Rhoswen and The Avatars
Title: The Avatars
Writer: Warrior of Ice
Summary: “The King of the Winds and his four winds begin a doomed romance with five mortals who are the chosen avatars of five very powerful deities. Love blossoms before identites are revealed, but its petals may wither to dust in the face of powerful opposition.”
Canon: AU
Rating: 4
Name: Serenity/Rhoswen, Mina/Mehalia “Melia”, Lita/Lehana “Leha”, Rei/Kassia, Ami/Ayla
Senshi Title: They're minor goddesses, they don't need sailor forms.
Hair:
Rhoswen: Radiant silver, up in “twin streamers”
Mehalia: “her long golden hair spilling over the edge of the sofa to pooling on the ground in silken heaps”
Lehana: Brown, looks reddish in the sunlight
Kassia: Raven, long “of an unusual thickness and silkiness.”
Ayla: Presumably blue, short
Eyes:
Rhoswen: Gorgeous blue
Mehalia: Cornflower blue
Lehana: Emerald, same as grass
Kassia: Purple
Ayla: Sapphire blue
Unusual Markings/Colorations: They all have flawless, perfect features.
Senshi Outfit: N/A
Possessions: None that I noticed
Guardians: None
Origin: They are all have the minor powers of a specific Greek god and carry out their duties on Earth. (Rhoswen - Artemis, Mehalia - Aphrodite, Lehana - Zeus, Kassia - Ares, Ayla - Athena) So they get to hang out on Mt. Olympus and play with magic and be pretty, but they can’t get involved with any mortal men. (See the first excerpt for more.) Ayla was an illegitimate child.
Connections to Canon: They are the inners… supposedly. (They changed their names when they became avatars.) They all hook up with Aeolus and 4 minor gods that represent the winds for the four cardinal directions. (Endymion and his generals.)
Senshi Moves: N/A
Other Special Abilities:
Ayla: A razor-sharp mind, of course.
Annoying Traits: They’re all amazingly beautiful.
Rhoswen: She is the most beautiful mortal woman alive. “Everyone’s always been nice to you, Rhoswen.” “Even those who were jealous of her beauty could not bring themselves to hate her, and others were easily won over by the effect of her unconscious smile, her angelic spirit.”
Mehalia: She gets to break the “no sex with gods other than your own” rule (guideline?) so that Aphrodite can gain favor with the other gods. “Her smile was luminous, and the light within her dazzled everyone who looked at her - even those who had scorned her and coveted her position.”
Kassia: Ares beats her, because he’s the God of War and therefore has a bad temper.
Comments: It’s like watching one of those dramas where everybody is rich and good-looking and the only problem anyone has ever had to deal with is their significant other cheating on them. Yuck...
This is nicely written, but I kept getting that “This should be on FictionPress” vibe until they started using their canon names later.
Samples:
They were the legendary avatars, five young women who had been infused with minor powers of the gods and goddesses they served. Rhoswen was bound to Artemis’s service, Mehalia to Aphrodite, Kassia to Ares, Lehana to Zeus, and Ayla to Athena. At the moment, the other gods and goddesses were either between avatars or had never chosen to take any. Hades, for example, was one of the later group-much to the relief of many a young woman who feared living in his shadowy palace among the dead. [Hell, I’d do it. He’s got a whole realm full of precious stones and he sounds like James Woods.]
It was easy to see that the one who had come up with the idea of the avatars had been male-a god. All avatars were female; there was an unspoken rule that men could not be avatars. Perhaps it was because the gods feared for the defiling of the last three virgin goddesses: Hestia, Artemis, and Athena, or those who were married wished to prevent the seduction of their wives (not that seduction was an uncommon thing among the gods and goddesses anyway).
Not many rules governed the behavior of an avatar. More applied to the gods. The avatar, when chosen, was typically a young virgin girl in her teens. The current generation, however, had been singled out when they were mere babes. They had been taken to the oracles at Delphi and Dodona by their parents or other caretakers, each girl bearing a different symbol on her forehead. When they had turned fourteen, they had been spirited away to Mount Olympus to begin their duties as avatars, although they did not have many.
Basically, they carried out their god or goddess’s wishes on earth. This could entail carrying messages to kings and oracles, establishing universities, visiting those deities who dwelled on earth, and reporting certain matters of significance to the Pantheon: good harvests, bad harvests, plagues, droughts, floods, and the like. The rest of the time, the avatars did as they wished. They lived in splendid suites on Mount Olympus, frolicked with the Muses and Graces, visited the Furies without fear, and flirted with the gods.
