The Phantom of Scranton Hill

33

Millennia ago, daughter of Cinyras, king of Cyprus, Myrrha made an unforgivable mistake: she didn't honor the goddess of love, Aphrodite. Though it seemed small, it was considered a crime not to honor the gods of Olympus.

The female deity used her godly powers for revenge. She made Myrrha fall in love, but it was with whom that deemed it atrocious. Myrrha burned with passion, with love, for none other than her own father, the monarch.

Driven insane by her blazing desire, Myrrha attempted to kill herself, using a noose to commit suicide. However, an old lady, her nanny since childhood, found her before she could cause any real damage. She vowed to help Myrrha get what she wanted, no matter the cost.

Soon, a great festival was to be celebrated, commending the goddess of the harvest, Demeter. During those twelve days and nights, married women were denied the right to sleep with their husbands, including the wife of Cinyras, Myrrha's mother.

The old woman approached the monarch, sharing with him that a beautiful girl was crushing on him. He couldn't resist, drunken. He was tricked into sleeping with Myrrha, but didn't realize it until the last night of the twelve.

He awoke the morning after the festival, completely sober. He hadn't realized his crime until he spotted his daughter beside him, in his bed. Horrified at his actions, he tried to kill his daughter, redeeming himself of his sins.

For nine months, the king had searched for his daughter, but she fled, praying and begging for the gods to help her hide from him. Taking pity upon Myrrha, they changed her form, transforming her into a myrrh tree. In this form, she gave birth to a baby, Adonis, with whom Aphrodite ironically fell in love when she found him crying beside the tree. Her son, Eros, accidentally cut his mother with one of his magic arrows.

Embarrassed by her feelings for the young child and attempting to hide the consequences of her curse, Aphrodite hid the baby and handed him to Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, wife of Hades, and queen of the Underworld, to raise. Persephone saw the baby and immediately fell in love with him as his mother, refusing to give him back.

She and Aphrodite sat before Zeus, fighting over custody, and the ruler of Olympus established that Adonis would spend a third of the year with each of them, and the final third on his own. Oftentimes, he would spend those months alone alongside Aphrodite.

When with Persephone, however, Adonis was constantly at odds with her husband and captive, Hades. Adonis was young and egotistic, but strong and stubborn.

Eighteen years ago, he had a fight with Hades who refused to train his swordsmanship further, fearing that the young god would be able to defeat him. Outraged and irritated, Adonis ran away, but the wrong god found him.

A boar sent by Ares, the god of war, out of jealousy attacked Adonis while he sat by the shores of the Mediterranean. The boar easily killed him, for Adonis was unarmed and vulnerable.

Guilt ridden, Hades allowed him another chance at life, rejecting his soul's entry to the bleak wasteland, but there were conditions. Adonis would be forced to be reborn as a human, stripped of his godlike abilities and unable to remember anything of his past life, restarting as a mere infant placed into a random family. The god was cursed. He would only be able to fall in love with one woman, and she would not return his feelings until he died as a mortal.

On the earth plane five thousand and thirty-eight miles away, a newlywed couple was trying to have a baby, but they were having difficulties. The woman couldn't conceive. They tried and tried every night. Still, she couldn't get pregnant. But there wasn't anything wrong with her fertility. She was human; he wasn't.

The man came from a long chain of magical people called Mythics. In ancient Greece, they were prayed to by their mythological name, Mythikós, and were known for creating the bridge between imagination and reality. They were the parents of all things magical, adopted and used by the gods. They were the reason for godly power, the very basis of all life. But very seldom did they fall in love with mortals.