Hell Is An Empty Heart (Book One of The Triple Moon's Chronicles)

57 | Athena's Past I - Only The Strong Survive ***

Warning for mentions of cannibalism.

    At the earliest moment of her life, the female warrior goddess remembered coming out of a woman.

The dark, boundless stomach of Zeus was Metis home since he swallowed her whole, a prison where she had no light, no sisters by her side, but just two friends, the two simultaneous kicks from her unborn twin. She bathed them in her own tears and lulled them with those awful words: There is space for one only in my house.

Indeed, as her water broke, Metis sobbed, dreading the time that would come for her to make a choice. The forthcoming newborn boy trapped his sister under his body. He would be the only male to be on top of her, squashing her down with his innate might, challenging her to become the elder between them. But she wouldn't be defeated that easily.

She seized her umbilical cord—the rope wrapped around his neck and pulled it tighter and tighter until she dragged her rival out behind her. Asphyxiated by her own life support, she offered his mortal flesh in sacrifice for her mother to stab him mercilessly with a piece of sharp bone straight to the heart. He died in an instant.

It was Athena's first lesson in the world:
Only the strong survive.

After his passing, Metis named her lost infant Poros, and denied him a grave. She took his flesh to satisfy her own hunger, using his carcass to give her enough strength to feed his victorious sister, the one called into the world Athena.

A heavy name for the small shoulders of a yet-to-be-little girl, but the sequestered Metis never acted recklessly, for she was the divine incarnation of wise counsel, prudence, and wisdom. It was fate that made her mother to the child who would possess the mind of the Gods, the one who would hold all the knowledge, the intelligence in flesh.

Metis gave no kisses to her newborn, and when the young Athena latched on to her breast to feed herself, her eyes desperately searched for comfort. Instead, they met the frozen blue eyes of a face trapped behind a silver-mirrored iron mask.

Her mother showed none of the praised qualities displayed by the Goddess of Harvest. This goddess was barely a carer, either. As soon as her daughter knew how to be stable on her own two feet, Metis forbade her another taste of her milk.

She pushed that child of hers away, causing her to tumble to the ground hurt. Athena wailed, then pant loudly, but her asleep mother only turned her body in the opposite direction. The little girl ran to her again in a desperate attempt, but this time, Metis threatened her back with a spear carved in osseous matter.

The frightened infant walked a few metres away from her mother. She then laid down on her own on the cold, dark floor, staring at the back of her heartless mother until her eyes fluttered in slumber.

A survival mode triggered by her small organism to preserve the remaining nutrients left from her last meal. That was the first and last time the young Athena left herself to starve. When her little eyes shut tight, a rain of a reddish, sticky slime mixture suddenly overtook the ceiling of their unfortunate home.

Her mother stood up, gathering as much as she could of the sweet-scented liquid while the shortened Athena nearly drowned in its ocean, her mouth obstructed by its huge amount. She swallowed everything into her tiny stomach in order to survive until it flushed itself out from their floor. When Athena opened her eyes again, she was the only witness to Metis feasting on the strange fluid, leaving her to realise that was their food.

***

Athena, who only knew how to emanate the sound, Ba, repeated the syllable roughly ten thousand eight hundred times while staring at her mother on the opposite side. Unbeknown to her, she figured out the frequency of the flood, and on the third shower of the day, the young girl removed her dress. When the sticky rain washed away, a bag of food as huge as her whole body was now in her hands.