Between love and lust
"You did WHAT?" Hephaestos raged as he balled his fist and put on his best intimidating face.
"I proposed to Aphrodite," Ares replied with a smug voice where he stood nonchalantly leaned against a pillar.
"You asshole, what makes you think she want you?"
"Little brother, what's it to you?" Ares was shaking his head slightly. "I mean really, you haven't bothered with Aphrodite in years and years and years! So enlighten me! Why should you be concerned by me marrying her?"
"Because I care for her," Hephaestos snarled.
"You care?" Ares lifted a brow. "For a woman you hardly talk to these days?"
"I don't want her to end up with YOU!"
"So what's wrong with me?"
"Aphrodite deserves better than you, Ares!"
"Like what? An ugly workaholic who hides away in his tunnels and caves all the time and who can hardly bother crawling out for Athena's 600th birthday? You would probably forget your own wedding for some gadget you just want to test run."
"Don't you dare berating me, Ares!" Hephaestos pointed an angry finger at his brother. "You, who have all the blood of the last centuries of war upon your hands."
"War fought by weapons conveniently made by you," Ares didn't sound so smug anymore, temper was getting to him too. "I just wield them, you make them, this makes you as responsible for the killings as I do, don't you think so?"
"I am nothing like you, Ares. And you know it! So don't you hide behind an imbecil's excuses!"
"Am I an imbecil for wanting to give my woman what she deserves?"
"She's not YOUR WOMAN!" Hephaestos yelled. "She has never been! She's her own."
"Well, she's definitely not yours either," Ares said.
"I can make that change!"
"Keep dreaming. You had your chance. You blew it. Now my turn."
"You'll blow it too! You go out there warring, you think she wanna sit around waiting for you? Then I have news for you! Aphrodite won't wait for some two-oboles idiot like you to come home. If you believe that, Ares, then you're even more stupid than I thought! Now get real, she's not going to marry you, if you so were the very last man on Earth! No one wants a dick-less, brainless moron who can only think about his next kill!"
"And you think she want an ugly sod like you?" Ares raged.
"Rather ugly and with a brain, than a soft face but nothing behind. Nothing but demented blood lust!"
"You're gonna regret saying that!"
"So what 'you gonna do? Hit me! Come on then, Ares!" Hephaestos clicked his tongue and made a mocking, beckoning gesture with his blunt workman's fingers, and Ares lashed out in rage, not bothering with the fact that the quarrelling gods had attracted quite an audience.
"Ares, stop it!" Hermes laid a hand on the War God's arm – and not unexpectedly he became rewarded with a punch in his nose, one so forceful that he flew back several feet and landed on his butt, sliding over the polished marble until he collided with a pedestal with a flowerpot, which naturally tipped over, emptying its content over the poor messenger god. Several of the nymphs were tittering while Hermes rose and brushed dirt from his chiton.
"Ares! Have you completely lost your mind?"
"Not that he had much to start with," Hephaestos grumbled. "Where the brain ends the fists start and Ares is obviously short of the former."
"You ugly son of a..." Ares attacked Hephaestos, who stepped to the side, going:
"Don't say 'bitch' before you remember you're just from an earlier litter!"
The next second the war god was over his younger brother and managed to get in a pair of good punches before it took Hermes, Helios, Kratos and Aiolos to tear the two gods apart, Hephaestos with a heavy nose-bleed wetting his peacock blue tunic. His eyes darted to his chest before he looked up at Ares again, making a face in anger.
"Now what IS THIS ABOUT?" A bellowing voice was heard from the edge of the gallery. The next moment an imposing figure came striding along the floor, togas flowing and scepter gleaming in the rays of the late afternoon sun.
"Zeus," Aiolos voiced more or less unnecessary while the King took in the gathered Olympians, the broken flower pot, the whispering nymphs and his struggling sons, now firmly mired by a quartet of other gods.
"These young gentlemen decided to settle some quarrel," Helios said as he tentatively let go of the War God. "And Hermes got quite a backhand slam as well, which caused the accident with the flower pot over there." His cyan eyes flickered to the debris on the floor.
"So what's the reason for this fracas then?" Zeus asked.
"I proposed to Aphrodite," Ares said as he rubbed his cheek where Hephaestos had gotten in a good hit. "And my little brother seems to not approve of that."
"Aphrodite, eh," Zeus snarled angrily. "And what has Aphrodite said herself? She doesn't seem to be here, by the way. Perhaps she's not that interested in seeing you two sons fighting over her like some price item."
"She has not yet replied," Ares said. "But I know she's gonna say yes."
"Forget it," Hephaestos snarled angrily. "She sure doesn't want a ferocious moron like you, Ares!"
As a response Ares balled his fist before Helios clutched his arm again. Then he tussled in the grip of Kratos and Helios, insulting his brother with a line of profanities, and Helios almost lost his grip of the raging war god.
