Goddess Awakened (On Hold)

Goddess Awakened - Chapter One

Death had always seemed like the worst possible ending. After all, what fate could be worse?

Antheia was a goddess. She was an immortal and would live forever. As Zeus had often reminded her, it didn't matter what the Moirai had said, no mortal blade could wound her and no disease could fell her.

She had nothing to fear.

It had been too easy to believe him.

Now, Antheia knew better.

While there wasn't much that could cause lasting physical injury to a goddess, there were worse hurts fate could deal. Emptiness. Loneliness. Guilt.

Zeus, you were wrong. The recrimination repeated over and over in her thoughts - as it had year after year as she remained locked in the prison of her own mind.

Yes, there were worse fates for the divine than death. She should know - she was living it. She had been living it for over a millennium - perhaps more than two. Time had lost any meaning after the first hundred years.

Alone amongst the ruins of her temple, the forest had grown up around her. Trees and flowers had formed in the pool of her tears, growing tall until even the warmth of the sun no longer reached her.

Wind rustled through the leaves overhead, their thick canopies blocking out the light even in the late autumn when trees were normally bare. The sound filled her with both despair and hope. She was lost. Hidden away from the very humans she needed. And yet, there was always hope. Hope that things would change.

It was the hope that hurt the most.

Awareness came and went in ebbs and flows. At times, all Antheia could hear was the sound of her own guilt clamouring to be heard. It was all her fault. The terror. The blood. The waste of so much beautiful life. She could still smell their deaths. The metallic tang of mortal lifeblood, the smell of fire and burning flesh, and the inescapable smell of urine. At times, the memory was so vivid, the air so thick with those scents once more, it brought back the choking sensation of fear. It was a leaden weight sitting upon her frozen form. A weight she could not escape.

At other times, when people wandered close to her home, she could hear them. The mortals. They were so close that she could hear snippets of their conversation as they passed by. Their words were so clear that Antheia could imagine herself part of the conversation. For months, those soft spoken snippets played over and over in her mind as she remained trapped - unable to break free from the hollow existence she had been condemned to.

What she wouldn't give to walk amongst them once more.

What she wouldn't give for this in between to finally come to an end.

After centuries, Antheia longed for an end to the ceaseless existence. She was neither part of the living and yet she was far from dead. At least in death, she would be spared the hollow aching loneliness that stretched for centuries in either direction.

Zeus, if you're still out there. Help me.

Please, father.

Antheia shouted the words over and over in her head. She begged for help from the strongest person she knew.

Perhaps he was stuck too? Perhaps the mortals had forgotten about him too.

And yet, it seemed impossible. Zeus was the almighty. There was no way he could be forgotten. Zeus was a god people wrote songs about. He was a god who had threaded himself through the lives of mortals so thoroughly, there was no way he could vanish from memory. He was too powerful to be relegated to a barren existence.