Peyton picked up a wooden bow and inspected it carefully. It had so much power. It could do so much. It had turned so many lives in different directions. It had the power of love.
“It is completely useless,” Eros stated suddenly as he entered into his office. Peyton quickly placed the bow back onto the stand where it had been and placed her hands behind her back innocently.
“Why?” she asked curiously. “You used to use it all the time. That’s how you fell in love with Grandma!”
“Exactly why we had to stop using it,” Eros said as he took a seat behind the desk in the room. “Too many casualties on the job.”
“It was only you,” Peyton replied lamely.
Eros crossed his arms defensively. “And I am kind of a big deal in this business. It doesn’t matter anyway, we don’t use any weapons.”
“Then what do we use?”
“Our words,” Eros answered. “They can be powerful. You have my blood in your veins which makes you, well, likable. People are going to trust you when you talk to them. People are going to want to listen. People are going to listen. You just have to perfect the art of persuasion.”
“And how would I do that?”
“With our help of course!”
Two identical blonde haired, blue eyed men strolled into the office practically filling up the space of the room.
“Deimos! Phobos!” Peyton cried. She ran up and hugged her two uncles.
“Wow, we haven’t seen you since you were just a little girl,” Deimos said ruffling Peyton’s red hair. She only knew it was him because he had raised his hand first when she called out their names.
“You have grown,” Phobos agreed.
“Guys,” Peyton began. “I’m almost 20 years old.”
“Aw, and still so cute,” Deimos cooed jokingly. “She’s growing up!”
“Not for long,” Eros replied. “She’ll stop eventually.”
“Yes, we heard from Mother all about the whole council meeting,” Phobos said.
Deimos laughed nervously. “I’m sure it was exaggerated though. I cannot imagine sweet Psyche calling her such awful names.”
Eros shook his head and rolled his eyes. Peyton cocked her head to the side confused.
“What names?”
Phobos gave her shoulder a soft pat. “Names that you are far too young to hear. They would ruin your innocence.”
Peyton crossed her arms over her chest and huffed. She did not enjoy being treated like a child. She was an adult for goodness sake! Yet just because everyone was a millennium or two older than her, they all thought they were superior. Stupid gods…
“So what took you so long to come around?” Deimos asked his brother.
Eros sighed and rubbed the back of his neck.
“He wanted to let me live some more before I have to start working for the rest of my life,” Peyton claimed. “I had no complaints about that.”
“You don’t want the job?” Phobos asked curiously.
Peyton shrugged. “Not particularly, but Grandpa needed my help so here I am.”
“How sweet of you,” Deimos remarked seriously. “Your grandfather needed help.”
Eros rolled his eyes at the stress of the word. “I don’t look old enough to be a grandfather.”
“Au contraire,” Phobos said. “You are plenty old enough.”
“Yes, and… are those wrinkles?” Deimos joined in.
Peyton stood back and watched the argument slowly unfold between her family members.
Eros raised an eyebrow. “You two are her great-Uncles.”
“We are pretty great,” Deimos agreed.
“And you’re really not that grand,” Phobos added.
Eros waved them both away. “I never remember why I invite you over.”
“We’re here to help,” Phobos reminded him.
“But you guys work for Ares,” Peyton said finally speaking up from her corner in the room. “What can you possible do?”
“We’ve worked with your grandfather before,” Phobos said.
“Whenever he needs help,” Deimos agreed. “We’ve learned the craft of matchmaking even though it’s not our specialty.”
“And it’s changed so much too,” Phobos continued. “Eros has taught us through the years and now, it’s your turn.”
“Awesome,” Peyton said enthusiastically. “Let’s get started! So how do we get down to Earth?”
“Slow down,” Eros cut in. “We haven’t even gone over the rules. You have to learn all the new ways of how to convince people to speak to strangers. You have to learn how to judge people to know how certain ones will act.”
Peyton blew a piece of hair out of her face as her enthusiasm changed. It would be a while before she would be able to get down to Earth.
