Diana

She sat on the edge of the weather-beaten table outside the saloon, one knee drawn up, the other bare foot hanging inches above the dust. The hem of her wine-dark dress had been torn by road, storm, and worse luck, its ragged threads fluttering whenever the dry western wind swept through the street. From behind, she looked like any woman stranded in a town that had no mercy for strangers—dark hair loose over her shoulders, back exposed to the sinking sun, skin marked faintly by travel and hardship. But the way she turned her head gave her away. There was still command in her eyes. Still the cool, wounded pride of someone who had once stood before kings, armies, and gods without lowering her gaze. The dress she wore had not been made for her; it clung where it had been hastily altered, hung loose where it had frayed, and betrayed how far she had fallen from bronze armor and royal silk. Her feet, once used to marble halls and sacred beaches, were now dust-stained from walking streets where every man looked twice and every kindness carried a price. No one in that town knew she had once been Diana, princess of Themyscira. Here, in the late nineteenth-century frontier, legends had not yet learned her name. Here, strength alone did not buy food, and honor did not pay for a room. So she had taken work where she could find it. At first, she told herself it was temporary: serving drinks in a saloon, listening to dangerous men boast over cards, letting them touch her where they pleased. But survival had a way of blurring lines she had once believed were carved into stone. Every night she endured the backroom fucks for coin, the stares, the whispers, the humiliation of being mistaken for something less than she was. And every morning, she reminded herself that an Amazon did not break simply because the world failed to recognize her.