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[003. Something Real]
It takes recurrence to get to know something.
Replay.
The same stories over and over. The same conversation. The same words — cold burn — resting on the tip of her tongue.
Ma was simply the narrator — an omnipresent voice relaying the events of the legends. She did not try to divulge the emotions of the figures. She did not voice her opinion. To her, the myths were a guide to survival. A warning bell of what becoming part of their world — Olympus' world — entailed.
So and so and so went the story; the end.
And after listening to them for so long, Lian learned the core of these myths is love. No matter how small, no matter how nuanced, love never remains secret. Unlike Ma, Lian voiced this. She asked her questions: if it always ends in tragedy, if the base remains the same, why don't they learn? Why can't they be sensible? They've heard the stories. They know what the gods are like.
Because the gods don't learn, Lian, is what Ma said.
So arises the time-old question: why don't the gods ever learn?
They made mortals in their image, didn't they?
When love leads mortals to such extremities, then what of the gods?
It stunts their growth. Washes away the memories — the pain. If it didn't, they wouldn't deign to fall in love with mortals over and over and over.
The endings of these stories are a cold burn, too. All previous experience, all forethought, goes out the window because there is always this sliver of hope . . . maybe this time, it'll be fine. It mattered enough to hurt — to drown her in this stomach-churning dread. For the longest time, Lian thought it was simply because it was in her nature.
She has been like this — restless and hopeful — since birth.
It is her life.
She is nothing without hope, after all. Those golden flowers and the interminable hope.
But there is something real to it.
It dawned on her a few nights after that moment in the forest: Apollo's fingers soft against her temple; the warmth blooming around and inside her; the urge to lean in.
Eos and Tithonus — the myth Ma had been reciting to her.
Eos is the Goddess of Dawn — honing a tendency of carrying off the young men she fancied — and Tithonus had been her lover — a prince of Troy, son of Laomedon. Their trajectory had been one big, never-ending honeymoon phase. Eos had begged Zeus to immortalize Tithonus, and surprisingly, he had consented. They'd lived a blissful domestic life, and had two kids together, but Zeus' deceiving blessing revealed its nature before long.
