05
change
Time has passed, and our Aphrodite is tired. Olympus and its gods have worn down her beauty. Their hands like chains; touching, constricting, imprisoning. It ceased when they grew bored; there's always another nymph to chase. No one else noticed, but marks were left from those chains. Welts and scars along her wrists invisible to everyone but her.
It was the first thing she ever saw in this world and thought it ugly.
That's when she knew she had changed. Time and its tribulations have made her different - it's made her mean. She'd done stuff she wished she hadn't. That once powerful and unbreakable confidence is now more fragile, prone to jealousy.
And where was her boy of bruises? She has not seen him since the day he left her alone in that bed. Ares was still banished from Olympus, but the period had passed where he was forbidden from seeing other gods. Aphrodite knew, because Hera and him had met. He had reached out to his mother, to make sure she was fairing well.
But Aphrodite was met with only silence. A dog on the day of her announcement was what he spared her. She didn't care, it didn't hurt, time healed all wounds.
She was lying.
It was as if someone had taken a hammer to all her bones. Had reserved their energy for her heart, so they could hurt it the most. Aphrodite had ached all over, waiting for a sign from him. But when days turned into weeks and weeks into centuries, she stopped. The aching hadn't ceased, she only forced it to become numb.
She wasn't being fair, she knew that. Aphrodite was allowed to go visit him just as much as he was permitted to visit her. But she hadn't, and she wouldn't. She felt unwanted in this silence, and she'd be damned if she fed it.
But the silence had killed her, in a sense. Aphrodite Urania was dying, there wasn't much of that celestial love in her soul left. She noticed the effects of it on the mortal realm; the way that passionate and peaceful devotion had withered into a shell of itself. She pretended the consequences weren't there; she didn't want to be responsible for the world's love.
There was only a flicker of that old ardour left, reserved in the hearts of two boys. One of earth, one of heaven. The one of earth had kind eyes and sandy hair, born twenty seven years ago from a fleeing mother under a myrrh tree. She had happened upon him on a wander through the mortal realm; one of the few escapes from the escapades of Olympus. He had flashed her a warm smile from across the bar of a 1940s London pub, the sort of boyish grin that was kind and inviting. He was a far cry from Ares, and if she looked deep enough despite her hearts refusal, she would find that he didn't quite fill the hole her boy of bruises left. But she loved him, and that was enough.
Aphrodite called him Adonis, her handsome lord.
'That's not my name,' he had laughed when she called him it again.
'I know,' she replied. 'But Adonis does you justice. It's my mother tongue; a title that names you exactly as you are.' She thought it was fair. If he could never know or speak her real name, then she would share the courtesy.
During the time they had shared together, she hadn't shared much about herself. It felt wrong, to come to him in a mortal form that matched his own and lie about her life. But Adonis never pushed.
'It's your story. You give out the pages as you wish,' he had said. 'Just know I'll always be here to read them.'
'Perhaps we could start with a name,' she replied kindly. Once upon a time, she would've blushed. But love didn't flush her cheeks like it use to.
