⚡️ Vexatious (and adorable)
L&W15: Zeus has to rid himself of a pest before he can get back to solving his problem.
Previously on 6 LITTLE SEEDS:
Eros, God of Love, has been losing feathers from his wings, just like his mother, the Goddess of Love, has been losing hairs. Too many deities and their mortal devotees would rather make war than make love. So Eros has concocted a remedy that he is certain will bridge the chasms between multiple warring parties: to match Kore, Bringer of Blossomtime with Haides, Lord of the Underworld.
Unfortunately, both of the girl’s parents despise Haides and have ignored or outright refused his marriage proposals. In fact, Kore’s mother had it out with Haides so badly that it set off earthquakes. So he wrote back to the girl’s father.
Now Zeus, Lord of Lightning, broods and fumes over this message, attempting to decipher truth from lie, omission from misdirection. The words are full of veiled threats, promises, and dangling lures, no doubt rife with barbs. One can never be certain exactly what Haides is up to when he’s (seemingly) at his most charming like this.
Since Eros’ matchmaking scheme hinges upon the Thunderer’s willingness to allow Haides to ascend into the Upper Realms and lay claim to Kore, the God of Love will need to pull out his entire arsenal of mirth, mischief, and merrymaking to get what he needs from his grandfather.
But such sly machinations require wings, so Eros has glued his lost feathers back in and donned his most cherubic face. He sneaks into Zeus’ Chamber of Contemplation to peep, to plot, and to learn what the Lord of the Underworld wrote in that message…
—Start at the beginning
—Mature Content Warnings for this series.
Also. Nobody calls Persephone by her true name. They call her KORE, “the Maiden,” and it’s pronounced like “ko-ray” or “kora” not like “core of the planet.” KLYMENOS is one of Haides’ gazillion epitaphs. It means “illustrious” (or depending on who’s grumbling it, “notorious.”)
ZEUS THUNDERER, MASTER OF THE HEAVENS, RULER OF OLYMPOS, LORD OF ORDER, LAW & LIGHTNING, KING OF ALL GODS
🌩⚡️🌩
“Evening, Grandpapa. Whatcha doin’?”
Zeus’ eyes flew open, then slammed shut. He silenced his growl to a steady exhalation, yet he had to admire the boy. Who else would have dared interrupt the Thunderer in this place? And who would have done so by sneaking up to the tower’s window like a tomcat prowler? Eros certainly possessed a weighty pair.
Naturally. That’s my ichor in his veins.
Still, Zeus coated his stern look of greeting with a disapproving scowl as he turned around to face his grandson. “Eros.”
In his cherub form, the boy floated upside down, his tiny wings a-flutter. Golden light glowed around his dark eyes, huge and round and oversized in his pudgy face. Blushing and giggling, he waggled his fingers and made an inverted bow. “My King On High.”
Damned irresistible.
A doting smile threatened to crack through, so Zeus about-faced and strode toward his Platform of Policy, an unembellished cuboid slab of pure white quartz upon which he drafted and amended the laws that governed each realm. He blinked his visage into white-gold hair and sky-blue eyes, a kingly vision in a silver-embroidered chiton of cotton-and-cloud that pooled around his feet but never obstructed his steps. “Off with you, boy. I’m busy.”
“You don’t look busy.”
“The Master of Olympos is always busy.”
“With what?”
“Work.”
Eros righted himself, wings perked and buzzing. “Can I help?”
“No,” Zeus snapped, before the words could fully exit the boy’s mouth. Concealing his amusement in a purposeful exhalation, the Divine Lawmaker formed a new cloud and took his seat.
This room was the Chamber of Communication and Composition, as well as Contemplation, so a wall of pigeonholes stood to his left, filled with first drafts he had scrawled upon sheepskin parchment. Those to his right held drafts that merely required the final edits prior to being lightning-seared into stone. From this wall, Zeus levitated a scroll toward the platform. “Do not you, too, have your own work to do?”
“Of course. The Master Matchmaker is always working. And playing.” Eros’ eyes lit up as he tracked the scroll. He whizzed after it to get an up-close look. “What’s this one?”
Since Zeus had known the boy would be helpless against the desire to chase a flying object, he had chosen this document purposely. It was all numbers, angles, trajectories, velocities. Something guaranteed to make the Cherub of Love yawn. Whenever Eros dealt with such things as flight and trajectories, he was more of a whim-shooter.
Like his irresponsible delinquent of a father.
Zeus captured the scroll and unfurled it, showing it off as though it held the most fascinating and covert tidbits. “This is Helios’ daily trek across the sky, drafted from my wife’s meticulous calculations. It’s nearly time for the annual update. We must ensure that the Sun God’s trajectory does not interfere with that of Selene or any other heavenly body, you see?”
