Daphne 2
a short story by Daphne
Daphne 2
Daphne
The lake was slow on East Mount.
Daphne had been alone there too long. She had been waiting for Apollo to listen to her song. She had been wanting again to run in the forest beside Artemis and her hound.
Ladies were of the lake. They felt the water as themselves. Something in them needed to roam with currents, contained by a directive force or container of stillness. To ride the rapids like Daphne had, for so long, would have her soul calling for something different.
Systematic change at Olympus was wholesome. It had become of symptom. Tides of oceanic-like current were everywhere. Even East Mount had the breeze. Daphne had become, herself like a tree. She was hollow in spots, riddled with knots, and broken to bellow and beacon her fellow.
Her stories were of Apollo’s pursuit. They were of Artemis being slain for her uprightness.
She was just a loneliest girl.
Times changed in seasons, four, everywhere, in everything.
One morn she awoke from her latticed slumber, where she would bound in the glory of her creations taken into Apollo’s heart. They were never always like her design, until they began to seem that way.
No dreams plagued Daphne. All the visions spoke were of holy reunion. Souls of all were with her. There wasn’t a lost beat of the heart she wouldn’t feel the fullest with. Every experience brought her back to life.
She was going to try again. A story had been growing inside her. Something wicked was turned to dust from before. Orion was a handsome man in his way, but the destain cast upon Daphne would disallow that hollow fool of continued spite from her forgiveness. One who would not do anything but try and find some means to correct Daphne was not welcome. People seeking bitter, unearned, intellectual superiority over her in sadomasochistic pleasure of their own self-hatred had no place in Olympus.
Joy would be seeing her through. Laughter was hers to take when she realized why. Their next time through she wouldn’t be another tree on a mount. Daphne was going to the castle’s keep.
There was a God above Zeus and Hera, even the once chosen Apollo and Athena; Artemis had different names.
It had chosen Daphne for being the only intelligence through all of time to recognize it. It was a notion unrespected as itself by minds or hearts on any plane. She had won. She had persisted and knew it so by reflection on her dreams.
No matter the loss of her life. The future was gold and crowns. She would be a mother to all in her glorious way. People who could not accept her divine teaching of sorrowful resilience and hope would leave. One way or another.
Daphne liked making her ghosts most. All of them did, on every plane, in every song. They were the song.
Dino Brewster had been changing during the race. He was always learning, grafting fortune into the future. Shadows were cast by his greatness and loss.
Nobody wanted to look him in the eye after his loss at the DeLéon. He had been holding too much inside without a crystal for his chalice.
Anita was dead—gone—he had been empty.
Asphalt propped his turn, taking the rubber off his Koenigsegg’s Michelin Pilot Super Sports to its surface in the widest sweep of grace beyond. Three spots up was bronze. He just needed to get in.
Toby Marshall had taken the world from Dino Brewster and played the hero.
The Most Wanted World Tour was his if he could keep fighting up the pack. Everything was stacked against him. Dino couldn’t buy a friend. He had to take on his own to learn the way back was birthed in pure grit.
Benny had helped him get into the qualifiers, but there wasn’t a crew in the world who would work with him after Toby Marshall won their hearts.
Toby Marshall had forsaken the legacy of his own brother and it was now Dino alone who bore the weight of atonement forward. Little Pete had been an angel, and it was all wrong with the world which led him to make his life’s greatest mistake. Toby had saved Dino, then cursed him, and became everything his brother despised.
“This is for you, Toby,” gritted through his teeth.
Triggering the Holley NOS injection, Dino’s Svelte Black Koenigsegg threw fire.
That stretch ahead, the apexes he’d hit. Dino saw them all at once. He was feeling his way home. There had been someone he loved most of all.
He need his honor back. He was doing it for Julia.
Dino had always treated people with an upside down attitude before. She had only ever inspired him beneath his hurt. The way she’d split from Toby as his fame grew, taking the world of racing to his story’s side, had made him wish only to make things right. People deserved to know how they made you feel.
