04
love
Aphros would be lying if she said it hadn't hurt to wake up in the morning with him already gone. She understood why, but hated it anyway.
Hephaestus had not been waiting for her in the doorway when she returned. She had tiptoed down to his workshop, and found him there amongst the steel. He did not look at her.
'Hephaestus-'
'I've already spoken to Hera,' he said, still staring at his tools. 'She will arrange for a divorce soon.'
A sad silence hung between them. How could he not have known? He had seen that tentative hand on Ares shoulder, had noticed all the stolen glances between them. Where she spent all her long hours of the day. She hadn't meant to be cruel.
'I'm sorry,' she tried.
'So am I.' He started drilling, and did not look at her again.
The divorce was as swift as the marriage. Hera knew why, but she did not comment on it. She arranged Aphros her own house; a pretty place full of pillars and tile. It was positioned on a stony flat that overlooked her own estate, which was full of thriving woodland and groomed gardens. There was a spring further in the thick forest, and roses blooming in the backyard. Swans and doves flocked there amongst the nymphs that worked to keep it all clean.
Beautiful, yet empty. There was no feeling inside this home. Half of her had gone to earth, banished there between the mortals. Hera had noticed it during one of her visits.
'You are two sides of the same coin,' she had commented idly as she pruned a rose. 'Both gods of passion. The duality between creation and destruction. Love is what makes you, you are defined by it.'
Aphros paused. 'What was that?'
Hera looked like she was smiling, but didn't move from her rose. 'What was what?'
'That.' She rolled the word around on her tongue. 'Love.'
Hera watched the petals fall. 'I think you know what it means.'
She departed that afternoon, and left Aphros alone on a bench by her house. Her mouth felt sticky. Love. Is that what it was, the pull between her and Ares? The emptiness in her stomach. Is this what she wanted? Love made her feel lonely. But it had also been a salvation. The string that rooted her to this soil, and kept her from falling back into the sea foam. She did not know a feeling like this; one capable of transcending time and space. Because no matter the distance or centuries between them, she did not think she would stop loving Ares.
A nymph was strolling past.
'Excuse me,' Aphros asked her politely.
The nymph stopped. 'Yes, goddess?'
'Do you know where I come from?'
The nymph looked confused. 'You pulled yourself from the foam, goddess.'
'But where before that?'
The nymph thought for a moment. 'Some believe you hail from Uranus. He was the sky during the titan time, and when he was slew, they threw his remains into the sea.' She studied Aphros. 'Perhaps that's where you were born; grown between his skin and bone.'
Aphros watched the nymph go, and then smiled. A dove landed on her knee. She gazed down at it.
'I have a plan for you and I.'
| | |
Aphrodite Urania was wondering along a beach in Kypros. The villages had heard rumours of her arrival, had laid down wreaths of roses and myrtles. They hoped their goddess would bestow upon them lasting lovers. She would try her best.
Because she was Aphrodite Urania, goddess of love. A heavenly representation of soulful devotion; one that transcended even death. Inspired by her own experience, based off that boy of bruises across the oceans. That afternoon after her announcement, there had been a dog waiting for her outside her house. It got to its feet upon her arrival, brushed up against her leg once, before bounding back into the woods. She did not need to ask who it had belonged to. She knew that warmth anywhere.
Now she was in Kypros, where its sweet fragrances had drawn her attention. It was a beautiful place. No one knew she was here.
Or that was what she thought, before the thunder rumbled.
Zeus was in front of her seconds later.
'My king,' she bowed politely.
He did not reply.
'What is it I can do for you?' she asked, but there was an edge to her voice.
'You are the goddess of love,' he said slowly. 'There is one thing you can do for me.'
She stilled. She had been expecting it. He had held a grudge against her since the trial with Ares, when he had seen she had come to the aid of his son, and not the king.
He started towards her. He possessed those old, prying eyes that gazed upon her when she first arrived at Olympus. Something sparked in them. It looked a lot like hunger.
She took a step back. 'Ares will-'
'Ares,' he drawled. 'Is not here. I am no Halirrhothius, little god. This will be quick, and it will be quiet.'
Zeus lunged for her. She ducked, and then ran. She could hear the king right behind her, could feel him lifting his arm and summoning the sky. She sprinted across the sand, calling for the sea, the trees, the heavens - anyone to hear her cries. She screamed for Ares, hoping he heard her as he did for Alcippe that hunting day.
She was met with deaf ears. Ares did not appear before her, veins snapping, eyes bleeding, dogs roaring; ever the defender. There was only silence on this beach, and the taunting sound of Zeus behind her.
'Where is your protector now?'
Aphrodite felt the hair on her neck lift as electricity hummed through the air. As the lightning formed to strike, she scrambled within herself, tore to the surface a magic that had not yet properly formed, and shifted into a dove.
She dived just as Zeus landed his bolt. The force of it made her tumble, nearly made her lose balance with these new wings. But she regained the momentum, and then shot up into the sky, straight for home.
Behind her, Zeus yelled. He could not see her tiny form. An escape, for now. There would be more moments like this. Moments where she would not find a chance to flee, where she would have to face his fury. Zeus was right, she had no protector now.
They had no protector now. Her and that warmth that grew inside the stomach, nestled between her womb. Who would fight for that little boy of bruises, so innocent and unknown to the tempers of this world?
The dove began to weep.