"Enough, Ares!" Zeus ordered. "And enough from you too, Hephaestos! I know you and Aphrodite had a relation earlier, but that is no reason for protesting so wily when another man proposes to her."
"I can have her back!" Hephaestos protested. "I've just been busy lately."
"As you always claim to be," Ares scorned.
"I happen to have a son to care for," Hephaestos shot back.
"And whose kid is that son?" Ares challenged in return. "Not exactly Aphrodite's, because then we would all know it."
"No but I care about Ery, as much as I do about Aphrodite! I just haven't had the time to keep up with..."
"Hephaestos," Zeus cut him off. "Who is the mother of Erikhthonios really?"
Zeus' question was followed by silence from his son, who suddenly looked down, as if the matter was delicate. A curious Aiolos met Hermes' eyes across the hall and the messenger shook his head slightly. Not even he knew. The motherhood of Erikhthonios was a well-kept secret.
"I'm not going to insist," Zeus sighed. "It's clear that you care for the boy and I know that Athena has been giving you a hand with him. But one thing remain clear, this situation with Aphrodite must come to a solution."
"I am marrying her, Father!" Ares insisted.
O*o*o*O
"You can't marry Ares!" Hephaestos looked genuinely unhappy, where he was standing in Aphrodite's hallway, just as he had that spring morning so many years ago when he learned that she had spent the night with Helios. However this time there was no accusation in his voice, just despair.
"Why not?" she asked mildly, even though marrying the War God was exactly what she was not going to do. She had no intention to wed Ares, but she sure wanted to hear his brother's reasoning.
"Because... " he hesitated slightly. "You won't be happy together with him!"
"You think so?" she took the last step down from the stairs and walked halfway across the airy and sunlit hallway, almost up to him, but stopping just without his reach. She didn't want him to touch her right now, she was not ready for that sort of thing. Not before she had learned his thoughts. It was too long since the two of them broke up. Right after the event with Typhon and that was what? Twenty years ago.
"No. I mean yes. No I mean no," he stammered. "I mean no, you won't be happy with Ares!"
"Why wouldn't I?" she tilted her head. His sentiment was endearing and it made her regret that she had let him go.
"Can you imagine being married to him, sitting around waiting for him to come home from yet another war? And do what in the meantime? Raising his kids? Kids, he would no doubt turn into the same kind of warriors as he?"
"Well, Ares is busy with his while you are busy with yours," she said matter of factly.
"Yes, but I work daytime and I'm almost always at home here at Olympos. And you are often busy during the days too. However we can get the evening and the nights for each other. Lose ourselves in love making, the way I know we can. But Ares don't come home in the nights. He's so often gone, far away from here. Fighting his war, sleeping by the frontline. No doubt with some woman or the other warming his sleeping-bag. So while I can hold you in the nights, don't count on him to come home all the times. If you marry him, learn to get used to a lonely bed!"
"Heph?"
"Yes?"
"It sounds to me... " she hesitated and swallowed. "..that you haven't really given up on us."
"You're right, I haven't," the engineer admitted. "Aphrodite, I want you to marry me!"
O*o*o*O
"You look tired, honey," Hera leaned her chest against the shoulder blades of Zeus, letting her arms slid down on each side of his neck, caressing him from behind where he sat by the desk, staring without reading down in a scroll.
"Uhm, yeah..." the King of the Gods admitted absent-mindedly, leaning his head back into the warmth of Hera's embrace, inhaling her fragrance of vanilla and timothy. She rested her head upon his, tilting it slightly, let the fair curls of his hair tickle her cheek and her nose.
"What is it, Skylight?"
"Several things," Zeus sighed.
"Sparta?"
"Yeah, that too. But what more is, Themis is resigning."
"What?" Startled, Hera lifted her head, trying to get her brain to catch up with this sudden piece of information.
"Yes. Came in and told me just this afternoon, after my meeting with the Weather God Council."
"But, darling, why?"
"It's not that I haven't seen this coming for years and years," Zeus sighed. "But I guess I've pretended that it would go away if I only imagined hard enough it would. Or at least pushed it to the side, since I've so many more urgent things to deal with. When we had to replace Hades the other year, I had hoped that Themis would stay as a Dodekatheon member out of loyalty to the pantheon in spite of everything. At that time she did admit to me that she couldn't step down. But more than thirty years has passed since and she feels now that her time is up. She wants to leave Olympos entirely."
"And do what?"
"She didn't say. But that matters little. What matters more is that we're going to need a replacement. I'm not sure who we can ask this time."
"Selene?" Hera suggested.
"I don't think she wants."
"Hermes?"
"I've been thinking about him too, but he's not mature enough. Too volatile, too time optimistic, too much of a trickster. In a few decades time perhaps, but not now. I've been thinking of asking Helios again."
