atheism. God would rather deny himself than waste any more time failing to solve humankind's problems.

 

I comforted God with this news: "No one can blame God for humankind's failure since God never existed. Nonexistence is the ultimate form of innocence and therefore God's preeminent status is preserved eternally as an imaginary product of humankind's innate genetic sickness."

The Word Series

"Spectral Resonance" captures the stark contrast between the finality of death and the exuberance of life. This ai-generated artwork features a haunting skull enveloped by an explosion of vibrant splashes, symbolizing the burst of energy that is life against the void of nonexistence. The dynamic interplay of colors set against the dark background evokes a sense of the cosmic dance between creation and destruction.

the oystercatchers filled my soul with beauty and happiness whereas humankind fills my soul with despair and a longing for nonexistence. Humans really are the worst animal to ever exist on the Earth. Humans know it, too ... there is no doubt about it, every human knows that human nature is a tragedy with a tragic ending.

So, lets take a closer look at some of the results of this habit of adopting elements of foreign culture.

“Adopting” or copying? The Japanese are often accused of just copying western technology. This might have been true initially but is not generally the case today. (British Leyland story)

 

There's no such thing as nonexistence.

the theory that humankind is an intelligent animal is refuted every single day in the God Bless'd US of A. Humankind is intelligent enough to drive itself extinct and too stupid to avoid extinction. Humans have behaved in such a horrendous manner that they will make the universe a better place by nonexistence. There is no saving humankind from itself. It is impossible to teach peace to a primate.

Clouds colored by the sunrise reflected in Spring Bayou, Tarpon Springs.

 

The Universe pauses for a moment and wonders, "Did you choose to remember 2016 and forget 2017?"

 

I answer the Universe, "Free Will isn't possible within this Universe so it would be inappropriate to imagine that there was any choice involved at all."

 

God found this answer quite alarming and spoke from the Heavens, "If Free Will isn't possible within the Universe how then does God make a choice?"

 

I answer God, "I've got some bad news for you, God. If you existed you'd never escape criticism but nonexistence has exonerated you and preserved your innocence and benevolence at the cost of your omniscience and omnipotence."

 

God was comforted by this answer and responded, "God has been redeemed and saved at the sacrifice of God's existence. It was a small sacrifice and actually quite a bit easier than crucifixion."

The parrot says that it can understand why humankind has chosen to live in dark caves and enjoy the flickering light of a television rather than the steady bright lights of the sun and moon and stars. I ask the parrot, "Explain!" The parrot says, "Humankind is already absent from reality. Humankind has already left the Earth. Humankind has already abandoned the future. Humankind has already surrendered to extinction as the ideal fate for the species."

 

I talked to a Catholic yesterday who wanted to teach me the distinction between Christians and Muslims. After telling me that he had read the Qur'an and the Hadith, I asked "What did you learn?" After a momentary pause, the Catholic said, "Muslims are violent." I asked the Catholic, "Well, could you explain what happened in 1492?" Ironically enough, the Catholic knew precisely what I had in mind. There's some sort of major cognitive dissonance in Christians, Europeans and Americans about their own history of perpetual warfare, violence and crimes against humanity.

 

I also explained to the Catholic why Christians and Muslims have violence in common. The Catholic didn't particularly appreciate my explanation. Such is life on a planet with too many gods, too many guns, too many bullets, too many bombs, too many missiles and too many acts of violence and no saviors.

 

I do not reject God. I do not reject religion. I reject humankind. I reject human nature. As it turns out, humans need not worry about God's nonexistence. Humankind perhaps should worry about humankind's nonexistence, but humans are famous for their obliviousness and their lack of free will and inability to avoid self-provoked catastrophes.

To live in true freedom is to release all inhibitions.

The fears of mortality must be forgotten; no longer living for death, no longer dying to live.

Existence and nonexistence coagulating.

Saftey found through ignorance; shackling human individuality.

