Queen in her heart Chapter 1: Evanescence, a greek mythology fanfic

Queen in her heart

Reposting this with my new account because the old one got trolled and I had to delete it.

A divine saga in seven parts

"I love you, my strong and brave Queen", he whispered. "Always will. Be careful!" His beautiful, blue eyes held on to hers, but when she reached out to touch his face, he was gone, and the whirling mists closed around her.

Evanescence

Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year everyone!

Taking a small step back, sharp stiletto heel cracking the thin crust of ice beneath, she regarded the candle-lit scene in front of her while grabbing the fur cape, pulling it tighter over her shoulders against the cold midwinter night. Her friends. Gathered at the terrace to her large penthouse suite. Linda letting off another of those Asian floating lanterns in the sky where it joined its umpteen likes in an orange nebula. Natek filming it all with his smartphone camera, his white knitted cap sitting askew on too much dark-brown hair. Fireworks were flashing against the starry night sky, and beneath them Stockholm was sparkling like a slow-mo version of the pyrotechnics above. Thousands of thousands of lights reflecting in the water, glittering like the gemstones in a magic crown of a fairytale king.

Bolero was playing on the surround system, its distinct and well known cadence mixing with the random rattling of firecrackers being set off, the smell of gunpowder blending with that of perfume, after-shave and candlewax before it reached her nostrils.

This was her world, her town, her home, her friends. Still it felt so strange, so distant. So unreal - intangible. Unfathomable as if she didn't really fit in here. Like a coincidence had brought her here. Like she had merely been dropped down trough time and space and relocated to this place, and that her real abode was somewhere else, far away – and yet so near. As if she just needed to reach out with her hand, letting the thin surface of reality crack beneath her gold-painted nails to show her where she really belonged. The realm from where she had journeyed to come here on some mission she could not recall.

"Hannah!" Emanuel's deep voice shattered her thoughts. "More Champagne?" She turned towards the sound, facing the tall, slightly rotund man with blond, curly hair receding over a pale forehead and gold-brimmed glasses gleaning as they reflected the many flames of the thick white candles.
"Yes please," holding out her glass, she watched him fill it, the sparkling slightly golden beverage streaming down from the opening of the moist-covered green bottle, the festive bubbles playfully dancing around in the swirls and tickled her nose as she took a sip. Another one was opened up at the same time, the well-known pop of the cork followed by cheerful handclaps.

"Erik!" Linda's soprano mixing with the applause. "How much Champagne did you really get?"
"Enough," a debonair tenor resounded from the other end of the terrace. "Enough for us to celebrate that we're beginning another year. A hopefully better year than the one we're putting behind us."
"Can it be better," Monica's laughter pierced through the air. "For some, I mean." She was already more than reasonably tipsy. Bordering on drunk to be true. "Not all are as happy as you, Erik and Linda!"

Hannah sighed. She didn't want Monica to create another scene. Not on New Year's eve. However she knew the redhead teacher was right. Erik and Linda were successful, and they did nothing to hide it. Occasionally it tended to be a bit too much. Monica stood a bit to the left, glowed hand cradling her glass of Champagne as if she was afraid it would fly away together with the orange lanterns, which were now disappearing out over the water towards the city hall with its significant tower.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Hannah called out, letting her eyes slid over the gathered ten on the terrace. "I think it's time for another toast. And to hope that some of those wishes sent with the lanterns are to come true."

However she knew that one of the wishes would not become true.

The one she had written.

One single word.

Health.

However not for herself.

But for her best friend, Agnetha.

Agnetha, who was dying from the cancer. The cancer they all thought she had conquered. Became liberated of by the miracle that was 21th century medicine. However the tumor had returned, and with a vengeance.

"This will be my last New Year, Hannah," Agnetha had said in the kitchen before she and her husband Claus had left. They didn't want to stay over the strike of twelve, didn't want to mingle with Hannah's other friends and their superficial glee. The up-and-coming Linda and Erik, cutting gold with their investor companies. The talkative journalist Emanuel and his timid Thai wife Ilsa. Monica, who drank more and more and was turning bitter since her divorce. Natek and Karl, the frivolous gay couple with their thousand and one ongoing projects, ranging from modern circus to Eurovision Song Contest contributions. The twins Chantale and Renate who couldn't wait to go out clubbing and finally Logan, struggling with the Swedish and never giving up his tries to get Chantale in bed.

