Effervescence

She had no idea how long the two of them just stood there, embracing each other. Convincing themselves it was not a dream this time, it was real; they were finally together once more.

Hera and Zeus.

The way it should be.

As Hera traced her hand across Zeus' whiskered cheek, felt the warmth and texture of his skin, realizing that it was indeed familiar, she found her memories wake up for real. Those recollections that had been little more than dreams earlier were now coming alive like old-school polaroid photos, blurry and diffuse at first, then growing more and more real, more colourful and detailed. She recalled not only Zeus but Olympos and the rest of her family. Her friends. Her old life. Her real life!

Finally they let go, ever so slightly, just to be able to face each other. To be able to talk.

"How?" they both begun. Then they laughed together. The consoling familiarity in his deep and joyous laughter made her confident that nothing could ever go wrong again. They looked at each other, uncertain of who should begin. Then he relented, his lids fluttering just a little bit.
"How did you find me?" she asked.
"It wasn't I. It was Hermes. He suspected you'd come to the foothills of Mount Olympos sooner or later, so he hung around, kept his eyes open, checked those Neo-Hellenics out. Yesterday he saw you in a restaurant and got in touch with me, told me you were probably planning to climb the mountain, trying to get home that way. So I came here and waited."
"What if I'd taken another way?"
"Sooner or later I'd found you, Hera. I always do, you know."

She remembered that now. The time he had cheated on her, the time he had conceived Hermes with that woman Maia. She had torn up heaven and Earth before she packed her bags and left – only to have him catching up on her and begging her to return. At that time she had to admit, she would never be able to leave him. Not for real. They were too tied together.

"Honey, my memory is a wreckage," she sighed and shook her head and he let his hands play along her back, rubbing it in comforting circles.
"Don't worry, heart of mine, we'll fix that. In fact, I believe it'll fix itself just if you get the chance to come home."
"You defeated the Malaikins?"
"Yes, they're gone now. Permanently this time, I'm convinced. Athena and Ares came up with a master plan and opened up a portal to Tartarus, you know that old black hole. Opened it just as the Malaikin main force passed across. The majority of them became sucked in, however enough ships escaped for it to become a real battle. Some ass-kicking for our beloved war-lusting children."

"I told her so," Hera smiled, knowing somehow that Zeus was playing down the actual battle a bit. "I told her she would figure something out. Now, I just wonder what happened to the Portal and to this world. And where in all heavens the blue crystal went."
"We'll see if we can locate it again. Otherwise I guess Hephaestos'll just have to manufacture a new one. Far more important was retrieving you, my love."
"How about – well, here? All those people?" she mentioned the loud-mouthed Italians she had passed by some half an hour earlier. It felt so much longer now.
"We will have to discuss that with the family. You and I don't solve any problems here, at the slope of Mount Olympos. Come now, my dear, let's go home! There are so many waiting for you."

"Sure," she murmured, leaning her head against his firm chest. "But you'll have to carry me, dear. I've lost my divine powers. This body is – far from adequate."
"Which will be all in order again when we pass through the Portal. This world has held you in stasis, but when you return home you'll shed that mortal body and become yourself. Like a butterfly from a chrysalis."

Hera picked up her discarded backpack and took it in her arms, and then she let Zeus gently lift her up and ascend into the air, carrying her as if she was a child again. In a way she felt like one, her mortal body far too vulnerable for what she wished to do with it.

¤0¤0¤0¤0¤*

Manga publisher presumed dead in Greece

The Manga publisher Hannah Bielke disappeared sometimes between the 4th and 15th of February 2014 in Olympia Greece, where she was on holiday alone, supposingly to partake in the Neo-Hellenic gathering beneath the Mount Olympos. Apparently she went hiking in the mountainous area and when she didn't return, the local police and rescue patrol went searching for her, without success. Bielke, who was no experienced mountaineer, was soon believed to have fallen down some chasm and perished, however no body has been found.

Bielke was the sole owner of the small publishing company Bou-ken, specializing in Japanese Manga. Bou-ken was doing fairly well and according to Bielke's friends, there was no reason to believe her presumed death to be anything but an accident. Bielke had no close relatives and left no will, so her estate, including the publishing company will be inherited by her maternal uncles.

¤0¤0¤0¤0¤*

There it was, on the other side of the portal. The blue semi-sphere which was Olympia – a gem more treasured than all the wealth on old Earth, because it was the home of her heart. Olympia, not a planet or moon in the normal sense, but a single floating rock revolving around the planet of Aragirian, a satellite bound by magic forces rather than regular gravity. Aragirian was a bit larger and with much fewer clouds than the Earth she knew from the NASA pictures and it was surrounded by three moons. Seen from the Portal it was half lit, however Olympia had moved into the day side and was almost fully bathed in light, and Hera knew it was early morning in her home.

