Fire (Leto, PG)
Title: Fire
100moods prompt: 83. Restless (My table)
Character: Leto (mention of Leto/Zeus)
Pairing: PG
Word count: 1,200
Summary: "Her childhood dream was half fulfilled, but the most important part of it had been destroyed."
Back when she was still young and new, her father would pick her up (bring her to his grand, titanic level) and reach her upward to the heavens. He asked her, eyes closed against the sun-halo around her head: “What would you want most in the world, if you could choose anything, my Leto?” She said what she longed for in the golden dreams of young girls: “To see the world and to understand it.” He put her down with a smile tugging at his mouth and a weight pulling at his shoulders.
If there was one fire in her veins, it was the desire to stretch her body over the earth, from pole to pole - to set foot after foot on the harshness of the ground and, after a while, to find it soft under her toes like the intimately sampled and remembered body of a lover. She wished to let every grain of sand on Greece’s beaches stream between her fingers and know all of it (all of the land, the mountains, the seas). She longed to sit on the rocky homes of gods until she was a rock herself (and maybe, in the deeply hidden recesses of her feverish young-woman dreams; a goddess as well).
It’s how Zeus spotted her, a beacon burning red-hot on the cool stone. She had climbed a mountain until the unfriendly rock would support her no longer, and now she was balancing on the edge of a steep fall. She was - a fire at the edges of a cold sleeping giant, nursing blood-red fingers that had left shimmering marks on the grey face of the earth. Zeus, who spent his days with skies that trembled pale blue under his command, longed for red (her hair, beating like a warning flag, her blood her dress the inside of her mouth). He came to her and pried her gently from the rock (made her a goddess, revelling in her heat).
Afterwards, he asked her why she had been perched there, on an edge that only those who the gods have condemned have seen.
She said: “But you have condemned me.”
Confused, he said: “I do not condemn those I love.”
She ran a finger over his neck (the still neck, without the tell-tale beat of human veins) and painted him like a warrior with her red-stained fingers. “You bring me too close to the maddeningly elusive insight in the world,” she said.
He could say nothing, except maybe this: “but I love you” to which she could say nothing except that she did not.
He left her with a glowing residue of her body’s heat still on him, and told her he would protect her, look after her from the crackling skies - “No storm will ever harm you,” he finished and kissed her, kissed her blood-red mouth and bit her lips to have more of it. He couldn’t understand she didn’t want his protection, she wanted his indifference - let me be tricked by the world and its people, let me be struck by lightning. Maybe it will make me understand.
When he left she immediately realised she was pregnant. Doubly so, and in the night’s chill, resting her hands on her stomach, she imagined the multiplication had happened when she had been split inside herself (two Leto’s, the one that had happened, kissing Zeus in the red of an evening sun and the other that could have happened, running barefoot on the rock away from his cold advances - somehow, to compensate for the half of her that was missing, she had doubled what she had received).
In the swiftly growing darkness, she told her slowly growing children: “I wish for you the easy contentment of your father, not the relentless fire of your mother.” She already knew the wish would be in vain as she felt how warm her stomach was. She slept anxiously, not used to the heat in her gut.
When morning came, she was ready to leave. She felt strengthened by the knowledge of the company she was keeping now (the treasure, the two-fold love to make up for the emptiness when Zeus embraced her). She felt young and fresh, and the idea of having to go until she no longer could was thrilling; to go the earth, to know the earth until she was part of it. Somehow she knew Hera was looking for her - but she would walk to the edge of the earth, where Hera’s eye didn’t reach. She was determined thrice over.
The chase began - the first days were slow and easy, feeling her way over a ground that was still friendly. Eventually the colour of the sand changed, though - and she was no match for mother earth herself, who had been pregnant a hundred times over and who bore Hera a warm heart. The great women of the universe, united against her.
There was no rest for Leto - there was no sleep, there was no sitting at a river to close her eyes for a moment. Even worse, there was no travelling (there was only moving, never stopping, never looking where she was or who was there with her). Her childhood dream was half fulfilled, but the most important part had been destroyed. She saw the world and she didn’t understand, was bewildered in this hostile attack on every fibre of her ever swelling body. At night, sobbing in relentless fatigue, she cried against Gaia, let her tears seep into the ground - but the earth was solid and cold under the warm bulge of Leto’s children waiting in their safe seas.
Zeus, looking down and feeling his heart burn, tried to help. Leto, proud and cold when thinking of him, avoided all of his safe passages and chose the hard ones (the ones with water pounding against her, with the earth falling away, with the cliffs, the cutting rocks, the shaking sands). He called out for her from the heavens, trying to get to her (but she turned away and hid so he couldn’t see her anymore).
It was the ultimate defeat, eventually - in labour and without a place where her feet could stay for over a moment, she cried hot tears on her cold cheeks and looked up to Zeus. He commanded the earth to still, and found dry sands that still looked up to him as their master. He made her a bed of cold leaves and wet grass, feeling distinctly human.
He lingered for a moment, but she wailed: “You have condemned me.” And she cried and bled until he ran, back up to the indifferent clouds that could make him pretend he didn’t see.
“You have condemned me,” she said again and then there it was: her own shattering, the sky blazing red behind her eyelids, the earth-blinding pains and suddenly, the tentative hope lighting up in the bloodied sand; two small beginnings to start where she had stopped. They lay cradled in her arms, warming her breasts. They were there, and they were what she had been (the potential, the power). They were her. Shining like stars. Crackling like night-time fires.