She sighed and mumbled, “Well… let’s get started then.”
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We were in a zoo. A zoo! I was 20 years old not five…
But I was acting like I was five. This was my first time to ever visit Earth! Most of the animals here I had only seen in books and pictures. They were all so close now and so real.
“This place is amazing!” I stated excitedly. “And look at this map! It says that there are seals here! Seals! Have you ever seen a seal in real life? Because I haven’t and they are just around the corner! Can we go? Can we go? PLEASE!”
My grandfather laughed at me and my behavior. Only here, he wasn’t my grandfather. Well, he still was but I couldn’t call him that on Earth. People would look at us funny considering that we appeared to be almost the same age. It was weird to call him anything other than ‘grandpa’.
“Calm down, Peyton,” Eros said. “We’re here to work not to have fun.”
I was unable to hold back my pout. I wanted to see all the new things. This place was so cool! I didn’t think I’d ever get tired of it.
“I could live here, Eros!” I shouted throwing my hands in the air and spinning in a small circle.
“No you can’t. You would need a special license to live here.”
“There are no immortals on Earth?” I asked curiously. Eros had begun walking straight ahead through some path in the zoo. He seemed to know exactly where he was going. I made sure to keep up one him.
“There are many,” Eros disagreed. “Only immortals with nowhere else to go can live here.”
“You make it sound like a punishment to live here.”
Eros chuckled to himself and muttered under his breath, “It certainly seems like that to them.”
“So where exactly are we going?”
“To work,” Eros replied easily. We continued in silence along some unmarked path that Eros was taking. I would constantly stare off at all the exotic animals around me. They were just so cool and I really wanted to stay and watch them longer! I wished for a camera or something to help remember this trip. I would have to remember to come back to one of these zoo places whenever I got the chance to come back to Earth.
Eros led me over to a tall fence that held some animal inside. It must have been very interesting because there was a large crowd of people around it.
“Oh! What is it?” I asked excitedly. “I want to see!”
“We’re not here to see the animal,” Eros reminded. “We’re here to work.”
“But I want to see it!” I complained.
Eros sighed. “If you can tell me which two people in this crowd belong together, then you can take a peek.”
I stood on the tips of my toes to try to gain a peek without doing the work I needed to but it was to no avail. I couldn’t see anything through the thick crowd of people.
Sighing, I mumbled, “What am I supposed to look for?”
“We didn’t go through months of training for you to be asking that,” Eros said. “So you tell me.”
I sighed again. This was supposed to be fun but Eros was making it boring. I glanced at the crowd looking for anything out of the ordinary. Eros never told me what would happen. He said it was different for each person so he wouldn’t be able to describe it to me. That left me on my own.
So maybe I would have some special vision that would make two people turn pink or something? Or maybe the two people I had to look for would raise their hands and help me out? After a minute of gazing out over the crowd, I saw nothing.
“I can’t tell,” I whined suddenly. “Aren’t I supposed to be able to tell? Why can’t I? Am I dysfunctional? Am I broken? Maybe I don’t have enough of your blood! I am two generations after to you!”
“Calm down,” Eros said with a small smirk. He found this amusing! Amusing! He was taking joy in my frustration! What type of person did that? Eros dropped his smile and motioned over to the crowd. “Do not put so much thought into it and simply look.”
Taking a deep breath, I did as I was told. I couldn’t see many faces as the crowd largely had their backs toward me and were inspecting the animal in the exhibit. I focused on the back of everyone’s head wondering what the front of them looked like. I could tell by some of the hairdos that some people did not have great fashion senses.
“I’m still not-”
“Shh,” Eros interrupted suddenly. “Feel them.”
I gave him a curious expression. What did that mean? Was I supposed to walk up to each of them and touch the back of their heads? I was sure to have some explaining to do if that was the case. How did Eros do this all day?
Facing the crowd again, I took one step forward before stopping suddenly. I felt it. I wasn’t sure what exactly… but I felt it.
