Hell Is An Empty Heart (Book One of The Triple Moon's Chronicles)

18 | Demeter's Reasons III - Arion

He was Arion. The only one that lived with Demeter at her temple, her son and the only one divine race horse endowed with speech. He possessed a long, black mane that cascaded over his cervical neck like it was on his tail—the hair that any goddesses worthy of a sense of beauty would have coveted.

Four long legs ending with unbreakable feet known as coffin bone adorned him. A robust body bedecked him too with a soft, lustrous walnut fur turned into a seat on his back for his mother, Demeter. He only ate the food grown by her hands, as he was a herbivore by design and to survive against his own predators, he was made the fastest one from them all, defying every other animal from the Kingdom of Gaia. And it only took him a few moments to bring Demeter and Hestia back to Mount Olympus.

The brief time in which a knotted belly caused Demeter ache—her unspoken regret over Pythia's demise. She shouldn't have asked for a second or third question, but it was too tempting. Indeed, Demeter's ill-fated solitude had been washed away from her heart, as she would be the mother of at least four children, leaving her only to speculate about who their father could be.

From birth to adulthood, the then Demeter only knew one lover, one fashioned by their Great Mother Gaia to be her divine soulmate. He was the extension to her brazen nature, the one that was solely named the "husband of the fertile earth," the male tailored to her heart, Poseidon.

They were conceived as a pair to grow within their mother Rhea's domain of deity to mature together into their father Cronus's stomach. She had seen the male as an infant, a boy, then a man, for she had caught nearer and nearer into her concertina locomotion, succumbing effortlessly and fighting off in vain to their lust. Unbeknown to them, they had unavoidably fallen head over heels in love with each other. That was why Poseidon was Demeter's greatest tragedy. The perfect love that would never be fulfilled.

As a small droplet of tears left her eye, they had all finally returned to Mount Olympus. She didn't have the time to wipe it away when she heard Arion yelling out, "Father!"

Arion would never refer to any other goddess as his mother, just as he would acknowledge no other god as his father, aside from Poseidon. Her heart shrank at this impossibility. Demeter didn't even need to look around to vanish from Arion and Hestia's line of sight. She fled as fast as she could, with the shadow of her tears following her from behind. Demeter had to hide somewhere, anywhere, but even there, Gaia's spell had sent her back to him.

Demeter had to run into Poseidon.

He hadn't changed from her memory. He was still the tall, sturdy-built man belonging to the realm of her fantasy. The untameable half-naked male with his long hair and unkempt beard, only his celery leaf crown, had made him different, as he was now the King of the Sea.

A ruler high in prestige and low in deeds with a confident voice that fell flat at her sight. "Demeter."

It was indeed her name, but she wished in this moment that it wasn't.

Her muscles quivered in anger, and she bit her lips to bleed; they would remain sealed to him, and Demeter retraced her ways back and escaped him once more.

Poseidon called her out again and chased after her all over Mount Olympus, but he wasn't able to capture her until he threw his trident in front of her.

The fear of an injury froze Demeter on the spot.

There, maybe, she would pay attention to what he had to say, but first, he wrapped his arms around her from behind, holding on to his divine other half. Poseidon breathed in the air through her hair, infusing himself with her essence, then he cried over her shoulders in remorse.