07
revelation
Aphrodite hears the call she's been dreading.
She was on Olympus watching Eros fly, when she felt a cord snap within her. Like a blade had struck heart. She cried for a nymph, who appeared instantly, and ordered her to watch Eros. Then she fled to the mortal realm.
Instinct lead her to a battle field. It was silent. Smoke hung thick with the smell of gunpowder. She blinked for a moment, let her eyes adjust to the light of the going down sun, and realised what lay around her.
Bodies. Hundreds of them. Half sunk in the grass, wet with blood. Some still moved, most did not. She was in no mans land, fresh from a battle just fought, a graveyard to the dying soldiers that now lie buried within it.
She felt that cord flicker again. Following it, she stepped around the bodies, walked to a patch of the battlefield that looked less like a tomb than the rest.
Or so she thought.
Because as she looked upon her Adonis, wheezing there in the meadow, she realised that this earth would host another grave tonight.
She got to her knees beside him, gently lifted his head into her lap. Blood had made his lips red. His uniform was soaked with it.
'Meri?' he croaked.
'Hello,' she tried to be strong, use a tone that did not waver. But her voice broke the second his eyes looked upon her.
'Are you the vision that carries me home?'
She swallowed her whimper. 'Yes, I hope that's alright.'
He laughed a little, but it came out in more of a cough. 'How could I want anyone else?'
He spluttered again, and Aphrodite held him a bit tighter. If she had the time, she would trade her soul to Hades for his death to be swift. To have him arrive at deaths door quickly, without any of this pain.
'Ma, and my sister-'
'I'll look out for them,' she promised. He relaxed a little more.
'I know you're not real, and that this is just comfort.' He was using the last of his strength to speak like this. 'But can I tell you something anyway?'
'Of course.' She stroked the hair away from his eyes, waited for him to catch his breath.
'Meri,' his voice was but a whisper now. 'I'm sorry I couldn't make it back to you.'
She made her crying silent. 'My Adonis, you have nothing to be sorry for.'
His eyes were closing, but he managed to smile. 'That's not my name.'
She leant down, passed one last kiss against those bloody lips.
'I know, Charlie. Rest now.'
He died in her arms. And when she felt that last breath leave him, when his hand went limp in hers, she finally let herself weep. The sun set behind them, as if it were capturing all the dead boys in its dying light, and carrying their souls to Elysium. But she stayed with Adonis anyway, with his body that would soon sink into the soil, and let herself love him a little longer.
