Re: second class smoking room
Who was he? Hephaestus thought of prophecies written in bone and fire, whispered to priestesses in the flutter of leaves in dead rock, prophecies torn up in blood. He was the cuckold fire-god, bastard son of a king who amused himself with the wives of his siblings, who combed through his daughters for fantasies to fuck. He was the punchline to a joke forever told in paintings and poetry and the ashen smoke, bitter curling from where his fingers clenched on the chair was forgotten, lost in ambiguity.
“Hephaestus,” he said, gravel and rock grinding together, the deep heat of molten glass. “I am Hephaestus.” It was true. But he was not asked often. He was told; bring me this and make me that, marry a goddess who loves another, get out of my sight. Asking was novelty. The mortal (and he was mortal, something perched on his nose to make sight better - and none of the arrogance of a god) was a novelty.