Hermes | Book 1

: 10 :

Conversing with the Darkness, the Light learnt many things;a person who does not speak or has no friends should not be considered uninteresting, it is simply that he hasn't found the right topic to speak about yet.

Chapter 10

"WHERE ARE  we?" Hermes asked quietly, afraid to disturb the tranquility in the air but at the same wanting to quench his ever growing curiosity.

If he became God again-when he became God again, he wanted to return here. It was unbelievable that he would find any part of the unappetizing Eta desirable, but the human world was constantly surprising him.

"The Zeus mountains," said Asta after a moment of meditative silence.

Hermes looked to his right where Asta was standing, a good few feet away from him, and starting at the breath taking view below them. "Zeus mountains?"

He never knew that there was a mountain dedicated to a God, specially in a place like Eta that was too poor to construct a worthy temple for the Gods.

Asta hummed in affirmative, rocking gently back and forth on the balls of her feet; she looked below searchingly and then sparing him a single glance, looked back down.

"Why is it called the Zeus mountains?"

Below them them was an everlasting expanse of green and blue. The kaleidoscope of greens belonging to the mountains and the deep green-blue for the vast sea near. Above them more of the green and brown of the mountains stretched and if they looked a little farther away, they could see the white of the snow.

There was a slight fog where they were standing, even though it wasn't very high, and sometimes Hermes could only see parts of Asta. It almost seemed like, for a fraction of a second, she was simply a mere painting in an ambitious canvas.

But she was a beautiful painting.

Asta looked like she truly belonged to the mountains, just like Hermes felt he did. Maybe in some impossible alternate reality, they may have lived in high up in mountains, scaling them with expert ease even when they were toddlers.

"Why can't it be called the Zeus mountains?"

Hermes truly didn't believe that anything could shatter his peace in here but Asta seemed hell bent on proving the impossible.

"Well," said Hermes as gently and slowly as possible, as though he was speaking to a child, "there must be some reason why it's called the Zeus mountains right? Some back story?"

"I didn't know you were the type to listen to back stories," Asta said dryly. Then as if she rembered something she said, "Of course, forgive me, I completely forgot that you were the type to know everything."

Hermes wanted to lash out her. He really really wanted to strangle her with his bare hands, exactly the way he wanted to do to that waiter who insulted her. Thinking about it, that I incident seemed almost ages ago.

But it was certainly ironic.

"It's not a very long story," Asta began monotonously before Hermes could do something rash. "But let's sit down."

Hermes agreed, the story seemed very important to him suddenly.

Silently they sat on the hood of the car, which was a still little warm from the drive they had. The space on the hood was much lesser than they expected it to be; Hermes and Asta's shoulders were nearly touching.

With an awkward clearing of her throat, proceeded to slide off the hood.

Immediately, like a reaction to her stimulus, Hermes clasped her wrist.