The Perils of Unrequited Love

EPILOGUE

Thus with a kiss I die.

--Romeo, Romeo and Juliet ( Act 5, Scene 3, william shakespear)

127 years later 

Winter solstice celebration this year was delayed due to a little surprise bomb Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, dropped at the beginning of the annual Olympian council meeting. The goddess had chosen that moment to reveal that the god of requited love was in fact a woman, causing an uproar among the twelve Olympian.

Faster than wildfire, rumor spread across Olympus that the goddess of beauty had fooled everyone passing off her daughter as her son.

Ares, the irascible god of war and the sire of the child in question, almost charged at the mother of his children and Apollo, the sun god and Hermes, the god of messenger, had to physically restrain him.

Athena, the goddess of wisdom and Hera, the goddess of motherhood felt personally insulted by Aphrodite and publicly denounced her while Demeter, the goddess of harvest, Dionysus, the god of wine and the rest of the councils only gasped loudly, too stunned to speak.

The only god who seemed to rejoice in the situation was Haephaetus, the god of black smith, but given his history with Aphrodite, it wasn't surprising.

Zeus, the king of gods, was beyond furious. He wanted to throw Aphrodite into the darkest abyss. If it weren't for Hermaphroditus, the long lost god of Homosexuality, who bravely barged into the council room and ended all disputes with his speech on gender fluidity, the whole celebration would have started off on a grim note with the goddess of beauty's punishment.

Nevertheless, Zeus had decided to forget the offense, as not to ruin the holiday's spirit and commenced the celebration. All immortals on Mount Olympus naturally followed suit, all except, the cause of the havoc herself.

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Hiding in the sacred groove that surrounded Olympus, Lady Rosabelle Godfrey, no, Anteros, the long-lost goddess of requited love, watched the boisterous celebrations from afar with little desire to join it.

The excitement of whether or not Zeus was going to zap her with his lightning bolt proved to be too much for her to handle. She was exhausted and needed her bed, but since she didn't want to risk offending Zeus by leaving early, she tried to make her staying slightly more comfortable by hiding in the darkness, hoping that nobody would come and disturb her.

" Nectar?" Hermaphroditus, her savior, approached her carrying two glasses of shimmering liquid. She hadn't seen him in over half a century after he decided to embark on a trip around the world. Last she heard of him, he sent her a lovely postcard of Taj mahal. Hence, she was eager for his unexpected company tonight.

" Why did you come? I thought you vowed not to come back here again." She asked, sipping her nectar, letting the magic liquid relax her tense muscles.

" How can I not come?" Hermaphroditus pretended to be offended. " You were in trouble. I had to rescue you, didn't I?"

She sighed, " Thank you so much, Di. Zeus would have blasted me up into a thousand pieces to hide the embarrassing proof that he was duped by a woman, if you weren't here in time."

" Why do I think that that is exactly what you wanted?" Hermaphroditus mused softly. " Since he was gone..."

" He " was gone for precisely a hundred and nineteen years.

Human scientists predicted that the sun had only 8 billion years left before it sputtered out. 8 billion years.

He was her sun for only 8 years. That wasn't even long enough to compete with human's sun. He left her in the morning when the first light of dawn was at the horizon and she could never look at the sunrise the same way again. Her heart died. There was no reason for her to keep living.