Vol.5 Ch.31.1 – Pillow Talk I

Chapter 31: Pillow Talk I

Even after welcoming Melinoe into our little group we didn't simply rush off to bed like horny teenagers. Oh, I was fully intent on ravishing her and my other girls but not quite yet. We had all been up for well over a day, with no proper rest and while facing some of the most cataclysmic fights of my entire adventuring career. I was dead tired and the absolute last thing I wanted was to fall asleep in the middle of it and make any of them think I didn't actually desire them.

And so, after the soothing bath and the spectacular dinner we did the thing we often did when we were too exhausted to have sex but not exhausted enough to drop right into bed: We sat in the living room and told stories.

You'd think that after months of having done this we would have run out of stories but even if Anna, Yume and I didn't have a nearly inexhaustible supply of anecdotes to tell, now we had a goddess and a demigoddess along to share their own stories. Even if some of those stories were a little... morbid.

“When I was little I used to treat Tartarus as my own personal playpen,” Melinoe said. “And it only occurred to me much, much later how cruel some of what I did was.”

Tartarus was the part of Hades' realm reserved for punishing sinners and also for keeping the Titans locked up. Given that one of the residents of Tartarus was the Chosen One Ares had given Yume to I was pretty sure that all of the sinners Hades locked up down there deserved it but when it came to the Titans I was less sure of that assessment. Although, to be fair, Hades wasn't the one who had decided to lock the Titans up down there. That had been Zeus' idea, born from the same mind that also thought chaining up Prometheus and letting an eagle peck out his liver every day for all eternity was a perfectly fine punishment for the crime of not wanting the mortals to remain as ignorant beasts.

I didn't mention any of that, however. I didn't want to bring down the mood and so when Alisha, Selene and Yume expressed confusion I let Anna fill in the blanks, who did so with much less vitriol.

“So, what did you do that was so bad?” Alisha asked.

“Well,” Melinoe hedged, her face getting a little red, “I used to climb all over the branches above Tantalus' lake.”

I burst out in laughter.

Alisha tilted her head in confusion and so I explained:

“Tantalus is one of the sinners. His punishment is that he has to stand in a lake, above him branches bearing ripe fruit. Whenever he reaches for the fruit the branches recoil away from him and whenever he leans down to have a drink the water recedes.” I turned to look at Melinoe. “Did you jump up and down on the branches to make him think he had a chance?”

“Sometimes,” Melinoe admitted.

“That's horrible,” Alisha said. “To have fruits right there but unable to reach them. What did he do to deserve that?”

I shut up again. I wasn't wholly sure but if I had the story straight then I didn't want to ruin the mood.

“He killed and cut up his own son, then served him to us Olympians as a feast,” Athena said. Her tone wasn't harsh, but the words were.

“Way to ruin the mood,” I muttered.

“Oh fuck you, Tailor,” she hissed. “Alisha wanted an answer, I gave her one.”

“We have a saying up north,” Selene said. “'Well meant is the opposite of well done.'”

I snorted. I hadn't heard that one before.

Athena looked annoyed, almost upset.

“You need to work on your people skills, Tina,” Melinoe said.

“You never complained about my people skills before,” Athena replied, a touch waspish.

“Oh, it's always bothered me,” Melinoe said, “I just never had occasion to tell you. You weren't exactly sociable back in Olympus.”

Athena's lips pressed into a thin line, though she looked more lost in thought than truly upset.

“Come to think of it,” I said, “none of the Olympians had much to say about you either way. Did you keep to yourself a lot?” I actually surprised myself with how gently I'd asked the question.

“I did,” she said, her tone calm and collected. Thankfully she hadn't taken the question as me needling her.

“Why?” Melinoe asked. “I mean, I have my reasons for staying away from Olympus but you're a proper goddess.”

“I didn't see the point in it,” Athena admitted. “They're all so frivolous, almost none of them take their position seriously, except when they can lord it over the mortals.”

I did not mention that she'd spent a whole lot of time frivolously lording her position over me and I was very proud of myself for it.

“All they want to talk about is their mortal dalliances,” she continued, “and I never saw the point in that.”

“Until now,” Melinoe said with a look over at me.

