Shiri Eneas (pensivxpression) wrote in olympian_rewind, @ 2010-04-07 19:39:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | adam jenkins, polyhymnia, shiri eneas |
Who: Adam & Shiri
What: Aftermath
Where: A room in Hestia's house
When: Backdated. 2/23/2010. Immediately after this message was sent
Warnings: none
Polyhymnia sat on the edge of the bed in the room her aunt had provided in quiet shock as she read over again and again the message on her phone. Her glamour was partially dropped. Worship was soon, she could almost feel it in the air but her eyes couldn't move from the little screen on her phone. Instead of watching Adam prepare, she read the message again, her heart and its quickened beat felt like it was caught way up in her throat.
Her father was dead. Whether or not it was permanent, it still made her shiver. The shiver forced the rest of her glamour away, revealing the scar along her paled throat that she now worried with her free hand as she used the other to scroll the message again. She had been made painfully aware of the ability of gods to die but this was quite a reminder.
Her voice hushed, she didn't even know she was speaking, “This is the fate of those who trust in themselves, and of their followers, who approve their sayings. Like sheep they are destined for the grave, and death will feed on them. The upright will rule over them in the morning; their forms will decay in the grave, far from their princely mansions...”
Adam blinked at his girlfriend's words, and turned from unpacking the box before him. This was... odd. He had ignored his phone and most other things, so he didn't even know if it had beeped or rang. Now though, he stood and went to the bed, sitting beside Polyhymnia and stroking her back lightly. "What's wrong?"
"... Like the beasts that are destroyed..." she murmured in reply as she stared through her phone and through its little bright screen before tossing it aside on the bed and regaining her own thoughts. No more auto-pilot. Polyhymnia returned to the real world and the present at her priest's touch, "Daddy is dead. He died." A frown instantly consumed her features. "I feel like a monster."
"Died?" He knew he was kidnapped, since that was the whole reason for the lock down of sorts. And it made sense if he was injured or held hostage or something but... "How could he die?" The concept simply couldn't form itself.
The concept perfectly formed itself in her mind, especially as she continued to worry the scar along her throat. "Yes, died. I am sure Hades, lord of death, knows how to tell if he was dead. Someone greater than he obviously took his life. It can happen."
Zeus, dead. The mortal frowned, his had pausing in its actions as he considered this. He hadn't been close to his father, but it had happened to another side of family to him. Now that father was dead. He sat there, trying to absorb it, sitting still and quiet.
She noticed his stillness and put an arm around him. It was his father, too. Easing closer to him, she whispered into his ear, "The Dread One did say temporary. May he can bring him back."
"Hmm?" He turned to look at her, her words needing to make sense in his mind before he could nod.
"The Dread One... Hades," she replied slowly, "He said temporary. Maybe it is possible to bring back the dead still." Shiri didn't especially believe that. Her fear of death was too great to allow an escape like that to exist in her mind, but when it was written in black and white, she would easily repeat it just the same.
"Like zombies?" he blurted without thinking. Somehow that was just the first thing that came to mind, along with the thought of his father as a zombie. Quickly he shook his head. He couldn't see Hades doing that. "Sorry. How would he bring him back?"
Shiri pushed away from him with a shudder. Her father as a zombie was never going to get out of her head now. Never ever. She leapt to her feet with a glare, abet a gentle one. "Well now I feel a little less like a monster when you are imagining him as a zombie."
"You said bring back the dead, and that's the closest reference that I had." He shrugged, and then stood so that he could wrap his arms around her, trying to be comforting. "Sorry."
She leaned against him with a sigh, accepting the comfort. "Then I go back to feeling like a monster. I was so annoyed at him for being kidnapped. Now he is dead."
Gently he rubbed her back and placed a kiss to the top of her head. The idea of his father being dead didn't seem real. "I'm sure he was pretty annoyed with being kidnapped, too. I can't see him really planning it."
"Yes, but I blamed him like he had. Like he had planned it just to inconvenience me." She sighed a little against his throat and clung lightly to his shirt. Her mind flashed back to him flying her home after finding out her secret, holding her as she fell asleep. In her moment of need, he had shown mercy. In his, she had only been annoyed. The realization made her pull away from Adam and turn her back in a moment of self-seclusion.
Adam dropped his hands to the side, then turned and sat on the bed, letting her have her space. She wouldn't have pulled away otherwise. Slowly he rubbed his hands together, not fully sure what to do with himself. The death of a father wasn't something that could just be kissed and made better. For either of them.