*** Chapter 2 - κλήση ***

  

} Museum of Cultural Antiquities {

} Gateway City, California {

 

The young girl applies her brush to the infuriating statuette for a millionth time. Feeling as though this try will definitely be the ticket, her lips absently tweak in determination, in accordance with her tool outlining divots in the clay. However, like all the other attempts, her toil seems to transfer the grime, not remove it.

 

Her preservation process steadily leans toward what might be considered just shy of warfare.

 

A tall woman with thick glasses enters the workroom and, perceiving the accident at hand, rushes to pry the items away from her mentee.

 

“Not so harshly, Cassandra, you could damage it,” the woman soothes, coming across somewhat disheartened.

 

Shoving away from the desk on the wheels of her chair, Cassandra grouses, “I can live with that.”

 

The woman flips the statuette over in her palms, considering. “Hm, sometimes other people live with your mistakes too, though. The people who paid to have this piece brought here, or, the visitors who would not be able to enjoy seeing it, if it were broken before the exhibit opened.”

 

Cassandra indifferently rocks her neck on the headrest.

 

“And you know,” the woman carries on, unfazed by the girl’s response, resituating Cassandra’s seat at her station with a firm hand, “we make mistakes even when we are careful. But diligence is a virtue all the same. It can ease the mind when you…”

 

She entrusts the tool to the Cassandra again.

 

“… look back at some things. And more importantly it can tell others that you respected the duty you took on, no matter how it ended.”

 

The woman guides it with both their hands, with an apt flair at the end of the stroke which effectively cleans one notch in the object.

 

“And so,” Diana Prince nods once, affirmatively, “we brush lightly.”

 

“Maybe it’s a mistake for you to trust me with this if it’s so important.”

 

“Trusting in you wouldn’t be a mistake,” Diana minutely smiles, unoffended. She gets back to her own responsibilities.

 

Cassandra places her things aside, but not in defeat. “I’m sorry Diana, I didn’t mean that.”

 

Diana waves her off gently, appearing to be engrossed in an armful of files she had drawn from a cabinet, but she maintains her composure only briefly. She again joins Cassandra, planting her hands on the table and smiling mischievously.

 

“Besides all of that, I really do not want Dr. Sandsmark angry with me, for giving you some of my work. So make it look good, young lady,” she revises.

 

“There’s only so much sympathy for us working stiffs, huh?” pipes Cassandra. “… Guess I should thank you anyway. Doing this with you beats the heck out of sitting in some screwy classroom.”

 

Troubled by the girl’s flippancy, but not wanting to disrupt the amity they have for now, Diana chooses her next words mindfully.

 

“I think you know just how much your suspension worries your mother,” she arrives at, reminding the girl of the reason for her being sentenced to the museum.

 

“Wull yeah,” Cassandra’s voice cracks a little, guiltier than she let on. “… But… But Diana, I can’t sit in school another minute. Mother wants me buried up to my ears in books. I want to go places, like you said you’ve been to! I want to go discover some snazzy temple, find doodads like this thing… and let someone else grate their fingers off, getting it to be presentable!”

 

Cassandra replicates Diana’s work on the statuette; a hundred contours to go.

 

“Your mother wants that for you too, one day,” Diana assures her, and anticipating a rebuttal, elaborates, “She does; you may laugh, but I know she will not be one to hold you back. She wants you to learn before you leap. I could have done with that, in my youth.”

 

“But my mother—”

 

“Curates this place. That is a status of intelligence and merit that many woman, and many men, only dream of. You know I have had my own adventures, but I envy your mother’s accomplishments. I have found fortune, when she has found meaning in her efforts here. And with you, her family… whatever differences you have, please believe… she has found solace. That is perhaps a little more impressive, wouldn’t you say?”

 

“I dunno… she’s… I don’t think I can see her, like that. Y’know. It’s always this, this ‘one way to success’ with her…”

 

Though not disinterested in hearing Cassandra out, Diana is all at once subject to a distracting compulsion; unknowable in its hold, but of nostalgic familiarity to her. Straying unobtrusively from the girl’s side, Diana makes her way to the furthest row of shelves of the cataloging area. The ethereal directive nags at her still. Diana grits her teeth.

