Love or Not

Chapter 23: Is This The End?

Suddenly, a loud noise shook the room, and Hera and Zeus forgot about their argument. Each reached for the other's hand. No matter what happened, Hera was always by his side in Olympus's time of need. She would serve her world no matter the personal conflicts. They took off at a fast run to see what was happening.

Zeus was shocked that he saw something speeding towards them. He sent a lightning bolt straight to the object, and nothing happened. Nothing could withstand his might. But the object kept falling from the sky towards them, and then...

Lóngshén & Tiamat

Lóngshén was tired after the day's drama but needed to vent. He needed to find a solution and knew who could help him find an answer. Tiamat, the primordial goddess, was credited with having created the worlds by some dragon-worshiping mortals centuries ago; she was always willing to listen to Lóngshén when he had a problem.

She was loving and sweet to everyone around her but too lazy to have created the human realm. She was not that dynamic. It did make for some great parties and lots of jokes. She took it all in stride.

All the dragons and Phanes would laugh when Tiamat lay on a perch eating grapes and saying how easy it was to create a vast universe, or she would put on a costume and act like Phanes waving her firestick scepter. In truth, all mortal stories about the gods were flawed, but the gods loved it all.

Tiamat was special. Like most of them, she acted young but was as old as time itself and very smart. He decided to take the trip to her vacation home to have a good talk.

Tiamat was shocked to see Lóngshén shape in the distance heading toward her home. He had flown to her mountain retreat, making her feel something was up. She slithered to the kitchen where her new boyfriend was making them lunch and told him to hide.

When Lóngshén arrived, he laid his large body on one of her perches. He picked up a purple grape, Tiamat's favorite, and popped it in his mouth before speaking. She had already settled herself for the tale.

"Do you remember when we visited the mortal realm and listened to the stories the mortals told of us?

Tiamat laughed; she remembered the crazy stories humans told about her. She had been torn apart, burned, and destroyed in hundreds of other terrible ways that a dragon could never die from. Those stories always made her into something she was not.

"Where do those humans get their imagination, I wonder," Tiamat mused.

The best was that she married her brother and had a thousand children. There was some truth to that story. However, it was not her, but her brother who had impregnated many female dragons, and a thousand sounded right.

No matter how crazy, she loved the many stories that gods and mortals have told over the centuries. Her favorite was she had five heads. Okay, she may have done that to scare a mortal once, but it was not her true form.

Who cares? She was centuries old, beautiful, and fabulous. She was finally dating again. She had taken a century off dating when her last mate candidate tried to dominate and steal her horde. He was using her to get ahead and marry a princess in another realm. Unseemly, this dragon was. But she kicked him to the curb, as humans say.

Her new boyfriend was terrific. They have been dating for about two hundred years. His kindness and care for her melted her cold heart. He made her laugh, and she was finally happy. It was July, Zee, and Nu's cat. No one had ever heard of a cat and a dragon dating, but it would be fun while it lasted.

They would go on long flights with July perched on her neck and his paws on her head. When they landed for a rest, he would circle her neck and purr. Those moments gave her tingles from her horns to the end of her tail.