This story is dedicated to, "Longing for Saisei," who saved six of my Cupid stories straight in a row to favorites! Wow! No one ever did that before for me! Longing for Saisei has me feeling much better about myself!

Cupid: 1212! :0)

by

Elizabeth Hensley 8-)

Thursday night Singles Group. Mandatory for him! Part of his Outpatient commitment rules laid out by Claire. He didn't mind. It was a great place to get Prospects to match up. But gee whiz! The young Lady he called "Worried Girl" was at it again! Cupid leaned back in his chair and sat, his eyes half closed. Internally he sighed! She was pretty, a brunette, wore lots of ribbons, kind of immature looking, sounded that way too. Had brains obviously. But spent them googling every conspiracy theory and half cocked, "we are doomed!" scenario Mortals came up with from nanonites getting loose from laboratories to Aliens taking over, to global warming to Biblical damnation beyond what was really in the Bible which she obviously really hadn't completely read to the end! (As if Jehovah would have gone to all the trouble to die on the cross to model proper forgiveness behavior for these precious Beings just to destroy His own example and smite the best thing going in this corner of the galaxy! It hadn't been easy to get these cute widdle Fishies to form legs!)

Trevor put his hands over his face and stared at her through his fingers in sheer, bewildered amazement, a god in sheer awe at Mortal powers to create! Incredible her debts of despair! Going out on a date with her guaranteed an evening of recounts of future woe and doom and gloom that would have made going out with Jeremiah the Prophet seem a trip to Disney World with a Four Year Old on Prozac! No wonder she had no prospects! He wasn't going to try to get her any either!

The disaster dejour was 1212. She stood there just as panicky as some of the Paranoid Schizophrenics he had seen back in Sachs-Gordon before medication did its wonderful magic and calmed them down enough so they could start to think and reason again. (The only difference he could see between them and her in craziness was it was her own mind not Toxoplasmosis Parasites or demons lying to her and she dressed better!) "I mean why should we even be trying to find love? The Aztec calender is going to run out in just a few years! Then what?"

He just couldn't take it anymore! Superman eat your heart out! This was a job for Cupid! He stood up and proclaimed menacingly. "Mortals it's worst than that! Much worse!"

Claire glared at him. He grinned back at her. She was so cute when she was angry! He knew what she thought about him openly admitting he was Cupid! But darn it! He had gotten so tired of staying in the closet! So what if it cost him a little respect? It had gained him some too! It was amazing how many modern Mortals believed him and many amazingly had figured it out anyway, either that he believed it or that he was! He'd had a few take him aside and tell him quietly that, "He really was Cupid. It wasn't just a nickname and they'd figured it out and were wondering if ah, he knew it? Did he know he was being possessed by that ancient deity?" Hey! Modern Mortals were doing better than was thought! But the nervous and embarrassed way they were putting it! It was like they were telling him, "do you realize your fly has been open all day sir?" He had to keep from laughing!

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Anyway he stood up and commented with as much menace in his voice as he could muster, "I happen to know that a similar disaster is going to happen MUCH sooner!"

That got the attention of everybody in the room as if he hadn't had it before!

"Yes!" He intoned solemnly. "I know a calender that is going to run out on December 31 in 2O1O! I have it hanging on my wall at home! It's kind of purty. It has Birds on it. I like Birds! But darn it! It's going to be as useless as the Aztec calender and two years sooner and it's happening now in less than two months!"

His room started to titter! That was the response he was aiming for and Claire gave him a begrudging smile and reluctant nod of acknowledgment. She mouthed at him silently, "you won this one 'Cupid!'"

But ever the ham he had to keep going! "I have a partial solution though to this calender problem. I plan to go to the bank where I got this one and say 'This was a great calender but it seems to have run out. Can I have a more current one please?' I have an account there. Claire helped me open it when I was first released from the hospital. So despite the slow economy I suspect they will still be giving out free calenders again and I will be able to pick up one for 2011. If not, there is the Hallmark store up the street. I also suspect in 2012 and then in 2013 and horrors, 2014! If I am not back home on Olympus by then I will still be able to do the same; acquire a calender that is current by some ordinary Mortal means. Don't you think?" He jabbed the air with his finger to help make his point. "Because a calender is only the measurement of Time, not Time itself. And Time goes all the way around the wheel, Folks, all the way around! It never ends and never will. It is a grand merry go round! Believe me I know! My Grandpops, Zeus is older than the Big/Crunch/Big Bang. But anyway down in Aztec land they do have a bit of a problem! But it's because they never invented nails."

