Coming Of The Season
Summary: Claire is the Goddess of Spring, and at her coronation she meets the King of Death. At first she can't fathom why everyone's so afraid of him; but as she gets to know him, she realizes that he's darker than she could have ever imagined.
Prologue: Coronation
The days leading up to her coronation ceremony were a blur full of flowers, wheat and mortals. And her father's increasing anxiety.
Claire sighed as she pulled her hair back from her face, carefully folding it into a simple bun.
"Ahhh..." She smiled triumphantly, pinning it in place.
From what her father had told her of Olympus, it was a terrible place of sin and drink, and not a sensible soul lived there. She scoffed, rolling her eyes. Her biological father - he lived there, as well as the nymph that had birthed her. She thought perhaps her father could be right, if her parent's were anything to go by.
She dabbed some rosewater behind her ears and on her wrists. She raised the simple gold necklace that her father, her real father had brought her on her 18th birthday. It was a simple thing that Noah had had made for her - ironically, in Olympus.
She stared nervously at her reflection in the mirror. She looked not much different, perhaps a little richer and a little more... Goddess-like. Which was the point - she just didn't know if it was enough.
The one time she had visited Olympus - what, it must have been 7 years ago? - the women there were dressed in such fine ornaments, layered with heaps of the finest silver and gold until she wondered how much it must have took for them to stand straight and not fall with the weight. She had just that necklace, and some fire-dusted gold earrings that her mother had sent back with her father when she was a girl. She knew she was beautiful, but the women at Olympus were other-worldly. And despite all else that her birth parents were, she wanted to make them proud today.
"Claire..." Her father, the man who had raised her from birth because her father did not want his first illegitimate child at court (there were others that followed, but she guessed that their mother's were of a better class than Meredith was), "Come. It is time to leave."
Her adoptive father, Noah, god of the Harvest and Agriculture, had found her by the stream where her mother had left her. He had taken her home to his mortal wife, a woman of simplicity and a deep love of animals, who had lusted after a child but had never been able to have one, and they had raised her as their own.
Despite knowing of her origin more than 16 years ago, when Angela, his mother, had told him of where she had come from, her father still hadn't been able to shake his innate dislike of her father, the King of the Gods. As far as he was concerned, Claire thought, Olympus could burn and he'd happily contribute to it's downfall.
She rose, and reached up to hug him. He was so tall that she could hardly reach his neck. He smiled down at her, holding up a small white flower, and wedging it between her ear and head.
She reach up to touch it, smiling. "What is it?"
He grinned. "A new flower I found growing in the field today. I think the mortals call it..." He reached for her hand to lead her to their chariot, his brow furrowing as he struggled to remember. "..Narcissus?"
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Sylar hated the yearly visits to his brother's castle on the top of Mount Olympus. There were too many nieces, too many nephews, too many people trying to win his favor.
There was that, and Nathan was not his brother. No matter what Angela, his not-mother would say, he was not, not part of their little family.
"Sylar, come here!" Peter, however, was a different story. He tried to refrain from rolling his eyes as his younger brother threw his arms around his neck. Sylar returned the embrace as affectionately as he could manage.
"Still haven't found a scissors, I see." Sylar remarked as they drew away from each other, eyeing the fringe that was sure to impede on his brother's vision at some point or another.
Peter rolled his eyes at his older brother's brusque manner, smiling slightly. "Come. Mother's prepared a feast."
"You mean, she got the serving nymphs to prepare a feast."
"That's what I said. Come on, now."
Sylar sighed before allowing Peter to lead him inside.
One of the things he hated about his not-family was their indiscriminate display of wealth. Sure, he was the god of all of the gold they seemed to hang from everywhere, but he thought it was a little - he wrinkled his nose in distaste - shabby.
The walls and pillars were splashed with gold, and as a new addition since the feast last year, jeweled wind-chimes now hung low from the ceiling. Sylar rolled his eyes, marching through the 31-foot tall gold dining room doors with Peter.
Nathan as usual, was surrounded by his women. Niki, Tracy, Heidi, and a multitude of nymphs surrounded him, as if feeding out of his palms. He snorted, settling himself at the other head of the table.
"Hello, brother." He drawled, and smiled when the room was stunned to silence. "I hate what you've done with the place."
Nathan didn't flinch, to his credit. He merely smiled, raising an eyebrow. "Hello, Gabriel."
Sylar's lip curled with distaste at his given name, but smirked, refusing to show how much it bothered him. He knew how Nathan played his games - he played them too.
"Gabriel." The tall, stately woman with crow's eyes and entered the room, head held high and this time, Sylar couldn't help the wince. Angela did tend to have that effect on him.
"Greetings." He sneered. "Mother."
Angela raised her eyebrows. "Tone, Gabriel."
Sylar rose from his seat, the legs of the chair scraping against the floor of the grand hall with an unholy screech, shoulder's tensed to fight, when the dining halls doors opened once more, his brother Noah, and a girl he didn't recognize with hair spun from gold entered.
Sylar worked hard to unclench his fists, not wanting to make a scene in front of an unknown face, and sat, eyes fixed on the girl.
"What's her name?" He asked Peter, eyes running over the small, sun-soaked flower-child that sat across the table from him. She was new. He didn't like 'new'.
"Oh." He waved to the girl, and she smiled and waved back. He eyed them suspiciously. "That's Claire."
He rolled his eyes dismissively, already losing interest if she was but Peter's passing dalliance. "Just a nymph, then? What's she doing with him?" He nodded to his brother, who seemed to be in deep conversation with Nathan. He frowned. Those two avoided breathing in the same air space if they could...
"She's Nathan's daughter. Noah took her in when she was a baby and Heidi wouldn't allow her at court." His eyes shifted back to Peter, who was frowning at him. "Haven't you met her?"
He grasped the goblet of wine that had been lain at his place, gazing at the girl with a small smirk.
"No. No, I don't believe I've had the pleasure."
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