She also saw the stars, so much more of them than in the location where Earth was. Aragirian and its sun were far nearer a galaxy center than Earth, with many stars shining only light months away. Stars visible even in daylight down on Aragirian.

Zeus entered the atmosphere of the Olympia orb and dived trough it with the ease of someone who had done it so many times before. When Hera felt her strength return, she asked him to let her go, so she could fly on her own and to finally taste the liberty of not being bound by gravity but only use it to make the descent easier. The last leg down was taken hand in hand and Hera felt deeply moved when she spotted the familiar rolling green hills by the Indigo Lough, the long sandy beaches and the brilliantly coloured buildings climbing the lush hills.

As cut out of a wish came true, Hera beheld her and Zeus's home on the highest top, an airy abode built in white, with accents in blue and gold and partly covered by a gilded roof, carried by rows and rows of pillars and glittering in the slanted sunlight. A cavort breeze made the colourful banners fly merrily, displaying the coat of arms of the gods and goddesses inhabiting the Olympia. Surrounding their home were the terraced gardens with the lake, the ponds and the waterfalls. And thousands of blossoming flowers, a colour explosion upon a canvas of greenery. Hera felt as if she could already sense all their fragrances even though she knew she was still too far away.

Around that magnificent place the last of the night mists were being whiskered away and revealing all those small details of the garden. The statues, the meandering paths, the lanterns. The tiny gazebos, the fountains and the perpetually blossoming trees.

Returning to Olympos filled her with the effervescence of a calf in pasture land. Regaining her immortal body was just part of the experience, even though it felt like recovering from an excruciating and prolonged decease. What seemed her more important was the return of her memories, like discovering a cornucopia of experiences and erudition. Hera laughed before she cried then laughed again when they finally set foot on the large roof-less terrace in front of the house. The extended living room with its plush furniture, potted flowers, colourful carpets, singing fountains and crystal chandeliers suspended in midair.

With a sense of boundless relief, Hera dropped her awkward backpack and let Zeus grab her and swing her around in a joyous rave underneath the chandeliers, while she was going over and over again all those things which was important to her.

Him not the least, and the love they shared. The love, which had taken its battering and beating over the years but always emerging stronger, healthier and more ready to take on another aspect of reality. Seeing that well known face again, the reflections from the crystals in the chandeliers twirling over it as they danced, it was a true sign that she had found her way home again. For Hera, home would always be where Zeus was, because he held her heart in his hands.

Beyond him waited her children. There were Athena, Ares, Hephaestus, Eileithya, Dionysos and Hebe. As did the other four, her step children, the ones who she had learned to love as well over the years. Apollo, Artemis, Persephone and Hermes. There were Zeus' sister Hestia, there were Poseidon and Demeter, Leto and Astraios, Hecate and Hades. And all the rest.

Hera re-encountered her daughter in law Aphrodite, the lovely girl whom Poseidon had found by the sea-shore of the Aragirian island Kypheria. Back then she had been a teenager with memory-loss. She recalled Dionysos' strange fate of having been born trice and by three different mothers, first by Dione – who had no memory of it whatsoever, then by someone named Semele, whom nobody could recall, and finally by herself.

She also remembered hearing how Hades had brought Hestia, Poseidon and Demeter trough death and back, to protect them from being annihilated by Cronos. It had been risky, however the alternative had been worse, better to have died than to never have been born at all.

When the overwhelming experience had faded and Hera had re-settled in the place where she really belonged, she finally understood how so many members of her family and her friends must have felt when they had been torn out from their realities and hurled down somewhere else. She understood the emotions running through the mind of Leto that day, when she encountered her grown-up children. The twins she couldn't remember having birthed, because it had happened in another time-world, where she and Zeus had been lovers. A time-world, which Cronos had destroyed. Not to mention how the poor Apollo and Artemis must have felt when they met parents who didn't remember them.

Hera harked back to what it had been like.

¤0¤0¤0¤0¤**

A bit more than three centuries ago, Olympian time scale, had they opened up a Portal to the world which was Earth. Earth, which universe was located between Hera's home Aragirian and the war-damaged Leolorian. Back then Earth had been pristine and oddly undamaged by Cronos and his rampaging. It was a rough and rustic world, not as refined as Aragirian, Elysium and Narivo. Or destroyed as Leolorian or Asphodel had been. It had breathed of promises and future, with a mortal population whose civilization had almost reached the era of industrialization. Those Earthlings were perhaps a bit violent and crude but with intelligence and creativity to match the humans of the older worlds.

