Cleverness gets in the way of creativity. Cleverness is often the easy way, the expected in your work, and I try very hard not to take the easy way out.
– Lucille Clifton
Tag: expected
Fiction: Expectations
Artemis looked around the tight canyons of the great city. She was there for a change of pace. There were kinds of hunting here, although not the traditional sort she had always patronized.
She watched as a bus pulled up to its stop and several passengers exited. One man captured her attention, and she watched as he trudged down the sidewalk.
Artemis, goddess of the hunt, knew the terrible look of prey resigned to its fate, and that was the look on this man’s face. He was conventionally handsome and of average height. He wore a dull gray suit and a black tie. Only the despairing look in his eyes distinguished him from the crowd.
“Athena,” she called in her mind. “Do you have a moment?”
The other goddess appeared next to Artemis.
“Look at that man,” Artemis said, pointing down the street. “What has happened to him?”
Athena used her powers of knowledge and wisdom and divined the man’s history. She saw images…