Wow - I've been busy! Two chapters at a time. But that's mostly because they are so intime tied together.

Big time party

When all the gods left the Arena to form the start of a procession up to the palace of Zeus, Ariadne had thrown away her bridal bouquet. She guessed she had wanted Artemis to catch it or maybe Athena, they both needed love in their lives, but it was Hera's teenage daughter Hebe whose slender, white hand had reached up and clutched the flowers.

Then came the banquet. The mother of all parties.

- We'll sure give people something to talk about, Hera had promised. And the queen had been right. There had been so much food served that Ariadne didn't know half of the dishes, all washed down with the best of her husband's seasoned wines.

There had been entertainment, not only by Apollo and his muses but also by gods and goddesses from far away. Songs had been sung in alien languages, strange rhythms had been drummed and odd instruments had been played. There had been goddesses dark as the night, almost naked and with long braided air who had danced like crazy. They had soon dragged the men into the dance and then women had followed. Ariadne had felt that the rhythm had somewhat altered her mind, made it possible for her blood to sing and her senses to be aware of all kinds of supernatural things.

She had received stories in her head, stories of the faraway continent where the dark deities came from. Stories of blood and war but also of otherworldly beauty, love and friendship. And she had danced until sweat had broken out beneath her thin bridal dress, knowing that a mortal would have fainted after just one tenth of the same effort.

Then when she finally had sat down, with Dion's arm around her panting waist, the floor had been taken by two male gods with golden skin and oddly angled eyes. They had performed a mock-fight with sharp, curved blades, dancing in the air and running upside down in the ceiling, every movement so fine tuned that it became the very essence of perfection.

In the end one of the gods had landed on the floor, lifting his blade in the air so that divine light shone off it, casting reflections all over the hall. The other god had left his place with a somersault and ended upside-down balancing his blade on the tip of the one belonging to the former god, becoming a perfect mirror image of him. At that time the jangling music had stopped and all the gods had busted out in exclamations.

After them a quite different performance had taken place. A sole goddess with a long, white waterfall of hair and a golden harp had sat down on a ebony stool. Slowly she had begun drumming on her instrument, conjuring op beautiful tunes, not far from Apollo's perfection.
"I'm Meda," she said. "And I begin to sing the song of Deidaron and Ashtela."

Then she had sung the saddest of epics. Two lovers from rivalling families fighting to keep their love alive. But in the end they had died, a misunderstanding had led Ashtela to believe Deidaron was dead and she had killed herself, Deidaron reaching Ashtela just in time to see the light wink out in her eyes. Then he had taken his dagger, stabbing himself to death.

Ariadne had cried when Meda stopped her song, and she was far from the only one.
" Not an appropriate song for a wedding", one of the black goddesses had pointed out, but others had hushed her.

Next performance had been more heartily, it had been Hestia playing with fire, turning the divine flames into little men and animals interacting with each other or into beautiful abstract patterns surrounding the gathering. Once again there had been "aahs" and "oohs" because it was only Hestia who could conjure up flames straight as rods or turning them into written messages. When Ariadne had received a burning rose complete with stalk and leaves she really felt what it meant to be a goddess.

A god called Brage, from the Norse pantheon of Valhalla had also been a singer, but his songs were of quite a different kind. Slapsticks and dirty jokes which had the audience fit with laughter instead. He was followed by Aegypti twins with trained cats riding chariots and playing with balls. A blue god from India had showed how sleek he was in turning himself into various animals and other beings and then back to himself again.

In the end he turned himself into a mist and promised the one who caught him that the deity could ask him of anything he/she wanted. A lot of gods had started to run around the hall, chasing the glittering blue cloud, spilling wine and tumbling furniture in their wake. It became Aphrodite who managed to catch him, by tricking him into an amphora and putting a cork in it. It wasn't really that hard to guess what she would ask the god to give her, Ariadne could hear Hermes joke about it as Aphrodite with a smug look put the still corked amphora inside her gem-studded girdle.

A dark haired goddess named Astarte was next out, she recited the joys of marriage with an enchanting voice, conjuring up pictures of erotic bliss in Ariadne's mind that made her wet between her legs, and suddenly she wanted this whole event to stop right now right there, so she could ran off with Dion to try it all out. She glanced sideways, at her husband, and wasn't he a little red-cheeked too, with both hands covering what was going on between his legs. Same thing with Herakles apparently, who was sitting to the left of her. Poor men, they were never able to hide it.

