OTHERS
One as ancient as he should have known better than to take any skill for granted. There were always twists and turns that never could be smoothed, except by a master's hand. And a master's hand hardly ever faltered (even with the most difficult of tasks), so their craft seemed seamless and easy
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She looked so. damned. hopeful. So eager to please. And it was impossible not to take their hospitality, and smile about it. Children needed smiles and gentleness and soft words and validation. Erebos had been many things in the length of time that he existed. The thing that he had most enjoyed being was a father. The child, her arms full of the darkest cloth imaginable, reminded him with a swift sharpness, of one of the only unsullied joys he had in his life.
He closed his mouth immediately, and looked to the maiden who had greeted him.
"Erebos of Darkness." It was clear he was Greek, and unnecessary to explain this. Instead, he carefully shifted the gift he brought and set it on the hearth carefully, still wrapped in their leather and cloth insulation, then set its corresponding plaque gently down as well. He would have given the gift to the maiden, but that he felt somewhat guilty over giving a lady such a burden to carry.
"If she does not know me, please tell her that my daughters are The Fates."
He would not blame Brighid for not knowing him; he was reclusive. Most of the time.
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Brighid looked up from the glowing spar of metal arced across her anvil, and sighed. "You weren't flirting with him, were you, my dear ninny? Because you know I've told you not to toy with the Greeks." She gave the blade a quick flurry of strokes with her hammer as the heat started to fade, then turned and shoved it back into the coals.
"Na, I'd hardly dare, m'lady," Grainne beamed as she stole an apple from the side table and bit into it, "He's the look of one with a temper to him, and no mistake. 'Sides, aren't all those Greeks married anyhow?"
"Aye, minx," Brighid sighed, eyeing her clothes wearily; Leather trousers, cinderscorched muslin shirt and apron, gloves of stout dragon hide, and her hair creeping out of its plait in scarlet ribbons to stick to her smudged, sweaty skin. She was in no fit state to make a good impression, that was for sure. "and married to powerful, vindictive, jealous goddesses as well. Go and study the legends of Io, Danae, and Leda for proof of that. Go on now!" she waved the girl on when she hesitated.
Grainne made a moue, but turned and went on to the library as instructed. Brighid turned to the two girls who were resting behind the massive bellows. "Right then, you two. Give me a nice, bright coal for this one, and then you can knock off until I come back down. And we'll have no more breaking into Dionysus' temple and getting drunk with Maenads from either of you!" The pair groaned, but went to work, and soon the Forge was glowing brilliant and hot.
Brighid stepped into the flame, felt it consume her, subsume her, become her. The answering flame of the hearth in her upper hall showed the God awaiting her, and he turned his head to watch while the flames gave her form and substance, dressed her in a gown of scarlet and vermillion, wound gold in her hair, and around her throat and wrists, and dripped garnets across the lot. Damn sight quicker than a bath, if I do say so myself.<.i> Brighid thought, stepping down from the hearth with a smile.
"A thousand welcomes, Erebos of Darkness," she said as he rose to greet her, "It is good to meet the kin of a friend at last."
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He glanced over to the little girl, who was trying to make herself inconspicable, but was quite clearly too curious not to dismiss herself altogether. The harsh lines of his face softened slightly.
"Thank you for meeting with me. I trust I was not interrupting?"
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She noted Enye hovering behind Erebos' chair, and gave the youngest of her maidens a stern glance and a wink, then cut her eyes toward the three musicians. The girl broke into a wide grin, dropped a curtsey, and went to join them, adding a pure, artless voice to the song.
"I'm glad of the break anyway. I see few Greeks these days, since Ares stirred things sidelong, but I've always enjoyed the company." And the gossip, and the fun of having a lot just as foolish as the DeDannaan to laugh at, as well. she added to herself.
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The little girl's singing was innocent and beautiful in the way only children knew how to be. Erebos did not like spending time with gods and goddesses of other pantheons - barely tolerated the ones of his own - but here. seemed.
Different.
He wondered if this goddess found herself in solitude so often as to welcome a surly guest such as himself. He made sad company, and well he knew it. His wife, Nyx, was much better at socializing.
The thought of his wife, socializing in their ancestral home with that Sumerian, had his hands closing in on themselves in his lap. He focused instead on the business at hand.
"I am pleased that you have the time to make for me," he answered her. "And I am grateful to you for the assistance in returning Clotho to herself. Atropos has told me of your involvment. It seems to me that you are a forger of many things, including those things that have already been broken by outside forces.."
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"I'm a maker of tools. I've learnt to see when a tool is being used for fell means, and when one's been twisted from its purpose, as well. Besides," she admitted with a sigh, "I've made something not so unlike that in the long-past." She knew the painful memory was standing bare in her eyes -- she never could hide what it had cost her to make the Silver Arm, but she relied on the habit of Greeks not to know anyone's history but their own in this matter. And she suspected Erebos wouldn't ask her about it.
"Powerful, tricksy, temperamental, they are," she went on, accepting a cup from the maidens returning from the kitchen. They slid a tray of winter fruit, cheese and bread onto the trestle between them, and set wine, ale, and whiskey within her guest's reach before seeking out quiet tasks within eavesdropping range. "It doesnae take much to send one awry. As you have come to know."
