i know you’re probably getting a lot of requests, but do you think you would be able to write about the weirdest greek myth ever, the birth of the Minotaur?

shanastoryteller:

There are times when
Hermes’s role as the messenger god weighs on him. Declaration of war have left
his lips, the words he’s carried have ended whole countries and damned villages
to a slow painful death. The secrets he carries tears at him, the horrors he’s
had to face only so he could later tell of them, the warnings he repeats that
are ignored and all he’s witnessed is for nothing, since it happens all over
again in front of him.

There are times the news
he brings that tears at him, eats at his soul like necrosis – the death of
Kore, Poseidon destroying another seaside village, every whisper of Pandora, informing
Ares of yet another war.

This –

– isn’t one of those
times.

~

Aphrodite’s lovely face
is slack with surprise. At her side Hephaestus rubs his chin and says, “That
seems physically improbable.”

“How did she manage to
not die?” Aphrodite demands, then
says, “Wait, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”

Hermes grins, and doesn’t
bother to hide the complete delight he’s taking in this, “But my lady, 

it is my sacred duty to tell you these things. When Queen Pasiphae ensnared
Daedalus’s help

to be
mounted by the bull–”

She gives him a cross
look and is gone in a powerful gust of wind, and he has to grab onto the
volcano wall to keep from falling over.

“That wasn’t very nice,” Hephaestus
says, off hand. It’s clear he’s still thinking of the mechanics of a human-bull
hybrid.

“I’ve been accused of
being many things,” Hermes says cheerfully, “nice is not among them.”

~

Artemis lounges in her
tent with one of her huntress’s face between her thighs, inexperienced but
eager, and she so does love taking on
new women.

“Sister!” Apollo shouts,
appearing at her side and glaring down at her. “Have you lost your mind?”

Her huntress startles and
freezes, unsure whether to leave or continue. Artemis rolls her hips up, and
the girl ignores the appearance of the sun god and continues with her task.

“Not that I know of,” she
says, tilting her head up so she can look at her brother without altering her
position, “Why do you ask?”

“Poseidon cursed a mortal
queen to fall in love with a bull, and she gave birth to a bull headed monster
today,” he crosses his arms and glares.

She swallows the laugh
that bubbles up, but she must not be entirely successful because he starts
tapping his foot. “Well, isn’t that interesting. I’m not sure what it has to do
with me.”

“Sister dear, Artemis,
patron goddess of childbirth,” he says with syrup thick sweetness, “why on
earth did you bless that child? There’s no way it could have been born without
your help. It had to have been you.”

Her huntress pauses again,
and Artemis will answer her questions later.
She squeezes her thighs about her ears, and the girl resumes. “Oh come on, don’t
give me that look. This is hysterical. People are going to be talking about
this for years.”

He considers this for a
long moment, then uncrosses his arms, “Okay, you have a point.”

“I know. Now if you don’t
mind, I’m a little busy,” she gestures to the huntress between her legs.

Apollo snorts, “Get a few
more girls in here, and maybe I’ll consider that busy.”

He slips away, but
Artemis’s eyes narrow. That sounds like a challenge.

The girl replaces her
mouth with a hand and asks, “Should I gather the other huntresses, lady
goddess?”

“I like you,” Artemis
says, and the girl laughs, cheeks flushed and lips shiny.

~

Hermes appears in the
middle of the garden of Hades’s palace, and blinks twice.

The queen of the
underworld is half naked and on top of Amphitrite, and several things fall in
place at once. “Is this why you don’t get upset with Hades for his affair with
Hecate?”

“There is no affair with
Hecate, you’re just an indiscriminate gossip,” Persephone retorts. “And if they
were having an affair, I wouldn’t have a problem with it, and it wouldn’t have
anything to do with Amphitrite.”

“Oh,” he says. He feels
rather derailed from his original point. “I came here to–”

“If this is about the
minotaur, we already heard about it,” she says, “You can go now.”

They’ve already heard about it! “From who?!”
This is the best news in centuries, and this person is ruining it.

“Aphrodite,” Amphitrite
says, “She’s cross with you.”

Oh, this is war.

~

Ares feels a shiver go
down his spine, and looks across the battle field. People are dying around him,
but people are always dying around him. He doesn’t see anything particularly horrendous,
so he doesn’t know who could have invoked him so powerfully that he felt it.

A young woman who had
shared the last piece of sweet bread with him last night gets a spear shoved
straight through her chest, and Ares decides he has more important things to
worry about.

~

Athena is halfway through
a tapestry that is to hang in Hestia’s rooms when Aphrodite appears next to her
and says cheerfully, “Guess what Poseidon did?”

Normally Athena would
fling anyone who dare to disturb her to the depths of Tartarus, but she’s
always willing to talk of Poseidon’s misdeeds. “I’m listening.”

Hermes appears on her
other side, glaring. “You trollop.”

“He made a queen fall in
love with a bull, and she just had the kid. It’s got a bull head.” Her sister’s
smile is positively vicious.

“I’ll make you suffer,”
Hermes hisses, and slips away. Aphrodite follows, the sounds of her laughter
echoing in the room.

Athena blinks, looking
back to her loom, but is unable to concentrate.

Even she hadn’t seen that
one coming.

~

Hera doesn’t get
involved, she does not have opinions, as a rule if it doesn’t concern her then it doesn’t concern her.

She waits for her husband
to leave, and tries not to worry about his mutterings about bulls, the
queen-mother Europa, and how Pasiphae had the right idea of it. She steps into
the throne room, and the fire burns cheerful and bright in the center of it.

She sits beside it, and no
sooner has she done so than Hestia appears at her side. “You’ve heard then?”

“Hermes told me,” she rubs
at her temples.

“Aphrodite got to me
first,” Hestia says, and the goddess of the hearth seems entirely too cheerful,
“I can say, of all the misdeeds Poseidon has wrought, this one is certainly …
unique.”

She slumps and buries her
face in her hands, “This whole family is mad, and we’re doomed to only become
worse.”

Hestia laughs and puts an
arm around her shoulder, “Come now, I think Hades is quite reasonable.”

Hera shifts enough only
so that she can glare, “Hades chose to rule the dead and married Kore. He’s
the maddest of us all.”

Hestia can’t refute that,
so she starts finger combing Hera’s long, curly hair. Hera slumps back into her
hands, and Hestia’s smile is soft as they sit there in silence, the only noise
that of the crackling fire.

~

When Hephaestus returns
to the volcano, it’s to his wife sitting in his throne with her arms crossed. “What
did you do?” she asks.

“I just gave him a little
suggestion, is all,” he says, and scoops Aphrodite into his arms so that he may
reclaim his throne. She snuggles into his side, and if she’s trying to convince
him that she’s mad at him, she’s doing a terrible job of it. “Daedalus has
always been a very devout follower; he deserves a few good ideas.”

“He’s had enough ideas,”
she says, because without his help the queen wouldn’t have found a way to consummate
her love of the bull, “I don’t think he needs anymore.”

“Maybe,” Hephaestus
murmurs, dragging his nose up her temple, “but imagine this – a labyrinth, bigger than any other, than this
whole volcano.”

“That’s nice, dear,”
Aphrodite says, and then proves to be distracting enough that Hephaestus puts
his ideas aside.

At least for a little
while.

gods and monsters series, part xii

read more from the gods and monsters series here