But one of the cardinal rules for the avatars was no involvement with men-none whatsoever, be they mortal or gods. Of course, the rule had been broken a thousand times by the male gods and their specific avatars, but as long as it was discreet, it was viewed as something to be expected and easily overlooked. But dalliance between a god and an avatar who was not his especial property-forbidden. Absolute taboo. The whole idea behind the position of the avatars had been to create pure vessels for the divinities: young virgin women who were virgins when they began their service and died as virgins (presumably).
There were a few rules that applied to the gods and goddesses. They could only be in possession of one avatar at a time. It was thought that women, the weaker sex, would vie with each other for the attention of the god if forced to live together and perform the same duties. No interference with the other deities’ avatars was a given. Treatment of the avatars was also supposed to be closely monitored: no physical violence, no verbal abuse, and no rape. [“That includes you, Zeus.”] There had been other guidelines, but over the years, they had blurred.
The tradition was an old one. For years, the avatars had been held up before mortal men and women as the closest mortals could come to perfection without becoming actual gods or goddesses. Of course the avatars were always beautiful: this generation was no exception. It caused no little jealousy among the deities, but that was also to be expected. The avatars acted as intermediaries for the gods and the mortals they ruled over, and their positions were exalted above all others.
Once an avatar began losing her looks, she stepped down gracefully and handed her position over to a new successor. The old avatar would then go and live among Hestia’s Vestal Virgins in Rome.
Unfortunately, the distinctions concerning moral behavior had blurred a bit in recent times. The avatars were still beautiful young women, and they still became Hestia’s charges once their looks faded. The avatars-or, more correctly, one particular avatar, was no longer untouchable among the gods. Basically, a clever deity had turned the situation to her advantage. If one had a lovely, desirable mortal female as a servant...well, why not use her?
Aphrodite used Mehalia to gain her certain concessions from powerful gods. The god in question would promise her something she wanted, and in exchange for that favor, he would have one night with her avatar. Due to the strict regulations about rape, Mehalia had to agree beforehand-not that she disagreed often. The majority of the gods were handsome, courteous to women, and skilled lovers (due to centuries of experience). Neither was it wise for an avatar to disagree with her god or goddess, as she usually had another two decades or so to serve, and living with a vengeful goddess like Aphrodite, who could be particularly vindictive, was not a very pleasant thing.
The one time this matter had been brought before Zeus in blunt terms, the entire Pantheon had been in an uproar. In the end, even perpetually-jealous Hera had been won over: Mehalia, living on Mount Olympus, were convenient, in close proximity, and untouched by mortal men. Philanderers like Zeus would end their ceaseless affairs with mortal women (Zeus had had over a half-dozen affairs going at the time), and it seemed like a profitable solution for everyone-even the avatars, in the gods’ opinion...if this continued. They had a place of honor, pretty things, lives of luxury, and gods for lovers. What more could be lacking? Nothing, in their opinions.
There were still various gods and goddesses who were against the practice, but who could speak out against Zeus and Hera? The three most vocal were Hestia, Artemis, and Athena-the three virgin goddesses, unsurprisingly. Hestia considered the presence of women who were not virgins in her temples stains upon her own purity. Artemis thought it was a cruel, needless practice and hotly defended the young women. Athena looked at it from a coolly practical point of view: she thought it just like the mortal men having their way with the slaves. There were differences in treatment, rank, and duties, but she used it as an example that the gods were turning as barbaric and warlike as the mortal men they scorned. So far they were unsuccessful in bringing about a return to custom.
Several goddesses, with, surprisingly, Hera at their fore, had been campaigning for yet another change in tradition. They wanted to have male avatars-they argued that if the gods had female mortals serving them, they could choose male mortals for their avatars (Hera’s means of getting revenge upon her unfaithful husband). They were having little luck changing the minds of Zeus, the other male divinities, and even several goddesses.
Currently, the deities were of mixed thoughts about this new way of doing things. Aphrodite and Mehalia had an intricate, complicated relationship, and the two great beauties were extremely careful in their dealings with each other. The same arrangement did not hold for Zeus and Lehana, Artemis and Rhoswen, Ares and Kassia, or Athena and Ayla-bad enough, they said, that Aphrodite was doing things this way. It was kept hushed up, especially from the mortals, and even from the minor gods.
But several gods knew that if they wanted a night with Aphrodite’s lovely avatar, all they had to do was offer her something she wanted-not that many of them tried it, for fear of being labeled by their peers. But they watched Mehalia, and the other avatars, and fantasized about them as the mortal men did. The kindest term that was applied to the avatars, indiscriminately, was seductress. Coarser names were whispered among the jealous goddesses and scornful gods-whores, sluts, prostitutes. Mehalia seemed not to mind the gossip that went around behind her back, but Kassia and Lehana were furious. Ayla kept her opinions to herself, and gentle Rhoswen was completely unconscious of the rude murmurings.