 

“Not yet. Not yet…”

 

At last she reaches adequate seclusion from Cassandra, and not a second too soon, for Diana instantly finds herself opposite the most irregular greeter. The one she foresaw.

 

She has wings——snowy in coloration, and deceptively small to the point that they seem decorative——resting behind clad shoulders. In this dingier corner of the museum, her pauldrons evidently radiate their own prismatic shine; the light spills over a bronzed complexion and the gilded caduceus in her grasp.

 

“Iris?”

 

“Princess Diana. Themyscira calls for you. We must hurry.”

 

“Wait! Iris, I cannot… Tell me what—“

 

“What’s the matter, Diana?” Cassandra peers from around the cluttered shelves, healthily concerned.

 

Diana all but jumps. She quickly adopts a smile and confronts Cassandra vibrantly, casually shielding Cassandra from staring at the angelic woman: “Iris”, who is herself uncomfortable with the jarring interval.

 

“Don’t worry,” Diana says, squeezing the girl’s arm, “it’s—“

 

Cassandra won’t believe.

 

“… family. I’ll see you later. Stay here. Please, for your mother.”

 

Tongue-tied, Cassandra doesn’t press, as Diana turns away.

 

“Not yet,” Diana hushedly repeats as an order to her visitant, who had begun motioning with her staff. Diana steers Iris to an appropriate exit, taking a parting look at Cassandra; it is less reassuring than either need.

 

Once beyond closed doors, Iris flourishes the caduceus with a learned facility, achieving the conjuration she has thus far been denied by her contact. The fluorescents in the ceiling bleed and streak with disparate pastels; those rays, intersecting a brilliant pinpoint ahead of the two women. As they start for it, space compresses between them and the solar tear, then explodes into a vista not fit for mortal eyes. Diana peels the eyewear away from her face and undoes the band around her pulled-back hair. She steps onto the lustrous beach cascading into view.

 

} Παράδεισος Νήσος {

} Paradise Island {

} Themyscira {

 

The enchantment surrounding Diana’s apparel washes off, recognizing the safe haven. In the light of her birthplace, the woman now stands in breathable red and blue, still modestly armored, with a soaring eagle emblazoned upon the breastplate, and a gleaming lariat at her waist. Contrastingly, unadorned vambraces of silver encircle her wrists.

 

Diana, as unfettered now as she had been in years, forgets all the questions, the presage of Iris… she forgets herself, giving a mirthful spin in the sand as her accoutrements’ evolution concludes. Her cloistered laugh, too, ceases when she notices Iris’ unease at even this minor respite. Diana makes up the lost distance in a heartbeat, and still the messenger of the gods does not afford her a glance, which urges the princess to broach some other point of dissonance shrouding the two.

 

“I tried to keep the young lady from seeing you. She does not know the truth about me.”

 

“The issue at hand overruled the formalities of discretion we still take on in man’s world,” Iris explains airily, in her usual way, but with a bent head she goes on to offer, “I am sorry.”

 

“It is good to see you, Iris.”

 

“Yes. … The same of you.”

 

Iris had transported them just outside the island’s agora, from which Diana could begin to hear the anxious chatter of Themyscira’s keepers. The Amazons.

 

The latest arrivals ascend the marble stairs, and garner every eye——silence, also——once inside the spacious pavilion. In spite of this, Iris noticeably relaxes; her own commission, fulfilled. Diana, far less so, as she nears the woman central to all others. She is the most regal among them, and the tallest, wearing armor as well as silken finery with colors only Iris “dared” rival. The princess salutes mid-stride with a bracer to her heart, then with an open palm.

 

“Queen Hippolyta. Mother…”

 

“Daughter,” Hippolyta repays reservedly. Her eyes search over the sea of heads before her.

 

Diana could not read how much of her brevity was sorrow for the unanswered questions soon to be raised, or for her daughter’s return to Themyscira itself, and so Diana, disappointed, bids no more from the matriarch. She instead heeds how all the Amazons now watch the air around themselves.

