He was so embarrassed. This was ridiculous. It was not going to work. Not at all. All his brothers' grand ideas of just throwing him into crowds of people and letting him talk his way out of them didn't work, he just ended up blushing and stuttering until he was able to shuffle into the shadows and away. So that way a complete and utter failure. His sisters' ideas of trying to get him to talk to them like they were strangers didn't really work either because he knew they were just his sisters. It was hard to pretend they were someone else when they were looking right at him, and smiling... and telling him he was adorable.

That really was what ruined it, wasn't it? That part where when he would start to stammer and get shy that they'd tell him he was cute and just so adorable. It just made it so much worse somehow. He was supposed to be sweet, he supposed. That was part of what he was supposed to do. But talking was supposed to factor in there too at some point. ( That was rather the purpose of being the god of Sweet Talk and Flattery. )

Hedylogos was standing in the temenos, looking at the dressed and adorned statue with not only an affection but a deep level of concentration. There was, unfortunately, a limit to what he could do or say. The temple had been not only rebuilt, but redesigned. It was much larger, much more elegant and even though he had no hand in the planning or the labor involved in the build, he still felt it was not enough. When one considered the great temples of Zeus that graced the known world, this was not sufficient. But, Flattery was limited.

It was unfortunate, he often thought, how women were treated. The mortals saw them as nothing, and in the case of the Athenians, were preferred to not exist as anything other than a birthing machine. The men looked to Zeus, his king, for how to behave. It was why mortal men -especially the Athenians, philandered with frequency, sired bastards as will, sometimes beat their wives and then... sometimes even worse.

( If he ever married, Hedylogos knew he would never be so cruel. )