The old gods are still walking among us, yes.
The old gods still watch over us
Zeus lost his pride years ago; his beard is long and tattered, his clothes torn and dirty. He has talked to Odin and wonders if he really needs two eyes, if it would not be a fair trade for some wisdom if he gave one up. He wants to stop being the fool and become someone who could be king. But then a pretty girl will walk by and he is young and handsome and full of smiles and honey. He will remember how it felt when the world was young and his sons ruled it. He lets her buy him a drink. He lets her kiss him once, twice, three times. He closes his eyes and tries not to think of his wife He always leaves during the night. He never comes home anymore, unless his wife drags him there. He wonders how many single mothers blame him and wish they had more than a memory. He wonders how Hera does not hate him yet. He hates himself. He wonders what it would take to kill him. Ares might be up for the job. He himself killed his own father. Apollo doesn’t have the courage for it and Hercules loves him too well. But Ares….. Ares would do it and smile.
Hera lives alone. Her husband didn’t leave, he just drifted away until the sheets no longer smelled like him and his toothbrush no longer rested on the sink. She used to hate how he did that, but she does it now that he’s gone. She drags him home sometimes, she keeps trying. She smiles at him and it is beautiful and he says that he loves her every time, he kisses her and it feels like an apology, so she forgives him. It’s what she does best, after all. He is a storm and she is the earth, and she needs him even as he hurts her. He might stay for a day or a week or a month, but then he is gone, like smoke in the wind. It feels like waking up from a dream, when she realizes she’s alone again. Ares visits sometimes, and she kisses his new bruises like she used to kiss his scraped knees as a child, when he played too roughly. He takes after his father and never stays long. She loves him, but she is relieved when he leaves. Hestaphus doesn’t enter that house, he has a long memory and a twisted leg to remind him too well that she never wanted a son like him. But sometimes fantastical creatures breathing with metal lungs blink at her from her doorstep and lean into her hand when she touches them. She hopes that they mean forgiveness.
Poseidon is changing and we don’t know him anymore. He coughs when no one is listening and plastic tangles in his seagrass beard. He is sick, but not dying. This new world is changing him, and he is not so unknowable anymore. His secrets are being stolen. His reefs are raped. But he is still so, so strong and we still don’t understand, how is he not crushed? How is he not dying? He is evolving into something darker and angrier and other. Amphitrite stands at his side, her sisters’ songs are clogged with oil and plastic. She herself no longer sings, without them it isn’t magic, it is just a voice shouting into the void. She holds her husband close at night and stays watchful, wakeful. She misses the days when he walked the earth like the god he is. She even misses the children he had that weren’t hers, she loved them and can’t quite remember how they died. She prays it was old age. For her own children, she has nothing but sadness. Triton is set to inherit a crumbling throne and Rhode is slowly forgetting the ocean, with the sun for a lover she is blinded and cannot see the water for the light reflecting off of it.
Hades watches with open eyes, tired eyes, knowing eyes. Despite the stories of a dark god who kidnaps and steals and murders, he is the kindest of his brothers. He has always been the end of torment, the gentle good night, the darkness on the other side of sleep. He saw this coming, read the deaths like the old priestesses would read bones or stars. He could tell you how many more years this earth is going to struggle, struggle on, but he won’t because, even after all these years, he still has the little red-winged thing called hope deep in his chest and he still believes in humanity. He walks the streets arm in arm with Persephone, their breath fogging in the air. They giggle like children, and shop owners smile as they sneak kisses, as if this is the first time and someone may yell at them. They are young and in love and wherever they walk is blessed, empty cups and stomachs and mouths are filled if there is a need, and they are so in love it hurts to look at.