 

Running out of options, the princess entreats her sisters. “Well? Mala? Philippus… What has happened?”

 

The redheaded archer Orana tromps forward to a break in those amassed. She does a poor job of smiling to Diana, then yells for the whole island to hear: “Princess Diana graciously answers your summons, hag. Keep her and our queen waiting any longer, and—“

 

An unusually comedic chiming cuts off the warrior’s threat: wood on ceramics. It comes from the only one there who saw fit to carry a floral mixing bowl and spoon.

 

It was another woman. A markedly out-of-place woman, with a profile like a hawk’s. It was improbable——impossible, realistically——that she had gone undetected for any length of time. Her choice in attire was a polka-dotted sundress. Victory rolls. Enough nail that she could have shared with a few Amazons. The look was complete, save for what precisely was being mixed in the bowl. What would pass for tar and shards of bone was at odds, to say the least.

 

“What’s shakin’, girlfriends?” are the first words to leave her mouth, as chipper as if the occasion were a bridal shower. At this, Diana is able to put a name to her, with no uncertainty; the one thing she could never mask was her voice.

 

“You were here not five minutes ago. We all fare the same,” Melanippe relays militarily, apparently understanding the slang, but not one for the woman’s vivacious way.

 

The newcomer surprisingly halts the performative entrance by flicking the bowl into nonexistence and resting a hand behind the other elbow, in mock politeness.

 

“Actually I never left. … It was just an expression, darling. It’s ‘in’ right now,” she informs the Amazons’ Captain of the Guard, swishing her dress. “Oh I know it looks dull out there in the States right now, everyone in their tidy little homes making tidy little families… not that Queenie lets you vestals out on the town… but it has its perks. And if you could see under the hood like I can, under skin…”

 

The woman’s face stretches hideously with glee. “… There’s some lovely stuff in the works, yet.”

 

Diana deftly slings her lasso at the posturer, having incrementally moved out of eyesight during the bluster. But her target dissipates like frigid breath, reconstituting meters behind the heroine before the magic bind has even slapped the floor. The sorceress had let slip her costume, in the transition, and can now be seen in a toga with silver trimming, and predominantly, of a hue more complementary to the contents of her heart.

 

“Princess!” she further overacts. “That thing could really hurt someone adversed to the truth!”

 

“I know whatever has necessitated the attention of Iris, and of my sisters, is too dire to be played with as you so do,” Diana scolds. “Speak plainly, Eris. Or do you think you still vex us?”

 

“Facile,” Eris throws back. “Get some new material.”

 

“It is useless, asking of the Goddess of Strife timeliness,” Queen Hippolyta rules brusquely, although it could be gleaned that she took pleasure in the backhanded pardoning of Eris’ conduct. “She will tell us all we need in good time, because it concerns her, just as it does us.”

 

“Mother knows best, after all,” Eris concedes. “Why uh, don’t you start us off, dear? With the bits you know. I’ll just be finishing up with this.”

 

The bowl and spoon were back in hand; the slough therein, presumably congealing to Eris’ indiscernible standards. Hippolyta, as dignified as ever, acquiesces to Eris’ challenge of authority. She faces Diana.

 

“A woman, hailing from England, was observed by Olympus to have recently uncovered and deciphered a rare manuscript, which she correctly dated to over three-thousand years ago. It is the poem of a discredited scribe, commissioned by Eris at the height of the Trojan War.”

 

Hippolyta’s eyes barely narrow at their unwelcome guest.

 

“… the confession of a proud and petty creature that had no one else to congratulate her for the meddling she finds such adolescent reward in.”

 

Thunder rolls through the blue sky, and the Amazon Guard stands by in apprehension. Eris curtsies, and Hippolyta waits for her daughter’s direct attention, after Diana is done scrutinizing the unrepentant goddess.

 

“It is a prophecy. The Golden Apple of Discord has been lost to the realm of Hades for all these centuries, and soon, if it is not given to the one worthy of the inscription thereon, this document foretells an immeasurable suffering on man’s Earth will result.”

