For who could ever learn to love The One who doesn't know love?
By Asso
Chapter One
Just like that.
For who could ever learn to love The One who doesn't know love?
For who could ever learn to love The One who doesn't know love?
Chapter One
Sunlight does not shine, here.
This is not the realm of sun.
Helios does not conduct his chariot across the blue of the heavens.
The heavens... they don't exist, here.
Here, there are no skies swept by fluffy clouds. Or gloomy and stormy skies. Of gentle breeze. Or impetuous winds. Of fresh and sweet air. Or crisp and lively.
There are no such things here, there is no place for them here. For things so full of life.
Here...
There is no life.
"Oh Hera, my wife! Sniff! Smell! Feel! One senses the scent itself of life!"
There is not, here, its brilliant light. The vivid light of life. Punctuated by the brilliance of the day and by the quiet break of the night.
There is another light, here.
A dark light.
Sombre and obscure.
Always equal to itself. Immutable and unvarying.
All time
A light without night.
A light without day.
"What a lightful day, Hera!"
Hera looked haughty at her Lord and Groom. Haughty, just like her stern voice. "Admittedly it is indeed..."
The thrilled eyes of him settled down on her, as his voice thundered, powerful and cheerful, blocking her words in her throat.
"The perfect day for this day! The sky is so blue that it can not be bluer. Helios shines as he never has shone. The clouds chase each other in the blue, joyful and evanescent." His mighty laugh rang out. "It just seems that our sister Demeter has decided to make this day the day that it must be!"
Hera said nothing and her gaze remained deadpan, just like her face.
Zeus took a deep breath.
Well, honestly he could understand her. He... he could not say that she was in the wrong, in showing such a coldness.
Slowly and gently - his gaze, though still proud, showing an equal sweetness - he came up to her. He took her hand, gently, and gently he drew her on to her feet.
Now the two of them were facing each other.
Her gorgeous and perfect visage, impassive and in wait, was turned up towards his.
Zeus sighed again.
Then, finally, he made up his mind to speak.
It was not easy for him to talk that way.
It was not easy for the King of the Gods to say what he wanted to say.
"Wife, I understand you, and you're right. I'm... I'm in the wrong." His voice was sincere. She knew grasp well, when he was lying.
She waited for what he was about to say.
"Hera... my wife... I am a two-timer, I know. I've betrayed you so many times. But..." Again. Another deep sigh. "But I love you. You are my bride."
She sighed in turn. Freeing her hand from his, she turned and, with her back to him... "You love me. Yes. I know." Her voice was soft and sorrowful. "You are sincere. But..." She turned toward him. Her eyes were sad. "But how many children, yours and not mine, do I have to tolerate yet to see walk on the scene of the world?"
Zeus grabbed his wife's hand and held it tightly. An affectionate squeeze, even. "Oh but... but this child… this child is something else! She's... she's different! She will be the one who…"
And his voice failed him.
And Hera stood astounded. Never such a thing had happened to him!
Wide-eyed, she remained dumb to listen to his words, the moment he regained his self-control.
His voice sounded strange. There was something in it... a tone... yes, an apologetic tone. True. Real. Sincere. But also something else. Pride? Joy? Yes, it was so. And this was at all understandable. But the issue was that, in the midst of all this, one could perceive, could feel even...
…something more yet. Something... something...
But it was not possible. It could not be fear.
The King of the Gods did not fear anything or anyone.
And then why? That was the day that he had long awaited, not the day of the fear, but the day of the joy and satisfaction, for him and... yeah, even for Demeter.
And so why?
What could on that day, just on that day, strike fear and just into him, the mighty Lord of all, Gods and Mortals, the one who by definition nothing could fear?
Absolutely nothing. Except...
Eh sure. Nothing except Destiny.
Destiny...
Hera pondered.
Yeah, Destiny. Of which, sometimes, it was possible to discern some vague glimpse.
It happened to everyone. To Gods and Mortals, although anything, in reality, of what Destiny had in store for Gods and Mortals appeared never clear in the eyes of anyone.
However, it happened. To all.
Even to the King of the Gods.
Fear, so? Could it be? For some inkling he someway had had about the future that was in store for that daughter - in his saying so much different from any other of… his children - of whom they were talking about? And also… also...
Disquiet? Dismay, even?
Could there be all this, amid the flamboyant and self-confident thunders of his words?
