I didn't realize how lonely I'd be without my parents. They never told me they'd die, or what this intense loneliness would feel like. At least I'm not gone yet… however, I am lost.
It was my father who died first. He'd been able to survive all the centuries, of pain and hatred, wars that lasted years, wars that lasted decades. He saw through the inner turmoils of deciding who to love, of children being cast out for loving who they want. He survived all of that until the World Wars started.
He didn't just sputter out and die like the rest of the gods. No, he was killed, assassinated. I felt like I was still a little girl despite being aeons old. My mother mourned with me. We were the last ones left.
Recently she died. I never thought it would be possible. Her body started to decompose, she told me she felt she was fading. She felt it. It gave me time to realize, to grieve when she told me this. And suddenly, one day when Aurora had decided not to illuminate Helios' rode, she passed into the abyss.
She told me that it would happen like this. That when the people started to rely upon their governments, didn't think for themselves. That was when she would die. She couldn't handle the stresses of fear and hatred anymore. It was just far too much for her. She greeted Thanatos almost too eagerly.
There was no funeral, no bodies to bury or set on fire. They weren't really physical beings, but the world felt both of their departures. In the plane of gods, there were tombstones made of marble thrones. The Thrones my parents kept secret and safe. They didn't want to die for they were far too happily in love. But now their names are carved upon the backs of the thrones. They are set together with the rest of the pantheon.
I visited them, all of them. My grandmother, Aphrodite, my aunts and uncles and cross-bred cousins. They're all dead, and all their names are carved into their near-Spartan thrones. There's absolutely nothing to show difference, identity, other than their names. I placed a rose and a lily on my parents' thrones. I'm one of the last, I realized, then. I made a decision.
I'm here, in this void. I'm here, waiting to be found. I refuse to die because if there was no Beauty in this world, then this world should not exist. I'm here, you just have to find me.