----------------------------------------
Aeolus, the King of the Winds, paused in his daily sweep of the earth when he passed by the familiar energy signature of his friend Zephyrus West-Wind. He paused in mid-air and materialized in his human form, waiting for his friend to notice his presence. If those who observed him could forget the fact that he was hanging in the sky, he appeared to be an exceedingly handsome, well-built young man with coal-black hair and sapphire blue eyes.
Zephyrus was chatting up a girl who was perched precariously on the edge of a well and who had hair and looks as fair as his; she was flaunting her cleavage quite unashamedly, and he was taking a shamelessly good look of the view while he worked his charm. Aeolus had watched his friend seduce scores of women with a basically unchanged routine, and he was always surprised to see how well it worked-since Zephyrus’s pickup lines were practically as old as he was, which was about two and a half centuries.
However, the wind gods were babies in comparison to the deities of the Pantheon and sometimes treated as such, a matter which their pride failed to accept.
When Aeolus was tired of waiting (and somewhat disgusted by what was going on in plain sight beneath him), he landed on the packed earth beside the well with a soft thud. “Ahem. Excuse me! ZEPHYRUS!” he finally yelled when they failed to notice him.
The girl let out a high-pitched squeal and fell backwards into the fountain, her arms flailing wildly. She hit the water with a very loud splash, and Zephyr adjusted his tunic meticulously before peering down into the dark depths of the fountain. “Hello? Are you still alive?” he called down courteously.
“Machaon! Get me out of here!” she shrieked.
Aeolus, who was holding her head and shoulders above the water level so she wouldn’t drown with his magic, raised his eyebrows. “Machaon? Is that who you are today?”
Zephyr smiled lazily. “For the moment. Of course, I’m at your service, my liege.” He sketched low bow, and as he glanced up at his friend and king, the corners of his mouth quirked up in what could only be described as impudence. Both of them ignored her continued screams for help, as there was no danger of her drowning.
“But, ah, perhaps it might be more prudent next time if you called me in a different matter. You frightened my lady friend,” Zephyr said with a lascivious wink.
Aeolus shook his head. “She could have died, you know,” he informed his careless friend. “Why didn’t you save her?”
Zephyrus shrugged. His substantial form was that of a youth slightly shorter and younger than Endymion; his body was lean and slender but still well-muscled and tanned from sun exposure. Zephyr’s hair was a burnished copper-blonde in comparison to Eurus’s lemon yellow hair, and his green eyes were always full of wicked humor.
“I knew that you, being the perfect gentleman, would catch her,” Zephyr drawled, “so why should I bother? You’re faster, more careful, and less likely than I to drown her, even accidentally.”
The black-haired god frowned. “Stop being so lazy,” Aeolus chided. “One day I might not be able to bail you out of a mess, and then where will you be?”
“At Zeus’s tender mercies, I suppose? He likes me well enough...says my tricks remind him of Hermes’. Mine are better, I think. Although Zeus might be more partial to me if I was a female...do you think Boreas knows how to shapeshift into a woman?”
When he saw the look on his friend’s face, Zephyr laughed merrily. “Oh, stop worrying, Aeolus! Come, let’s seek out the others and have some fun, shall we?” he suggested, speaking of the other three winds, North, South, and East.
Aeolus nodded towards the well, where the mortal woman Zephyrus had been fooling around with before was now crying theatrically. “And what about your playfellow here?”
“Do what you like with her,” was his unhelpful answer as the handsome god winked roguishly at his king and disappeared, leaving a shower of cherry blossoms in his wake.
Aeolus wrinkled his nose at the smell and sighed as he hauled the sopping woman out of the well.
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” she cried, throwing her arms around him (after she had noticed how good-looking he was). “Are you a friend of Machaon’s? What is your name?”
He backed away nervously when she had let go. “Um...yes, I know M-Machaon. My name? My name is...Endymion,” he lied quickly.
“Are you a soldier as well?”
He choked back his laughter, imagining his finicky, vain friend trying army life. Zephyr would discover that the food was awful, the ground cold and hard, mirrors were scarce, and he wouldn’t be able to wash his hair five times a day. “No, I’m just a humble shepherd,” he replied.
Her very red lips, artfully stained with the juice of berries, formed an O, and she looked down at her feet, disappointed. Shepherds, no matter how handsome, were not worth her time. She decided perhaps it would be a better idea to look up Nisus...
Aeolus, meanwhile, was wondering at her fickleness. “You must be looking for Machaon. Well, he had to...leave.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” she said airily. “He knows where to find me when he comes to beg for my forgiveness.” Again, Aeolus had to suppress the ludicrous mental image of Zephyrus begging anyone to forgive him. “I had best be going now, though. It was wonderful meeting you, Endis...”
