Deities’ World: Callidora
Written for Surprise Story Week: 18.
Callie walked through the clearing that held her mother’s vision pool without stopping. Being Persephone’s daughter meant that Callie could view the future without difficulty. She chose not to. It wasn’t something she’d ever wanted to do because she saw how much it affected Persephone, especially when she witnessed something happening to one of her favourite mortals that she couldn’t stop. Callie didn’t want to follow in her father’s footsteps either. Being a death God or Goddess was something that only a very special deity could do because it was a hard path. Of course that didn’t mean she didn’t feel the affect that being Hades’ daughter had on her. The footsteps she most wanted to follow were those of her adopted grandmother Hecate but that path was almost as hard as that of being a death God.
Once Callie had asked Persephone what the future held for her, but Persephone refused to read the future for herself or any of the people she thought of as family. It was understandable but at the time Callie had been disappointed. She’d been having difficulty seeing what type of deity she was going to be and it was hard. Back then, at the beginning of her studies, she hadn’t understood that everyone went through those sorts of crises when they were working out who they were and it wasn’t going to be a decision that would be made quickly. Immortality meant that she could take as much time as she needed to find out what she needed to know about herself in order to find the deity she would be.
When Archimedes had taken on his first group of people he’d been over four-hundred. Callie hadn’t even been born then, so she always known her older brother as a God, but that fact did make her feel better. If he’d been able to take the time then she could too. He’d explained to her that he needed the time because becoming a deity in his own right was understanding who he was. In the end he’d become a God of winter because it had felt right, even though most people had expected him to become a God of wisdom or knowledge. That was why he was one of the people she always turned to if she needed advice. As he’d built a house close to their parents’ it was easy for her to go over and talk to him.
She knocked on the door and then opened it. “Archimedes?” she called, unsure whether he was home or not.
After a moment he popped his head out of the study. “Callie,” he replied, “how wonderful to see you. Come in here and we can talk.”
Shaking her head she stepped into the house, closing the door behind her before she made her way to the study. “We only saw each other yesterday when you came over for dinner,” she said as she sat down in a chair.
“It’s always wonderful to see my baby sister.”
“If you say so, brother dear.” She smiled at him. “Are you busy?”
“I’m not, and even if I was I would still make time for you. What did you want to talk about?”
“I don’t really know. I’m just confused.”
“Why are you confused?”
She sighed. “There are things that I know I’ve inherited from Mum and Dad that I feel like I should be learning to use but I don’t want to.”
“Like being able to see the future?”
“And Dad’s death sight.”
“You said to me before that you were thinking of becoming a Goddess of magic but that doesn’t mean you need to become a Goddess of prophecy too. There are different levels of seeing the future. Having death sight is creepy but it’s easy enough to learn to ignore if you don’t want to use it. I inherited it too so I can help you with that.”
“What do you mean by levels?”
“Well, you can use something like Mother’s vision pool which will show you everything. It’s a deity’s view of the future so you can see further into the future than you could using anything else. Then you have things like tarot cards. They will show you what your future will be if you continue down the path you’re currently walking down. They’re more personal. If you read for someone you can see what their future may hold but you can’t use them to see someone else’s future otherwise. Finally there are things like cloud scrying or using wax. They can be either. Sometimes you’ll see things relating to the future of the world around you and other times you’ll see personal things. Occasionally it might be both.”
Callie nodded. “I would never use the vision pool.”
“Sometimes I think Mother wishes she hadn’t, but it was the right path for her. I can see it when I look at her and she can do something to change the future of one of her worlds. If she’d hadn’t of made the choice to learn how to use the vision pool then she would never be able to do that.” Archimedes smiled. “It’s not something I could do though.”
“She gets so sad when she can’t change things.”
“That’s because she cares about her the people she’s connected to, whether it’s the whole race or her favoured mortals. It’s who she is. You can see it if you read any of the myths that people write about her.”
“I know, Archimedes. I wouldn’t change who she is for anything, but sometimes I wish things were easier for her.”
“It’s a wish I think we all share. She just seems to always pick people who are going to have a turbulent life.”
She shook her head. “I think they call to her because they’re going to have a turbulent life and Mum is one of those people who can’t let people do that by themselves.”
“All deities are like that really. If we weren’t needed then we wouldn’t feel a connection to someone.”
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Originally posted at dreamwidth.org (and crosspoted to livejournal.com) as kajones_writing.
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.