"And he'll say no again, nothing has changed in that case. Now how about Hemera?"
"No..."
"Hecate?"
"No!"
"You're right, she's not fit. Skilled but unstable."
"And she can be terribly moody sometimes. She'd probably cause spite without desiring it, just by saying something inappropriate to somebody. Then there's this other problem. Did you know that Ares had proposed to Aphrodite."
"Fates no!" Hera almost let go of her husband in surprise and Zeus placed one large hand over her corresponding one to make her stay, gently rubbing his fingers over her slender wrist.
"I became as astounded as you when I heard it," Zeus admitted and almost smiled. Hera snorted.
"She'll turn him down."
"I'm quite sure you're right, Hera. But it places yet another delicate matter in our laps. Something has to be done about that goddess' life style before it tears Olympos apart. Enough of the gods has been involved with her in one way or another and now they are fighting about her in earnest. Hephaestos cannot get over her, and I know for sure that both Hermes and Phosphoros have been delighting quite a bit in what she has to offer recently. Not to mention our youngest wind."
"Euros! He's still hardly more than a boy. He'll fly too close to the flame and get burned," Hera's concern was heard in her mellow contralto.
"Exactly my thought. I know Aphrodite doesn't do these things out of malice, she's simply just careless. She think all is going to be all right if she just giggle and flutter those long lashes of hers and blush a bit, being the playful kitty. She doesn't grasp that using sexual affection like that is more than a game for most people. They invest feelings they do expect to be returned. When that doesn't happen they become sad and frustrated. Hera, she's hurting people. And not only young winds. We need to convince her to settle down. To marry. Or at least have a child with any of the gods..."
"Zeus," Hera interjected, let go of her husband, only to slide around his chair , push the desk away and placing herself in his lap instead. Then she took his chin in her hand and looked right into his sapphire eyes. It was so odd, she thought. He could say all those things, sounding so wise, and then he plowed along and behaved exactly the same. As a male mirror image of Aphrodite, using sex as a plaything. Hurting her! Out of carelessness rather than malice. Forcing these thoughts aside, Hera went on: "I have an idea, dear! Listen, this is what we're going to do..."
O*o*o*O
When the nymph closed the double doors behind Aphrodite, the goddess felt a bit strange, there was an unusual sensation of vertigo in her belly. She had expected to meet the King of the Gods alone, perhaps discussing some succession of a royal house or another with him. Instead she found his office filled with deities. There was Hera, standing leaned against the wall between two windows, her beautiful features composed into a sombre, almost stern appearance. Next to her stood Iris, looking her usual kindness, but with an odd, worried frown between her brows. In chairs in front of the King sat Ares and Hephaestos and by a small desk sat the nymph Oletta with a scroll in front of her and a quill in hand.
"Come in, Aphrodite," Zeus said and smiled lightly as he saw her hesitate by the doors. "Have a seat!" holding out his hand he indicated an empty chair standing between those of his sons. Blinking uncertainly, Aphrodite complied. The air in the room was tense in a strange way and it made her quite uncomfortable. What could have happened? What was wrong? It couldn't be the fact that Demeter had asked the Cretan god Carmanor to come to Olympos and move in with her, could it? No? It was Aphrodite's doing all right, but – people found Carmanor likeable and everybody ought to be happy for Demeter's sake, wouldn't they?
"Thanks," she whispered hesitantly as she took place in the chair, gracefully slipping one leg over the other. As her left leg became visible through the slit in her peplos, she noted that Hephaestos paid it a fleeting attention, before he looked down at his hands again. Ares on the other hand appeared almost cocky and he didn't hide his ogling, which almost annoyed her, as it seemed so out of place to do such a thing here and now, with both his parents and his brother present.
"Aphrodite," Zeus began. "I can see the confusion on your face as to why you are here. Therefore I'm going to get right down to business. I imagine you know that Themis is resigning from her seat in the Dodekatheon."
"I am," she nodded, trying to grasp where the King was heading. Could he mean? She didn't dare to think, sure she wasn't...
"Now, I was planning on offering you this empty position, Aphrodite." Zeus said. "But before I can even begin to suggest such a thing, we must do something about your private status. And that's why we're all here today."
"My... private status?" Already as she echoed Zeus' words, Aphrodite heard how daft it sounded and she almost put her hand to her mouth, but stopped herself in time, fingering her necklace instead. "You're giving me Themis' place?" she went on, feeling her cheeks starting to burn. Forcing the blush to stop she realized she couldn't take her eyes off the sapphires of Zeus.
"Yes, I will do that," the King said, his voice oddly harsh. "I believe, and Hera thinks so too, that you can become an excellent addition to the Dodekatheon."
"I'm honored..." Aphrodite struggled for appropriate words. Inside of her she was cheering. A place in the Dodekatheon! The ultimate honor. The ultimate elevation! However there was a BUT attached to it. She could feel it fermenting the whole air in the room.