“Endymion,” he corrected.
“Yes, yes...Endmon, I know...but I must go now. It was lovely meeting you.” She blew him a very distracted kiss as she meandered down the winding path, and Aeolus lingered only a minute longer, feeling very befuddled.
--------------------------------------
Kassia had gone about two steps down the hall when Ares summoned her. With a sigh, she glanced into a silver-edged mirror hanging on the wall, making sure that her makeup hadn’t smeared. Her hair was perfect, as usual, raven-dark and of an unusual thickness and silkiness. She adjusted her robes and closed her eyes, feeling the power she had been gifted with welling up inside of her. In an impressive burst of reddish-gold light, she left the halls of Olympus to reappear, within seconds, at Ares’s feet.
“Good morning, my pretty.” It seemed that he was in a good mood, as he raised her up fairly quickly and smiled his usual cajoling smile. Where others saw handsomeness, Kassia saw only unscrupulous violence and amorality in his dark features.
“It’s afternoon,” she corrected before she could stop herself. She ducked her head, letting her hair fall over her shoulders, expecting a harsh reprimand or a slap. Even on his good days, Ares was rough. “My apologies, my lord.”
Luck seemed to be with her for once. The god laughed, drawing up a delicate wicker chair and conveying , with the pressure he placed on her shoulders, his wish that she be seated. “So it is, so it is. It seems like morning to me; I’ve just awoken.”
Kassia sat in a graceful sweep of cloud-like material. “Perhaps a little less indulgence?” she suggested carefully.
Ares rolled his eyes. “You women. You’re all alike, immortal or not. This is Olympus, my dear Kassia. Have you not adjusted yet? There is nothing here but wine, free and flowing.”
“And the nectar, my lord?” Kassia shuddered to think of the wine the Olympians drink. It was ten times as potent as what was drunk on earth, so she could take a sip and feel the effects of an entire bottle. It was best for humans to avoid the drink if they wanted to avoid a very serious hangover the next morning.
“Ugh. That stuff comes from flowers,” he informed her. She merely nodded, awaiting his next words. “Where have you been, then? I missed you.”
Kassia glanced up warily. “With the other avatars, on Olympus. Do you object, my lord?”
Ares shook his head. “I should have known...yes, fine, do what you like with the girls. I certainly have no objections to spending time with four lovely young ladies.
But I used to have such high hopes of you, Kassia. I thought you would take much longer to break. Now, in the past...in the past, you wouldn’t have bothered to be so polite. And the ‘my lord!’ You would have been sarcastic. You would have been angry with me. You would have thrown more temper tantrums-and broken more of my vases.”
Her face went tight as he scrutinized a nearby vase. “Another thing about women,” he said carelessly, tossing the delicate vase from one hand to another, “is that you gossip all the time. Really, women are such busybodies. What do you possibly have to talk about so much?”
Kassia shrugged, knowing that he wasn’t really expecting an answer. “When I was in Olympus this morning, Queen Hera was...not in good humor.”
“My mother has never been in a good humor. What is it this time?” he sighed. “Must I placate her again? I’m supposed to be the spoiled child, not her.”
Her flawless features were expressionless as she answered, “Lehana suggests that King Zeus may have been involved with another mortal woman.”
He snorted. “That’s nothing new. You would think that she would be accustomed to such things by now.” He sighed a dramatic, long-suffering sigh. “But if I’m to remain in her good graces, I’ll have to endure the weeping and the raging and be the loving, sympathetic son that I am.”
She rolled her eyes discreetly as he continued, “Then, of course, I’ll visit Father and tell him that Mother should be more understanding, more tolerant, more forgiving.” Ares laughed mockingly. “They’ll make up eventually, and he’ll promise not to break her tender little heart anymore-not that she has one-but the minute some fetching girl catches his eye...”
Kassia hid her disgust. Like father, like son.
“Mortal women are always more interesting than immortal ones. There are so many pluses-they have more life in them, metaphorically speaking, and they don’t live as long...what more could a man want?”
Kassia narrowed her eyes. Ares and Aphrodite’s perpetually unstable relationship was off-again and had been for quite some time. That was the reason he had been in an unusually foul mood recently.
Ares turned to smile at her, and she felt the chills crawl up her spine. “Speaking of mortal woman...come to me, my darling avatar...”
Obeying him and hating herself to it, Kassia let him enfold her tightly in his muscular arms, cradling her against his chest. She closed her eyes, despair and agony at her surrender surfacing. “Tell me you love me, sweetheart.”
“I love you,” she whispered, sinking lower and lower into self-hate.
He smiled and kissed her cheek. “Louder, Kassia. I couldn’t quite hear you that time.”
“I love you,” Kassia repeated clearly, and his lips descended upon hers.