Now Agnetha's tear-stricken face somehow overlaid those merrier ones on the terrace. So while Hanna raised her glass, she recollected the hug she had received from her best friend, before Agnetha and Claus had left a bit more than an hour back. Agnetha had felt so gaunt, so fragile. She, the pudgy one who had always wished to be slim. Don't wish too hard...

¤0¤0¤0¤0¤*

The reminiscence of the dream flashed before her as a back marker catherine wheel careened through the sky outside the kitchen window and Monica's drunken hysteria fired off in a shrill laughter.
"I mean, Logan, gimme a break, she so jellicle!"
"Monica, please! I like you as a friend," Logan replied. "A good friend, I don't want to spoil that. Now, let me call a cab for you."
"I can ride the subway," the teacher replied. "We can ride together you and I!"
"Monica..." Logan's sigh was pretty audible, no doubt was he cringing at her blunt innuendo.

Hannah put the last of the Champagne flutes in the dishwasher and hit the ON button. The big machine thundered alive in a gush of white noise and she dried off her hands on a towel before leaving the kitchen to say good night to the last of her friends. Chantale and Renate had left soon after the strike of twelve, ready to hit the clubs, then Erik and Linda had hurried home to relieve the baby sitter and with them went Emanuel and Ilsa. The others had stayed to play scrabble. IRL game with a board and markers, a bit more genuine than the cell phone hype.

Now it was a bit past three o clock and Monica had failed in her mission to seduce Logan. Karl and Natek were tired as well, tired and content, their jovial bantering fading out as they were disappearing with the downgoing elevator. Leaning against the door frame, Hanna watched Logan helping Monica on with her parka and her long, green dickie, which she wound several loops around her neck.
"Take care of her", Hanna mouthed as the drunk woman turned her back and walked over to the elevator, calling it back up to the apartment again. Logan smiled silently and made a salute with two fingers across the forehead. Then they too disappeared.

It was 3:30 in the night and the year was 1214. Hannah was going to bed, and she wondered if the DREAM would come tonight again.

¤0¤0¤0¤0¤*

Around them cosmos swirled. Up was down and down was up. The shadow across his face was hard, rendering half of it in complete blackness, the way it did where there was no air. Still the remarkable beauty of his features was intact, and she let it burn through her retina and into her mind, to always remember. Always remember if anything should go wrong.
"Do you recollect how to do it?" he asked of her.
"Undoubtedly," her voice rung clear and firm, reverberating of confidence she didn't feel. "I close the portal from my side, you from your side, and the mortal realm will be protected while you, my friends take on the Malaikin. And then I just make sure the Crystal is safe at Olympos and wait for you to open the portal again when you are finished."

"Darling," with a gentle hand did he sweep a few strands of soft hair away from her pale temple.
"Let's not procrastinate. I'll do it now. And I see you so much sooner." She took his strong hand, removed it from her face and placed a gentle kiss upon his index finger. The warm and well known texture. She lingered perhaps a bit too long.

Then she let go and with her right hand she lifted the blue crystal before she stepped through the opening, seeing the turquoise sky there on the other side of the undulating mists of time-space. Frost broke out across her arms and painted itself up over her face as she passed through the opening like so many times before. Yet this time she knew it was different. She could feel it in all her essence, how this great Change manifested itself across the round opening like small, blue sparks crackling around the edges.

"I love you, my strong and brave Queen", he whispered. "Always will. Be careful!" His beautiful, blue eyes held on to hers, but when she reached out to touch his face one last time, he was gone, and the whirling mists closed around her. As she fell down towards the mountainside, she saw the mighty opening up there close and fade away, melt and white out until the only thing seen was the blue of the sky and the clouds.

Landing hard she felt how she dropped the crystal and she saw it roll away from her down the hillside, pulled by gravity into the chasm below.
"No!" she reached out to grasp it, but too late, and a flash of blue sapphire blinded her before she closed her eyes.

