The stars cannot fathom their falling [Hermes]

Sep 03, 2007 23:25

It was a long walk up the mountain. And then up the Mountain (the one that didn't quite exist) to Olympus, home of the gods. Heph had of course had to leave his donkey behind on earth, as only a divine being could survive such a climb. Well, Hephaistos had crawled his way back up in worse health than this, and after an eternity of resigned silence, his siblings tended to leave off the teasing. Mostly.

It was beautiful in Olympus, as it always was. As it always ought to be, seeing as his own hands had designed and built these temples, and here he'd had left off all pretense at obeying the laws of Euclidian space. He came up, as always, at his own (comparatively) small temple, and sighed a bit at the dust and ashes he found there. He'd had a good run of it with the industrial revolution and the machine age, but humanity was fickle and for all that it still clung to the trappings of industry, Hephaistos's estate had been in decline for years now. Ah well, they'd come 'round again. Always did.

Out into the complex proper, then, to find his parents and siblings, and hear the news. Or so he'd thought. Coming out of his temple, Hephaistos draws up short, looking around himself in shock. It was...deserted. There was nothing there. Oh yes, the temples were still there, or the...space and lack-of-space that made them up, but nothing was inside them.

"...Mother? Father Zeus? Pallas? ...Ares? Dionysius? Uncle Poseidon? Ceres? ...Hestia? ...WIFE?" His great voice rumbled out of his chest like the groaning of tectonic plates, louder and louder until it seemed that all the world would be crushed in an earthquake. But there was nothing.

How could this be? "Hermes." He would know. Friend to gods and man, he would know. Throwing open the doors of the messenger's temple, Hephaistos dove into the dark. He had crafted this place and did not need light to see his way. He simply stumbled and ran and hauled his misshapen legs through rooms and corridors, calling his brother's name. Searching its labyrinthine depths for something, some clue, anything...
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