Before You Go
“May I court you? Perhaps we could try being friends? I would never expect you to take me at my word and just accept me as your wife in all things. But I hope one day to get there.”
“May I court you? Perhaps we could try being friends? I would never expect you to take me at my word and just accept me as your wife in all things. But I hope one day to get there.”
“You would be correct in saying that I do not deserve him. I spurned him, and worse. But do you think that attempting to kill his wife in his own temple would endear him to you?” I kept my voice calm, hoping to bring her down some. I knew her bullets would do little more than hurt and piss me off, but why risk her accidentally hitting someone else?
“Micah? Tori? Callie?” They didn’t answer me, but it was completely unnerving how all their heads slowly turned until they were staring at me with wide eyes. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually experienced true terror, but the sight of my mortals looking soullessly at me was definitely the most terrifying thing I’d experienced in a long time.
My heart ached as I took one last glance at Tori and Callie sitting and staring into nothing on the couch, but I knew there was little I could do for them if I didn’t discover what had happened.
I was the heart. She was the butterfly. We’d fought once, long ago, when I was still considered a war goddess. She was forever a warrior, but it’d been a long time since she questioned my skills in battle. Our malicious and derisive names for one another became loving endearments by the time our swords were sheathed and we lost ourselves in friendly drinks.
They were quick to welcome me, encouraging me to join them for a Star Wars marathon. While my weakness was for Battlestar Galactica, I didn’t see a problem in joining them. Perhaps I would be able to lose myself in the movie and not give in to the vicious voice in my mind.
My gaze flitted to one side and then the other before I decided to use some questionable skills I had picked up in my time away with mortals. They were both good and bad influences. I was going to find what I wanted for muffins, and I wouldn’t let something as simple as a locked door prevent me from reaching them.
Perhaps I was giving in to the dramatics I had come to love from mortal media. But there was something about his startled cry when he saw me sitting in the near dark, playing an athame between my fingers that made me almost giddy.
Though I plotted and planned, I knew it was too soon to put those things into motion. I had considered resuming my search for Hephaestus. It had taken years to destroy our relationship, and I knew it could take just as long to fix things between us. However, no one wanted to tell me where he was, and I still had to figure out who had his number. Then I had to convince them I only had the best intentions, so they would let me have it.
Callie’s tears had slowed, and I could see her body was dragging her back into sleep. I stroked her hair again and whispered, “Rest. We will deal with everything else later.” And we would, but her ex just might not survive me dealing with it. I still had a little goddess wrath within me, and I had plenty of frustrations to take out on him.
The heavy weight in my chest, and the trepidation knotting my stomach, disappeared as the calming embrace of the sea wrapped around me. It was the calming embrace of what I could only think of as my mother. It had been the source of my creation, my beginning, and I was drawn to it as part of my new start. My birth had been in those waters. Why shouldn’t my rebirth have the same beginning?
The answers I seek cannot be found anywhere else. Going home means making amends, and I am prepared to do that. Whether it be by humiliating means or good deeds, I know it must be done. I am hoping to avoid the former, though.
It’d be a long road to where I needed to be, but it was time to go home and face my family, my issues, and them.
How do you explain color to the blind? How do you tell a fish how it is to walk? If you were not there, if you did not experience the love they had for one another, then I could never explain it to you. It was an energy that filled the room. It was something that comforted and devoured you. And many times, I fell to tears after they left because I could no longer remember if I had ever felt that love for myself.