Writer: Warrior of Ice
Summary: “The King of the Winds and his four winds begin a doomed romance with five mortals who are the chosen avatars of five very powerful deities. Love blossoms before identites are revealed, but its petals may wither to dust in the face of powerful opposition.”
Canon: AU
Rating: 4
Name: Serenity/Rhoswen, Mina/Mehalia “Melia”, Lita/Lehana “Leha”, Rei/Kassia, Ami/Ayla
Senshi Title: They're minor goddesses, they don't need sailor forms.
Hair:
Rhoswen: Radiant silver, up in “twin streamers”
Mehalia: “her long golden hair spilling over the edge of the sofa to pooling on the ground in silken heaps”
Lehana: Brown, looks reddish in the sunlight
Kassia: Raven, long “of an unusual thickness and silkiness.”
Ayla: Presumably blue, short
Eyes:
Rhoswen: Gorgeous blue
Mehalia: Cornflower blue
Lehana: Emerald, same as grass
Kassia: Purple
Ayla: Sapphire blue
Unusual Markings/Colorations: They all have flawless, perfect features.
Senshi Outfit: N/A
Possessions: None that I noticed
Guardians: None
Origin: They are all have the minor powers of a specific Greek god and carry out their duties on Earth. (Rhoswen - Artemis, Mehalia - Aphrodite, Lehana - Zeus, Kassia - Ares, Ayla - Athena) So they get to hang out on Mt. Olympus and play with magic and be pretty, but they can’t get involved with any mortal men. (See the first excerpt for more.) Ayla was an illegitimate child.
Connections to Canon: They are the inners… supposedly. (They changed their names when they became avatars.) They all hook up with Aeolus and 4 minor gods that represent the winds for the four cardinal directions. (Endymion and his generals.)
Senshi Moves: N/A
Other Special Abilities:
Ayla: A razor-sharp mind, of course.
Annoying Traits: They’re all amazingly beautiful.
Rhoswen: She is the most beautiful mortal woman alive. “Everyone’s always been nice to you, Rhoswen.” “Even those who were jealous of her beauty could not bring themselves to hate her, and others were easily won over by the effect of her unconscious smile, her angelic spirit.”
Mehalia: She gets to break the “no sex with gods other than your own” rule (guideline?) so that Aphrodite can gain favor with the other gods. “Her smile was luminous, and the light within her dazzled everyone who looked at her - even those who had scorned her and coveted her position.”
Kassia: Ares beats her, because he’s the God of War and therefore has a bad temper.
Comments: It’s like watching one of those dramas where everybody is rich and good-looking and the only problem anyone has ever had to deal with is their significant other cheating on them. Yuck...
This is nicely written, but I kept getting that “This should be on FictionPress” vibe until they started using their canon names later.
Samples:
They were the legendary avatars, five young women who had been infused with minor powers of the gods and goddesses they served. Rhoswen was bound to Artemis’s service, Mehalia to Aphrodite, Kassia to Ares, Lehana to Zeus, and Ayla to Athena. At the moment, the other gods and goddesses were either between avatars or had never chosen to take any. Hades, for example, was one of the later group-much to the relief of many a young woman who feared living in his shadowy palace among the dead. [Hell, I’d do it. He’s got a whole realm full of precious stones and he sounds like James Woods.]
It was easy to see that the one who had come up with the idea of the avatars had been male-a god. All avatars were female; there was an unspoken rule that men could not be avatars. Perhaps it was because the gods feared for the defiling of the last three virgin goddesses: Hestia, Artemis, and Athena, or those who were married wished to prevent the seduction of their wives (not that seduction was an uncommon thing among the gods and goddesses anyway).
Not many rules governed the behavior of an avatar. More applied to the gods. The avatar, when chosen, was typically a young virgin girl in her teens. The current generation, however, had been singled out when they were mere babes. They had been taken to the oracles at Delphi and Dodona by their parents or other caretakers, each girl bearing a different symbol on her forehead. When they had turned fourteen, they had been spirited away to Mount Olympus to begin their duties as avatars, although they did not have many.
Basically, they carried out their god or goddess’s wishes on earth. This could entail carrying messages to kings and oracles, establishing universities, visiting those deities who dwelled on earth, and reporting certain matters of significance to the Pantheon: good harvests, bad harvests, plagues, droughts, floods, and the like. The rest of the time, the avatars did as they wished. They lived in splendid suites on Mount Olympus, frolicked with the Muses and Graces, visited the Furies without fear, and flirted with the gods.