"I was so ready to never see him again. Not to see anyone again. I spent centuries accepting that fact. When I found him I told him to stay away from me..." Polyhymnia sighed a little and lowered to her knees in the middle of the floor with a gentle but depressed grace. Now she probably never would see him again. He was out of her life, his tongue silenced and his wrath quenched. She got everything she had asked for.
Her eyes slipped shut, "They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills. Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence. From their callous hearts comes iniquity;
the evil conceits of their minds know no limits. They scoff, and speak with malice; in their arrogance they threaten oppression. Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth. Therefore their people turn to them and drink up waters in abundance... How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors..."
He listened to her words, sitting there on the edge of the bed, but he could think of nothing to say. Later he could mention the 'he knows you love him' and other comforting words, but just now, they weren't at hand. He had barely known his father, but they were at least talking, and he was making some kind of effort. He didn't know the words that Shiri seemed to be quoting, but he let the sound fill the space of the room for the both of them. It was the most he could do just then.
She didn't especially want them to fill the room. Her words, the quoted psalms terrified her on a number of levels. She fought the natural instinct to look to the sky. The action in this very moment was wrong - her father, the Sky King, was dead and the one who did own the skies now was not where she wished to direct her gaze even though she was quoting His poems as fulfilled prophecy. Instead, she looked over her shoulder to her priest, lover and brother, "Come to me."
Glancing up, Adam paused for only a moment, then moved himself to the floor and sat beside her, cross legged. He looked to her, wondering what she intended.
Truthfully, she intended nothing; she simply wanted him near. Her self-imposed isolation was over and her social spirit now demanded another. With a heavy sigh, the muse in her natural appearance shifted and laid down, resting her head against his thigh and looking up to him in all her uncertainty and vulnerability. But her words held none of those sentiments, they were firm, "The world moves on. It is completely out of our hands."
"We aren't unaffected by it," he answered. Lifting his hand, he brushed back her hair, lightly petting it to give himself an action. There wasn't anything they could do about what happened to their father, but it was unexpected, and there were a number of things that hadn't been done. And now, wouldn't.
She reached up and touched his cheek with a frown. They had been together for more than two years. Sometimes his thoughts reflected against his eyes in a way she could read, the same as musical notes on a staff. In fact, they looked much the same to her. "It is not your fault that you did not pay so much time with him."
Often, Adam had no reason to be hard to read. He watched his girlfriend's eyes in return, and pressed into her touch. "I didn't exactly seek him out." He hadn't ever felt much of a need to.
She rubbed his cheek with her thumb in complete tenderness. "Adam, you told him you existed and where you were. You were the child abandoned by him. He should have sought you out." Sighing lightly, her hand fell away from him as her eyes closed, "At least you did not tell him to stay out of your life. I told him that to his face... More than once."
"But he didn't. He still liked to know what his children were doing." His hand shifted to rest against her stomach, feeling the rise and fall with her breathing, a calm reassurance of her presence and life.
"Only after a lot of fighting and butting heads. It was a hard road to me letting him close to me." In the end, how foolish had it been? He had been merciful to her. Not that that gave her any hope when it came to other people whom she loved and their reactions. She assumed the worst from them and every passing day, she assumed even worse. But that thought was for another time. Almost sensing how he was being assured, she took up a little bit of her glamour again - the part that hid the scar along her throat - but still laid there in her natural form along his thigh, looking up to him, her curled white hair spread out over his leg, "A lot of wasted time. Now that I think about it, how he was with you is similar to how he was with us all. A good, proud father when we were in his midst, and out of sight/out of mind when not. I guess it is hard to balance time with countless children." She wished she was exaggerating with her estimate but she doubted she was.
"He had a lot of things to do. And we each have our own lives to." He watched the subtle change on her skin, and continued his touch at her stomach. His other hand caught a few strands of her hair and lightly twisted them, then let them drop.
"He probably would not want us to dwell too much. Probably would rather us keep moving forward, especially you with your limited time..." Her words trailed off though as she became unsure of that. He would either want that or would want deep, extreme mourning -- tearing of clothing, wailing, dirges, ash on the skin. The whole deal. But that was so much effort and selfishly, she simply didn't want to rip her clothing and put dark ash on her pale skin, even for her father.
Adam closed his eyes after her words, and leaned back on one arm, letting the one at her stomach stay. He hadn't needed any reminder that he would one day die, but the end had seemed a distant and vague thing. His father, now that he knew him to be a god, was now the one dead, and even if he hadn't been, his mortal form died young. So Adam said the first thing that came to mind. "Maybe it's time I quit the bar."
