Free Elysian Dreams by Marie Medina

back and smile after hearing her tell a class it was such a shame I was a womanizing bastard since I was the most ‘fascinating and complex’ of all the Olympians. I was the god of light and truth and healing, but that was negated because I was an asshole. Those were her words. That’s what one of my few real friends thought of me.”
    Aphrodite had the consideration to look pained. “She had no idea it was you. If you were friends, she obviously liked you and cared for you. She didn’t really think those things about you . Do any of us look good? Has anyone even thought of us seriously since Rome became a great power? We weren’t truly their gods. Maybe god is even the wrong word for us. We live forever. So what? Lots of beings are older than us. So many things happened—”
    “This isn’t the point! I don’t give a damn about my place in the universe. I care about what you did to me. You ruined my entire life because I made fun of your son.”
    Aphrodite bit her lip. Her eyes were puffy and watery. He groaned because something about Aphrodite crying always invoked sympathy. It was obviously a power she didn’t fully understand. If she had, she would always have made more of an effort not to cry.
    “I only meant to ruin your day,” she said quietly.
    “And you ruined all my days.”
    “That’s why I wanted to make it right.”
    “Do you really think anyone is going to be happy at the end of all this?”
    She remained silent.
    “I don’t hate you, but I don’t like you at all. You came here to ask me to be careful and give Daphne time? I am. Please leave me alone for now. All right?”
    She nodded and began walking toward the path that would lead her up to Zeus’ palace on the side of Mount Olympus.
    Apollo bent his paperback just enough to get it into his pocket and walked in the opposite direction. He didn’t know where he would go before heading home, but he sincerely hoped he wouldn’t run into anyone else.
    * * * *
    Zeus had never had much interest in epic quests. They made nice stories, but he preferred to do things the easy way. Despite that, he found himself traipsing through the woods far from his palace on Mount Olympus. Unlike his cosmos-pondering brother Hades, he wasn’t interested in finding out if the forest stretched into infinity as the Titans had once told them it did. Anyone or anything with more wisdom, knowledge or power than him could keep it. He had better activities to engage in.
    He would have preferred spending most of the afternoon discovering new uses for Hera’s sex toys, but he hadn’t been able to find her in Olympus. He sighed. He knew he’d had three times as many affairs as she had, but the idea of her losing interest in him again bothered him this time. He’d started to realize it was because she had actual love affairs. Sometimes she slept with someone only a few times, but most of the time the affair would last for several years. He’d never really feared she would fall in love with someone else before, but the idea had started to eat away at him. If he were honest with himself, he had to admit she probably had. He looked at other women all the time and fucked them more often than not. He’d never loved them though.
    The sky above him darkened.
    “Hello, lover.”
    He turned, hoping to see Gaia but knowing he wouldn’t. Nyx stood before him. Her black hair reached to her ankles and flowed behind her in billowing waves. Her eyes were completely black with tiny star-like sparkles in them. Her daughter Eris had similar but more human eyes, black with stars shining only in her pupils and on the edge of the iris but not reaching into the white part. Nyx’s eyes could devour one’s soul, pulling one into the darkness forever. And she stood completely naked, every voluptuous curve proudly on display. Her large breasts looked as inviting as ever.
    “Hello. It’s been a long time.” He waited for her to make the first move. The primal deities often made him