No! Hannah's eyes fluttered open and she found herself staring into the well-known off-white sloping ceiling of her own bedroom, the dream memory fading fast and turning into nothing more than shattered evanescent fragments. With a throaty moan, she turned in bed, untangling herself from the duvet, which had played boa constrictor in the night and wrapped itself around her legs and feet. The red digital figures on her alarm clock showed 10:53. God, she had slept too long. And that dream. It had been oddly detailed this time. She could recall the tactile sensation of his hand across her face, the warm skin she had kissed, the blue eyes holding onto hers. However she had lost his name. Again.

"Why can't I remember you?" she asked out loud while sitting up in bed. Outside it was raining, the water drumming persistently on the skylight and there was the deep rolling sound of an airplane passing above. "You're the only one I have, and I don't even remember your name. I don't even know if you're real or if you're nothing but a dreamwork. Still, you keep coming back to me all the time. I know the love in your voice is real. And your eyes, I would recognize your eyes anywhere."

"Oh, look at me," she then heard herself say, in another voice. Realistic and more scolding. "I talk to a dream man, do I cling to him because I've lost everything else?" involuntarily Hannah's eyes drifted over to the photo of her parents and her little brother Joly. The tsunami had taken them that horrid day in Thailand in '04. Nine years had passed, since those whom she had loved the most had vanished from her life. And soon her best friend Agnetha would be gone too, nothing but a memory.

"Then there'll only be you left, my nameless beloved," she complained pityingly while she stood up and walked across the cold floor to the hanger with her dressing gown. Shivering against the chill she gratefully wrapped the soft, ruddy terry around her naked body and continued out in the living room, her bare feet patting softly over the white-speckled black marble.

Ouch! The new year didn't start well, at least not when it came to the weather. Outside it was gray and wet. Uninspiring. Transparent worms of water painting themselves across the large glass surface, and out on the terrace the rain was soaking the candle leftovers, three empty bottles of Champagne and killing what little snow there was left. Beyond it, Stockholm looked washed out and gloomy, as if a collective hangover had manifested itself in its colour-less disillusion.

Breathing upon the glass, Hannah watched white condensation coat it and hide the outside. Using her index finger she painted a heart there. Another ephemeral tribute to her name-less beloved.
"I have nothing to write in that heart," she said. "Nothing but..."

"I just make sure the Crystal is safe at Olympos and wait for you to open the portal again when you are finished."

I just make sure the Crystal is safe at Olympos.

"Olympos. That word – a name. That's a clue!"

The fervent jolt through her mind made Hannah almost bounce back from the window, not caring that the heart she had drawn was disappearing fast as the condensation was fading. Swirling around, she almost ran into her office, removing the manga translation she was working with from the office chair, and powering up her laptop.

As soon as her little faithful had stirred alive and connected with the world outside, she went to Google, typed in the word Olympos and then spent a quarter of an hour there clicking some links which appeared interesting. Slowly something began to dawn upon her. Olympos being that mountain in Greece where the old gods had been alleged to reside. Could her dreams be connected to the old gods?

And why?

She had recieved this dream as long as she could remember. The dream of the man with his face halfway hid in shadows and the backdrop of the bright, starlit sky. So much more starlight than in real life. The man with the deepest, bluest eyes who had told with his kind, resounding voice that he loved her. The gentle hand caressing her cheek. Hannah had clung to this recollection trough the hardships of her life. Through the anguishes of her teens when she had felt like a misfit, through the loss of her family and trough the ups and downs of her professional life and when she had learned of Agnetha's cancer.

This nameless man had been her only constant. Her offbeat shelter, her personal religion. The one she had always known would return. To be there again in the dark of the night, telling her he loved her. Ever so often had she hoped that he would one day become real, that she would find herself face to face with him while being wide awake.

Only lately – the dream had grown so much more elaborated. More detailed. Today for the first time had she remembered herself mentioning Olympos. She recalled Olympos and that strange blue crystal, the one she so unfortunately had dropped. Now she clearly educed its primary blue colour, how that last aquamarine flash had burned into her retina, making her waking up.

Hannah had googled blue crystals and blue crystals + Olympos, but it had returned very little. Still she knew that in the dream had she fallen down on Mount Olympos, lost that important crystal which probably was operating the portal. And then...

And then?

And then she had ended up in this life, with the only recollection of her old life and her real beloved an evanescence of reappearing dreams.