Peace, love and misunderstanding

"Poseidon, eh?" Hera said and put down her notebook. That thick, blue notebook where she wrote the names of men and women of noble birth in neat columns, keeping track of who could work together with whom.
"How'd you guess?" Aphrodite sighed and regarded her beautiful and elegant employer who was sitting opposite of her by the oblong worktable in the office of the Queen, the hazy morning sun falling in through open windows and making her dark brown hair glisten. Hera folded her well-manicured fingers and regarded Aphrodite, with kind, slightly humorous brown eyes.
"Not that hard to guess. I can tell by the way you carry yourself that you've been with someone tonight. Yesterday eve, just minutes after you'd left, I sensed Poseidon's presence in the hallway. I thought he'd come to seek Zeus or me about something, and perhaps that might've been his original plan. But then he disappeared. Must've left with you, I reckoned."

"Okay..." she admitted. You do have an eye for things. But please, Hera..." she hesitated but Hera filled in the dotted line:
"Sure I'll keep my mouth shut. It's really none of my business anyway. Just word of advice, dear?"
"Yes?"
"There's nothing wrong with your discretion, it takes a used eye to notice what you did last night, just be careful with the hearts around you. The men's as well as your own."
"I..."
"It's called 'the doctor's decease' among mortals. The docs tend to see the illnesses in everyone else, but they forget themselves. That they might get unwell too. It happens to our kind too. We help others and fail ourselves. I've been looking after so many marriages while neglecting my own."
"I know the drill," Aphrodite agreed. "Where I came from we used to say that the lawyer who defended herself had an idiot for a client."

Hera laughed lightly before she took up her note book again. But before she went back to work, she told Aphrodite that Ares might be home by the end of the week. The Goddess of Love smiled in return, she felt that particular, happy warmness starting to bubble inside of her again. Ares! Coming home!

0O0O0

But the day which had started out so great soon turned in a quite different direction. Aphrodite didn't think it was the nymphs who had been talking, and she knew it wasn't Hera. And hardly Poseidon, since he had returned down beneath the waves. In spite someone had found out – and that someone had talked. Aphrodite heard the comments, felt the looks as she entered the Poplar Garden Square outside the Palace of Zeus where lunch was served every day. Now she regretted coming down here instead of returning home after her midmorning with Hera. Although she had promised to meet up with Hemera for a little bit of small talk over something to eat. The other goddess was leaving Olympos the next day and the two of them had agreed to make time for each other prior to that since Hemera wasn't sure she knew how long she would be gone.

Aphrodite looked all around for Hemera without seeing her, so she figured she was first on location and selected an empty table in the shadow of a large elm. While descending the stairs, she first thought she heard someone say her name, but when she turned around there was no one there save for two dryads she didn't know who were pouring nectar from a barrel with a tap, and the giggling tykes seemed well preoccupied with that business. Shrugging it off, she carried on, down the stairs and across the patio where several tables were set for lunch, about half of them occupied.

"So how was Poseidon?" she heard a snidy voice call out when she was almost half way to the table beneath the elm. Turning around Aphrodite spotted Ciresia with entourage. The five goddesses in colourful robes were sitting by a round table, where two nymphs were about to hand out their dishes.
"I bet you don't have to ask that of me," she returned to the strawberry blond old rival.
"Oh, oh, oh!" another of the women hooted, an emaciated and raven-haired goddess with a spiteful aura. "Ciresia! You just pissed off that blonde one!"
"I tend to enjoy it, Darbena," Ciresia returned before directing her next phrase to Aphrodite. "Didn't you hear I asked you a question, blonde? Or are you too haughty now, since you're toiling with Queen Hera's stuff?"
"Since when has that ever been your business, furniture goddess?" Aphrodite snapped back.

"Since it became common knowledge at Olympos that you're trying to bed as many gods as possible in as short time as possible," Ciresia shot back. "And wasn't it Boreas yesterday as well, or so I heard?"
"And that satyr whatshisname," Darbena added, and the other three goddesses were laughing maliciously.
"I don't understand why you should ever care, Ciresia! Because you can't even have a satyr yourself?" Aphrodite snapped back. She knew she should turn and walk away, she just couldn't.
"No, since we, who are sitting here, have a bit of higher standard than you, Aphrodite," Ciresia replied and the love goddess bit her lip. Just walk away, that little voice inside of her kept urging her.
"Higher than Poseidon, then you'll have to look hard," she responded.
"Haha Cirrie, you see she did fomp Poseidon after all," Darbena laughed and now Aphrodite could feel something burn beneath her lids! Darn, if she was going to show those jerks her tears!

