No More Olympus

Chapter 2

Athena awoke to the sound of a busy kitchen and the feeling of the Alabama sun stinging her cheek, taking a moment to bask in the yellow shine as the faint prayers of her handful of remaining worshippers faintly bounced around her head.
She slowly rolled off of her bed and headed downstairs into her kitchen.
"Good morning, folks," she announced to the tiny tiled kitchen,
At the stovetop was Jacob, who was trying his best not to burn pancakes, all while wearing his favourite mostly ironic 'Kiss the Cook' apron.
At the table in a high chair was a six-month-old girl named Odessa, who was shaken awake by Athena's greeting.
And under the table was five-year-old Alec, who was awkwardly shaping clay with his uncoordinated hands.
Both children looked up at her with their inherited piercing gray eyes.
"Morning, sleeping beauty," he replied.
"You talking to Odessa or me?" Athena asked, carefully approaching him in her bare feet.
"Two birds..." he shrugged, "Pancakes will be five minutes."
"Nice apron," she smiled, giving him a quick peck on the cheek, "Now, where's my coffee?"
Jacob reached behind himself and handed her a piping-hot cup.
"Oh, I love you," Athena sighed, taking a sip.
"You talking to me or the coffee?" he asked.
"Two birds..." Athena smiled, "Your pancakes are burning."
"Shit," he hissed under his breath, searching desperately for his spatula.
"Hey Alexander," Athena said, peeking under the table to look at her son, "Whatchya making sweetie?"
"A dragon," he said with excitement.
It by no definition looked like a dragon of any species. It looked more like a snake that had been run over by a truck with an awkwardly misshapen body and no head to speak of in the slightest. Still, Athena wasn't about to crush the child's enthusiasm.
"That's awesome," she complimented with an honest smile, "What's his name?"
Alec paused, his face and eyebrows narrowing at the question that hadn't crossed his mind before now.
"I'll give you some time," Athena chuckled, lifting her head out from under the table. She turned to face her daughter, who stared back at her, the two almost having a conversation with nothing but the movements of their eyes, "Has Odessa eaten yet?"
"Not yet," Jacob answered, flipping a pancake, "I thought you would like the honour."
"And what an honour it is," Athena said in a high-pitched tone, inspiring a snicker from Odessa.
She stood up from her chair and walked over to the yellowing refrigerator in the kitchen corner.
"So," Athena began as she rooted through the fridge for baby food, "Anything interesting planned for today?"
"I got a guy coming in to pick up an industrial welding torch," Jacob commented.
Jacob had created and owned a small hardware store for many years 'Bauer's Hardware', in whose upstairs their apartment was located. It had struggled for several years until he met and eventually married Athena, whose sharp intellect and savvy financial skills quickly whipped the store into shape and allowed it to make consistent enough profits to live a decent life.
"Like the ones they use on oil freighters?" Athena asked, "Do we even sell those?"
"We don't," Jacob continued, "But the guy offered me an extra hundred if I could find him one, so I got a friend in a supply company to sell me one below market price."
"But what does he need it for?" Athena asked, being her typical nosy self, a trait she kept from her days as the smartest of the Olympians.
"I don't know," Jacob chuckled, "The guy owns that new boxing gym, that 'War Dogs' place across the park. Who knows, maybe he's taken up welding."
"He'd have better luck using a smaller torch then," Athena reasoned, "A big heavy torch is going to make it hard to get the clean lines you need on household projects."
"Since when do you know about welding?" Jacob asked as he poured the rest of his batter into his hot pan.
Athena hesitated for a moment. She certainly wasn't going to let it slip that her brother was a smithing god of legend and had taught her a thing or two about metalworking.
"I knew an old friend," she answered after a moment, making sure to be unspecific enough so as not to arouse suspicion.
"An orphanage friend?" Jacob asked casually.
Athena had a cover story. She couldn't exactly go around telling people that she was the daughter of Zeus, so she had come up with a story that filled in all of the blanks. Little baby Athena was dropped on the doorstep of an orphanage in Greece when she was only weeks old, she stayed there until she turned eighteen and immigrated to the United States under the name Athena Michaels. The story helped to explain away why she had no family to speak of at all, why she spoke perfect Greek and why she lacked a paper trail. Jacob like most people had believed this story without a second thought, much like Athena had planned.
"Yeah," Athena agreed, going along with Jacob's assumption,
She peeked over the refrigerator door, "So what do we want for breakfast, baby girl? Peas, Sweet Potato... Peaches?"
She stuck her tongue out at Odessa, which inspired her to giggle.
"Peaches it is!" Athena announced, pulling out the glass jar and slamming the door shut.
"Pancakes are up!" Jacob declared, placing a stack of the golden disks in the center of the table.
