WHO Luna WHEN Wednesday WHAT It's fine, it's healthy levels of obsession.
The wall of Luna's living room had taken on a drastic redesign over the last two days, but Luna felt finished with it now as she stood against the opposite wall to take it all in. The people at the copy center down the street thought, perhaps, that Luna was doing some sort of art project. In a way, she was.
The plain pale yellow of the wall was now plastered in papers, of various shapes and sizes - and a cardboard box nearby was piled with the offcuts that were unneeded. It was not just depictions of Hermes - from both ancient and modern artists - but also pictures of those things he held domain over: there was a photo of a crowded busy mall, of two hands exchanging money, of long roads that stretched out through deserts and trees, of banquet tables piled high, of people working out in gyms. There were locked doors with antique keys, and open doorways, and atlases, and letters. There were photos of rams and hawks, and of strawberry trees and crocuses, of calendar pages and star charts and the planet Mercury. And between all these pictures were the handwritten notes Luna had made, all in her finest handwriting - the writing of the words was a form of worship in itself, and not one part of this project she had done without letting her mind remain on Hermes and her purpose.
One piece of fine card read ΞΞ·ΟΞ±Ξ½ΞΉΟΟΞ·Ο, trickster, and that piece she connected with two twisted gold threads to a picture of playing cards, and to a picture of his winged feet. ΞΞ±ΞΉΟ αΌΟΞ±ΞΉΟΞΏΟ (Comrade of the Feast) she connected to the various banquet images. ΞΟΞΉΞΊΟ Ξ΄Ξ·Ο - Splendid - ended up being connected in gold to five different images.
She wrote out his classical hymns in full and posted them up, and then rewrote different sections and filled spaces where they looked appropriate. She wrote her own prayers and hymns with more modern ideas of his domains.
And now, looking at it all, Luna tried not to think she might look like an exhausted detective hoping to solve her final case before she could retire.
The thread was gold, after all. Red was for crime walls. Gold was devotional.
The purpose of the wall was to help her focus, a vision board of sorts, and beneath it was where Luna set up her new altar. It would need more things to go on it, too sparse to currently really be an altar of any worth. She'd hit the pagan shops tomorrow and find most of the things she needed. Ideally she would put a large Hermes statue in the center, but she'd need to find that first. It would need to feel right.
But Luna knelt before it tonight and prayed, deeply and fervently, before getting back up to her feet.
She had one more task for this evening, and it was probably better to do now that it was starting to get dark.
From the kitchen table she grabbed a heavy bag of papers and a staple gun, locking her door behind her. "Hermes, protector of homes," she whispered as she turned the key. "Keep safe this place of mine. Keep locked my doors. Keep your blessings upon me."
(Never mind that the whole problem right now was that Hermes' blessings weren't upon her. Luna was taking every single opportunity to pray.)
Downstairs she walked a block away from her house, and then on a telephone pole she pulled a sheet of paper from the bag and stapled it down, the staple gun feeling very satisfying when it went off.
Luna was not a graphic designer - not even a little - but she could find her way around photoshop. Or, at least enough to put together this letter-sized poster she was planning to put up everywhere.
Luna had two hundred of them ready to go up across the city, although it was going to be the job of more than one night.
(By the end of the night she would get more of them put up than expected, all over Manhattan and a bit of Brooklyn. She would jump on and off trains, feeling compelled to keep going until it was late into the night.)