The next moment an arm slid under hers and Aphrodite heard Hemera loud and clear:
"We all know you're romancing after Zeus, Ciresia! Just watch where you're stepping, Hera's wrath is not easily dealt with. Who knows, she might turn you into a cow. Not that it would make any tangible difference." Then she turned Aphrodite around and steered her away to that free table under the elm. Behind them they could hear Ciresia snarl:
"Stop laughing, dumbasses!"

"Thanks," she whispered silently to Hemera as they seated themselves.
"Anytime," the mellow goddess replied and picked up the menu. "That Ciresia is a bitch and Darbena is none the better."
"How about the others?"
"Oh, they?" Hemera shrugged the very notion off. "They're just – well, hang-arounds. Zentha, Pira and Ona. None of them particularly intelligent, they're just showing their ugly faces where they can get a chance to be audience to some cat-fighting. In the company of Darbena that tends to happen more than frequently."
"Idiots, what's the point really?" Aphrodite sighed and settled for a salad.
"Who knows," Hemera shrugged again. "They must have a dull life."

After that the goddesses had left the unheartening topic of Ciresia and her daft friends. Instead Hemera told about her upcoming trip to Crete together with Nyx and Hestia.
"We're seeing Rhea, Hestia's and Zeus's mother."
"Isn't she the mother to Poseidon and Demeter as well?" Aphrodite asked. "I sort of remember something like that."
"No one knows for sure, save for Zeus. Before Zeus liberated them they were imprisoned together in the Hades back during the regime of Cronos. Including the god who more or less took his name from the land down under. Or if it was the other way around, I don't remember. But what I do know is that Rhea adopted all of them after the war – just to make sure they all got the same status as her children of womb. Including Hera and a handful of people who aren't around anymore. Like Metis. And Cybele."
"How come she adopted them all?"
"I'm not sure, but probably to make sure people bounded, stuck together and that we would finally have peace."

"Plus she really didn't know who was hers. Besides Zeus that is," someone was saying behind Aphrodite, who turned around to spot Nyx. "Mind if I have a seat?"
"Certainly not," Aphrodite smiled.
"What makes you up in this early hour?" Nyx's sister teased.
"Ah – I haven't gone to bed yet," Nyx replied. "I've been a bit busy. And now, when I finally decided to crash, I realized I was hungry. Never can a woman be lucky!"

Aphrodite couldn't help giggle at the Night Goddess' quirked humour. Nyx didn't seem to take herself half as serious as most people around here, and that was so refreshing.
"What do you mean she didn't know?" Aphrodite returned to the subject of Rhea. "Didn't she remember whom she had given birth to?"
"Only Zeus," Nyx shook her head sadly.
"How come?" Aphrodite asked.

"You know that Rhea was Cronos' second last wife. The second last one in a long row of unfortunate women whom he threw down in to the Hades when he tired of them. He also took all their offspring and threw them down there too."
"That's awful! Why?" Aphrodite felt herself pale as a waitress nymph came up with her and Hemera's lunch and promised to be swiftly around with Nyx' order as well.
"Because Cronos was scared," Nyx replied. "He had heard some awful prophecy that he was to be dethroned by a child of his. To prevent that prophecy from coming true he decided to get rid of all the kids there were. Since they were immortals he couldn't kill them, so he imprisoned them down there instead."

"But couldn't he just stop having children instead?" Aphrodite pondered.
"The stupid asshole didn't think that far," Hemera scoffed.
"Or rather, he let his dick think for himself instead," Nyx guessed. "It is a rather common male trait, you know."
"Tell me about it," Aphrodite murmured under her breath and Nyx drank of her sister's wine to the latter's loud complaints.

"Finally," Nyx went on and returned the cup. "When Cronos had made Rhea pregnant for the fifth or sixth time or something, Rhea managed to get away from her tormentor and hid away on Crete where she birthed Zeus, hidden in a cave away from everything. Then she handed the baby Zeus over to her old friend Amalthea and returned to Cronos, so that he might not suspect at thing. Later on Kronos tired of her too and threw her down in the Hades. From where Zeus years later liberated her and all other immortals he could find down there. Including his sisters and brothers. When Zeus found her, Rhea had lost most of her memory of the time prior to her imprisonment, about the only thing she did remember was giving birth to a little baby boy. She recognized Zeus when he came for her. As for the other children, it was impossible to really know who was hers and who came from elsewhere. Save for Hestia, since she and Rhea look almost the same. Tall and fit blond women both of them with sparking cerulean eyes."
"Just like Zeus," Aphrodite added.

