Author's Note: Hi guys! This is my little story based on the Greek gods/goddesses. Sorry that the chapters aren't the longest things on the planet, hopefully they'll just be short but there will be a lot of them- and fast. ❥Anya
"For some reason I can't explain- Once you know there was never, never an honest word…
That was when I ruled the world."
For some unknown- ungodly perhaps you could say- reason somehow we all faded into the black. I smiled at that fact that we were long forgotten, but yet we were still here. Dwelling amongst the rest of society- No, I suppose the more common of us weren't, when it came down to it… They were still where they should be. Zeus in the sky, Poseidon governing the sea, Hades guarding the underworld with Persephone- I always envied Persephone… Known to be the light in darkness- well, what were we? The darkness of the darkness?
That must be what it was- for we were the children of darkness, daughters of Nyx, mother of night, who faded into what she so personified- the dark. I pushed my wavy, white-blonde locks behind my ear as a gust of wind swept it back. You had to look to find my mother, and ponder the reality of my father. Could you even call him a father? Our- my sister's and I's- creation was in a way a secret. No one truly cares about us, though. No one wants to take the time to welcome the possibility of our existence when there are so many simpler figures already there. Perhaps that's why we faded along with our mother.
I stood up from the park bench I had perched myself upon. I was in one of the numerous bustling parks in the city of New York; to passer-bys I was just another stranger, a commoner. I adjusted my red sundress, if a commoner was what they wanted- it's what I would be. In this world I had become Alyssa Marie White, but if I had somewhere still had a place with the gods… There, I would still be just Lyssa. Yet, I was not there, I was here dwelling on the past.
I looked out past a group of what I presumed to be tourists to see if I could spot my sister. Although she was millenniums old, like me, in this world Maniae was personified as a child and I was placed in charge of her. Legally speaking, here she was Mae Elizabeth White and was only a mere fifteen where as I was seen as twenty-three- making me her guardian. For decades Mae had been stuck in a perpetual loop of high school. She would make a lose touch with groups of friends every time. She knew she couldn't keep up with them and stay with them, because she would never change.
She'd expressed numerous times how she thought being a goddess was nothing but a curse, in her eyes we were better off not existing at all anymore. I have to admit, there had been countless times I'd agreed- if we're nothing but forgotten why are we forced to be here? Mae would spit in disgust and look at me with her blazing amber eyes and ask me if I knew how it felt. I would always have to say, "No, Mae, you know I don't. I can't act like I do and I can't get you out of this."
My eyes locked on her, she was walking back towards me in her purple cami and short denim shorts, her curly brown hair trailing swept up in the wind behind her. She had taken after our parents- dark hair and eyes- we weren't entirely sure where my blonde hair and sea-blue eyes had come from. She looked up at me as she reached the top of the hill and sighed, "Alright, I got all the pictures, let's go."
We walked back to my old dinged up white Honda accord. I opened the door to the driver's side and caught Mae, as usual, staring longingly at the steering wheel as she got in. She would never legally be able to drive, because she would never turn sixteen, and despite me constantly telling her it was nothing special all her friends who ended up being able to drive made her rather envious. I sighed, turned on the engine, and put the car into reverse. Within moments we were in the middle of one of New York's limitless traffic jams, I couldn't help roll my eyes. Mae had taken to busying herself with flipping through the shoots she'd gotten.
"Get any you like?" I asked, looking at the Cannon I had managed to save up and buy for her for one of her 'birthdays' one year. She nodded and proceeded to turn the screen towards me. It was another stunning shot of the Statue of Liberty, her usual object of interest. Mae had a wall covered in shots of the woman, one she'd taken every year. She said she liked it so much because Lady Liberty was a symbol for misfits and dreamers.
Maybe that's what my sister had turned into since being stuck here- I wasn't really sure anymore. I put my foot down on the gas pedal and moved the car forward as the traffic around us began to finally move. I turned onto one of the less crowded street and then pulled into a spot in front of our apartment building. It wasn't anything fancy- I couldn't afford it, I'd been stuck on what most people would consider a "starving artist's" salary for a long time. No place would hire a girl my age unless it was at a little thrift store or supermarket. We trudged up the fire escape- we found it was a good way to avoid our building's manager- and climbed in through the back window. I looked at our front door and noticed the piece of paper wedged between it and the frame. I pulled it out, already knowing what it was.
I rolled my eyes at the "late notice" scrawled in red. I had told Mrs. Williams a thousand and one times that I would get and turn in the money on the twenty-first, today was only the sixteenth. I think somewhere along the way she figured out she could make more money off of us this way- charging us with late fees and what not. The paper I was holding in my hands wasn't surprising, however, the knock that followed me finishing reading did.
I peeked through the little fish-eye hole in our door and was surprised to find it wasn't Mrs. Williams. It was, strangely enough, a boy who had to be around my age. Now, don't get me wrong, I'd had boyfriends in the past, but it was like Mae's problem with keeping friends. Needless to say, my relationships never really lasted. With that said, in all my time as a participating member of the world's average society, I had never had a random boy come visit me and my house, I always knew them beforehand.
I unlatched the deadbolt, unlocked the door the rest of the way, and opened it. The boy jumped a little, I suppose he might not have been expecting me to answer or maybe an old woman to answer- most of the people in our building were older ladies, and then regained his composure. I raised my eyebrows at him and said, "Yes?" At that, he smiled.
"Hi there, it's nice to meet you, Lyssa. I'm Himeros. Is Maniae here with you?"
My mouth dropped, as did the paper in my hand. Standing before me, personified in dirty blonde curls and green eyes was the god of unrequited love- one of Aphrodite's sons.
