Kallisti

Chapter 4: Historical Interlude

As they walked further along, Rose found more questions than answers floating in her head. A young man and his friend glided by them, he wearing tie dye on every stitch, she dressed in pale and somber grecian robes. "What's Kallisti?" she asked.

His cheeks seemed a little pink beneath the noonday sun. "For the fairest," he said, softly, looking down at her with his face very close to hers.

She tilted her head up, her heart thundering in her chest, and wondered if this was finally the moment she'd been wishing for - not waiting, because you couldn't wait for something you never expected to happen - wondered if she was finally, finally going to find out what kissing him was really like. She batted her eyes closed and leaned in, expecting him to close the gap between them at any minute.

Instead, he cleared his throat nervously, and she felt a sigh on her forehead. "It started a war, once," he said, pulling back. "Or at least that's what old Earth mythology says."

She opened her eyes and stared at him as he backed away. She wondered suddenly if he had any idea what he was doing to her. He was an alien, after all, and so much more than she, so maybe he didn't understand her physical feeling at all. Wouldn't be surprising, would it, in someone who could completely exchange one body for another and still claim to be the same person. Still, she had gone over all these worries a hundred times before, so she pushed them back and concentrated on steadying her breathing. "What war?" she asked, to distract him from her distraction.

"Oh, the Trojan War. According to Earth and Discordian Mythology, the cause was the 'Original Snub' - Eris wasn't invited to a party the other gods were attending, so she chucked a golden apple marked with that word into the party and sat back to watch the fireworks. The goddesses all claimed the apple for themselves. Well, who's going to tell a goddess she isn't the most beautiful, anyway? And they argued incessantly over the apple, and Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite each claimed it, and they were all probably in the right, at least by their ideals, so there was a very messy little cat fight - imagine your mum, three times over, fighting with each other over a little bit of gold when she can have all the gold she wants. So Zeus stepped in and picked a human arbitrator, the shepherd boy, Prince Paris of Troy. The three goddesses, who all wanted to get their own way, exactly like Jackie, you know, went to Paris before the decision and tried to bribe him. Hera promised him a fortune, and Athena promised him a great battle reputation, but Aphrodite promised him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world. Being a young lad and possibly a fool, he chose Aphrodite, who gave him Menelaus of Sparta's wife."

"Helen of Troy, right?" Rose interrupted. "Face could launch a thousand ships and all that."

"Exactly," he said and beamed at her. "Well, Menelaus wasn't giving that up without a fight, so he did indeed launch a thousand ships to get her back. You know, I can't think of what Helen had to say about all this."

"Well, if the goddess gave him her love, and she was the goddess of love, wouldn't Helen have loved him even if he was a bit of an idiot?"

"Hummm. Suppose so. Love was never known for being exactly rational."

"Tell me about it," she muttered. They continued along the busy market street, the Doctor chattering on about Homer and Clytemnestra and Achilles, and all sorts of other mythological dead people.

When he suddenly said something about hot dogs, though, she stopped him, looking up, completely confused. "What do hot dogs have to do with the price of fairy buns on Raxacoricoafallapatorius?"

He grinned. "Discordians, again. The hot dog was the solace of the goddess following The Original Snub. Of course, they don't eat buns."

"Is it you not making any sense, or them?"

"Couldn't tell you," he said. "You know me, Rose, can't ever make sense unless I'm making no sense at the same time."

She laughed lightly and fingered the flower at her neck. "Well, do we get to go to the party?"

"Up at the castle? Do you want to?" He waved the bit of psychic paper in front of her, smiling.

"Yep. Eris shoulda just got herself some psychic paper and had done with it."

He moved quickly, seeming to plan to race on ahead of her, but the rattle of the chain reminded him before she ended up being dragged behind him like a sled pulled behind a St. Bernard. "I could get used to this," she told him as he reached back and caught her hand.