“Until now,” Athena admitted. “Now I am exactly the same as all of them, drinking, socializing and dallying with mortals... well, with one specific group of mortals at any rate, and now talking to my kin is even more uncomfortable because now I just feel like a hypocrite.”

“No wonder you're so awkward,” I said.

“You're making fun of me again, aren't you?” she asked.

“I'm not,” I said. “You can't relate to mortals because you aren't one. You can't relate to the other gods because you spent so long isolating yourself from them. But then again, you never really had a choice, did you?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Remember that conversation we had in the underworld, about how you came into existence fully grown and didn't have a childhood?”

“Yes...?” she asked hesitantly.

“And now this conversation,” I said. “Every time one of us shared a childhood anecdote you get this weird look on your face. It's not nostalgia like it is for normal people, is it? It's not just that you didn't have a childhood, you can't even fathom the idea of people small and clueless, can you?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I find it impossible to reconcile the foolish stories you shared with the people I see before me. But the people before me weren't the ones who did those foolish things, were they?”

“It's not as simple as that,” I said. “We are who we are now because we had the chance to be idiot kids before.”

“Well, I never had anything like that,” she said. “So what would it have changed?”

“Maybe if you'd been a child coddled by all the Olympians you would have turned out more sociable.”

“Possibly,” Athena allowed.

“Although to be fair,” Melinoe said, “I already like this version of you a lot better than the Athena from before.”

“I don't think I've changed that much,” Athena said.

“Compared to the goddess I met after I took up with Felix, yes you have,” Alisha said. “You've become someone I actually enjoy being around.”

Athena blushed.

“But it does raise the question of how she changed,” I said.

“Because of you, obviously,” Melinoe said.

“It's not that easy,” I said. “Gods are supposed to be influenced by their followers, aren't they? And while I do actually enjoy the new Athena's company, I absolutely don't count myself among her worshipers so it's not due to my influence.”

“You did a pretty good job worshiping her two nights ago,” Alisha muttered. In response I reached out and flicked one of her pointy ears. “Ouch!”

“It's still because of you though,” Selene said.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Selene didn't often get involved in discussions like this but it wasn't because she couldn't follow them. When she chose to get involved her contributions tended to be quite insightful so I was curious.

“Gods are influenced by their followers,” she said. “They change according to how their followers see them.” I nodded. “And we know that Athena spent years complaining to everyone who would listen to her about you. Remember that cleric who came at you with a knife for insulting her?”

I did remember, though from the way Athena flinched I was pretty sure this was the first time she'd ever heard of it.

“So,” Selene continued, “if this has been going on for a while then to her followers it must have looked like she's been getting more emotional over the last few years. And if her followers think that she is getting more emotional...”

“Then she's actually getting more emotional,” I said.

“That doesn't make sense though,” Athena said. “Because the emotions my clerics saw regarding you were anything but positive. If this theory was correct then I should have gotten more and more vicious towards you.”

“You did,” I said, “up until I told you about the Dark Lord of the Black Goat.”

Her lips pressed together.

“And besides,” I said, “as Syr kept telling me regarding you, 'the opposite of love isn't hate but indifference.'”

“What,” Alisha said, “you're saying her followers have been questioning if her obsession with you was truly hatred?” Athena's cheeks were turning red.

“She admits that she never cared much for the physical world,” Selene said, “and then suddenly there's this mortal that she won't stop talking about.”

“It's not an unreasonable assumption,” I said.

“But if that's all true,” Athena said, “am I really the one who is interested in you or is it my worshipers?”

Melinoe gulped. She'd told me before that one reason she didn't mind not being a goddess was that she didn't like the idea of the whims of others affecting her personality. Thankfully, in this situation, I had a clear answer.

“The tether from you to me is entirely separate from the tethers of your followers,” I said. “This obsession came from you, not from them.”

“So you can still see them, can you?”

“I,” I tried to continue but the biggest yawn forced its way out of me. “Yes, I can.”

“Aw,” Alisha said, “are you ti—“ And she, too, let out a great big yawn.

Soon everyone was joining in.

“Bed,” I said. “Sleep. Everything else can wait until tomorrow.”

“Agreed,” Melinoe said, her eyes already half closed.