The Queen's Irony

12

"Hera!" Adiya cried.

She ran over to the shadowed ball Ares had pointed out in the distance. He ran after her, somehow slower than the mortal when they were still back on Olympus. His lungs burnt, something he never thought would happen to him while chasing after a mortal.

He looked down at the girl, she had collapsed to her knees holding a limp figure. His brown eyes surveyed the scene. Adiya was wearing a simple white dress with a red sash and her waist. He remembered it to be the dress she wore when she first stepped onto Olympus. Her golden hair was stuck to her sweaty forehead and her tears, clear and warm, landed on the icy cheek of the woman she held.

He looked closer at the woman. She was pale, with large bruises that mottled her face and arms. She wore a basil dress, which was tattered from the hem and sleeve. Brown hair lay about her haphazardly and her broken, plump lips were slightly parted. There was a golden wedding ring on her finger.

He stepped closer carefully, a wedding ring? Was that what Adiya was basing this woman's identity on? He shook his head. This woman. She didn't look like a goddess. She didn't radiate the power, the aura, that his mother held. His mother would never be crumpled in the snows of Russia this way.

"That is not my mother," he told the mortal.

The mortal ignored him holding the woman tighter, foreheads touching. The way she cried, the sentiment she held. Her wails, he never thought he would hear them outside of the battlefield, he looked up expecting to see a triumphant soldier carrying a bloodied sword but only found the empty flurry of snow Russia could offer. "Hera, please wake up. Olympus needs you,"he heard the mortal cry.

He looked back at the two women and knelt next to them. This couldn't be his mother, this woman was nearly dead; if not, completely dead. However, the prospect of being able to save her mother's shade from the Underworld was preferable o the fate- He blocked the thought from his mind, preferring to believe this woman was not his mother at all; however, as he held a hand out to touch her, it shook with the possibility.

He was reaching out to her, to touch her shoulder when the smell of vanilla reached his nostrils.

"Ares, my love, don't run too far. I can't see you beyond the cave," She called out to him.

He looked back at the woman. She was young. Curly, brown hair framed her face as a white dress wrapped around her petite body delicately. She looked no older than 15. A little girl held her hand, around his age. She was dressed in robes and her black hair was straight and cropped off at her shoulders.

The little girl looked up at the teenager with rusty eyes and then back at him,"You should listen to mommy! The Titans could be out there, brother!"

He stood at the shore's edge, the water tickling his toes and then running away from him. "Ares, come on," the teenager called to him. He looked back out at the broad horizon that stretched out for miles, he tried looking past the point where the sky and the sea touched. He looked back to the cave: where his father was raised, where he and his sister were both born, and where his mother and sister stood now. Then to a point above the cave where a lush mountain loomed over them.

"Ares, if you stay near I'll show you a surprise," the teenager had called.

He sighed, waddling back up to them and taking her other hand.

She led them up and over the cave to the mountain that stood tall and proud. His short legs struggled to keep up with her long ones which strode over the rocks and hills so easily. When would he be able to step over as many rocks as she did?