 

…

 

Diana, at first, has no reaction to speak of. She casts an inquiring look to Iris, who has not found reason to add to anything since Eris’ introduction. Eris herself is too preoccupied with flinging a clot from her spoon, or else she would have heckled the queen’s translation. Diana shakes her head.

 

“… No. Paris’ charge was bogus. The apple was only symbolic; it was to bring ruin whether received by Aphrodite, Hera, or any other. This is just another of Eris’ ruses. Any discourse to come will do so by us entertaining more of her lies.”

 

Again, thunder, without a fleck of grey above. Queen Hippolyta sighs in exhaustion, for which Diana takes accountability, unbeknownst to her mother.

 

“It’s okay, Dad,” Eris diffuses, squinting up at the heavens and blowing hair out of her eye. “Look, Di, you’re sharp as a tack, I’ve always said so, but you need to start taking people at their w—“

 

“Very well, Eris,” storms Diana, “You know you have been caught. You’re here, so you too want the prophecy stopped. What are any of us needed for? Go collect your debacle and do with it what is called for.”

 

“So, first off, I wasn’t the one who hid it, I just had the idea,” Eris details, walking Diana through things as if she were a child with a new word. “So you’re going to have to ask the good doctor about the specifics… by the by, when you meet her, she goes by ‘Minnie’… Aaand, you’re here, because I said so. I had my pick of the litter. What can I say? You’re top… dog.”

 

Diana makes an effort to untangle Eris’ jabbering. “If Eris does not know the apple’s resting place…”

 

Breaking her silence, Iris interprets, “The Englishwoman, a Dr. Minerva, still seeks an answer within the manuscript, as to where exactly the Golden Apple resides in the Underworld.”

 

“We neither have the whereabouts of the apple nor how much time remains to bestow it. … It must be sought now,” Diana reasons. Comprehending Eris that little bit more, she continues, staring down the goddess plaintively.

 

“I must seek it. And only me.”

 

The Amazons convey their dissatisfaction extensively, none so loudly as Philippus. The scholar Althea cuts through the uproar, as a voice the others would hear on their least charitable day.

 

“Princess Diana understands Eris’ role for her. The apple will divide sisters as it has divided empires. Diana, the best of us, must go alone, without room for envy or comparison of any kind which the apple will corrupt.”

 

“An Amazon is NOT stronger alone!” Melanippe rejects heartily, winning over many previously unopinionated Amazons. Diana tries very hard to not imagine her mother’s eyes on her in that moment; in the process, she drowns out much of the others’ misgivings.

 

“How can we even trust the premise of the apple being in Hades?” Mnemosyne raises. “How could that have come to be?”

 

“Fees, honey. A Golden Apple, golden coin, golden bough…” Eris assists. She takes a recess of droll remembrance. “… Charon’s easy like that.”

 

Addressing her queen directly is Philippus; forlorn, more than outright angry, as she has already toned down her vocality out of respect. “We have readied, for generations, to face what sins might be rallying in Hades, and now when we have cause to march on them first, to save a world beyond ours, we are to stand by? For this trickster’s sport.”

 

Hippolyta puts an end to the vote that never was. “My daughter will hear a call to action from our gods, and answer it as instructed. The Amazon Guard best serves its function, Diana, and Earth, from the shores of Themyscira. Listen to Althea. … Lest we think our vanity so utterly buried, or our wills more resilient than those of Athena, and Hera.”

 

“Hph.”

 

Eris, softly laughing with her nose, undercuts the very decree of her superiority in the matter with, “… You can’t go alone.”

 

Clamor again ensues; more heretical this time, than at Diana’s realization. Iris is left the single woman on the island unprovoked by the other goddess, idly leaning on her rod to wait out the storm. Eris, clearly savoring the resurgence, eventually decides to play the hero and clarify the fickle rules to her game.

 

“Not with another icky girl who’ll mess everything up, Di, with a man!” Eris swears to her, bastardizing her own joke past recognition.

 

“To what end?” Diana shouts, pulling away from trying to assuage Melanippe’s ossified distrust of, at this point, a mission in any shape or form.

