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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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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