Re: second class smoking room
Hephaestus had never been master. He had been of women his entire life, the two that raised him within the brined air of the sea and the one who held him with the brevity of molten things turned back to natural state. There are kings and champions on Olympus, there is competition and gossip and superiority reigns when Zeus is preoccupied - bird, coins, it doesn’t matter which - but he crowned victors without comment, was no challenger. He had sunk into preoccupation, the heavy head very low. The fabric of the chair was beyond singed now, it was beginning to smoke dangerously with a smell of burned feathers.
“Do you live by managing to live?” There was no ill-will in the question. The vulcan was no miser, he lived in the forge but that world was not silent, it heaved with hot air, the stench of sweat and the pounding of metal reshaped. No war-maker, he fit the weapons for their hands as often as he made the torques for their throats, the delicacies to dangle at their ears and delight them. His smile was a crevasse to fall into, the composure of eons. “Gods are fickle. Do you have a woman?” Or a man. Pederasty was common on Olympus, a cupbearer was never safe. Ganymede set himself on pots and in the stories for it.
He looked at the mortal and a little of the gloom lifted like volcanic ash sifting free. “There are always women and men. Love affairs are stories for mortals and gods both.”