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Her handmaids came a scant second later, offering perishibles for their enjoyment. As Brighid continued on, he nodded once, reaching for the whiskey. (While he leaned toward scotch, he guessed that the whiskey here would be the best one could find. A moment later, his supposition was confirmed.) "As I have come to know, indeed. To my rue."
He leaned forward, turning his eyes finally back to the one across from him.
"Have you seen Atropos as of late?" he asked.
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"Atropos has never struck me as shy when it came to asking for what she wanted, but is there perhaps some reason I ought to seek her out just now?"
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He paused, then named it carefully.
"Happy. Happier than she has been in a very long time. I believe you will be pleased to see her again."
Leaning back in the chair, he finished his whiskey and set the glass down. It was surprisingly easy to be in the company of this goddess. Even if he preferred solitude himself. She seemed saucy, yet regal. Powerful, yet kind. Iron-blooded, gentle-hearted. A heady combination. Had he not been married---
The impossible half-thought died the moment his mind tried to register it. What did register was that he was more susceptible to the graciously given kindness from this beauty than he had imagined, at present. Now that he knew it, the danger of it lessened. But it troubled him. He cleared his throat.
"Lachesis is also happier than she has ever been. And Clotho is returned to herself. This could not have been accomplished without your hand. I leave the details to Atropos to relay to you. But I doubt that had you decided not to honor Atropos' request when she came to you - despite the possible political rammifications - then they would not be where they are now."
He stood from the chair and strode to the hearth. Setting the plaque carefully aside, he gathered up the cloth bundle so that it lay over his arms. When he walked back to Brighid's side, the edges of the material were pulling themselves away. And by the time he knelt at the arm of her chair, the soft wrapping had unraveled themselves from the gift completely. A blade.
The work was undeniably Hephaistos' own. The metal had been processed until it shone like diamond. The hilt was shaped like a woman, arms bracing strong under the weight of the pommel. There were stresses in the blade, however, that a master alone would be able to differentiate. There was the mark of Darkness under that diamond facade. Erebos himself had destroyed what the blade had been before. Hephaistos' skill had restored it into something more beautiful than it had been before. There would always, however, be those almost-imperceptible stresses in the metal that would stand for the destruction done to it in the past.
An admission of guilt. An acknowledgment to his need for assistance in rectifying his mistake. A silent nod to the skill with which the goddess Brighid worked. And the suggestion that she had made his daughters better with what she had done.
"If it would please you, I would give you this."
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"Aye, there is much history here," she said aloud, curling her fingers over the hilt with a smile, and lifting the blade from Erebos' hands, "Many tales pounded into this length of blade. I can think of no gift you might have offered, which would please me more. Your kindness is accepted, Darkness," she said with a gleam to her eyes, "and I thank you for it."
She turned to regard him, laying the blade across her knees for a moment. "I had a son once, you know. Well. Perhaps you do not know it -- wany Greeks do not, and he is many centuries dead now. I failed to save him from his father's ambition. The armour and weapons I made for him, which might have kept him safe ont he battlefield, his father refused to allow. In the end, he rode at Breas's side, to meet his death against my own kindred..." She traced the delicate cheek of the hilt-woman with a soft finger.
Looking up into the God's eyes, she came to a sudden decision, and rose to her feet, summoning a dusty, ancient spear from its place of honour above the mantle. It slapped into her hands with a shiver and a chime that set a sympathetic hum up from the sword she held in her other hand. The spear, still bound with red-gold wire, and and traced with powerful, knotted spells, she held out sidelong to Erebos, locking his eyes until he extended his hand to take the weapon from her.
"My Ruadhan taught me the power of loss," she said as he turned it over in his hands, "I would never see another parent learn such a lesson. Not when action of my own can gainsay it. But I think it time that lesson passed from my hands, don't you?"
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Locked in her gaze, he accepted the spear with the strength and dignity that it deserved. Once in his hands, he could feel the ancient love and the fierce desire to protect and defend radiating from the weapon, as if it were a living thing.
He was not a loquacious god. But it was not often that he found himself wholly without words. He bowed his head as his fingers traced the length of the spear and the twisting tapestry of spells that hummed over it. This would have been a fine weapon for battle.
The madness that would have settled in his head at being denied the right to protect his own child was too terrible a thing to imagine. And Brighid had kept this symbol of it over her hearth for centuries. He did not try to understand Brighid's loss or her pain; he only accepted it.
And now she gifted him with a reminder of what he could have done to Clotho, had it not been for the assistance of others. More: he held in his hands the symbol of generosity extended from a foreign pantheon to his own, for friendship's sake. Friendship had become nearly a forgotten thing with the Darkness, so deep had been his solitude of late.
"You have taught me many things this day, Brighid of the Celts."
He glanced sideways and smiled for the girl who was humming with the soft sound of the flute behind her.
"I will not forget."
Erebos bowed deeply to the goddess standing splendid at her hearth. But when he left her home, his respect for her stayed behind.
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