She slept, finally, warm, heart to heart to heart.
100moods prompt: 83. Restless (My table)
Character: Leto (mention of Leto/Zeus)
Pairing: PG
Word count: 1,200
Summary: "Her childhood dream was half fulfilled, but the most important part of it had been destroyed."
Back when she was still young and new, her father would pick her up (bring her to his grand, titanic level) and reach her upward to the heavens. He asked her, eyes closed against the sun-halo around her head: “What would you want most in the world, if you could choose anything, my Leto?” She said what she longed for in the golden dreams of young girls: “To see the world and to understand it.” He put her down with a smile tugging at his mouth and a weight pulling at his shoulders.
If there was one fire in her veins, it was the desire to stretch her body over the earth, from pole to pole - to set foot after foot on the harshness of the ground and, after a while, to find it soft under her toes like the intimately sampled and remembered body of a lover. She wished to let every grain of sand on Greece’s beaches stream between her fingers and know all of it (all of the land, the mountains, the seas). She longed to sit on the rocky homes of gods until she was a rock herself (and maybe, in the deeply hidden recesses of her feverish young-woman dreams; a goddess as well).
It’s how Zeus spotted her, a beacon burning red-hot on the cool stone. She had climbed a mountain until the unfriendly rock would support her no longer, and now she was balancing on the edge of a steep fall. She was - a fire at the edges of a cold sleeping giant, nursing blood-red fingers that had left shimmering marks on the grey face of the earth. Zeus, who spent his days with skies that trembled pale blue under his command, longed for red (her hair, beating like a warning flag, her blood her dress the inside of her mouth). He came to her and pried her gently from the rock (made her a goddess, revelling in her heat).
Afterwards, he asked her why she had been perched there, on an edge that only those who the gods have condemned have seen.
She said: “But you have condemned me.”
Confused, he said: “I do not condemn those I love.”
She ran a finger over his neck (the still neck, without the tell-tale beat of human veins) and painted him like a warrior with her red-stained fingers. “You bring me too close to the maddeningly elusive insight in the world,” she said.
He could say nothing, except maybe this: “but I love you” to which she could say nothing except that she did not.
He left her with a glowing residue of her body’s heat still on him, and told her he would protect her, look after her from the crackling skies - “No storm will ever harm you,” he finished and kissed her, kissed her blood-red mouth and bit her lips to have more of it. He couldn’t understand she didn’t want his protection, she wanted his indifference - let me be tricked by the world and its people, let me be struck by lightning. Maybe it will make me understand.
When he left she immediately realised she was pregnant. Doubly so, and in the night’s chill, resting her hands on her stomach, she imagined the multiplication had happened when she had been split inside herself (two Leto’s, the one that had happened, kissing Zeus in the red of an evening sun and the other that could have happened, running barefoot on the rock away from his cold advances - somehow, to compensate for the half of her that was missing, she had doubled what she had received).
In the swiftly growing darkness, she told her slowly growing children: “I wish for you the easy contentment of your father, not the relentless fire of your mother.” She already knew the wish would be in vain as she felt how warm her stomach was. She slept anxiously, not used to the heat in her gut.
When morning came, she was ready to leave. She felt strengthened by the knowledge of the company she was keeping now (the treasure, the two-fold love to make up for the emptiness when Zeus embraced her). She felt young and fresh, and the idea of having to go until she no longer could was thrilling; to go the earth, to know the earth until she was part of it. Somehow she knew Hera was looking for her - but she would walk to the edge of the earth, where Hera’s eye didn’t reach. She was determined thrice over.
The chase began - the first days were slow and easy, feeling her way over a ground that was still friendly. Eventually the colour of the sand changed, though - and she was no match for mother earth herself, who had been pregnant a hundred times over and who bore Hera a warm heart. The great women of the universe, united against her.
There was no rest for Leto - there was no sleep, there was no sitting at a river to close her eyes for a moment. Even worse, there was no travelling (there was only moving, never stopping, never looking where she was or who was there with her). Her childhood dream was half fulfilled, but the most important part had been destroyed. She saw the world and she didn’t understand, was bewildered in this hostile attack on every fibre of her ever swelling body. At night, sobbing in relentless fatigue, she cried against Gaia, let her tears seep into the ground - but the earth was solid and cold under the warm bulge of Leto’s children waiting in their safe seas.
Zeus, looking down and feeling his heart burn, tried to help. Leto, proud and cold when thinking of him, avoided all of his safe passages and chose the hard ones (the ones with water pounding against her, with the earth falling away, with the cliffs, the cutting rocks, the shaking sands). He called out for her from the heavens, trying to get to her (but she turned away and hid so he couldn’t see her anymore).
It was the ultimate defeat, eventually - in labour and without a place where her feet could stay for over a moment, she cried hot tears on her cold cheeks and looked up to Zeus. He commanded the earth to still, and found dry sands that still looked up to him as their master. He made her a bed of cold leaves and wet grass, feeling distinctly human.
He lingered for a moment, but she wailed: “You have condemned me.” And she cried and bled until he ran, back up to the indifferent clouds that could make him pretend he didn’t see.
“You have condemned me,” she said again and then there it was: her own shattering, the sky blazing red behind her eyelids, the earth-blinding pains and suddenly, the tentative hope lighting up in the bloodied sand; two small beginnings to start where she had stopped. They lay cradled in her arms, warming her breasts. They were there, and they were what she had been (the potential, the power). They were her. Shining like stars. Crackling like night-time fires.
She slept, finally, warm, heart to heart to heart.