Hermes | Book 1

: 15 :

At that moment when the Light truly understood who the Darkness really was, he realized that until then, he had never truly seen what had always been right in front of him.

Chapter 15

THE MESSENGER bag on his shoulder felt like it weight a lot more than its original weight. A thousand tiny nails were pricking underneath his feet and he felt like his head was forced under water for longer than he could survive.

"Hermes is the patron God of Eta." Hermes repeated, feeling utterly and completely stupid.

"Yeah," Asta said agreeably with a small smile. "That isn't much of a news for you, right?"

He stared at her incredulously. Was she mocking him?

Watching the tips of her lips tilt further upward with every passing second, he decided that she was; and she was enjoying every second of it too.

"Of course it isn't," she answered the question herself.

Then why ask the question in first place? Oh right, she is having fun.

Hermes regretted the moment his heart softened at her happiness and foolishly allowed her to further pursue it. He didn't mind Asta being happy, goodness no, but when he was the one who was suffering for it, he wasn't feeling so generous.

"The Great and powerful God Hermes forgetting that he is the patron of Eta for more than a few hundred centuries? Utter foolishness!" Asta gave a small laugh, as though the whole thing was very entertaining.

"Asta," said Hermes warningly. He didn't want to blow up on her yet, he had saved it for later when he pulled out the topic of Olympus, but he wasn't sure whether he could control himself if Asta went on with her quiet teasing.

"Yes, Hermes?" She retorted sweetly.

Hermes staggered for a moment under the weight of genuine sincerity in her voice. He looked at her like she was a human that had crawled up from under the ground in a   blindingly clean white dress.

"What?" She asked with a tinge of defensiveness. "Is it a crime for a girl to be nice?" Pale pink dusted her cheeks, which he noticed almost at once because of her unusually pale skin tone.

"Are you alright?" Hermes touched her forehead discreetly, taking care not to grab the attention of the people around him. "Do you have a temperature? If you're too weak I can contact Julianna myself. You can just give me her contact address and I'll ring her up-"

"Hermes please," Asta swatted his hand away.

"What? You are acting very unlike yourself-" Asta put a hand over his mouth which shut him up efficiently.

"I was just teasing you Hermes," she said exasperatedly, "I was teasing when I talked about not remembering about being the patron of Eta. I don't have a short term memory- I know that your memories of Godhood are fading."

"You can tease?" Hermes muttered crossly.

She smiled began walking forward, casually inspecting a few selections of clothes that were on display as she moved. Seemingly struck dumb for the moment, Hermes walked beside her, occasionally staring at the scene around him, thoroughly unimpressed. There were too many people and too many shops, all of them small and dingy with mediocre collections and the road they walked on was cracked, ruined by the sweltering heat of the sun directly overhead.

But Asta seemed to be very satisfied by the stifling and slightly humid atmosphere around her and eagerly looked around, buying street snacks and munching it along the way and squeezing her way through a thousand sweating humans like she had lived there all her life.