Clockwork

HEPHAESTUS

HE HAS BEEN FORGED BY TRIAL and blackened by fire. He has been denied of a love of the heavens, tossed down to the ground so cruelly and discarded like a broken rag doll. His soul is so charred that he does not know if his heart has simply burnt to a crisp or refused to start beating. 

He makes his home in the fire, in the bubbling volcanoes, in the depths of the dark; perhaps it is better this way, he reasons, so they need not see me. 

He is Hephaestus. Hephaestus is he. The name sits ugly in his mouth, difficult on his tongue, lumping in his throat. It never goes well taken in and doled out, constricting until he is gasping with unshed tears that he refuses to let fall.

He is marred and disfigured and unwanted. He is also a god. 

Funny, Hephaestus thinks, how one leads unto another. 

The divine, so wonderfully worshipped, are the epitome of perfection. Nary a blemish, nary a disfiguring mark, nary a handicap. 

Hephaestus, well, he carries all three. 

The blacksmith god who dwells in the heat, embraces it like his second skin, the ash of the embers more soothing than his mother ever could have been ― and ever will be. The husband of the beautiful Aphrodite, married because Zeus thought him a punishment rather than a blessing. 

How humiliating it is to be tossed off a mountain because he is an unholy holy abomination. Humiliating to be married to the most alluring woman in the world because he is the only one who can rival her vivacity ― to have her beautiful looks to be spoiled by his repulsive ones.

Gold runs in his veins, worshipped by the sun and the stars and the moon combined, but he wonders if they knew that they have forgotten to do the same to his face ― it mutilates his appearance until all they can see is one eye, two eyes, crooked nose, blistered mouth. 

No one ever dares to look at the entirety of him all at once. It is too much too take in, and even for a god Hephaestus knows it is too much to ask. It is unfair to demand that of a mortal ― the small scrap of life they hold in between their teeth should be spent looking at something beautiful rather than something scarring. 

He doesn't think he has loved anything as beautiful as the humans. They keep him humble, they keep him hoping. 

With the gods and their clashing swords and personalities and their constant warfare, they have transformed into creatures as vile as the dark of night, dealing in the business of lives so systematically, so cold. 

They have lost what it means to be human ― each and every one of them, even he. 

He, who has made his home in the earth, where they are twenty thousand times more welcoming than the heavens. He, who has lived ever triumph mankind has achieved as if they were his own. He can feel it: his insides are becoming as ugly as he is on the outside.

He is hallowed thin, trembling bones and cavernous lungs. Nothing works exactly right anymore. He is a planet with no sun's orbit to keep him in place, his fingers itch to let a flame consume them. He feels volatile, he is volatile, as shaky as the ground mortals set him up upon, as broken as the gods have made him feel. 

Ugly, they like to whisper when they do not think he is listening. Disfigured. Cripple. Gruesome. Disgusting. Horrific. Terrifying. Ghastly. Vile. 

There are many words that are used to describe him, all of them synonymous with the name his mother gave him as she cast him down from the heavens.

He wonders if he is made ugly by their words or simply born that way. 

It is most likely a mixture of both. 

He has forgotten what he looks like. Over the centuries tales of deformed face and jilted lips have made Hephaestus hesitant to glance in a mirror and look at his reflection; he is too afraid of what he might find, had he chanced a peek. And besides, there is no point in looking for something he lost use for centuries ago. 

Is it funny that word of mouth is far more debilitating than anything he can craft with his hands ― and he has created wondrous skies and magnificent things with the calloused palms he calls his own ― or is it just plain sad?

Hephaestus is a god, but he has never called himself one ― for gods are just fools who think they host an advantage because of the ichor that runs beneath their skin. And Hephaestus is no fool. He knows better than this, than them. 

So he lets them party into oblivion, lets them waste immortality and get drunk on the sheer loneliness it provides until they are merely shells of who they used to be. 

Bitter souls, bitter hearts ― that is the effect that time has had on him, and after it is done, he will never be quite the same. They will never be. 

"Well," Hephaestus says with the night as his witness, teeth curling into an angry grimace as his hammer goes to strike the iron beneath his hands, "What does it matter if gold or rust belongs in your veins? You bleed all the same."

The words leave an acrid taste in his mouth, but the weight of his words have never been heavier than they are now.