 

“You still need the one who will bestow the apple!” Eris recites, thrilled with how nebulous she has managed to be. “What? You didn’t think you were the one who’d be declaring ‘the fairest’, did you? Aw sweetie, cute idea, but there’s a couple reasons why you’re not the one to be handing out the apple. You know the ones. A bit hasty of you to think you’re the moral compass I wanted, really… Let’s not get into all that, though. My guy needs some muscle, and sis, you are really it. You catch me?”

 

“It is as she designed ages ago,” Hippolyta delineates heavily, not at all glad to be apologizing for Eris’ grueling ways. “A god ordains a hero with the quest, and they shall gift the apple to the fairest, as their own rationale determines. Defying this criterion will not see Eris’ curse on it lifted.”

 

Diana fumes. “This is foolish. All of it. I suppose Eris was left the privilege of finding a hero suited to such a crucial task because no other on high Olympus will risk taking responsibility for another Troy!”

 

This is enough for the customary clouds to at last billow out of the aether and coincide with the most chilling thunderclap yet. Additionally, the sun’s nurturing blanket over the island gradually changes to something that was, to the many wise beings there to recognize the phenomenon, inherently oppressive, and not to be tested further.

 

Diana has given up her fretting over her mother’s disapproval. The frivolous gods’ display escapes her. Now, only Eris——who has taken to fanning herself with another summoned prop——is on the princess’ mind. She reviles the witch.

 

“… Only you say that this time, it will not be kingdoms but all of man that pays your price. This jest of yours, that you never thought would get so out of hand… If the 'true' fairest is not found, what then, Eris?”

 

Eris bugs her eyes out. “Well what does an apple do? It’s been rotting, and it’s going to seed. When the new tree pops up… every man will inexplicably have the irresistible desire to present this magnificent, natural wonder to their… well you know, the apple of their eye. Why, they’ll swim oceans if need be, er, try to. And every woman will claw through their own flesh and blood to have it.”

 

…

 

“Aaand then, that’d then be the kiddies running the show out there, for however long that can last… then go the little fuzzy creatures that they took all the bite out of… I guess drive-ins go out of style?” Eris callously rattles off, deliberately inundating the sufficiently-repulsed Amazons.

 

…

 

“Oh Hades, but what am I doing, lumping all my problems with you ladies? You have this rock to look after. Excuse my impropriety, ‘Eris has gone cuckoo,’ right? It’s not like I could have any interest in sparing all those humans; I only appreciate them more than any of you do. Quite regularly.”

 

Diana can muster no more than a languid blink. “Who seeks the apple? Who will I serve?”

 

Eris’ showy enthusiasm springs right back, having flirted a little too lengthily with genuine bitterness in her last words. “It was a real treat setting you up, Di. You know, I really wanted to get you back together with that specimen, Steve? Only, oh I hope this isn’t the first you’re hearing of it… he’s with that biddy of a secretary, what’s-her-name—”

 

“And you do so hate to inflame personal matters,” Diana remarks with stoic sarcasm. “Mind your words, Eris. Lila is a dependable and driven woman. And very funny. I would be happy for them both.”

 

“Ohhh, blegh,” Eris points down her own throat, pantomiming gag reflex at the princess’ good nature. She hisses merrily, and goes to hang on Orana’s shoulder, but the Amazon does not humor her with so much as a flinch. Eris’ verve dies off.

 

“aaaohww honestly, where am I, Medusa’s place?”

 

“Who. Did you choose,” Diana demands, with waning patience.

 

Eris yawns. “Epimetheus.”

 

“You… idiot,” Melanippe dubs her.

 

None of the Amazons need be reminded of the name. Their queen had seen to their education pertaining to the pantheon which had given them life, and as for the vigilance their race of warriors upheld, few tales exemplified its place in the world as did the legacy left by Epimetheus, the second-generation Titan. It is Iris who is pained most of all by the announcement, though no one sees, because Iris does not condone it to be.