"And Athena," Hemera pointed out. "While we can almost certainly rule out Demeter and Hades from any blood relation. They simply don't look the same."
"What did Cronus look like?" Aphrodite asked.
"Beats me," Nyx shrugged. "I've never really cared."
"I've heard he was blonde," Hemera said. "Platinum, even fairer than Zeus."
"Is that possible," Aphrodite wrinkled her brows. "Then it must be like – white. Like some old mortal."
"Most probably," Hemera replied. "Although I can hardly think of anything of less importance than Cronos' hair colour."

Aphrodite hummed in agreement. It ached in her heart while thinking of Zeus' mother. The things that goddess had gone through. Losing her children in such a dreadful way. Being imprisoned down in the abysmal Hades without knowing if she was ever going to make it out. How many years had she spent there before Zeus came down and liberated her? And how had it affected her? Aphrodite wondered if it was ever possible to heal from such a long time of torment.

0O0O0

There it was again! Someone mentioning her name? Yes, Aphrodite stopped in her tracks and leaned over the marble banister, looking down into the hall two floors below her, while she partly hid behind the ornate marble pillar. Sure, by the vaulted entrance to one of the ballrooms she spotted some of those old fighter gods, gathering around a long table, drinking something from gilded cups. One of them was playing with a long and wickedly curved blade, but it was not the weapon they were discussing.
"Yes, she is one hot little package, that goddess," said a hugely muscular hulk with jet black hair and trimmed beard, whom Aphrodite remembered as Cyges. "Although I wouldn't bother with her, Kotos, she's out of our league."

"Oh that's bad," Kotos pouted. He looked very much alike his brother although he was clean shaven and a bit shorter and his curls were tied up in a knot on top of his head. "Now, there's only so many nymphs and you get tired of them. Especially of their chit-chat."
"Don't be so certain about the 'out of your league' thing, guys," Nike's brother Kratos said. He was a brutal looking blond with a lean physique and angular cheek, as if having been cut out of granite and not smoothed off thoroughly enough. "I just heard she's bedding everything with a cock."

"Shit!" Aphrodite hissed while she felt her face going crimson and she took a step back, as if trying even harder to get out of sight from the men down there.
"You mean I can have Aphrodite?" Kotos beamed up.
"Does Poseidon swim in the sea?" Kratos responded.
"She's that easy, eh?" said Briareos, Kotos' second brother. He was even bigger and brawnier than the other two and his hair was cropped so short he appeared almost bald.
"You bet!" Kratos drawled. "Heard from Bia who had heard it from Aesyle, who had heard it from one of those lesser goddesses working with domestic stuff. Apparently that vixen has been with Poseidon and Helios and all of Zeus's lads and several of the winds. And Tartaros knows how many satyrs! And that's just in the single year she's been here."
"Oh yes!" Briareos bellowed. "Then I guess it's our turn next!"
"Count me in!" Kotos exclaimed and made some rolling motions with his hips.

"I've never been with Helios," was the only thing Aphrodite could think of whispering to herself as she pushed her knuckles to her mouth in despair and felt the tears starting to flood for real. What had she done? Did she really come off as the cheapest slut in town? How had it come to this? And what would she tell Ares? There was no doubt the War God would learn about this the moment he sat foot on Olympos again. He would be furious of course! And Zeus – who had hired her, who had trusted her, how would he react? He had booted out several of her precursors for various reasons, sleeping around had been one of them. Would she go the same way as them now?

Then she remembered something Ares had told her once. That you can't always be on defense position, because then you would eventually become backed up in the corner and with nowhere to go. That was why you had to attack, to go ahead and be offensive and force the enemy to retreat instead. Being belligerent was the only way to gain ground, especially earlier lost ground. Yet she spun around and took another way out from the palace, to not having to face those rowdy old gods. She was not ready for them yet, however she decided it to be time to stop backing off and hiding in the corners. She was going to need a plan of attack!

0O0O0

"I heard you've been having quite some fun while I was away," Ares snarled as he stared her right in the face, having placed one hand on each side of her, resting against the wall, forcing her to stop and face him.
"Just some pastime," Aphrodite replied, in the end there was no use lying. She was relieved he had cornered her down in the gallery towards the Solar Lawn where there was not a soul around, since she could feel the 'scene' building up with the speed of sound.
"Some pastime! Seems like you've been bedding the whole mountaintop while I've been gone. Was I that bad, really? That you couldn't wait for me to be off the Olympos before you started to philander?"
"No, Ares, you weren't."
"Then why?"
"It just – happened. There was Poseidon and he caught me in a weak moment. When I was tired and felt lonely. I didn't know when you'd come back."
"Poseidon, eh? And the rest of them?"
"That was it. Just Poseidon. A mistake."
"That's not what I've been hearing," The War God's dark eyes were smoldering like hot coal as they bored themselves into hers, making her head hurt.