What was he hiding from her, her royal consort?
What sort of obscure and scary vision was it possible he had been able to rob eventfully from the arcane mind of Destiny?
What was concealed in his bombastic words?
"She is the daughter mine and of Demeter, o my wife! She's the daughter of the King of the Gods and of the Goddess of Nature! The daughter of one of the daughters of Cronos and of the one who, among his children, defeated him! That's her! That's the one who is meant to be the worthy daughter of two of the mightiest gods among the mightiest gods! Of the one who governs Nature and of the one who governs everything!"
But right after, Zeus's voice dropped to a sigh. "And whether Demeter can ever have another child or not, no one else of her children can ever be like this one."
Then, as if desirous to show of whom the voice was, it became mighty again. Very mighty. And proud. "And only from me and from her could arise such a child!"
The voice became almost rough. "I admit. I enjoyed doing it enormously. But I couldn't help but do it, Hera."
The voice was a rumble. "She was to be born."
The voice paused.
One long moment.
Then it resumed. Even more mightily.
"Light was to be born!"
My light.
The light of my realm.
Hera looked at her consort with intense and puzzled gaze. She knew him very well and when he used so orotund words… well, this meant that there was something that didn't add up. Not to mention what she had seen in his eyes and sensed in his tone.
What lay behind his grandiloquent speaking?
"The light? What do you mean, husband? The light already exists. Helios lights up the world. The sky, the earth, even the depths of the sea realm ruled by Poseidon. The light is everywhere."
Zeus found himself looking dazed on his wife. For Uranus' sake! It was true! The light was everywhere! Why had he found himself proclaiming that thanks to him was born the light? Brought by his daughter? His and of Demeter? She, their daughter, would bring the unknown feel of something there was not yet. Would bring the sparkling joy of a sweet ... how to call it? ... yes, here ... of a sweet season. Season. That was the term. Something that didn't previously exist. Something that, despite being the passing of the days of the year already constantly cosy and pleasant, would make more diverse and gayest the immutable climate of now, the climate of Demeter. This was what she would bring with her. Of this, she would be the Goddess. Of… of... its name would be Spring.
Zeus raised his bushy eyebrows.
The Spring. Bright, this was certain. Gently, beautifully, softly bright. So he imagined that the gift that her daughter would bring with her would be. But, by no means, such a gift would be the carrier of something that already existed.
Yes. It existed. Light existed already. Although the chariot of Helios not yet walked the paths of the sky, it existed already since the dawn of time, since the time of Uranus and Gaea. And maybe even before. Before. When there was only Chaos.
It existed. Everywhere.
Everywhere.
Yeah. Everywhere.
That word swirled in the mind of Zeus.
Everywhere everywhere everywhere...
No. It wasn't… it wasn't so.
Not everywhere.
The dark shadow of the strange and chilling premonition which had seized him when his daughter had been born, which had prompted him to recommend to Demeter to grow their daughter under the closest surveillance, powerfully grabbed him and its true meaning, the truth that was hidden in it, became clear, now, in his mind.
That word - light - that he had unwittingly uttered in thinking about her, about his daughter, about her very essence... that word had brought into the open that recondite and terrifying meaning, that awful truth.
The cursed plan of Destiny.
Not everywhere.
The words of his wife had been the push that was needed yet to understand everything, to bring in full light the dark substance of that ancient vague foreboding he had had just at the birth of his daughter.
In full light. Light! Once again that word! Once again that word whose deepest essence so well suited his daughter!
No! Damnit, no! The light, the light of all time, the light that had always been, the light that existed prior to the new light of his daughter, did not shine everywhere!
Not everywhere!
And, without knowing it, without realizing it, he found himself murmuring stunned the two scary words that were chasing each other within him.
"Not everywhere."
Perplexed and confused, Hera wrinkled her beautiful and haughty forehead. "Not everywhere? But that's untrue, husband! The light is everywhere. There is no corner of the world where Helios can not reach. What more might she do? In what unknown land unimaginably devoid of light, might she bring it? She, the Goddess..." Hera strove to repress the bitterness that the mere thought of saying what she was going to say caused to her. "... the Goddess who was born in Demeter's wombs from the seed you have implanted inside them?"
The only light that could be born here. In the cavernous, secret wombs of the earth.
My light.
My dark and cold and gloomy light.
Dark.
