We Bent Fate

Chapter 34

MARTHA

"Sit here and don't touch anything," said Athena as she took off her leather jacket and fanned her face dramatically, revealing her tanned skin from under the top. She smirked at me when she caught me staring at her and I shifted in my red heart-shaped chair.

"Ma'am, Goddess is busy right now. She will see you in a while." A blonde girl told us and offered us water. Athena nodded at her and I silently watched Athena's eyes following the girl going out of the room.

"Isn't she hot?" Athena wiggled her eyebrows at me and I nodded and then shook my head, unable to decide what to say.

"She is beautiful," I admitted.

"Do you know she is a robot?" Athena said and I looked at her, stunned. Athena smirked.

I focused my eyes on the red and pink light blinking overhead which read out Matched- the workshop where Eros, Anteros and their other siblings work under Aphrodite to match people's life threads and get them romantically attached by one another.

When I raised my eyes, I found Athena's blue eyes glowering down at me and I tried to maintain the eye contact but failed. She smiled, her expressions softening.

"Hey, come on. Say something. Do you not remember how I had taken your lessons to be merciless and dreadful when you were a little one? You obviously didn't learn much." Her face turned in something distasteful. "Say something." She again insisted.

"I really wished that you guys would understand me."

"But what you did was wrong." She glared at me. "You channelled an energy that will instantly make you stronger than the others."

"How-" I was about to ask when the blonde lady entered again.

"Goddess will see you now. This way."

We silently obeyed the robot as she led us through a long corridor of pink painted walls and to a small familiar chamber where I remembered myself going as a child to listen to love stories.

"They are here." The robot smiled at Aphrodite who was probably sitting inside right now and I tried to focus on how naturally the robot acted like a normal being rather than dreading about all the things that were going to happen.

"Bring them to me." I heard her familiar sweet voice and I let out a shudder-y sigh to subside the tension growing warm on me. I was quietly ushered inside the chamber and it was in the same way in which I had seen it last. It was made of mirrors; mirrors mapping on each wall in an array.

My eyes landed on the Goddess and I felt like I was knocked down with a feather, my eyes on stalks as I watched her. She has always been the most prettiest and the fairest among all. Her blonde hair toppled around her shoulders like honey, matching her soft peach complexion and her red lips curled into a small smirk when she saw me eyeing her, giving her cheeks the kind of puff, and the natural blush that almost every teenager girl would want to have.

"Hello, Martha." She spoke softly. "Long time, no see."

She battled her eyelashes coyly as she cocked her head to a side and smirked at me. Long time, indeed. The last time I saw her was in the court where she had come up with that brilliant plan of hers to make me kill Austin. I clenched my jaw tightly as I glared at her, my eyes never leaving her blue ones.

"Come. Sit beside me!" She scooted a little to my left, leaving enough space for me to sit on her massive red couch.

I trailed my eyes over her and then at the empty space next to her, weighing my options. Slowly, I took two small steps and sat timidly next to her.

"Do you remember coming here daily to play with Eros and Anteros?" She suddenly asked and a quip of a pain flashed inside my chest. Those were the good days!

I nodded and her smile brightened.

"Do you still like love stories?" She giggled like there was something funny. "I had thought that you would at least be smart enough to figure out that love stories don't always end up happily. We get to decide that. I should be the one to decide that."

I felt the last straw of my patience finally withering away and I asked, "So?"

"Did it never occur to you how you fell in love, and that too with a mortal, even when it is clearly mentioned in your fate that you are meant to remain single forever? You know that fates never waver, don't you?"

"What is your point? Why am I here?" I yammered out in frustration.

She fixed her eyes on me so much so that I couldn't shake off myself from her gaze even when I wanted to. Her features hardened with an evil glint in her eyes as she gave me another one of her warm friendly smiles.

"I want to tell you a story." She strayed her eyes away from me and then in the space in the midair. I gave her a dirty look and followed her gaze with a frown.

"What story? I am not here to listen to a story."

"What are you here for, Martha?" She looked at me expectantly.

"You tell me. I saw you in my dreams and-"

"That is exactly what I am telling you, Martha. Let us not waste anymore time." She said and I stiffened beside her.

This is it. I am finally going to get my answers.

Her eyes closed momentarily and then she breathed out and peeled them open. I couldn't see laughter or happiness in her eyes, neither could I find any traces of smiles twitching her moist full red lips. Instead she appeared estranged yet at peace. Her sockets darkened into inky blue pools as she stole a glance at me and smirked.

"Don't worry. You are going to love this one. It is a love story, after all." Her smile faded a little and her lashes closed around her pupils as if in meditation. "A tragic ending, but a love story still. You clearly must have loved it when you read this one!"

"I have read this story, already?"

"Of course, you have! Martha, it is to die for." She winked at me and I loured at her.

She cleared her throat like she would always do before narrating a love story and I waited impatiently for her to communicate the language of dreams into rich emotion, imagery and metaphor.

I waited for her words to come and weave a story in my mind through a dream talk, into a prose as naturally as a bird build its nest.