Eros’ face fell and his wings drooped. “Oh.”
“Say, now,” Zeus said, casting an appreciative eye over his grandson. “You’re a master of flight…”
“Well, that's certainly true.”
“Perhaps you could help me, after all. What do you think of this angle of approach here—”
“Blechk.” Eros fluttered away and drew corkscrewing backflips in the air.
“You don’t want to help me?”
“Not with that.”
“Are you quite certain?”
“Boring!”
“Then off with you.”
“Don’t you have any—whoa!” How Eros ever managed to skid to a halt while in mid-flight, Zeus had never figured out. He guessed it was an optical illusion designed for drama. The size and luster of the boy’s eyes, however, was genuine. “What is that?” Before Zeus could open his mouth, Eros zipped to the front of the platform.
The King of Olympos floated higher so he could peer over the slab. As suspected, his grandson was admiring his reflection in the sheen off that gargantuan diamond Haides had sent up. “Do you like it?” Zeus asked.
“Do I!” As the boy transformed into his adolescent countenance, the full magnitude of his wings flashed through the room. It would have made lesser gods flinch, but Zeus was accustomed to such intense radiance and more. Eros planted fists on his slim hips and shifted from side to side, flexing muscles, fluffing feathers, beaming like the asinine juvenile he was.
Blasted adorable.
Zeus couldn’t help an eye-roll and shake of the head.
“Wow,” Eros said, “I need one of these in my temple. This is way better than Mama’s silver dome.” He bent over with one foot arched so the muscles of his thigh and calf popped, then pumped his bicep while bristling his wings up straight behind him. After growling off a fierce grin, he batted cherub-eyes up at Zeus. “Where’d you get it?”
“It was a gift from one of my vassals.”
“Really?” Eros’ eyebrows flashed. “I’ve gotta get me some vassals.”
“All in good time, my boy. All in good time. My ichor runs through you, so you’ll have plenty of vassals, to be certain.”
Zeus returned his attention to the scroll. Mortal ones. Idiotic love-stricken ones. No threat to anybody’s power or position, but enough to satisfy a half-witted imp. It really is a pity that my wisdom skipped two generations, rather than just the one.
“Can I play with this?” Eros asked, already levitating the diamond away from the platform. “Please, Grandpapa? I promise to be gentle.”
With a grand show of consideration, Zeus drew in a breath, held it, raised an eyebrow, sighed. At last, he said, “You may. But do not break it.”
“I won’t!” With a dazzle of light, the bauble was high in the air, spinning, dancing, bobbing, spiraling, with Eros all around it.
Once the nuisance was occupied, Zeus went back to pretending interest in his scroll. In truth, Haides’ boulder-blasted message still weighed, but the King On High couldn’t let his flappy-lipped grandson have an inkling that anything was amiss. If Eros knew, everyone would know. To outright banish him from the chamber at this point would only increase the boy’s determination to spy.
Naturally, the Rascal of Lust would appear just when the most powerful god in the universe sat stewing over his fiendish, infuriating brother and his gorgeous, cursed, delectable, infuriating wife.
Bee-nosed busy-body, always poking into everyone’s affairs.
Point precisely proven: Eros’ question struck as keenly as his darts. “Why were you all thunder-heady when I buzzed up here?”
Zeus’ heart skipped a beat. But he didn’t so much as bat a lash when he replied, “I was not ‘all thunder-heady.’ I was deep in contemplation.”
“Yeah. That's what I said. Growly, gloomy-loomy contemplation that had you all thunder-heady. Who’s in need of blasting today?”
“No one is in need of blasting.” At least not yet. “Management of multiple realms from sky to sea, from on high to the deeps below is a tricky balancing act. As such, it requires my most intense concentration, which makes my—”
“Grandpapa, look! I’m a juggler!”
Zeus’s head snapped up. The irksome child had picked up Haides’ message, as well as a roll of blank parchment. He bobbed in the air, legs crossed at the ankles, beaming his idiot-grin as he spun the rock, the diamond, and the roll in ever-faster circles around each other. “How’s this for tricky balancing acts?” When he added himself to the orbits, he said, “See, I’ve got your trajectory of heavenly bodies right here. And is this body ever heavenly, huh?”
The Thunderer gnashed his teeth, forcing himself to smile. “I told you to be careful with that diamond.” And that message more so. The last thing he needed was to have a single nuance dinged off of Haides’ words. Even the flourished tail of one symbol could hold meaning with that diabolical bastard. Zeus snapped his fingers. “All right, that’s enough now. Let’s put those away and let Grandpapa get back to work, shall we?”
“Sure.” Eros zinged the parchment back into its oversized slot in the wall. With a wicked smile, he tossed both stones into the air, crossed his arms, and let them drop.