And cold.
And gloomy.
And… lonely.
Like me.
Zeus sighed deeply. Something... a kind of veiled sadness - or was it guilt? - crossed his eyes.
And this time his wife was sure.
There was fear in them. And disquiet. And dismay.
And suddenly she understood.
The light - the true light - was not everywhere!
There was a place, a concealed realm, a realm that none of them – Gods or Mortals - wanted to know, where there was another light.
A dark and terrifying light. A light which was darkness.
Only Hermes had sometimes crossed the horrid threshold leading to that light, by reason of his duties.
And every time, he had come back shocked; every time, shaken by tremors unworthy of a God, he had yelled from the rooftops that never he would go back down there, although he had never gone much beyond the threshold and had never met in person, in flesh and blood, the… the source of that light made of shadow.
And only the terror that Zeus could force him to be for much more time than that of one of his missions as messenger of Gods, had, each time, persuaded him to set foot down there again.
But the last time he had screamed that he would rather give up all privileges of his being a God, that he would rather live forever among the Humans, mixed with them, one of them.
Hera's hand grabbed that of her august husband, held it tremendously strongly.
"No! No, Zeus! No! You won't... you won't allow! You won't allow… "Hera swallowed hard before managing to say it; before that pronoun could get free out from her lips. "…him!"
Zeus looked at his wife with lost eyes.
Inside his mind, his thought ran terrified over there.
To that other realm.
To the dark and cold and gloomy realm...
To the lonely realm...
Of his lonely brother.
Of the powerful and dangerous older brother. Dangerous. The only one who could have the strength to oppose him.
The one... the one he, with a dirty and deceitful trick, had condemned to eternal solitude.
And who, with a simple and quiet nod, had accepted the burden of his destiny.
The destiny that only he could hold up.
The fate of being…
Hades.
Strange thoughts, on this day.
On this day that seems to me pervaded more than ever by the gloomy light of my realm.
By my light.
Strange.
Why these thoughts?
My burden is heavy, but it is my burden.
I have accepted it.
I have nodded to my ambitious young brother my assent. I have nodded with my head and my eyes to him that I was willing to bear the burden that he was giving me by deception, both of us well aware of his ignoble trick.
The monstrous Hades.
The tenebrous Hades.
The wicked Hades.
Hated and reviled.
And lonely.
For eternity.
Strange, strange thoughts.
Strange.
Why do I have them?
Why is my cold stone throne so cold today?
Why does the light that surrounds me - my light - appear to me so cold and dark, today?
It is a day like many others.
A cold day; and melancholy.
And lonely.
Like all my days.
Zeus remembered well that distant day. It was carved forever in his mind.
As much as convinced of himself he might be, he knew that his reign was founded on deception.
And he was certainly not the only one to know.
Oh yes! He remembered well! He perfectly remembered the grim and conscious nod of assent that his sombre brother had given him; the mocking, disdainful and yet, in some way, also unfathomably sad spark of awareness that had shone in his dark and glacial eyes that distant day. Fully aware of the deception that he, Zeus, with that straw of which he knew the length - the shortness - was perpetrating against him.
But there was no another way. Or he or Hades. Poseidon counted for nothing.
And Hades knew that only he could hold the weight of such a fate.
And Hades was noble. Noble, damn him! A grim, dark and elusive nobility. Unfathomable. Exactly as grim, dark, elusive, unfathomable as it was him.
He, who, with one single glance, with his mere shadowy presence, was able to shake the veins and the wrists of the Titans, during that distant long, exhausting war for supremacy!
He, so different from all his brothers and all his sisters.
Frighteningly different.
A God... a God to keep away.
And he had agreed to stay away.
Had accepted to be kept away.
Because he was noble. Incomprehensibly noble. Obscurely noble.
And willing to accept the heavy burden of his obscure nobility!
Willing to accept his difference from any other God. To accept his own… darkness.
To accept to be the despised and feared Hades.
The horrid Hades.
The King of the Realm without light.
The Lord of the Underworld.
I knew what was the destiny which expected me.
I knew.
I knew, when I pretended not to notice the deception of my youngest brother. When I nodded him my assent.
The straw.
The shorter straw to me!
As if I did not know that my brother knew what was the longest straw. And the intermediate one. And the shorter one.
But never he or any other of our siblings could have been able to bear the burden of...
Of the Underworld.