"Then you've been misinformed. Some gossiping bitches have been exaggerating things out of proportions. You know how the talk goes here. By the way who DID you hear I've been with?"
"Boreas for instance. Zephyros. Some satyrs. Hermes. Helios. And Poseidon of course."
"There was only Poseidon, Ares. I did see Boreas, but that was just business. I'm still working on teaming him with Oreithyia. He told me about his unfortunate affair with Sekhmet of Egypt."
"Now that's a cool chick. But you're right, she's nothing for Boreas." Ares seemed to relax a bit, still Aphrodite felt she had to move her next pawn.
"How about you? Were you chaste down there among the mortals? In that war."

Ares' eyes were suddenly darting and then he became the one in defensive position. You hardly noticed it; his cheek was still clamped with anger and his eyes still burning, his biceps still bulging. But there was a slight flutter of his nostrils, two blinks and an almost imperceptible twitch of a muscle underneath his right eye. Aphrodite had to use all of her self-discipline to not in any way express that she had noted these things.
"No – I wasn't." His reply was unexpectedly honest.
"Oh really!" she added just a grain of scorn to her voice; she didn't dare pushing it too hard. Not now when Ares still was so much more angered than remorseful.
"Yes. But it is different."
"Different how? Because you are a man? Or what?"

"Aphrodite, these women were mortals. Of none importance."
"'These women'? More than one then?"
"Does it really make any difference?"
"Does it really make any difference that I was with Poseidon?"
"How about Zephyros then?"
"That was before you and I happened. And you know it. Besides he has hardly sat his foot on Olympos since you and I started to see each other. And when he did, he left so fast I didn't even get a chance to see him. Yet even if I would have, he and I are over. Because of you, Ares. I hope you can respect me enough to believe what I tell you. That you take my word over whatever gossip you've been hearing from the nymphs when they fill your tub and take out your laundry."
"I hope you can prove yourself worthy of that respect then, Aphrodite."

"Trust me, Ares! I did a mistake and so did you. Can we say we're even? I love you too much to have those stupid things ruining it all. When it's peace again I'll..."
"Hush," Ares disconnected his left hand from the wall and laid a finger on her lips instead. "Peace and love, that's what everyone wants, right."
"Peace, love... and understanding."
"That depends on what we're expected to understand. Not some goddess straying from the one who care about her, I hope. And especially not with a Sea God who's an expert of leaving broken hearts washed up on the shore wherever he swims."
"I mean understanding as in no misunderstanding. No nymph talk getting in our way. And no mortal women either."
"I..."
"What is done is done, Ares, let's try to move on forwards instead!"

Now Ares took the other hand away, and stepped back, sighing. He didn't say anything though and Aphrodite went on:
"I'm not giving up on us. Not that easy. We have a fine thing going, don't let us ruin it!"

"Ares?!" she added when no response came from the War God. "Ares, if you're indecisive, please let me know that much at least."
"I don't know how you do it," he finally said and massaged his neck while making a face to express some kind of frustration.
"Do what? What do I do?" Aphrodite felt equally exasperated. She felt like stamping her foot and yelling, but now was definitely not the time for such drama.
"Not specifically you. All women. You twist around with all the words and never take the blame."

"We do? I do? Come on, Ares!"
"I've heard mother when she has a go at father. It sounds almost the same and I get this freak déjà vu when hearing you like this."
"Perhaps because you're your father's son."
"What do you mean?" Ares stopped massaging and started fiddling with his hair instead. It was obvious he didn't know what to do with his hands. He was a war god after all, always used to have his hands full of arms in every conflict he was involved in.
"Perhaps you keep pushing the same buttons as Zeus. Making me react just like Hera."

Now he was finally smiling and then he sighed and came up close to her again and laid his arms across her back, pulling her close to himself.
"Sweetheart!" he just said. "Sweetheart! Sweetheart! Sweetheart! Believe me there are certain buttons I cannot wait to push. Starting right now. Af-ro-di-teee!"
"There is?" she was eagerly waiting for the rest as he started to rock her to and from.
"We're not the ones who's going to repeat the older generation's mistakes."
"No, let's make some new ones instead," she couldn't help saying and to that Ares caved in with a chuckle. "Let's have some peace and love. And no more misunderstanding!"