"Aphrodite," Zeus went on. "Before I ask you about this though I want to know what you intend to do with the proposals you have received. I know that both my sons here have offered you marriage. I also know that you have not given any of them a reply. Now, before I'm presenting you this Dodekatheon position, we must have this straightened out."
"Eh... why?" Aphrodite felt so small and vulnerable as she faced the mighty god. Tiny and afraid in a way she had seldom felt earlier. At this very moment she truly understood how much the King could make people shiver, because his looks were intimidating and he locked her eyes like a carnivore was staring down his pray. At the same time it appeared as if he could see right through her, reveal her innermost thoughts, fold out her very private secrets and dissect them. Swallowing hard, she felt lightheaded, as if the oxygen was being denied her. "You want to know if I want to marry... Ares or Hephaestos?" She wasn't able to face either of the gods sitting next to her. Truthfully she wouldn't have dared doing so even if she could have torn her eyes off Zeus' hypnotizing scrutiny.
Now Hera spoke up.
"You must understand, Aphrodite that you have ended up in a situation with yourself in the middle, right between two gods who dearly desire your heart. Two gods who both care a lot for you and who feel that the other one has become a threat to their happiness. Two gods who are brothers. Zeus's and my sons. Now, as long as this stalemate exists, the whole Olympos is affected negatively. These bad vibes spread, you of all people ought to understand that. They are already distressing others. Strife is spreading. Naturally we need to put an end to this. On one hand we see the value in having you in the Dodekatheon. On the other hand we cannot place you there, not while this situation remains. After all both Ares and Hephaestos are members of the Dodekatheon. They wouldn't be able to cooperate for the common good with you between them. Not before we solve this."
"I..." Aphrodite hesitated as understanding dawned upon her. Fighting the nausea she finally managed to tear her eyes away from Zeus' and she turned to face Hera, who was not leaning anymore but standing erect, eagerly awaiting the love goddess' response.
"Surely you must have had enough time to think this over by now," Hera went on. "Hephaestos told me he proposed the day before yesterday and Ares did so already last week. So we are all eagerly awaiting your answer. Who will you wed, Aphrodite?"
Yes, Hera had it right. As always. Probably the Queen also understood that Aphrodite really wanted to remain single, but Hera had omitted that option in her usual smooth way. Which left the Goddess of Love with two possible alternatives, either of the two sons of Hera and Zeus.
However, Aphrodite still didn't want to marry. Any of them. She cringed at the very thought of marriage. Not because of the men, she liked them both, but just the notion of being locked into a commitment with any of them felt overpowering. It would delimit her freedom way too much. Conversely there was that alluring Dodekatheon position. The honour that came with it. Finally there was the heavy demand from Zeus and Hera. The king and the queen were not going to let her off the hook, she knew. She had to make up her mind, and to do it now. She had to accept either of the gods sitting in the room, there was no other way out of this. Finding herself backed into the corner, she had to admit to herself that it was as much her doing as anyone else's.
So now what?
She looked to her left. At Ares. He was wearing his trademark smug look, smiling slightly, his glittering eyes having that usual strong affect upon her and she felt her lower regions stir in lust. Those dark eyes were giving her one clear message. I can give you so much more than him, they were saying. So self-assured he was. Then she came to look at his strong hands. Those hands. All over her body. She wanted...
Forcing herself to turn around she faced Hephaestos to the right. He wasn't staring at her though. On the very contrary, he was looking down upon his hands. He held something in them, but she couldn't see what it was, only that it glittered slightly, it appeared to be a gem infused in gold. But his shoulders were slumped and he looked all sad and forlorn. As if he knew that he had lost. Her heart ached, she wanted to hold him, comfort him. Telling him what a great person he was, how kind he was and how many great things he had bestowed the society of Olympos with.
"Sugarplum!" she heard Ares behind her, his voice like honey trickling over a cake. Seductive and hot. Impossible to resist.
Well almost.
Aphrodite didn't turn to look at him, she couldn't stand to see his boastful face, his leering, his self-assurance. Besides, she didn't have to turn, she was so familiar with that expression, that victorious glee. At that moment she suddenly felt she couldn't stand it. She wanted to wipe that smug grin off Ares' face forever, she wanted to take that pot with lilies on Zeus's desk and smash it across that grinning countenance.
But she didn't need that. She had a much better way to expunge it.
She faced the god to her right, shifting in her seat.
"Hephaestos?" her voice was clearer than she had expected, however a bit bland. Hesitantly the younger son of the divine couple glanced over to her, his brown eyes unable to read beyond the sadness which was there. "Hephaestos," Aphrodite repeated. "What?" Finally he looked up, meeting her eyes.
"Yes, Hephaestos. I will marry you."