“I can feel it!” I squealed suddenly. Eros nodded encouragingly. I searched through the crowd quickly. It was like a magnet being held apart at just the right distance to cause a pull. I could feel it! And even through the crowd, I could tell just the two people who were causing the pull.
“It’s the blonde girl and that man standing behind her,” I claimed.
Eros glanced at the two I was pointing at and nodded approvingly. “Now, go and do your job.”
“Wait… what?”
“Persuade them to meet each other.”
I furrowed her eyebrows. “Can’t we just bump them into each other? They would meet that way.”
“Now, Peyton,” Eros began. “That is not how this works. Go and do as you’ve been taught.”
Sending him a glare, I grumbled as I made my way over to the two people in question. The girl had a camera in her hand and she was furiously snapping pictures. The man behind her was just trying to see around her hand. As I neared them, I glanced back at Eros. He was nodded and waving me in the direction of the two.
I didn’t want to talk to them. That seemed like such a hassle when I could just simply…
Suddenly there was a flash of brown from the exhibit. It was a baby brown bear! I cooed automatically and wanted to rush forward to see the little thing. And there was no better opportunity!
Slowly I approached behind the man and woman. I pretended to look around them to try and see the baby bear. I groaned and irritably pushed forward, purposely crashing the man into the woman in front of him. I moved out of the way to avoid blame as a slow domino affect occurred. She bumped into someone beside her who bumped into the person next to him and so on. A round of apologies was heard from all the people who had bumped into one another. The crowd broke up and people began walking away onto other exhibits. I took my opportunity and ran over to inspect the little cub.
It was so adorable! It looked like a teddy bear and it was grumbling and running around. Sometimes it would trip over its own feet or stop to play with a toy in the exhibit. Its mother was lounging around in the back un-amused by the people. I had the goofiest smile on my face watching the small cub.
Eros suddenly joined me and I looked over at him. People had really begun to lost interest and the area had really cleared out. Eros didn’t seem pleased with what I had done.
“That was not what I said to do.”
I glanced over my shoulder. The man and woman who had the magnetic pull were off to the side talking assumedly about the camera in the woman’s hands. The man was pointing down toward it and saying something to which she would respond eagerly. I shrugged back at Eros.
“It worked,” I said simply.
“That’s not the point.”
“Isn’t that all that matters?”
Eros grumbled something inaudibly under his breath. I smirked at his irritation. He was kind of fun to annoy…
I glanced back at the cute little cub but suddenly lost sight of him in the exhibit. I sighed and turned to Eros with wide pleading eyes.
“Can we go see the seals now, Grandpa?”
Despite fighting off a smile, Eros couldn’t help it. I had made sure that no one around us could hear when I had said that.
“Please?” I asked again giving him a pout. “I wanna see the seals!”
Eros rolled his eyes with an obvious smile on his face. “Fine.”
_____________________________________________________________________________
So there was Peyton’s first job. You can already see how she works differently from Eros. We might see a little more of that later on too. I have the intention to show you how Eros works one of these chapters.
So, I will say that I am SO sorry I haven’t updated sooner (but it’s still Sunday for me!). I’ve been busy for once in my life and I suddenly had this gut wrenching pain in my chest all day today so I haven’t been up for writing. But I suffered through it and pounded out a chapter! The things I do for you guys!
What’s next you may ask? Well, I leave that up to a vote because I’m unsure… So do you want:
Option 1: Another short of Peyton on the job that shows how Eros’s methods differ from hers and a possible cameo from Nate. (If that doesn’t make sense to you then you’ll have to read it to see it.)
OR!
Option 2: The story of how Peyton met Brooke!
The choice is yours! Choose wisely!
Happy CC Sunday! (No one reminded me about it by the way…until this was already posted!) See you CC fans next week! Hopefully I won’t be so busy or in so much pain. :P
I hope you enjoyed!
~GermanSam