Here, the Olympians would be able to start anew. Build up a new world, create a society that could withstand wars and terror. Dawn these people into a civilization of humanness and philosophy. Turn them from warriors to thinkers, from destroyers to creators, from slaughterers to artists.

The Portal had been opened up over a mountain a bit higher than the rest, on the easternmost of three large islets poking out in a large sea basin. It had been a fairly populated and objectively civilized area in a nice climate, and the proud and gallant people there had referred to themselves as Hellenes.

The Olympians had soon understood that contrary to what they first presumed, this world had been affected by the Titanomachy. There were faint memories of the Titan Cronos and of Zeus' defeat of the same. There were even mentions of Hera, Poseidon and a few of the others. However it wasn't until their arrival in a town called Delphi they really understood how significantly the hand of war had touched this world.

Delphi was not much more than a sanctuary, brightly painted temples and shrines located on a mountain-slope with the most magnificent view over the landscape beneath and beyond. Mountains clad with lush greenery surrounded a narrow ravine, and at the end of the chasm a blue bay could be seen glittering in the sun. The air was warm without being too hot, since it was still rather early in the morning. Drops of dew were gleaning on leaves, grass and spider webs and mists lingered down in the depths of the ravine. In a way it reminded Hera of Fevoriga on Aragirian, a delightful place which she had visited in her youth.

Here in Delphi resided the Pythia, a priestess which was said to know the means of mentally cutting through the currents of time and behold possible futures. The Olympians had heard of Oracles before, beings with those strange capacities were said to have been at work on Aragirian a long time ago. These Oracles were even believed to have foreseen the Titanomacy including the outcome of it. But to find an Oracle here, on Earth, that was incomprehensible, and thus Zeus had asked Hera and Leto to look into it.

However arriving in this little pretty town they had been in for an even greater surprise. A surprise in form of the god residing there.

Not expecting anything more than some mortals with supernatural powers, Hera and Leto had landed at the edge of the sanctuary, coated in invisibility. A precaution to not have to face any mortals, or they might risk being stuck there helping people out. Especially Leto, who couldn't let a child with an abrasion go unhealed. Soon the two friends were making their way past small congregations of mortals and ascending marble steps towards the grand temple where the Pythia resided. Once again, Hera marveled over how much the architecture of these sanctuaries reminded her of her home. It was the same rectangular or circular structures, rows of pillars carrying slightly sloping roofs.

The Goddesses had reached about half way there when they heard someone calling out to them in an aggressive voice.
"Halt!" the man was ordering. "Not a move, or I'll shoot!"

Hera rose her hands in the universal sign of being unarmed and without ill intent, before she turned around, facing a blue-clad deity with a bow, aiming a strung arrow at them. A man who looked like he could use this exotic weapon and would no doubt do so if he felt it necessary.
"Who are you, daring to trespass the holy ground of Delphi?" he kept on, and Hera amazed over the familiarity of the voice. He sounded almost like her Zeus, however there was a more melodic timbre to his bass, as if he was used to sing rather than barking out orders like this.

"We are Hera and Leto from Olympos," Hera replied. "We come in peace, with a desire to learn about this place of marvels."
"Leto? Olympos?" there was a slight tremor in the voice of the god, however no other than a trained ear would have heard it, and Hera noted a faint tremble of the arrow, sunlight shivering upon the edge metal.

"Yes," her friend said, taking an hesitating step forward, her green, knee-long silk robe billowing backwards in the wind and showing off her tomboyish form. "I am Leto." Once again, the god's appearance wavered, Hera sensing the clear consternation and surprise emitting from him.
"Mother?" now he lowered his bow, and Hera noted how much he looked like her husband as well. Same lithe, fair-skinned body, same blond curls with a mind of their own, same sparkling blue eyes, brimming with intelligence, kindness and curiosity – and with that same deep sadness Zeus' eyes had held the first time she had met him. Eyes directed at Leto as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"Do I.. know you?" Leto's voice held the same dismay, and she reached out to Hera for comfort. Taking Leto's slender hand, Hera glanced at her before facing the Zeus lookalike again. The young god was lowering his bow now.
"Yes – it's me! Apollo!" he was saying, raising his long-fingered hand slightly, in a gesture as if he wanted to reach out and touch Leto, assure himself that she was actually there – however not really daring.