That got every one's attention even more than his mentioning his Grandfather was Zeus!

Finally Worried Lady asked, puzzled. "Nails?

Cupid nodded. "Yes! One of the remarkable things about that civilization was they never invented nails! Everything was held together by carving the stones so carefully, they just, fit! So tightly even many earthquakes and hundreds of years of the passage of Time have not managed to dislodge many of them. So buildings still stand that have nothing holding them together but that. No mortar even! But they didn't hang calenders on walls due to that as you modern Mortals do or even we gods do back home on the old homestead. They just carved most of them into the walls. That's going to make them a Bear to change now! It's going to make the Y1K problem look like a Pussy Cat compared to a Rigelian Sabersaurus that is twice the size of a T Rex in comparison. Because if we want those calenders changed you Mortals or someone are going to have to re-carve the blasted things to change em. I am not volunteering, Folks! I like to work. Work is Love made visible and I am Love. But this would seem a tad pointless! You Mortals have made us both much better calenders now!"

"Y one K?' Worried Lady asked. "Don't you mean Y two K?"

Cupid shook his head. "No. I meant, YIK. Yes, there was a YIK problem. I was there. I saw it. I'm over 3000 years old, remember? Just a little squirt for a god but old enough to have seen that hullabaloo! They didn't call it that. They called it the extra digit problem or the New Millennium problem and other things in

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various places. But you Moderns might have called it the Y1K problem and it was exactly what you had a few years back, problems adapting suddenly to too many numbers in a system not set up to accommodate them! The exact same thing as Y2K! There was a big ruckus all over Europe! Monument Makers were NOT Happy Campers when suddenly they had to start carving four digits instead of three!"

The little group of clueless, modern Mortals started tittering.

Cupid grinned himself but said. "Oh don't laugh all that hard! It takes several minutes to hand carve a digit into a hard piece of marble or granite. So think about it! If you are doing that all day suddenly you are going to need more money to sell the same works or your profits fly out the window because now you can't make as many in the same length of time. Quite naturally the Carvers and Sellers wanted more money. But also being Human the Purchasers of such monuments didn't want to give them more! Big toodo!"

Even Claire was intrigued. She had to ask. "So what happened?"

Cupid smiled, "You Mortals adapted! That's what happened! Just as you always will you wonderful, wonderful Beings! Nothing is ever going to stop you, not even your own stupidity! Slow you down yes, many times. Trim back your numbers. Yes, that too! But your destiny is to go sailing in your growth and development past us bewildered but ever faithful gods, growing up in your Power to Love and in every way into The Head Honcho Himself! You are promised this and informed of the fact. It is not like you were ever lied to about the Reality of things! Ephesians 4:15."

"Wow!" Said Worried Girl!

Cupid grinned, "So quit worrying so much! Dance! You make it around The Circle and take us with you! You kindly do that for all your Dreams and Wishes! And we are ever so grateful! You gave all of us, Life! And thus due to circling Time it is you Yourselves who use your own ever-increasing Science to perform your own miracles and life for each of you so called Mortals is also eternal. You give the Galilee Carpenter His Kingdom. He gets to open the Book of Life and becomes Head of it All simply because He is worthy! He taught you to forgive and the violence done to Him that He so amazingly forgave you for is slowly shocking you out of your savagery and that saved you from one very real danger, nuking yourselves out of existence!" Trevor/Cupid smiled at Claire/Psyche. "So all is well and Life is forever and not even a sick Sparrow does without an Eternity of being loved and wanted by the Big Guy you grow into. Because Faith and Science working together and love-fussing and dancing around the entire Circle, would not have it any other way!"