But one of the cardinal rules for the avatars was no involvement with men-none whatsoever, be they mortal or gods. Of course, the rule had been broken a thousand times by the male gods and their specific avatars, but as long as it was discreet, it was viewed as something to be expected and easily overlooked. But dalliance between a god and an avatar who was not his especial property-forbidden. Absolute taboo. The whole idea behind the position of the avatars had been to create pure vessels for the divinities: young virgin women who were virgins when they began their service and died as virgins (presumably).
There were a few rules that applied to the gods and goddesses. They could only be in possession of one avatar at a time. It was thought that women, the weaker sex, would vie with each other for the attention of the god if forced to live together and perform the same duties. No interference with the other deities’ avatars was a given. Treatment of the avatars was also supposed to be closely monitored: no physical violence, no verbal abuse, and no rape. [“That includes you, Zeus.”] There had been other guidelines, but over the years, they had blurred.
The tradition was an old one. For years, the avatars had been held up before mortal men and women as the closest mortals could come to perfection without becoming actual gods or goddesses. Of course the avatars were always beautiful: this generation was no exception. It caused no little jealousy among the deities, but that was also to be expected. The avatars acted as intermediaries for the gods and the mortals they ruled over, and their positions were exalted above all others.
Once an avatar began losing her looks, she stepped down gracefully and handed her position over to a new successor. The old avatar would then go and live among Hestia’s Vestal Virgins in Rome.
Unfortunately, the distinctions concerning moral behavior had blurred a bit in recent times. The avatars were still beautiful young women, and they still became Hestia’s charges once their looks faded. The avatars-or, more correctly, one particular avatar, was no longer untouchable among the gods. Basically, a clever deity had turned the situation to her advantage. If one had a lovely, desirable mortal female as a servant...well, why not use her?
Aphrodite used Mehalia to gain her certain concessions from powerful gods. The god in question would promise her something she wanted, and in exchange for that favor, he would have one night with her avatar. Due to the strict regulations about rape, Mehalia had to agree beforehand-not that she disagreed often. The majority of the gods were handsome, courteous to women, and skilled lovers (due to centuries of experience). Neither was it wise for an avatar to disagree with her god or goddess, as she usually had another two decades or so to serve, and living with a vengeful goddess like Aphrodite, who could be particularly vindictive, was not a very pleasant thing.
The one time this matter had been brought before Zeus in blunt terms, the entire Pantheon had been in an uproar. In the end, even perpetually-jealous Hera had been won over: Mehalia, living on Mount Olympus, were convenient, in close proximity, and untouched by mortal men. Philanderers like Zeus would end their ceaseless affairs with mortal women (Zeus had had over a half-dozen affairs going at the time), and it seemed like a profitable solution for everyone-even the avatars, in the gods’ opinion...if this continued. They had a place of honor, pretty things, lives of luxury, and gods for lovers. What more could be lacking? Nothing, in their opinions.
There were still various gods and goddesses who were against the practice, but who could speak out against Zeus and Hera? The three most vocal were Hestia, Artemis, and Athena-the three virgin goddesses, unsurprisingly. Hestia considered the presence of women who were not virgins in her temples stains upon her own purity. Artemis thought it was a cruel, needless practice and hotly defended the young women. Athena looked at it from a coolly practical point of view: she thought it just like the mortal men having their way with the slaves. There were differences in treatment, rank, and duties, but she used it as an example that the gods were turning as barbaric and warlike as the mortal men they scorned. So far they were unsuccessful in bringing about a return to custom.
Several goddesses, with, surprisingly, Hera at their fore, had been campaigning for yet another change in tradition. They wanted to have male avatars-they argued that if the gods had female mortals serving them, they could choose male mortals for their avatars (Hera’s means of getting revenge upon her unfaithful husband). They were having little luck changing the minds of Zeus, the other male divinities, and even several goddesses.
Currently, the deities were of mixed thoughts about this new way of doing things. Aphrodite and Mehalia had an intricate, complicated relationship, and the two great beauties were extremely careful in their dealings with each other. The same arrangement did not hold for Zeus and Lehana, Artemis and Rhoswen, Ares and Kassia, or Athena and Ayla-bad enough, they said, that Aphrodite was doing things this way. It was kept hushed up, especially from the mortals, and even from the minor gods.
But several gods knew that if they wanted a night with Aphrodite’s lovely avatar, all they had to do was offer her something she wanted-not that many of them tried it, for fear of being labeled by their peers. But they watched Mehalia, and the other avatars, and fantasized about them as the mortal men did. The kindest term that was applied to the avatars, indiscriminately, was seductress. Coarser names were whispered among the jealous goddesses and scornful gods-whores, sluts, prostitutes. Mehalia seemed not to mind the gossip that went around behind her back, but Kassia and Lehana were furious. Ayla kept her opinions to herself, and gentle Rhoswen was completely unconscious of the rude murmurings.