Zeus gasped and moved to slow their plummets, but twin balls of light appeared beneath them to gently cushion them to the ground. The chamber darkened with the Thunderer’s growl. Eros’ giggle filled the room.
But then the boy’s eyes and mouth went huge again as he sucked in a breath. Before the rough-hewn boulder could settle, he flashed cherub again and zoomed at it. He made five zig-zagging passes around the message, reading every word in the span of a millisecond. As the rock thunked on the ground, he zapped directly in front of Zeus’ nose. “Whooooahhhhh,” he said, barely audible over the buzzing of his wings. “Really?”
Zeus glowered. “Really, what, boy?”
“Really-really? Do I finally get to shoot Hekate?” He zoomed into a backflip. “I’ve been trying to get her for ages, but just when I have her in my sights—zwoop! She disappears downstairs where I can’t get her. And the Tormentor? Pffft! Do you have any idea how impossible it is to shoot him? The only way that could happen is if you commanded the Earth to crack open and brought him up here.”
Zeus’ head tilted as he scrutinized his grandson. “So then, all this mischief...you didn't incite it?"
“Well, I’m always up to my waggling eyebrows in mischief. But which now?”
“This business of Haides wanting to marry Kore.” At the sound of the Chthonic King’s dreaded name, Eros shuddered. Zeus smirked, enjoying the boy’s look of awe at such audacity. “Are you saying that wasn’t your doing?”
“Me? You must have me confused with my father.” As the cherub swam backstrokes through the air, that tiny puckered mouth said, “I would never, in a million aeons, poke one filament of my feathers into the Underworld, even to shoot somebody, unless I was under your hem. Nope, the fiend from down there developed an incurable case of the home-grown, organic attraction all on his own.”
“Humph.”
By every tic and facial twitch in the boy’s face, in every note of his voice, down to the vibration that emanated into the room from his core essence, it was clear—Eros was speaking the utmost truth.
He blabbered on. “That crusty, musty ole Tormentor’s had it bad for Blossoms for centuries, but I hear Demeter won’t even let him so much as speak to her daughter, much less marry her—such an insult to my gifts.”
Zeus crossed his arms. “Kore is my daughter, I’ll have you remember.”
Eros’ hand flew to his round mouth to cover his gasp. “Oh! Right.” Those cherub-eyes zigged and zagged, then dared to meet his grandfather’s roiling gaze again. “Damnation, I think everybody forgets that.”
Zeus’ cloud hedged toward thunderhead gray, as did his hair. “Yes,” he rumbled. “So I’ve noticed.”
Eros cringed. “Well, anyway…Demeter is being a short-sighted stick in her mud by telling him no. Really wasting a good opportunity. I swear, the Notorious One has become a hopeless, swooning sap down there. He would do anything to have that girl.”
“You don’t say.”
“Downright desperate for her.”
The hair at the back of Zeus' neck tingled with the sensation that always alerted him to the shifts that needed tending in the order of the Cosmos. It told him when to pause, when to deviate course, when to make an alliance, and when to break it. His hair was beginning to crackle, so he tamed it and assumed a more casual posture on the cloud.
His attention, however, remained sighed on Eros like that of an eagle upon whatever small thing rustled in the grass. Casually, he mused, "And here, that proposal of marriage seemed so composed. So businesslike, all about alliances and ‘the good of the realms’ tallying. So very…Haides.”
Eros shuddered again, then grinned.
“I never would have guessed that my baby brother is in love—something I hadn't thought possible in his night-stained heart.”
“Baby brother? I thought he was the eldest.”
“None of my siblings were truly born into the world until I set them free. As such, Haides was the last son vomited up by our father, therefore he is my baby brother.”
“Oh…”
“At least he remembered proper protocol. As is correct, I was the first to receive his offer before he went whining to Demeter. Patience of a gnat, that one. That’s actually what that diamond was for—a bribe from his original proposal.”
“Wow. See? Told you. Desperate.”
“So it would appear.” Zeus concealed his salivating grin.
Haides had at least written one truth in this latest message. He was a stickler about oaths, duty, and binding agreements. So if his proposal was genuine, not a distraction tactic while he plotted a coup…if he wasn't motivated by political maneuvering…if the Tormentor of Tartaros was foolish enough to get himself in love with someone he wished to wed, then whoever held the other side of his marriage contract would be able to demand what they liked from him.
A far better prospect than having Hekate wielded as a chthonic power piece in the never-ending game of Rise and Fall set up between the King of Olympos and the Lord of the Dead. Best of all would be to finally acquire the means of wielding Haides himself, yanking him around by his sterile ball sack and the tips of his two-pronged spear.