"Apollo?" there was something in Leto's voice as well, as if she was struggling for reminiscence.
"Yes, mother! Do you not recognize me? I admit eight years is a long time, and I've grown from an adolescent with too long legs and arms into a man. So has Artemis, in fact she looks the same as you, save for being taller."
"I..." Leto clasped Hera's hand almost desperately while shaking her head in confusion and despair. This beautiful man was apparently claiming to be her son, while it was obvious she had no idea who he was – or this Artemis. Hence Hera understood what has happened.

"Who is your father?" she queried.
"It's Zeus," Apollo said, shifting his eyes to Hera, and she saw them widen. "And you're Hera," suddenly his stance was all hostile. She saw the fist of his right hand clench the bow again, for some reason his feelings towards her were hostile. Sensing this she knew she had to take control of this situation fast, before it fell apart.
"Apollo!" adding command to her voice she locked her eyes with his, once again marveling over their likeness with her husband's. "I hear what you're saying, claiming Leto your mother. However a lot has happened during the time she has been away. The situation is far from straightforward. I want you to go fetch Artemis. And find a place where we all can sit down. Because we have things to confer."

"I don't take order from you in any way, Hera!" Apollo snarled. "And you don't have to either, mother! This jealous woman has been nothing but mean to you! She has no right..."
"Apollo," Leto pleaded. "Hera is right. You need to listen to us. We have a long story to tell. Of a world far away where cruel things happened, which tore you and your sister from me and from Zeus – and obviously Zeus and me apart as well. And Hera is without blame here."
"But..."
"Go and fetch Artemis, we need to talk," Leto's voice was more pleading than ordering, and Apollo inhaled as if to say something, then he simply hid his face in his hands, his bow falling to the ground with a rattling sound.

"Dear?" Now Leto let go of Hera, and took the few steps over to the man who had obviously been birthed by her in another time-world. Placing her hand on his shoulder she continued talking gently to him. "Look at me, Apollo," she besought.
"You don't remember me, do you?" his blue eyes were brimming with tears now.
"Somehow I do," Leto all but whispered. "Faint traces of dreams hold your name. And your sister's. Twins, born on the floating island. But fate has been brutal to all of us, and we need to tell you what happened. It's not your fault, my dear child! Now take your bow, and come, let's go find your sister!"

¤0¤0¤0¤0¤

The warm water was calming against her skin, brought her into a relaxing trance, where she lied with her eyes almost closed, breathing in the fragrances of herbs and perfume, felt the soft vapor caress and wet her cheeks. All she saw was the orange of the dimmed lanterns and the blue-green from the lit basin. She more sensed than heard Zeus' presence as he slid down in the water to her.

"Hera?" he moved up close to her and laid his arm around her wet shoulders and she moaned pleasantly and rested her head on his chest, her damp curls wetting him. "How do you feel now?"
"Much better," she truthfully assured. "A bit tired, but much better. For some reason the recollection of when we found Apollo and Artemis came over me. The talk we had with them. The tears of Leto and the twins. How terrible it felt for her to not really remember them. It was the same for me as Hannah, I could hardly remember you more than in faint dreams."

"I know what you mean, beloved," Zeus said, toying with her hair. "I've lost so many time-worlds, some which I remember, some which I don't. And every loss is unique. Every vanished memory different. Sometimes you can retrieve them, other times not. And I don't really know what's affecting it."
"I think I do now."
"What?" she felt him stiffen slightly with surprise and anticipation.
"If you're brought back to the time-world which you was torn from, your memories return as well. But sometimes you cannot go back, and then those memories remain gone. You and Leto couldn't go back to the world where you had conceived Apollo and Artemis and where she had birthed them, so you did not remember them when we rediscovered them."

"I believe you're right, Hera, I never thought of it that way before. However in the case of the twins it doesn't really matter anymore. I learned to know them and to love them as the great persons they are. Then whatever Leto and I might have had, I'm sure it was fine. And while I may regret that it's gone, I'm positive it was nothing like what you and I have. Twin-soul of mine."
"Oh you just dare think otherwise," she suddenly laughed and sat up in the bath, facing her beloved.

"Are you threatening me?" Zeus smirked and Hera felt the effervescence start to sing in the blood.
"Perhaps," she replied. "It depends how willing you are to take up the gauntlet."
"After 45 days, a lot!"
"Try nine years!" she challenged and cupped water in her hands before hurling it in his face.

"I suppose I can," he said before returning the wet bestowment. The next moment they were splashing at each other, laughing like little kids, before Zeus suddenly surprised her by taking her in his arms and kissing her fervently. Responding with all her penned up emotions, Hera both felt how incredibly much she had missed this and oddly enough as if she had never been away. As if it was yesterday eve they bathed together the last time.