Glamour § Gold // Sheith

1. A Child's Memory

"Coran!" A boy with obsidian eyes shrilled as he scrambled into his room, eyes filled with tears. The household God rushed to his side and sat the boy down on his bed. The God's eyebrows shrug in confusion.

"Oh, Keith. What happened?" The little boy sniffled whilst he stared at the floor of his home.

"Some of the other boys said you weren't real. They said I was playing. I-I tried to stand up for you, but they wouldn't listen." The God's heart filled with adoration as he tried to soothe the young boy.

"Listen carefully, Keith." He spake. "Not everyone is going to believe you have a friend that's a God. They'll think you're lying or joking," The God straightened Keith's white tunic with a stoic face. "and then you'll really be upset. So, here's what I'm gonna do." The boy looked on with obvious interest at his friend.

"I'm going to tell you about my friends." Keith gasped before he could shut his mouth, clamping his hands over his lips tightly as an afterthought.

"But isn't that a big no-no?" The God only smiled.

"I'm sure Apollo and Cupid won't mind if I share a little knowledge." Coran winked, and filled the boy's head with stories of Gods and Goddesses for hours on end. When the boy was put to sleep, a question rose from his lips; a question that Coran didn't expect Keith would want an answer to.

"Are there any lonely Gods?" Coran blinked back in answer. He sat on Keith's bed to think, because he really wasn't sure. He knows that many of the Gods had friends and that many found solace in silence. After a minute or two, a certain God crossed Coran's mind. He bit his lip with a tidbit of anxiety before answering the boy's question.

"Yes," He paused. "Yes I do." Coran sighed and frowned deeply at the small child. "Are you sure you want to know about him? He's quite different." Keith only nodded his confirmation.

Coran smiled bitterly at his enthusiasm. "His name is Erebus; He's the God of Darkness." Keith's eyes widened in understanding. "His ex-wife, Nyx, brings the night sky. We used to see a lot of him, but Jupiter and Erebus had a fallout. They were close before the war."

"They're distant memories to each other now." Coran cleared his throat at the stare he received from Keith. "Erebus is quite lonely, I'm afraid." Keith's eyebrows furrow.

"Does he have any friends he talks to? Like you?" The small boy questioned.

"After Jupiter's judgement was passed by Justitia, no one went near him. He has no friends." That was the moment Coran knew Keith was going to be different than all the other little boys and girls who asked about the Gods and Goddesses; He knew Keith would be different.

"Well," Keith retorted indignantly. "I'll be his friend. His best friend." The flame inside of Keith sparked to life then, showing through obsidian eyes while he stared up at the night sky. "He's been lonely long enough. Don't you think so?" Coran smiled wide.

"Why he sure has. I bet that if you talk to him every night, he might just know that he's not lonely anymore." Keith gasped and grinned so wide his cheeks looked pained.

"Really?! Do you pinky promise, Coran?!" Coran took the small boy's pinkie with his own and smiled brightly at Keith.

"Double pinkie promise." With that, Coran left Keith's room, but not before he heard a soft, 'Hello, I'm Keith'.

***

Days became weeks and weeks became months; the penate God  continued to tell all sorts of stories about the Gods and Goddess Keith knew all too well. Apollo, Cupid, Faunus, Justitia, and even some of their little ramblings about the people nowadays. Apollo didn't care for how rude most of them were, but he found a new skillset; cooking. Cupid found it was harder to push two people together than it had been originally. Faunus wasn't too happy about how humans treated their nature. Justitia wasn't finding much Justice in the world, but that couldn't be helped.

He didn't speak of Erebus, however. Keith wanted him too, Gods, did he want him to say one thing about the God in question. However, Coran never did, and irritation placed itself in Keith's chest. So every night, he would sit beside his window sill and stare into the abyss, asking the sky and stars all his questions about Erebus.

He wanted to know more about the mystic being. He would ask simple, belittling questions, but in Keith's mind, they were get-to-know-me questions; questions about a person that everyone should be aware of. Sure, Erebus was the keeper of darkness, but that sounded lonely. Then again, Keith didn't know about any tiny details that could make it fun. Maybe he controlled shadows, maybe he controlled the smoke and fog that curled at his feet during the winter; Maybe Erebus had amazing patience because of his entitlement.

He would never know. It was better to ask his questions, hope for answer, and then sleep. Days turned into months as the boy continued this nightly routine. Years started to pass, but he kept the consistency. He would talk to the sky, hoping Erebus heard him. After many years, Keith started to lose interest.

He kept asking the sky questions, but he stopped talking about his day altogether. There wasn't anything to talk about. As he grew up, the friends he had as a child became distant and were an afterthought. He didn't have a day to talk about because he, himself, had become lonely as well. He had become a hot-headed, defensive introvert who only talked to one thing; the sky.

The night after Keith became a citizen, he asked the sky one final question. His first and last question to the sky as an adult. However, once he started, he couldn't stopped. Emotion flowed into his voice from the pain he felt in his heart from the betrayal of never having an answer from the most lonely God.

"Are you even listening?" The man whispered to the sky. "Do you even exist?!" Keith yelled. "Show me, that you exist. Show me, that you know all the things I told you about." His eyes narrowed in anger from the lack of an answer from the black sky. "Show me you're real, Erebus. Show me!" Anger slipped into his voice as he yelled at the sky. When he received no answer, he broke as he fell to his knees.

"I promised I would be your best friend, Erebus. I promised," He broke off, trying to calm his racing heart. "You, obviously never cared, otherwise you would've talked to me! You would've saved me my damn sanity!" With that, Keith stormed out of his room and out into the streets of Rome. He walked and walked until the soles of his sandals were ruined.

When he stopped to look around, his eyes widened in horror. He had walked all the way to the sea. The stars of the sky reflected on the water's surface, the moon shining down on his own skin. He dropped to his knees in the sand and started to cry. He mourned the loss of whatever he thought he'd had with the God who only received and never gave.

He mourned his most embarrassing stories that he spake of. He hoped those got a good laugh, even if he never got an answer from Erebus. It's not everyday that someone pulls your tunic over your head and hooks it into your hair.

Keith gazed up at the sky, watching the stars for hours before his eyes became heavy with sleep. As his eyes shut, a voice echoed in his mind as a presence settled in behind him. His eyes shut as darkness surrounded and enraptured him, body and soul. The voice whispered into his ear as he fell into a deep slumber.

"I promise to take care of you, Keith."

***

Okay that's the first chapter. Wow. I'm...so excited to write this. The reason the entire chapter is in italics is because I was focusing on a memory from Keith and it's a flashback of sorts. I hope you enjoyed this chapter and the next one will be here shortly. Thanks for reading!