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

84 | Doomsday IV - Bringing The Light On Her Shoulders

Was wrath a disease that only punishment could cure?

The colour of wrath marked the wedding of Zeus and Hera. No one knew if she forced him to take her as his bride, but when he named her Queen above all of his many concubines, it left everyone speechless. A strong status that raised even stronger suspicions around Hera.

Themis was the first one of them to point out how the now higher-ranked Hera would not live with them at Zeus' Temple. She was quickly followed by Mnemosyne, who also found it strange that Hera's firstborn son was fatherless and Olympians equal to the motherless Athena.

They both spoke ill will about Hera, but not Leto. She, who only expressed herself through quiet whispers, knew no evil in her heart. She was perhaps one of the longest residents within the abode of Zeus, a chaste beauty that was joined to him purely by love. A woman he had chosen for himself and who had always listened to any of his torments, a symbol of connubial fidelity who had never shown anger or jealousy to anyone.

Leto was the ideal rival to Hera, and with now one advantage over her, she was indeed with child from Zeus. A late pregnancy compared to the younger Hera, but one that could bring forth Zeus' first ever son.

Hera laughed out loud at such an allusion, but behind closed doors, she was mad with anger, and thus she concocted the most diabolical scheme to get rid of her foe. Hera dragged her newly befriended Leto down into the mortal world, knowing that she was soon due. After that, she forbade the latter from giving birth on any land. Hera trapped the labouring Leto between the suffering of her conditions and her bravery to seek refuge at the same time. 

Zeus, concerned about his lover and her pregnancy, waited and waited for her to come back until he could no longer wait. He descended from heaven to search the earth for her but only met instead a pair of unknown divine twin siblings. Artemis and Apollo took him to the cave on the newly formed island of Delos, where their mother had since dwelled.

He looked at her worn-off face, which no rest could repair. He stared at her once immaculate dress, now soiled in blood, and then Zeus recognised her; this was his beloved Leto.

Zeus threw himself at her feet and demanded, "Who did this to you?" while baring his teeth of anger. But as the frightened Leto couldn't answer, he hammered at his question again. She trembled in horror, her lips sealed, unable to utter a word. Hera's actions devastated Leto; never before had she been confronted with such cruelty, and yet she wouldn't name her persecutor. Zeus pressed Leto once more. "Who had threatened the lives of my children?" but all she did was to turn away from him and to sob louder in the darkness of her abode.

Artemis was the only one to draw nearer to her father, and she said to him, "It will take some time before she can speak again." She was already bold on her tiny legs, and she didn't hesitate a second to tell Zeus the whole perilous myth of her birth.

Unbeknownst to herself, Artemis had just earned her Olympian seat with her frank honesty, and Zeus could easily guess the perfidious work of Hera. Mad, the madder he was to her, when he returned to his realm with the poor Leto and her children, Zeus didn't waste on a breath to visit Hera. He yanked her by the hair out from her own home, humiliating her in front of all the gods there. Then, at the edge of Mount Olympus, he hung her by the foot with golden chains. An ironic punishment for the one who had chastised her rival by forbidding her any land to give birth to.

Days after nights, loud cursing words and then the even louder mourning of despair from Hera lulled the peaceful ether. No one ever come to her help except from the one son she had deemed not worthy of her time. The ugly Hephaestus was the only one brave enough to reach out to his estranged mother.