The Gift of the Lethe

Spinning Pain, Woven Rage

Athena squeezes Pallas' hand, trying to give her some sort of reassurance. Pallas said she was fine now, but Athena isn't quite sure that's true. She's been tossed a plank of wood to grab on to, but she is still stuck in the flood of emotions that had tried to drown her just a few moments ago. She isn't fully back to herself.

Athena would know this even if she didn't know all of Pallas' mannerisms, how she either withdraws into herself or explodes when she is hurt. She has withdrawn on this occasion, she's too quiet for it to be anything else, but her face is closed off too. It's blank of anything and everything, and that scares Athena. Pallas has never been good at hiding her emotions, so this has to mean that she's gone numb.

"Pallas?" She blinks, slowly turning her head towards Athena. Her eyes have gone glassy and Athena frowns. She pulls on Pallas' arm. "Up. Come on."

Wobbling slightly, Pallas pushes to her feet. She lurches a bit as Athena leads the way out of the room, but not enough that Athena really has to worry about her falling over. She leads Pallas to the weaving room and stops in front of a smaller loom than the one she uses, though it is larger than the first loom Pallas used.

"Come on. You are still hurting. You need to get it out, and this will help. You remember the weaving after your nightmares? We're doing it again."

Pallas wordlessly sits on the stool in front of the loom and scoots forward. Athena nudges a basket of thread closer to her before sitting before her own loom. She waits until Pallas has begun her own weaving before turning to her loom, her fingers moving deftly along it. The rhythm of the weaving is easy to slip in to, the images easing into life on the tapestry one after another.

With each inch of fabric, she can feel her dark emotions slipping away, imbuing themselves into the tapestry itself. That hasn't happened in quite a long time, not since her early days, in fact. She used to lock all of her works like this away, but eventually she found something more therapeutic to do with them.

She'll take a flame to this one later. But for now, she will let the images flow. Athena doesn't look at the completed ones, only the thin strip of cloth that she is working on at that moment. She glances over at Pallas for a heartbeat, her fingers stilling at the sight of tears running down Pallas' face.

The loom in front of her has a halfway completed piece already, and Pallas is staring at it. The fabric depicts a scene that Athena knows like her very heartbeat, the one that has haunted her since her childhood with Pallas. But it is also different. The lines are harsher than they were in reality, more pointed and angular.

The contrasts between light and dark are also starker. Together, Athena knows what this is. The sparring match, as Pallas remembers it. Imbued with fear and pain, the ghost that haunts her. Pallas' hands are shaking, but when she turns her gaze to Athena, her eyes are bright again. She gives Athena a wobbly smile.

"Thank you, for making me do this. It helps."

Athena smiles back. "I'm glad. Do you . . . do you wish to stop?"

"No, I have to finish it."

"Very well."

Athena turns back to her piece, keeping an eye on Pallas out of the corner of her eye. After another moment of staring, Pallas lifts her hands to the loom once more. Satisfied, Athena begins to work once more, letting herself get lost to the weaving. When she finally pulls back, the tapestry complete, she gulps at what she sees.

The scene is lined with rage, the colors of the tapestry dark and shadowed. The brightest of them all is the deep gold of ichor, spilling across the floor. She doesn't let herself dwell on what she wove, ripping the fabric from the loom and bundling it up. If her father had seen it, Pallas would be in danger. She would be in danger.

He would see it as a threat, and she can't deny the truth of it. What she wove in rage, the central image was the master bolt lying in a pool of ichor. There is nothing else he would have interpreted it to mean. Athena dumps it on the floor and turns to Pallas. She is looking between Athena and the fabric on the floor in shock.

"Thene?"

Athena shakes her head. "Don't say anything." Her gaze flickers to the piece on Pallas' loom. "Do you want me to take that?"

Pallas glances at the small tapestry and back again. "What would you do with it?"

"Burn it, as I would this one."

"Why?"

"We weave our pain into the cloth, and as it is held there, we free it so it can't return to us."

Pallas nods in understanding at that, but as she glances at her piece again, she says the last thing Athena would have expected her to say. "I don't want to burn it. I don't want to have to look at it, but I don't want to destroy it."

Despite her confusion, Athena nods. "Very well. Do you want to come with me to burn this one?"

Pallas nods, following Athena from the room once she has scooped up the bundle of tapestry cloth. Together, they leave behind the piece still sitting on the loom. Its too sharp spear, the too bright pool of blood, the razor sharp edges of the shining aegis, and the storm cloud blue-gray eyes of Zeus. They leave it all behind.

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What do you think of the tapestries? Will there be any trouble as a result of them? What do you think of this strategy for channeling emotions? Tell me your thoughts!

Happy reading and I'll see you next chapter!

~ Goddess of Fate, signing out