And, then, I knew it... everyone knew it… that one – that one - was my world.
I was the one who had ended up being the closest - horrendously near - to the dark and dull beat of the dull and dark heart of our father.
Of Cronos. Devourer of his sons.
That heartbeat made of darkness, of death...
I carry and will always carry it with me.
None of my sisters and none of my brothers ever heard and felt that heart beating. None of them ever was pierced by its dark and chilling sound.
None of them felt, as I felt, the chill of the icy blood pumped by that wicked heart. None of them has been enveloped, as I have been, by the dull and appalling sound of its perennial flow.
And least of all he, the youngest. Zeus. Who never knew the darkness. And the silence. And the frost.
And the loneliness.
The dark and chilly belly of our father, the dark and wicked beating of his heart, toughened me up.
And marked me forever.
They condemned me to the darkness.
To the frost.
To the silence.
To the solitude.
Yes. The Underworld was and is and forever will be my world. It's my destiny.
And none of my brothers and my sisters could have ever borne my burden. I am the carrier of obscurity. The Dark One. Not them.
So I... I, who was... I knew, I know... everyone, including my brothers and my sisters, know... I, who was and am the mightiest, precisely because of this... I'm here.
In the dark of my dark light.
In the silence.
In the frost.
In the solitude.
To rule what only I can rule.
Without ever the sound of a mild laugh.
The warmth of a smile.
The laugh... the smile of someone.
Of a…
A woman.
Who may love me.
Oh sure. Zeus remembered very well.
He remembered the treacherous way with which he had condemned the one, the only one who could have robbed him of the pre-eminence, to be the God without love.
Love? What's love? Why this word, inside me? I don't know love.
I am the God without love.
I know well. I can't be anything else.
So why?
Why these thoughts today?
I knew it.
I knew what would happen of me when I have made sacrifice of myself, when I prevented from making to happen - after a terrible war, the one between us and the Titans - another and even more fierce war, a fratricidal war between me and my young and mighty, certainly, but also outrageously cunning and ambitious brother. A war in which I would be alone, because - let also aside Poseidon - none of my brothers and my sisters would be deployed at my side. And, therefore, a war that would end or in my forced confinement in the same world that the trick of Zeus assigned surreptitiously to me - this time, however, not as its King, but as its captive - or in the subjugation, on my part, of all other members of my family.
And I would have been, in any event, alone. And neglected. And scorned. And despised. And hated.
More even than I am now.
This is my destiny.
To this I am forevermore doomed.
I knew all this perfectly, when I agreed to ignore the ignominious trick of my brother.
I was perfectly aware. More than him. More than any of my siblings.
I knew who I was and am.
I knew how would have been my days.
I knew what I would have been... forever.
I knew I would have been the dark king. The grim Lord.
I knew that fear would have been my companion.
I knew what would have been my name, a name that has no sound, that never emerges on anyone's mouth.
Never.
Except that at the end.
At the end. When it rises as an icy sigh, a gelid shudder of dread, that gets lost far away and fades and dies grimly, as if it hadn't ever been, rolling among the dead branches of the dead trees of a dead forest.
As if it had never existed.
My name. Just as me myself.
The One who does not exist. The One who it is best to think he does not exist.
That am I.
For the Mortals.
As well as for my brothers and my sisters.
As well as for all the other Gods and Goddesses who came after.
Who am I to them?
Nothing. Nobody.
The unnameable God of eternal nothingness.
The God who, the day when Mortals appeared on the world scene, erected for them the kingdom of dead. The icy realm of eternal nothingness.
The God of Darkness.
Of the silence.
Of the frost.
Of the loneliness.
The God of Terror.
The God who frightens the Mortals.
And the Gods.
The God who is better if he stays where he is.
Away from everyone.
In the dark of his dark light.
In the silence. In the frost.
In his eternal solitude.
In…
In his lonely world without love.
Zeus shook himself abruptly from his thoughts. The agitated voice of his wife brought him back to the world of the living.
"Thou shan't allow this, Husband! Thou shan't let his darkness penetrate her light!"
It was imperious, that voice. Yet terrified. And... and even pleading.
And that voice rose again, shrill, repeating with more force... "Thou shan't let his darkness penetrate her light!"
And it was clear, there was no need of any other details, to understand to whom they referred, that 'His' and that 'Her'.
