Maratona

Chapter Two

To Mnemosyne, the goddess of memories and mother of the nine muses, who she managed to raise wonderfully well, considering their father to be the almighty king of the gods, Zeus.

                           Hermes

Not having the chance to ask Apollo anything, since he had left, Hermes headed towards the oracle. He wasn't going to wait for the kid to show up.
And most certainly he wasn't waiting for Apollo.
Besides, Pythia was lovely company. Well, most of the time.
Getting to Delphi, Hermes got the happy chance to remind himself of just how much he liked the place.
Wishing to be anywhere other than there, he slowly allowed himself to slip back into an old memory.

It was right after Apollo had announced a particularly unpleasant prophecy of his. Since he had been pretty new to the oracley job, very few gods had honestly believed him.
Hermes had seen him just outside the throne room.
He had been sitting on a bench, his head in his hands, and he had been... Shaking?
Probably the god of truth hadn't been used to not being believed.
The god of lies, on the other hand...

"Lovely vision," Hermes had approached smugly.

"That," Apollo had corrected bitterly, "was a prophecy,"

"Right," he had replied, "that's why you were being oh-so-fancy about it. My apologies," he had bowed theatrecally, "that was a very fine prophecy, Oh wise Oracle,"

"Yeah," the Phoebus had sighed hopelessly.
"I'm guessing you believe me?" He had added ironically.

Hermes had held out his hands in defeat, smiling thinly.
"Maybe. Shouldn't you have sugarcoated it? You should definitely know how to deal with crows by now, god of poetry,"

"That's not how it works," Apollo had said softly.

"How does it work, then?"

He had paused briefly. He clearly was at loss of words. Ironically, improvisation just wasn't the-god-of-music-and-poetry's thing.

"It's like we're all in this huge orchestra," the god of music had prompted, "and we're all improvising. We all play different instruments, and we learn to deal with one another. Then suddenly, I just happen to get the script,"

"Aka gift of prophecy?" He had offered.

"More or less," Apollo had confirmed, "but then everyone starts freaking out, because the script in question is crazy accurate. It shows every note everyone has ever played or will ever play, even though it's all unpredictable improvisation. Then people start asking you what they're supposed to play, if they're getting to solo soon, if the violins will ever shut the hell up..." He had sighed, "it's hopeless. Y'all want information you know you'll never believe,"

Hermes had paused for a while. Honestly, prophecies were already driving him mad and that one exemplary conversation was his own, personal peak of oraclerlyness.
Apparently, Apollo hadn't been handling it much better.
"What if someone else was looking at the script?"

"What?" He had laughed bitterly.
"Have you lost your mind? Why would I curse somebody like this?"

"For starters," Hermes had said, "you could use some backup. And besides, you should keep playing, too. You are in the orchestra, too, and you can't just stop to read some stupid script. You'd be wasted," he had offered him smile.

"That is so selfish," Apollo had complained, slightly smiling though.

"Just saying," he had said, countering Apollo's point, "you could probably use some other inside points of view,"

That was a very nice memory. Especially because he had turned out to be right.
But sadly he got pulled back to the present by the mad priestess, happily meeting him.

"Hi, Hermes," she said, mindlessly giving Hermes her best innocent smirk. Of course, she was brutally failing at looking anything but absolutely driven.

"Hey, Pythia. Long time no see,"

     

                             Apollo

Before I even realised the day was over, I was already headed to the stables, carrying the sun to the sunset. Finally, I could head home.
As I released my horses from the weight of the sun chariot, I caught a glance of Artemis approaching.
Could it have been a vision from the past? Something from the future? Hopefully this time it was just the old plain present?
One can never be sure with the gift of prophecy.

"Hey idiot," Artemis scolded, as she had  probably noticed me zoning out.

"Nice to see you, too," I replied, and suddenly realising just how tired I was, I couldn't help but let out a yawn.

"Had a long day?" She happily teased.

"You tell me," I said, "enjoyed daylight?"

"Oh, you bet," she laughed, probably alluding to some crazy hunter-like job she got done that day. She was going to take care of my son, alone, in a day. I could rest assured, if I would rest.

"Anything interesting happened while I was gone?" I asked.

"Well, mom says everything went smoothly today. She's waiting for you at home," she said, and then added smiling "Hermes went to talk to Pythia today,"

"Really?" I asked, pretty honestly shocked. Hermes hated prophetic business. Not that I could blame him, but he never even visited Pythia without company or very solid reasons.
"That's... Smart. Though I would have asked Cassandra. Tiresias maybe,"

"You are obsessed with that prophetess. Let her be, dude. She already hates you as is,"

I smiled.
"Yeah. She's really good though. Maybe even better than me,"

"You cursed her that bad?" She smirked.
As she was ready to set off in her moon chariot, I waved her off.

"Have fun tonight, huntress,"

"Will do," she said, and with that she was off.

                           Glossary

Mnemosyne: goddess of memory, mother of the nine muses representing the arts.

Zeus: king of the gods, father of the nine muses and of a considerable amount of gods and demigods such as Ares, god of war, Hercules, Helen of Troy, Hermes and many, many others. He is the husband if Hera, goddess of families and marriage.

Delphic Oracle: very famous ancient greek oracle, often consulted by all kinds of people. It could offer all kinds of prophetic advice, by mysterious means. It was established by the god of prophecies, Apollo.

Pythia: She was the chosen priestess of Apollo who gave away prophetic messages to whoever looked for advice.

Cassandra: A chosen Trojan prophetess who predicted the turnouts of the Trojan war, but nobody believed her. By the myth, Apollo would have cursed her to never be believed by anyone as in vengeance for her turning him down. I hope you'll forgive my own interpretation of the myth that you'll find further in the story.

Tiresias: a chosen prophet of Apollo. He predicted many thing and he was a very common character in greek tragedies. His most know apparition was in the Odyssey, advising Odysseus on his journey. Since he is one of my favourites, he'll be pretty well-explored in this story. I hope you don't mind.