 

“I’ve had him wait with Minnie. Saves Iris some time,” Eris blows a kiss to the winged messenger. “… That is, I personally delivered him to her stoop; he shouldn’t be able to mess this up.”

 

With disciplined avoidance of any more emotional accusations such as Diana’s, Queen Hippolyta still lays into Eris, being well past playing the she-devil’s advocate. “You send my daughter to squire a hermit. An incompetent, even before old age found him. And you disgrace her ability to make the judgement thoughtlessly left to him. You have secured this quest’s end, whether or not it is your will.”

 

Eris is more interested in Diana’s trepidatious detachment from the world around her. The goddess waves her arms downward, pleadingly. “Oh try to hang loose, will you? Give him a chance! … All I need is for you to pick up some of the physical slack on this one. You’re the brawn for his… oh, well…”

 

She crosses her fingers. Orana, as red as her own hair, actually spits at Eris’ feet.

 

“Rid our island of your sickness. I curse the day you tempted our goddesses with the Golden Apple, tainted so. You knew—“

 

“Don’t give me that,” Eris is quick to bray. “That I forced them into a catfight over a lil' ol' Golden Apple. Aphrodite could pull them out of her ass whenever she felt like it. Hera had an entire GARDEN a’the things! … No one talks about that.”

 

The sky is quiet. The day grows older.

 

The urgency of the situation does not deter Diana from once more assessing Eris’ hand in the turmoil. “All this. The timing of it… You imbued the apple with this misfortune, only to allow that a warning be found in time to stop your ploy.”

 

Eris smiles.

 

Diana arches an eyebrow, but not in amusement. “This couldn’t be the very spirit of anarchy herself evincing a kind of, method?”

 

Eris smiles still. “Anarchy? That’s my eldest you’re thinking of, which I’ll take. … It’s not ‘cheating’ the title, Di. Discourse isn’t the absence of order or planning. Revolts are rarely spontaneous. And speaking of good times… I’m what lets any of you be heroes. If I wasn’t throwing the curveballs, none of you would have an inkling about that mettle you hold in such high regard. Be real with me, sis. I’m your favorite.”

 

Diana breathes out. “… Let us depart, Iris.”

 

Iris is only too happy with this decision. As she reunites with the heroine, so too does the Amazon, Mala: Sensible, and sensitive, she has brought to Diana her sword and shield. Themyscira’s princess had left for man’s world without such items of repute, in the same way she had left without the blessing she most needed. Wanted.

 

If the Queen of the Amazons has objections to the exchange even now, she does not voice any. If Mala has more than a sword and a shield to send her sister away with, she keeps that from sight. Diana accepts, and consults Iris.

 

“We retrieve Dr. Minerva. Once we have derived the apple’s location, we can leave her somewhere safe. Then, with Epimetheus, I brave Hades.”

 

“I can only ferry you to the presence of the gods and their kin. And believe you me…” Iris warns, before the next request can come, “there are no deities in the Underworld we wish to be in the company of.”

 

“Then we will return here, with Eris as your beacon once more,” Diana reworks emphatically, barely able to make herself look at the impish goddess again. Eris obligingly shrugs as if to say, “I owe you that much.”

 

“… and we use Doom’s Doorway to access Hades.”

 

The infernal entrance by that name is Melanippe and Philippus' to preserve. Diana looks to them for compliance. They hesitate, and bow, as one. With that, Diana would have let Iris spirit them away if not for her mother, who catches her arm. Who speaks to her with vulnerability that is yielded to no other.

 

“My only daughter.”

 

Hippolyta states this, more than she gives it to the woman before her.

 

“Because the young will not ask themselves these things, I ask you. My Diana. What incaution conceived by man or god will take you from your home forever?”

 

Diana, still, has not the time to ponder such a thing. Iris, still, waits for the bidding of another. Themyscira is still. Eris sees this, and has the thought that all is right.

 

Her polka-dots have returned. All that she has left for her playthings is a short swipe of her fingers, as an imposed adieu. Something jet-black darts behind her eyes.

 

“It’s time to beat feet, cats.”