But, nonetheless, Hera screamed it loudly.
"Hades can not have Persephone!"
Yes. Strange, strange thoughts, today.
Love.
What's it? I can't understand it. I can only understand it exists.
I can just grab, vaguely, something of the essence of what it is.
I am the God without love.
And I just know I am this.
So?
Why these thoughts today? In this day so equal to all my lonely days?
Why this strange longing? This yearning that I do not understand?
This desire to ...
To be loved? I?
But...
That's absurd! Absurd!
For who could ever learn to love The One who doesn't know love?
Zeus' eyes widened.
"I... I thought that you ..."
"That I hate your daughter, husband? That I may enjoy that evil may swoop down on her?"
"Well, I ... I ..."
"So do you judge your wife, Husband? This do you think of her?"
At this point Zeus found himself reacting angrily.
"I do not seem that tenderness is your hallmark, wife!"
Hera stood still for a moment to look at her consort with resentful gaze.
Then she lowered her head.
She turned, still head down.
And, with bowed head, in a low voice, she spoke.
"It is true. I am not tender. But it's hard to be tender considering all the times I had to bite the bullet of your treacheries."
Zeus suddenly felt guilty. "Hera ..."
She turned and looked at him with sad eyes, by slaying in his throat whatever he was going to say.
"But ..." Her eyes took on a strange light, a gentle light that he had never seen before in them. "... but it's true what you say, my husband. Persephone is different."
She lowered her head again and spoke one more time, but as if she were speaking not only to him but even and above all to herself.
"I detested her, when she was born. Then I have seen her grow. I've seen her become a little girl and then a maiden. I have seen flourish her beauty and her innocence. I have seen become little by little marvellously vivid her sweet light."
She smiled sweetly and sadly together.
"Yeah. That's right, husband. You're right. She brings light, with her. A light that was not there before. A different light. Just like her."
Her head stood up. Her eyes stared at his.
"It's not possible to hate Persephone, husband. It's only possible to love her."
For who could ever learn the Lord of the Underworld?
Zeus was speechless. He could do nothing but stand by and watch his wife open-mouthed.
"She is not only gorgeous, husband. She is the imagine of purity and innocence. Things that neither you nor I nor any other of our brothers and sisters nor any of the sons and daughters who are born to us before her have ever had. It is true what you say. She's really different. She is the hope of a different and brighter world. Wonderfully bright. Of a light that never there was before."
The mouth of Zeus continued to remain wide open, as well as his eyes.
"And you can not allow it to be for her fulfilled such a cruel destiny! If it's true what you have fear that it can happen, if it is true what I have understood that you've felt that could happen, you - you, o Lord of all Gods - you have to stop it! This time you must oppose even the Destiny! "
There was a long silence.
Zeus was able to close his mouth, at last, and watched for a long time his wife with a fixed gaze, her eyes locked on his, her lush breasts panting.
Then a veil of pain, a veil of sadness clouded the eyes of Zeus.
He gently took her hand; squeezed it softly.
"Hera ..." It was not the thunderous voice of the King of the Gods, that one. It was a voice pained and distraught. A whisper. "...nobody, not even I, can oppose the Destiny."
Hera freed vehemently her hand from his and looked at him with burning eyes.
"And instead you will do! This time you will do it! You will do it, my husband!"
"Hera ..."
"Thou won't let her be the one who has to pay the reckoning of your deception!"
"Wife! Watch out! Off your tongue! "
But Hera didn't even stay to listen to him.
"The fruit of your seed shan't give its gorgeous light to the dark world in which you have fraudulently relegated him!"
"With his assent, wife! With his silent assent! He agreed to be who he is!"
Now Zeus was angry. Extremely angry. Because his wife was throwing to him in the face the truth. A double truth. That of his deception. And that that the one who would have to pay his deception would be his daughter.
His eyes grew hard. His voice thundered.
"And it doesn't really seem to me that you, as well as any other of the sons and daughters of Cronos, have then considered so vile my deception!"
But it was as if he spoke to the wind and, indeed, his irate statements uncorked other and unpleasant outbursts of words on the part of his wife; violent words, that Hera flung without much ado on his angry face.
"His assent? You think he knew that you were tricking him?"
"Of course he knew! And he ..."
"And he allowed himself to be fooled?"
"And what did you want him to do? Let be unleashed another war? A fratricidal war?"