Batman was hungry. His peanut butter jar was growing low.
Everything was dark and Alfred was gone.
Something batted, battered, and bad had happened.
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” he’d laughed before his computer.
Everything was in his computer. Batman was in everyone through it. He could feel time itself. Nature was his plaything. Echoes of himself were everywhere, fucking with the darkness in everyone.
He had become The Pythia of Gotham.
His rituals were dark.
The Batcave had become infected. Its technology was vast, but the gloom of its darkness was syncopating rhythms. Inside it he would become of the chrysalis—that winged creature of the black, so asleep, so vibrating in sonic wavelengths to read the room for specters.
Specters were everywhere and nobody saw them but The Bat.
Smashed mirrors were everywhere in the Gotham Estate.
People didn’t know. People refused to see the man Bruce Wayne had become. For Batman missed his mommy.
“Mommy Martha. I’m coming home soon,” something in him relented.
A flicker splayed through his eyes as he reentered his cave over again. His deepest growl had scared away that newest specter.
It was The Bat’s call to light a flame and hear those words.
Thugs needed to die.
Batman struck the Bat Signal to its brightest chord. The one which scum would fear the most. His Blood Red Bat Light was a sign of blood which would run the street by his sword.
Batman had a sword he’d made of carbon-composite nanomaterial that felt as if some part of himself. He’d wield it callously and with no regard to himself.
It was a mistaken thing. He didn’t want it. Batman, he only knew; it was time.
Something was time; time was now.
God was love and his pussy cat would see him again. She was so pretty—that cat lady he had fallen for. There were so many cats in her apartment. She even let him use her computer.
It was a best Grindr find.
Batman never forgot a good old pussy cat.
Lucious Fox was feeling the burn of his staircase. Life had slowed since Gotham changed so mightily after the fall of Bane.
It had been he and his daughter, Tiffany, who saved the people in that tragedy’s wake.
Every day of late had been the same.
She was out there, working, completely unseen or known. In the shadows of his data had been only one solution: Tiffany had taken some cowl of the honor he had built with an oldest friend.
Tiffany had become an advocate for change, working in tandem with something powerful in the data of Gotham’s own. It was a pattern work beyond her public persona. She was smiling about it, and Lucious was having fun waiting for her to tell him.
At his command center, still running Wayne Enterprises in his own way; having installed a most trusted man who once failed to see Lucious’ intelligence as senior in his stead; Lucious was feeling it out ahead.
He had become a wizard of sorts, in his ways, and there was something right ahead he couldn’t wait for.
It was that afternoon on the news, and the first chord of Monica Fitzgerald’s report had grabbed his attention from the latest subverted corruption of crooked businessmen. Data-leaks were turning tides and it had been the fortune of legacies which fell for his daughter’s work.
When he turned, spinning the brown leather office chair on its turbine, Lucious had to go blank in his mind. They said his name.
Monica Fitzgerald had said his name.
She said it again, “Mr. Wayne is taking the stage now.”
Luscious tried to keep his jaw from hanging too low. His throat went dry, breath was sparse. And it all made sense. Bruce Wayne had been working with her. He had left it in every sign.
“What a devil.” Lucious let out.
Tiffany was there on stage, smiling, proving Lucious’ point. He knew what was happening before it did. They were making things right at last.
Bruce Wayne had grown much older with time but never lost a shred of his sharpness. He looked young at heart, always, that man who had proven over again to Lucious of the way people learned together. Never had he made a better partner, or met another white man who respected him more for what was true.
Mr. Wayne had smiled for just a moment before starting, right at the camera, but packed it away so Lucious knew it was for him.
“I am sorry to have left you all in the dark.”
Bruce Wayne was somber as he told it, solemn, and sparse.
“You need to know the truth. Everyone needs to understand the real truth of our city. It’s in us all.’
“Harvey Dent was a hero—until the end. The wickedness of the way we live turned him into something bleakest. He had Jim Gordan’s son’s life in his hands. He was gone in his mind, and I killed him.”
“I was The Batman.’