Alec slithered out from under the table and eyed the breakfast hungrily, quickly grabbing two as well as the glass bottle of maple syrup.
"Alexander, babe, watch the syrup," Athena requested, remembering the last time her son had overdone the sugar and quickly began bouncing off the walls of his preschool classroom.
Athena pretended to struggle as she opened the small glass jar of peaches. With the strength her godhood gave her, a small lid was no problem for her, but in the effort to keep up appearances as an average mortal woman, she had pretended to struggle against so many jars and heavy objects that it became an unconscious action.
"So, what do you have planned today?" Jacob asked as Athena played 'here comes the airplane.'
"The same thing as yesterday," she declared with pride as Odessa swallowed a spoonful of peaches.
"Any other person would be bored out of their skulls at just the idea," Jacob remarked.
"Alexander, that's enough," Athena said, noticing that there was now more syrup than pancake on her son's plate.
"Maybe you should get a hobby," Jacob thought aloud, "Something to get the creative juices flowing."
"Jacob, his syrup," Athena interrupted, pointing toward Alec and his absurd breakfast.
Jacob quickly leapt at Alec's plate, using his knife to scrape some of his excess syrup onto his own plate.
"Like what?" Athena asked as she continued to spoon-feed Odessa, "Basket Weaving, pottery? Been there done that, my friend."
"I'm not saying exactly that," Jacob responded as he finished his pancake, "Just something that you like to do. I just don't want you going stir-crazy again."
He stood up, placed a kiss on Athena's forehead, and moved over to the sink to wash his dishes.
"When have I ever gone stir crazy?" she asked, handing him the empty baby food jar to wash.
"When you were pregnant with that one," he answered, nodding toward Alexander, "You don't remember? You punched a hole in the wall?"
"Okay," Athena began, "First of all, that was pregnancy hormones, and I cannot be held responsible for what I do under the influence of those. Second of all, I did not punch a hole in the wall, I am not physically capable of punching a hole in the wall, I was moving a table, dropped it, and the corner of it broke the wall."
This was, of course, another lie. Athena had indeed gone stir-crazy during the fifth month of her first pregnancy, becoming so frustrated that she had punched clean through the bedroom wall out of pure anger. An anger she had inherited from her father, she had to once again mask her true strength with another lie.
"The wall is neither here nor there," Jacob reasoned, "Just... just don't let yourself go nuts, do something that interests you."
Athena thought this over for a moment.
She would be the first to tell you that perhaps she was overcorrecting.
She was once undoubtedly the most interesting woman on earth. Being a goddess was, of course, no small part of this, and compared to her fellow goddesses, her title was leagues more interesting than marriage, love, or even hunting.
But considering where this 'interesting' lifestyle had led her, she decided against being her warrior self and settled for a more mundane existence, housewife, mother, and co-owner of a small-town hardware store. None of these titles were as spectacular as Goddess of War and Wisdom. Still, they certainly made her far happier than the lonely immortal existence she had suffered for the last two thousand years prior.
All of a sudden, Jacob's watch alarm went off.
"Crap," Jacob hissed under his breath, double-checking the stove clock for the time, "We're late. Alec clean up your stuff. We gotta get you to school."
Alec dove under the table to clean up his clay from under the table.
"Don't worry about sweetie," Athena said, "I'll clean it up. Go get your stuff."
Alec sprinted out from under the table, running to put on his shoes and backpack.
"He's really old enough to be cleaning up after himself," Jacob whispered in her ear.
"You'd rather he be late?" She asked, "Then you'd have to check him in through the principal's office. He misses class time, we have to open late, we lose money, can't pay the mortgage, we're out of the street and selling the kids into slavery. It's just easier for me to pick up the damn playdoh."
"Fair enough," Jacob said, "Come on, kiddo, let's move our butts."
Jacob opened the front door to leave, and Alec moved to follow.
"Um, excuse me!" Athena called out to her son, grabbing his attention, "What are you forgetting?"
She tapped her cheek.
Alec sighed and jogged over toward her, planting a big wet kiss on her cheek.
"Have a good day," she said with a smile.
"I will," Alec replied, disappearing out the door that closed behind him.
"What does damn mean?" She heard Alec ask as the two walked down the stairs.
"It means your mom's got a potty mouth," Jacob explained, "And if you plan on sleeping inside tonight, you won't repeat it."
They were soon out of earshot.
A short silence rested in the room as the bus drove away.
"So," Athena began, turning toward Odessa, "I guess you and I have girl time."
Odessa raised her head, looked her mother straight in the eye, and vomited all down her bib.
"So I guess the peaches were a bust then," Athena said dryly, reaching over to the paper towel roll on the table.