"Ah, so then he would have pulled nobly back and would have accepted your deception for nobility of soul?"
"Oh well..."
"Zeus, Hades has bowed to your cheating because ... because he's a monster! A monster that can stay just where they're monsters! Down there! In the Underworld! It is there, that he wanted and wants to stay! Far away from us! Far away from everyone! "
"Hera! Stop it! He's not a monster! He was the only one who could stand up to that damn kingdom and govern it and he knew it. But instead of asking openly to him, I gave him that kingdom through deceit and I sentenced him to eternal solitude!"
"Do you remember his eyes, Zeus? Do you remember them?"
Zeus could not help but feel a chill in the back. Yes. He remembered his eyes. They were eyes that put the willies.
Hera sighed. She managed to calm down a little.
"Maybe... maybe I exaggerate, my husband. Maybe it is true that there is in him a sort of strange grandeur. But it is a greatness that gives the shudders. And... I do not even wonder if he has consented to bend to your deception without complain nor fight because driven by this sort of dark nobility or because the lure of that dark world, the world to which he belongs, was so strong for him to make him forget every possible wrong suffered by him. I just know that he is there, away from everyone, far from us. And this is enough also to everyone else who witnessed the division of the kingdoms, and this is more than enough to explain why none of us has had anything to say! And... "
Hera's voice trailed off. Became a whisper. Almost a sorrowful prayer. "... and I do not want him out of there. I do not want those frightening and malefic eyes of him to alight on Persephone. I do not want her to have to soothe the loneliness to which you... to which we all have condemned him! "
For who could ever learn to love me?
Zeus remained quiet a long moment, looking at his wife with intense gaze, absorbing her words. Then he nodded gravely.
And then…
"AND SO IT WILL BE!"
His voice was a thunder that made shook the bones.
Hera stepped back, scared.
It was really the King of the Gods the one who loomed now in front of her.
And his ardent and authoritarian eyes alighted on her.
"Why do you move back, wife? Why do you get scared at the very moment in which I decide to comply with your desire? To elude Destiny?"
Hera looked at him almost incredulous. Her voice sounded uncertain. The voice of the Queen of the Gods sounded uncertain. "Really will you do it, my Lord and Husband? Really will you try to ...?"
"I will not try, Hera. I will do it."
"But..."
Suddenly Zeus' eyes softened, as well as his voice. On his volitional mouth the shadow of a smile.
"You do not trust your husband, my wife?"
Hera, despite the moment, could not refrain. "It depends on what you mean, husband."
Zeus laughed uproariously. "Yeah. You're right. Maybe I should have said 'the King of the Gods', rather than 'your husband'."
Hera snorted, her fear abruptly evaporated in annoyance.
"Forget it, husband. No matter ..." Her eyes hardened. "... at the moment." Then her gaze was transformed. It became sweet. Yes, sweet. And full of hope. "But how will you do, my Lord and Husband? How will you be able to evade Fate?"
Zeus became deadly serious. His voice was low. And rough. And determined. And threatening. "I will deceive it."
Hera's eyes widened.
Those of Zeus narrowed to two slits.
"Just as I have done with him."
Hera's eyes grew puzzled and questioning. She took a step forward, toward him, completely forgetful of her previous fright. "You will deceive Destiny? But... but how ...?"
Zeus laughed again, gaily. "How? You're the one who suggested to me how, my wife."
"I?"
"Yes, you."
"But... but..."
Zeus took his wife's hand and there was affection in the gesture.
He smiled. "Hera, my wife. Think about what you said."
"And... what did I say, my Lord?"
"I do not want those frightening and malefic eyes of him to alight on Persephone. This, you've said."
"Yes, it is true. But... but with this? How can this sentence of mine be the way...?"
"The way I'll evade Destiny? The way I'll fool it?"
"Yes."
Zeus' eyes grew gravely serious again.
"Hera, you do not realize the depth of your words. But they are the solution."
"But how? How?!"
Zeus smiled, with no smile in his eyes. "You can wish for, you may want only what you see. What you know."
Hera was silent, waiting for the following.
And Zeus revealed his thought.
His plan.
His deception.
"This is the day, the bright day, when Persephone will be presented to the world. To the Gods. To all the Gods. Nobody left out. This is, at least, what Destiny expects to happen. So it's always been. Why should be different today? Right today? "
Zeus left off Hera's hand. He stepped back to look at her in whole.
