One torch, in your possession, is used to light up the chamber, throwing dark shadows along the wall and highlighting a single antique vanity. The vanity's mirror is cracked, and it throws a million images of the forlorn beauty back at her as she sits on the velvet covered stool. Her head is held in her manicured hands, and mascara runs in neat rows down her contoured cheeks, framed by golden hair that has been tussled into perfection. One would think her a damsel—a stunning damsel—in distress, but you know better. This damsel has daggers, in her words and probably somewhere on her person.
"What do I have to give you?" she moans, eyes never once wavering from the reflections staring back at her. "I was never a bad person, you know. Yes, I cheated on my husband—but, well, can you truly blame me? No one in their right mind would stay with someone who looked like that, especially when you look like me." Aphrodite gives a toss of her head, and golden curls fly through the air to land at her back. Her lips pucker into a practiced pout.
"Do you want someone to share your bed on cold nights? I can give that to you. There are not many out there who can come to love one such as you, but they exist, and there is no one better suited to find them than I." You do not acknowledge her, simply continue staring stoically at one of her fractured likenesses, the edges jagged and point sharp. She continues on.
"Or maybe I do not even need to make deals with my ruin," she muses, and there is a desperate recklessness hiding just below her words. "Maybe this," and here she moves for the first time, making a sweeping motion at her seated, trim figure, "will never cease to be."
You cannot keep this forever, Aphrodite, you say coldly. You lift up the inverted torch to your lips, but halt as she rises from her seat and turns to face you. At this angle, the fire casts more light on her face than it had at the vanity, too much light, and you can see the genuine goddess behind her thick mask of foundation and eyeliner. Her porcelain skin is chipping away, and within the crevasses you notice sinew, muscle, and bone poking through. Her eyes are more red than blue, bloodshot from stress, but, more importantly, time, too much time.
She laughs bitterly, revealing decayed teeth behind scarlet lips. "No, that is where you are wrong. The memory of me will always make it in the end; people trying in vain to trade this or trade that to find me. I was born from the waves of the sky himself, and I will long outlast all else. Something to offer, something to trade: I am sought after. I am craved."
Her laughter is odd as it echoes around the room, and you blow out the torch as it starts to fade and she gives her parting remarks.
"Beauty is immortal."