----------------------------------------
Aeolus, the King of the Winds, paused in his daily sweep of the earth when he passed by the familiar energy signature of his friend Zephyrus West-Wind. He paused in mid-air and materialized in his human form, waiting for his friend to notice his presence. If those who observed him could forget the fact that he was hanging in the sky, he appeared to be an exceedingly handsome, well-built young man with coal-black hair and sapphire blue eyes.
Zephyrus was chatting up a girl who was perched precariously on the edge of a well and who had hair and looks as fair as his; she was flaunting her cleavage quite unashamedly, and he was taking a shamelessly good look of the view while he worked his charm. Aeolus had watched his friend seduce scores of women with a basically unchanged routine, and he was always surprised to see how well it worked-since Zephyrus’s pickup lines were practically as old as he was, which was about two and a half centuries.
However, the wind gods were babies in comparison to the deities of the Pantheon and sometimes treated as such, a matter which their pride failed to accept.
When Aeolus was tired of waiting (and somewhat disgusted by what was going on in plain sight beneath him), he landed on the packed earth beside the well with a soft thud. “Ahem. Excuse me! ZEPHYRUS!” he finally yelled when they failed to notice him.
The girl let out a high-pitched squeal and fell backwards into the fountain, her arms flailing wildly. She hit the water with a very loud splash, and Zephyr adjusted his tunic meticulously before peering down into the dark depths of the fountain. “Hello? Are you still alive?” he called down courteously.
“Machaon! Get me out of here!” she shrieked.
Aeolus, who was holding her head and shoulders above the water level so she wouldn’t drown with his magic, raised his eyebrows. “Machaon? Is that who you are today?”
Zephyr smiled lazily. “For the moment. Of course, I’m at your service, my liege.” He sketched low bow, and as he glanced up at his friend and king, the corners of his mouth quirked up in what could only be described as impudence. Both of them ignored her continued screams for help, as there was no danger of her drowning.
“But, ah, perhaps it might be more prudent next time if you called me in a different matter. You frightened my lady friend,” Zephyr said with a lascivious wink.
Aeolus shook his head. “She could have died, you know,” he informed his careless friend. “Why didn’t you save her?”
Zephyrus shrugged. His substantial form was that of a youth slightly shorter and younger than Endymion; his body was lean and slender but still well-muscled and tanned from sun exposure. Zephyr’s hair was a burnished copper-blonde in comparison to Eurus’s lemon yellow hair, and his green eyes were always full of wicked humor.
“I knew that you, being the perfect gentleman, would catch her,” Zephyr drawled, “so why should I bother? You’re faster, more careful, and less likely than I to drown her, even accidentally.”
The black-haired god frowned. “Stop being so lazy,” Aeolus chided. “One day I might not be able to bail you out of a mess, and then where will you be?”
“At Zeus’s tender mercies, I suppose? He likes me well enough...says my tricks remind him of Hermes’. Mine are better, I think. Although Zeus might be more partial to me if I was a female...do you think Boreas knows how to shapeshift into a woman?”
When he saw the look on his friend’s face, Zephyr laughed merrily. “Oh, stop worrying, Aeolus! Come, let’s seek out the others and have some fun, shall we?” he suggested, speaking of the other three winds, North, South, and East.
Aeolus nodded towards the well, where the mortal woman Zephyrus had been fooling around with before was now crying theatrically. “And what about your playfellow here?”
“Do what you like with her,” was his unhelpful answer as the handsome god winked roguishly at his king and disappeared, leaving a shower of cherry blossoms in his wake.
Aeolus wrinkled his nose at the smell and sighed as he hauled the sopping woman out of the well.
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” she cried, throwing her arms around him (after she had noticed how good-looking he was). “Are you a friend of Machaon’s? What is your name?”
He backed away nervously when she had let go. “Um...yes, I know M-Machaon. My name? My name is...Endymion,” he lied quickly.
“Are you a soldier as well?”
He choked back his laughter, imagining his finicky, vain friend trying army life. Zephyr would discover that the food was awful, the ground cold and hard, mirrors were scarce, and he wouldn’t be able to wash his hair five times a day. “No, I’m just a humble shepherd,” he replied.
Her very red lips, artfully stained with the juice of berries, formed an O, and she looked down at her feet, disappointed. Shepherds, no matter how handsome, were not worth her time. She decided perhaps it would be a better idea to look up Nisus...
Aeolus, meanwhile, was wondering at her fickleness. “You must be looking for Machaon. Well, he had to...leave.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” she said airily. “He knows where to find me when he comes to beg for my forgiveness.” Again, Aeolus had to suppress the ludicrous mental image of Zephyrus begging anyone to forgive him. “I had best be going now, though. It was wonderful meeting you, Endis...”