"But today will be different. Today not all the Gods will be present. A pair of eyes - a pair of dark and scary eyes - will not be able see her."
Hera walked over to her husband.
Her voice betrayed her hope. "You did not inform him!"
Zeus laughed aloud. "No. I have not done it." He grinned. "An act of kindness, from me towards him."
His grin became a malicious smirk. "He stays so well over there, in his world! Why disturbing him?"
Then his expression turned grim.
He turned and his gaze ranged on the hemicycle of thrones on the bottom of the great room where he and Hera were.
He looked at one by one those majestic thrones, finally stopping his eyes on one of them.
A big, dark ebony and ivory throne, located to the left of the throne of Hera, which was to the left of his own throne. A simple and unadorned Throne, far from being lavish, contrary to the others. Yet, somehow, even more stately than them. And, somehow, permeated with a dark and scary aura.
Hera's eyes rested on the Throne, like those of Zeus.
"He sat on that Throne only once, Hera. When he was anointed to be what he is. Then, never again. I called him in our councils, informing him of every God and every Goddess who little by little were added to our circle. And hoping that he would not come. And he, thanks to Uranus, never came. He has perfectly perceived that none of us wanted him. He knows perfectly well that none of us wants him. He is perfectly aware of our ... "It was hard, on Zeus' part, to say that word. But it was no longer falsehoods time. And he said it. "... our disgust for him. And he just has always remained there, in his hideous world, disdainful of having to do with our disgust for what he is. And, let's face it, with our fear of him. Anyway, be that as it may, he knows every God and every Goddess simply because informed of their existence."
He turned to Hera, looking at her with deep look. "I would have done it this time too, Hera. Today I would have done it. I would have called him. Through Hermes, as usual. Despite ..." He chuckled. "... ... despite the reluctance of our beloved messenger."
His expression turned serious and severe. "And instead, I will not do it. Probably, he would not have come this time either, but that's not the point. The point is that he does not know and will never know anything of Persephone. For him Persephone does not exist. And she will continue not to exist. "
He laughed aloud. "And so I'll deceive Destiny!"
Then his expression turned deadly serious. "His eyes, wife, will never alight upon Persephone. Nor his thinking. She will never exist for him. Her light will remain here, it will never descend down there, to enlighten his dark world. His dark heart."
No. This never will happen.
But…
Oh but why these thoughts, today?
What could happen today able to make this day different from any other day?
Why this sensation, this heartbreaking perception?
Why…
And if it were?
If it were possible?
If it were possible that...
Could it be?
Could it be possible it may exist somewhere a woman able to learn to do it?
To love The One who doesn't know love?
To teach him to love?
To enlighten his dark heart?
Hera got closer to her husband, to the King of the Gods.
Her arms encircled her powerful hips.
She clung to him.
Her eyes looked at him from below. The eyes of a woman who relied on her man. Not the eyes of Hera, the Queen of the Gods.
And her voice was the voice of a woman.
Soft. Sweet. Confident in her man.
"You'll make it, my Husband and Lord. You will succeed. And this time, your deception will be consecrated by a cause more than noble."
Zeus nodded with conviction and his arms returned the embrace of his wife.
"Yes, wife. I'll make it. I will deceive Destiny. Because it's right it to be so."
His gaze turned to the blue and shining sky, beyond the majestic columns that surrounded the huge room.
He spoke gravely.
"A woman can do everything. Her love can do everything. But I will not let the light of my daughter get lost in the darkness of the dark world down there. I will not allow its darkness to infect her. Not for giving her vivid and lively light to the dull light of his realm, to his world, she was born. Not for enlightening the plumbeous darkness of his heart."
I have heard be said it can happen.
I have heard be said that a woman's smile might give light to the deepest darkness.
I have heard be said that the love of a woman is mysterious and unpredictable.
That the ways of love are endless and unforeseeable.
So then… so then…
Could it be that a little warmth may exist even for me?
Could it be that, up there, somewhere, may come into the world a woman capable of making to shine with a more vivid and lively light the dark light of my realm? Capable, even, of giving light to the plumbeous darkness of my heart?
Could it be that a woman may exist capable of learning to love The One who doesn't know love?
The Lord of the Underworld?
Me?
End Of Chapter One
TBC
For who could ever learn to love The One who doesn't know love?