Polyhymnia blinked at his reply. What did he just say? Had he just said he wanted to quit the bar? She closed her eyes and nuzzled against his thigh as a cover, "What was that?"
He shrugged slightly, opened his eyes and glanced down at her. "Maybe it's time I quit working at the bar."
Switch. All the muse's emotions switched immediately from somber depression to giddy glee but she was perfectly aware of them and so kept the giggle from her lips and the smile from her face Her only give away was the quickening of her heart beat but that was a muted murmur to his hand along her stomach. Calm. Calm. Polyhymnia knew she had to play this cool and slowly she opened her eyes and brought her hand back along his cheek softly, "It does seem time for you to move from that part of your life..."
A small smile quirked the corner of his lips. He knew she wanted him to quit completely for a long time, but now, somehow, it seemed right. He wouldn't live forever, and his father had supported his art. Maybe it was time to stop shuffling and relying so much on the income from the bar. He'd been there long enough to see just about everything, and little seemed new. Might as well start working on putting it to use. He pressed slightly to her hand. "It'll worry mom." ... That was someone else who would, eventually, need to be told.
She petted him lightly along his cheek as he did so, seeing the smirk. So, she had been busted after all, just as not nearly as busted as if she had jumped up saying "Whee!" like she had wanted to do. Perfectly calm and collected she kept her eyes locked on him, "His death or you quitting the bar?"
He lifted his eyebrows and considered. "Both." And it was true. Kathy hadn't exactly had much of a chance to really meet the father of her son again. She didn't need to, but it would have been nice.
"Tell her you have faith that you can succeed in your art without needing the safety net of the bar any longer." The muse smiled slightly at her choices of words, chosen purposely. It had always been one of the greatest reasons why she had wanted him out of that bar and focusing -- using it as a safety net made her feel like he lacked faith that he would succeed. But telling Kathy about the death brought an interesting new twist to this, "I do wonder if and when your father will be declared dead..."
"Soon, I hope..." It would make things a lot easier all around if he could say 'my father died' rather than 'my father was kidnapped and we think he's dead'. It would also make it better when leaving the bar. Cliche as it was, the death of a parent did tend to prompt people to make life choices to seize the moment. Or for Adam, take the leap into art. Pulling his hand off Polyhymnia's stomach, he laid down on the floor, one arm behind his head, and closed his eyes. It was a lot to take in.
In one fluid motion, Polyhymnia shifted and placed her head against his chest and over his heart to listen its beating. The steady thumping would be a nice drum to the sympathy of hidden glee that had conquered her sorrow for the moment at the loss of her father. Her mortal was finally giving in to her. At least Zeus hadn't died for nothing now in her mind. "What do you want to do?'
"Hmm?" Do? He wasn't sure if she meant now, or in context to coping, or something else entirely. He'd been preparing for their normal Tuesday night, but it was clear that he wouldn't be nearly into it as much as he normally was. Or did she mean in relation to his art? He laid with his eyes closed, and shifted one hand to rest against her.
Ooh, tucked so close against him, she could almost feel his thoughts mediating and pondering on what her question could mean. For the muse of mediation, it was like being offered a bit of candy to sate her and that fact was why she didn't change the question in any way. Let it be vague. "What do you want to do?"
He continued to consider for a few moments, then shrugged slightly. He didn't know what he wanted to do. At the moment, he didn't feel much like moving or doing anything. He was trying to wrap his head around the news and understand what had happened as best he could. "Let's just stay like this for right now," he suggested, phrasing it openly for her input.
Polyhymnia nodded, craning her neck just slightly to kiss his chin before reclaiming her glamour completely. The goddess in her true nature was hidden back again under the Hazara college student still tucked to his chest. She would give him dispensation from the holy night tonight. Death of a father seemed like a good reason, even though the worship would probably have made her feel better about all of it. But she had had her comfort from Adam tonight already. He was quitting the bar. Sometimes, not everything was all about her. "Whatever you wish, Adam."
A slow breath was released, as the mortal let himself relax against the floor. Maybe they'd need to move to the bed to be more comfortable, but for just now, he wanted most to just lay with his eyes closed, his girlfriend at his side, and let his thoughts wander. He didn't want to have to think about anything specific. It was how he would best come to accept his father's death. "Thank you."
Summary: Shiri and Adam find out Zeus died. They both have to come to terms.