Up until now, the best Zeus could do was keep him out of the way.
Perhaps his threat about elevating Hekate was a last-ditch bluff to strong-arm his liege into giving him what he couldn't win for himself. Kore was a sweet, succulent treat, to be certain. The girl would present no threat down there. She was a petite violet, forever shrinking in her mother’s shadow, so she would do what she was told, first by her father, then by her husband. Same thing, really. Because if Eros was correct about Haides—and he was the God of Love, so he would know—that girl would make the perfect pry bar upon which to apply leverage against the Fiend of the Pits.
Additional bonus: bartering the blossom away would infuriate Demeter, ensuring that two of Zeus’ siblings remained focused on playing tug-of-war with Kore, rather than plotting against their king. Yet with Haides locked safely behind the Impassable Threshold, genuine war could never disrupt the realms.
Even if mad old Earth Mama did blame Zeus, what could a puny harvest goddess do about it? She would do what she was told as well, or a good lightening bolt too close for comfort would remind her of her place.
Second additional bonus: pairing Kore to a god who could never father children meant that Zeus wouldn't have to worry about the creation of a being who might wish to overthrow the stability of his rule. Kore’s explosive fertility was one of the many reasons he had never married her off before now. But Haides was bound to the Lands of the Dead, and that's exactly what his seed was now. A little sea of dulled, dead swimmers.
Maybe this single match was the answer to countless nagging concerns.
Zeus’ gaze fell upon Eros like twin lightning strikes. The boy gulped and blushed, fidgeting under such intense perusal. The Thunderer awarded him with a broad, friendly smile. Making sure that he floated a head higher than his grandson, he materialized another cloud opposite him before the Platform of Policy. He offered a swift prayer of thanks to the Fates, then rested his hands upon his knees, palms up. His spine straightened and he let his eyes go the clearest, palest silvery-blue. His hair, beard, and cloud went nearly translucent as he opened his mind to its most far-reaching receptivity.
The bud of Eros’ mouth grew round in awe.
The boy’s arrival, like everything in Zeus’ charmed life, must have been destiny-kissed, or else why had Eros arrived at this precise moment? Zeus never would have thought to seek out the God of Love for any business dealing, least of all while arranging marriages for his offspring and the most powerful Olympians. But the Fates had never steered him wrong yet. He knew to the depths of his guts, bones, and balls that they never would.
There had to be a reason why this boy was here, so the Sky King beamed. “Let us meditate upon this matter together, shall we? I would like to hear your advice. Then I shall weigh all factors before making my decision. Please, Eros, I give you leave. Speak freely. What do you think of the match between my second-eldest daughter and the Lord of the Underworld?”
“Me?” Eros squeaked.
“You. Love-stricken gods are, after all, your domain. A wise ruler always examines a decision from many different vantage points. I would hear yours.” Zeus gestured toward the other cloud. “Right now.”
“Oh. Um…a-all right.” Eros blinked rapidly, then slowly expanded back into his most mature form. He retained his juvenile beauty, but his expression grew solemn as his wingspan filled the room. Folding his legs beneath him, he took a seat upon the cloud and faced his king as an advisor for the first time in history.
Zeus’ lips curved up at the corners as he allowed his own aura to glow as brilliantly as the God of Love’s wings. Then he brightened a few notches higher.
Eros’ eyelids gave the slightest twitching toward a squint. He fluttered off a smile. Placing his hands upon his knees, also palms up, he bowed his head and closed his eyes. His wings drew shut, allowing him to float solely upon the seat his grandfather had provided for him.
This time, the King On High didn’t conceal his smirk. Pleased, he allowed the dome overhead to become translucent as well. From the height of this tower, he could see beyond the sky-blue of Aither’s light into the realm of the dancing star-nymphs. Settling more comfortably into the cushion, he sent his awareness down through his spine and genitals, through the central spire of his temple, and into the core of Mount Olympos like a bolt shot through its heart.
Down, down, down he reached his consciousness, until he connected with the Walls of Bronze and Night. The barrier’s warding hummed, imbued with the charge of his lightning and Hekate’s magical spells. He sent a pulse through the Earth and let it radiate outward in every direction, feeling into the vibrations for any places of Harmony and the lack thereof.
Whatever Eros said, it would either resonate with the best possible outcome for the order of the Cosmos, or it would smack into obstruction and be disrupted by the jagged notes of Discord.
Once he had the cords tuned, Zeus closed his own eyes as he prepared to receive all insights that the God of Love would deliver. From there, he would analyze, weigh, calculate, and plot the wisest course for all the realms under his keeping, from the Highest Above to the Great Below.
UP NEXT: After Ares rejects Kore and sends her back home, she finds that the truths she must swallow have some JAGGED EDGES.
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