Then Apollo and the muses begun to play and now the dancing started for real. According to tradition Dion asked Ariadne up for the first dance, and although she had been a bit nervous, she had enjoyed the swirls with her new husband over the golden floor, hearts and stars of divine fire and sparking estelli following them around. Apollo had started out rather slow, so they could perform gracious movements, mocking lovemaking on the floor.

Then the muses had started to drum and the beat became faster and changed theme, The Bridal Dance dance was over and now more and more gods and goddesses entered the floor, and suddenly a long snake was forming, where each one took his or her neighbours hand and started to dance along first around the room and then out at the terrace and off in the air. Like a living cord they had spun trough the skies, shattering clouds and scaring birds in their way.

Apollo and the muses followed along providing music to this novelty way of dancing. Novelty to Ariadne at least who never had experienced something similar. The yellow gods of Sina had stopped somewhere along the way and instead created something they called fireworks – light displays that not even Hestia could match, to bangs similar to Zeus' thunderclaps.

Then more dancing, both indoors and outdoors. Ariadne had to dance with almost all the male gods there were, not only the Olympians but also with faraway gods with strange names. Gods who couldn't believe their ears when she told she had been mortal less than a year ago.
" Your Zeus can do amazing stuff", Osiris, a bald, Aegypti god had said and kissed Ariadne's hand. I would never have guessed, hadn't my sister Isis told me.

Ariadne had danced until Eos left the gathering to trigger the first pink of dawn. At that time the young goddess realized she wasn't really tired but she was experiencing a kind of sensory overload and the need to rest. As soon as she came to that conclusion Dionysos had been by her side once again.
" It's time for us to leave, don't you think so", he whispered in her ear. The night is almost over and you and I need to hail each other the way a bride and groom ought to.

So to the cheering of the crowd they had taken off in the air and out over the seaNot far from Olympos rose a sole stone island, high and sleek, almost like a black pillar. On top of that rise a nest was built. A bridal bed made of ebony and gold and with a roof of silk. Windchimes and roses. Nectar and ambrosia in amphoras and trays. And while the sun rose and coloured the sea first dark red, then golden and finally blue Dion and Ariadne had made love for the first time as wife and husband. After that they had fallen asleep in each others arms, not bothering with the fact that it was already morning.

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" Wake up honey!"

Ariadne had dreamt of Crete again and the palace of Knossos. She had dreamt of her sister Phaedra, that she was the one who married Theseus and Ariadne had been but a spectator, sitting on a beam in the ceiling, looking down at the ceremony. There had been her dad and her mum (although Pasiphae had been dead since many years) and a lot of other people Ariadne had known back then. In her dream she had wondered why she wasn't down there with them but up in ceiling; and she had understood even less when her mother had swirled out on the floor right beneath her – and her dancing partner had been a big, black bull!

Now sweet words were whispered in her ear, interrupting her dream, shaking off the last dusts of sleep. She was facing ocean and skies, lying entangled in silk sheet, and heard the calls of seagulls.
"Ari?" Soft fingers stroking her shoulders and she turned to face her beloved.
" Did we really marry, Dion? I mean yesterday. It seems that my dreams are mingling with reality."

" That's because you're learning to remember them fully. You were never able to do that as a mortal. Since this is new to you, I guess you will have a bit hard to tell dreams from reality for a while. Before you master the trick that is."
" And what is that?"
" Ask yourself "what do I remember when I look back?" and "are these currents of events connected to earlier memories in a smooth way?" And of course if the events make sense. "

" And if they don't?"
"Then they are dreams."
" But what are dreams, Dion? Why do we have them? When I was mortal we were told that the gods sent us the dreams. Who sends us immortals our dreams?"

" We send them to ourselves. As do the mortals most of the time, even if it is true that we gods can contact mortals in their dreams. Anyhow most of the times it's the brains way of sorting and cataloguing impressions. Think of it as putting books into a library in places where you can find them later rather than having them all lying in heaps on the floor in the order you acquired them. That's why we dream. Then, in certain cases, dreams may also contain messages from the future. As well as from the past and dead people."

" So when I dreamt that my sister married Theseus, does that mean it's going to happen?"
" It might do", Dion cupped his hand over her breast and for a moment Ariadne forgot her dream, then she recalled it again and asked:
" I saw my mother dance with a big, black bull. What might that mean?"
" I don't know, beloved. It might just be because you danced quite a bit with the Norse bull god last night."

" It feels more than that. It feels – well Important. "

" Then I guess you might want to find out."
" True. But not now. Not when you are doing THAT with your hands again..."