WHO: Aphrodite & Hephaestus WHEN: Ancient Greece WHAT: The first meeting of new husband and wife.
Twenty-four hours ago, Aphrodite hadn't even existed. She was the product of a mighty battle between gods, Cronus castrating his father Uranus and throwing his genitals to the sea. For a long time that discarded part had floated on the waves, nothing but immortal flesh for years upon years, but eventually the seafoam around it took form and become a woman-shaped thing.
The Erinyes took flight long before Aphrodite was ready to be born, formed from blood as she was formed from stirred form, her only true sisters.
Her first breath was taken of water and her second of air, a goddess of both worlds from the very start. By her third breath she knew who she was and what she had been born for. After her fourth breath a scallop shell rose from the bed of the ocean and gave her her footing.
And that was how she came to shore, standing upon that shell, naked and wet and knowing yet unknowing. Old Gods had fallen and New Gods had risen, the time of the Olympians now at hand. She was unsurprised when all of them wanted to own her. She was born with the knowledge that men would want her, that men would start wars for her, kill for her, die for her. She was Aphrodite Urania and Aphrodite Pandemos and gods and men would throw themselves on their swords just to once kiss her lips.
It was Zeus, even though hazy lust, who recognised the dangers of such beauty. With one breath he made her an Olympian and with the next he gave her in marriage to Hephaestus. Zeus would have no beauty bring discord among the gods, safer to wed her to the deformed one.
She didn't know what deformed meant yet. She knew only beauty and perfection so far, the idea that there were things unlike that was foreign to her. For newborn Aphrodite the whole world was without flaws, a thing worthy of her own beauty. The Gods and Goddesses were each beautiful themselves, creatures worthy of her presence.
So by the goddesses she was clad in a dress like their own and by Zeus she was taken to the home of Hephaestus and told that it would be hers as well. It was dark and dirty and she didn't like that. She couldn't see the sea from where she stood.
All there was now was to await her husband's return.