Rise Of Pandora

Rise of Pandora: LXVIII. King Piece

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VII. Gift

She had grown accustomed to Prometheus. The long conversations they shared in the past days had etched him in a lukewarm place in her heart. She felt comfortable again. He made her feel like she belonged. And that stolid suit of armor that never left her side, though rarely did it move, made her feel safer. The deities that scattered, flew and embraced her along the way made her feel whole. It was a perfect trinity to her. A large and robust man who reminded her of Prometheus in the pleasant yet realistic way he would speak to her, a broad and strong guardian whom she knew at this time would defend her with all that it had, and a beauteous family of billions that would never let her fall to her enemies, she reminisced and savored every minute and every hour that had passed her by.

But below was everything but happy. She knew what was surely happening, the constant wave after wave of her deities imposing all of their tremendous weight upon the cities and kingdoms, but the time she had with Prometheus took her mind off of it. The past days for her was filled with deep conversations on several subjects such as philosophy, ethics and morals, leadership, love and warfare, trials and tribulations, pleasure, hatred, and things of those likes. At times their conversations would become heated with Pandora standing strong on her view points and Prometheus challenging her to find within herself why she believed what she did and even at times outright rejecting how she saw things. It was clear that they had their different views on certain matters about life, where she saw life as something special and something that was meant to be cherished at its deepest levels, he saw the individual life as a chaotic force that was meant to be checked and governed, but ironically this only made her feel all the more comfortable to be around him. She loved a person who stayed true to what they believed and that was why this large, and at one time terrifying gray individual, inundated her thoughts with Prometheus, that strong and steadfast man who had fathered and cherished her all those long ages ago. The memories were still so clear to her as if they were not so old.

They had taken a pause from their long colloquy, the man she now called Prometheus and herself and she had now been taken in by the relative silence and was taking this moment to reflect on the last few days and all the irony that came with it.

In all the talks of valuing life with Prometheus, she had been willingly allowing her endless number of children to snub out life one by one, kingdom after kingdom. The cities and empires that made up the great imperium known as Kaoacien was mostly now remnants and dust. But from her high horse all the way in the sky, she could not get the chance to feel all of their suffering and cries, the cries of mothers forced to watch as their terrified children were crushed and swallowed by the ceaseless tides of deities, the shaky pains swelling within the bodies of brave soldiers who sought to fight back no matter how vain. Perhaps if she had, she would not be so eager to continue her expedition up north, a place that was so far from the southern imperium that it would only warrant more death and sorrow along the way. But the wise words of Prometheus, the gray man, made it seem to her as if it were the only way, a dark justice, a long and arduous journey through a glum tunnel all just so she could feel the warm embrace of light on the other side. What that warm embrace was, this was something she was still beginning to understand. When she first emerged from the box all those days ago in that murky forest on the stone floors naked, afraid and on the verge of death, she did not feel as if she belonged. She had entered a world that should have long forgotten her, she thought. Everything appeared different, like different forms of things she had once known so vibrantly. But she was adjusting, slowly discovering things about herself that she had never known and she owed it to the man who kept her company and fed her different and new thoughts each step of the way. This world was beginning to feel like that world she had once known, but with all of this power that she had at her side, she needed to know what kind of world she wanted to create. Though she was older than most, likely older than everyone who was now in existence, she still felt youthful. Physically, she was. A young, slender woman still blessed with the elixir of gentle adolescence. Her hair a smooth field of amaryllises, her eyes a lovely coalesce of green tones and textures, her skin a fresh running of milk with a gentle drip of honey, and that oh so strange yet adoring green glow that would flush and illuminate her skin like she was ensnared by a great pasture of untouched grass the way it wrapped around every single inch of her body covering her like she was the earth in which they sprouted so boldly from. She was certainly uncommon, she possessed and embodied a uniquely arresting soma that she could call her own, though she did not even know how she appeared to others. Never did or could she find a reflection of herself and so never did she know her own beauty.