warmth of the hearth | pertemis

warmth of the hearth

The hearth of Hestia had always burned.

Not in the way torches burned, consuming themselves in the effort, nor the way campfires burned, requiring tending and the constant attention of hands that understood how quickly warmth could become absence. The flame at the center of the dwelling of the goddess burned the way truth burned, steadily and without apology, present in every season, unchanged by the passage of time, requiring nothing from the world to sustain itself except the simple fact of its own essence.

The room around it had the quality of somewhere that had never once been actually empty, that was the distinction Percy noticed first, stepping through the low arched entrance beside Artemis, their shoulders brushing as they passed through. It simply received them, the way a welcoming home received people, without fanfare, with warmth already present and the smell of something delicious baked into the stones themselves, ancient and sweet.

Hestia sat beside the hearth in a low chair whose cushions had been worn into the particular shape of someone who sat there often and with contentment. She was small, as she always appeared when she chose a form that was softened for company, her firelight eyes lifting from the flame when they entered, and her face moved into a smile that arrived without any effort, the smile of someone genuinely pleased by the thing they were looking at.

"Welcome," she said, and her arms opened with the warmth of someone whose door had never once been closed to anyone who seeked it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

They settled, Artemis with her characteristic composure, her silver cloak arranged with quiet precision as she took the chair across the hearth, her auburn curls catching the flames and turning each strand a deep, burnished amber. Percy took the seat between them, closer to the flame, his dark locks falling forward as he leaned his forearms on his knees with the quiet ease of someone who had been here before several times and had never once found it anything other than good.

Hestia had prepared things without ceremony, bread wrapped in linen that had kept the heat through whatever time had passed since its making, honey in a small clay bowl, dried fruit arranged without decoration on a wooden plate. She passed the bread to them first, and asked about the Hunt with the genuine curiosity of someone who remembered every answer she had ever been given and never tired of listening. Artemis spoke with the measured comfort she reserved for company she trusted, describing the recent movements of the Hunt, the forest they had camped beside for a fortnight, mentioned that the young hunters that had been recruited after the Second Titanomachy were finally beginning to get used to their lives, and Hestia listened with the full attention of a goddess whose entire life was oriented toward presence.

The flame moved in its small, steady rhythms, throwing warmth across the hearthstone, across the low table, across the three figures arranged around it. The conversation found its pace the way good conversation always did at this hearth, not pushed, not performed, simply given room to arrive at whatever it naturally became. Percy listened, contributing when something asked for him, the comfortable silence of someone settled in familiar warmth, though his sea green eyes returned to the flame with increasing frequency, the look of someone carrying a question and anticipating the right moment to set it down.

Eventually he looked at the flame for a long moment, tilting his head slightly with the expression that preceded his questions, the ones that arrived without preamble because he had been turning them over internally and had simply reached the point where they needed to be answered.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

"May I ask you something," he spoke, his sea green eyes on the flame rather than Hestia, granting her the choice of receiving the question however she wished.

"Yes," she said, her hands settling softly in her lap, she had never turned down genuine questions from her family, especially from a member whose company she enjoyed.