At the last possible moment Melinoe ducked and hid out of the way, hunching down until she was almost but not quite sitting on the floor between two walls meeting in a corner. She covered her mouth and nose and breathed with deliberate softness, watching the god pass by with glinty little eyes. In the short time that she’d observed him she’d settled on three things. He truly loved sweet things, he was incredibly sleepy and he must have been a relation of Phobetor and Thanatos. From then on came the only logical conclusion; this was Hypnos’s temple, and the god walking away was Hypnos himself.
Though politics were still some years beyond her grasp, she did understand there was a hierarchy in the Underworld and the planes beyond it, certain jobs relegated to certain people. Not everyone was on equal footing with the shades. They all performed different tasks, they all had different purposes in life. Phobetor and his brothers were dreams and nightmares, Thanatos and others like him were death, her mother was spring, her grandmother was the harvest that sustained mortals, the list was endless. So she knew of Hypnos. Of his existence. Though he had, up until that moment, been a nebulous figure of no interest. He still wasn’t, exactly, he didn’t strike Melinoe as the particularly fun type. But who knew what she could learn from him?
She inhaled slowly, and turned her head unfailingly back in the direction of the kitchen. Actually. She was hungry, and not without something of a sweet tooth herself. Browsing through someone else’s kitchen and taking their things was a far different line than indulging in a little curiosity, however, so she refrained. Yet in the end indecision could only allay the inevitable rationalization that if she wanted something, she’d simply have to ask first. It was the civil thing to do and she’d also decided that an introduction was overdue. She knew his children and she knew his brother, it was time she met the god himself. Before he fell asleep.
Melinoe put a hand against the nearest wall and pushed herself upright once more, following after the scent of apple mint unfailingly until she caught up to him a couple of turns later. She cleared her throat, stopping right behind the god. “May I have tea?” She toyed with the hem of the chiton, considering. Perhaps she should have started with the introduction first.