“Endymion,” he corrected.
“Yes, yes...Endmon, I know...but I must go now. It was lovely meeting you.” She blew him a very distracted kiss as she meandered down the winding path, and Aeolus lingered only a minute longer, feeling very befuddled.
--------------------------------------
Kassia had gone about two steps down the hall when Ares summoned her. With a sigh, she glanced into a silver-edged mirror hanging on the wall, making sure that her makeup hadn’t smeared. Her hair was perfect, as usual, raven-dark and of an unusual thickness and silkiness. She adjusted her robes and closed her eyes, feeling the power she had been gifted with welling up inside of her. In an impressive burst of reddish-gold light, she left the halls of Olympus to reappear, within seconds, at Ares’s feet.
“Good morning, my pretty.” It seemed that he was in a good mood, as he raised her up fairly quickly and smiled his usual cajoling smile. Where others saw handsomeness, Kassia saw only unscrupulous violence and amorality in his dark features.
“It’s afternoon,” she corrected before she could stop herself. She ducked her head, letting her hair fall over her shoulders, expecting a harsh reprimand or a slap. Even on his good days, Ares was rough. “My apologies, my lord.”
Luck seemed to be with her for once. The god laughed, drawing up a delicate wicker chair and conveying , with the pressure he placed on her shoulders, his wish that she be seated. “So it is, so it is. It seems like morning to me; I’ve just awoken.”
Kassia sat in a graceful sweep of cloud-like material. “Perhaps a little less indulgence?” she suggested carefully.
Ares rolled his eyes. “You women. You’re all alike, immortal or not. This is Olympus, my dear Kassia. Have you not adjusted yet? There is nothing here but wine, free and flowing.”
“And the nectar, my lord?” Kassia shuddered to think of the wine the Olympians drink. It was ten times as potent as what was drunk on earth, so she could take a sip and feel the effects of an entire bottle. It was best for humans to avoid the drink if they wanted to avoid a very serious hangover the next morning.
“Ugh. That stuff comes from flowers,” he informed her. She merely nodded, awaiting his next words. “Where have you been, then? I missed you.”
Kassia glanced up warily. “With the other avatars, on Olympus. Do you object, my lord?”
Ares shook his head. “I should have known...yes, fine, do what you like with the girls. I certainly have no objections to spending time with four lovely young ladies.
But I used to have such high hopes of you, Kassia. I thought you would take much longer to break. Now, in the past...in the past, you wouldn’t have bothered to be so polite. And the ‘my lord!’ You would have been sarcastic. You would have been angry with me. You would have thrown more temper tantrums-and broken more of my vases.”
Her face went tight as he scrutinized a nearby vase. “Another thing about women,” he said carelessly, tossing the delicate vase from one hand to another, “is that you gossip all the time. Really, women are such busybodies. What do you possibly have to talk about so much?”
Kassia shrugged, knowing that he wasn’t really expecting an answer. “When I was in Olympus this morning, Queen Hera was...not in good humor.”
“My mother has never been in a good humor. What is it this time?” he sighed. “Must I placate her again? I’m supposed to be the spoiled child, not her.”
Her flawless features were expressionless as she answered, “Lehana suggests that King Zeus may have been involved with another mortal woman.”
He snorted. “That’s nothing new. You would think that she would be accustomed to such things by now.” He sighed a dramatic, long-suffering sigh. “But if I’m to remain in her good graces, I’ll have to endure the weeping and the raging and be the loving, sympathetic son that I am.”
She rolled her eyes discreetly as he continued, “Then, of course, I’ll visit Father and tell him that Mother should be more understanding, more tolerant, more forgiving.” Ares laughed mockingly. “They’ll make up eventually, and he’ll promise not to break her tender little heart anymore-not that she has one-but the minute some fetching girl catches his eye...”
Kassia hid her disgust. Like father, like son.
“Mortal women are always more interesting than immortal ones. There are so many pluses-they have more life in them, metaphorically speaking, and they don’t live as long...what more could a man want?”
Kassia narrowed her eyes. Ares and Aphrodite’s perpetually unstable relationship was off-again and had been for quite some time. That was the reason he had been in an unusually foul mood recently.
Ares turned to smile at her, and she felt the chills crawl up her spine. “Speaking of mortal woman...come to me, my darling avatar...”
Obeying him and hating herself to it, Kassia let him enfold her tightly in his muscular arms, cradling her against his chest. She closed her eyes, despair and agony at her surrender surfacing. “Tell me you love me, sweetheart.”
“I love you,” she whispered, sinking lower and lower into self-hate.
He smiled and kissed her cheek. “Louder, Kassia. I couldn’t quite hear you that time.”
“I love you,” Kassia repeated clearly, and his lips descended upon hers.