sixthiterationlogs | " I closed my eyes. If I had been a mortal, I would have heard the beating of my heart."

Entry tags:

" I closed my eyes. If I had been a mortal, I would have heard the beating of my heart."

WHO: Circe
WHERE: The village, the woods
WHEN: 6/3
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Mentions of mortality and death

The Village

Fear was rare in the gods and it was always over the unknown. For Circe, the moment that fear came to her was not when she climbed out of the fountain and found herself in a different realm, it was when she heard the sound of her heart and felt blood racing through her veins. Mortality was a concept she had thought of and considered, but never experienced and not in such a jarring way. It was almost as though she were living Glaucus' tale, she fell asleep and was changed. But she knew the reason behind his transformation. Had she done this to herself?

As she had when she arrived on Aiaiai, she had needed a day to curl in her room and let her fears pass before she explored and accepted her home. This was no difference. She disappeared after her arrival, preferring the woods to the village. She had found a mossy bank surrounded by strange flowers, wrapped herself into a ball and slept.

When the morning came, she was dry, the strange bracelet was still on her wrist and she could still hear her heartbeat. This wasn't a dream and she couldn't allow herself to cry herself until she became a tree or stone. Resolved, Circe pushed herself from her hideaway and trailed back towards the village. There was more life now, something that she hadn't seen the night before. There were animals, the sound of others working and mortals tilling in the fields.

She watched at a distance for a time, trying to decide whether this was some set prepared by the Olympians or some new punishment devised for her by the Fates. Had Aeetes cast some spell? It seemed unlikely and her intuition said no. With that simple reassurance, she pushed herself to find an empty home, assuming that it was for them to choose, ready and prepared for them. There was one near the riverbank that she liked, close to what looked like a Mill.

It was empty and dirty, unlike the mansion she had been given during her exile, though this meant little. It gave her something to focus on instead. She pulled her pant legs up to her knee and tied her hair into a loose braid, ready to work. The rooms needed dusting and there were paw prints from animals, she would have to find something to hunt the predators (as well as provide company.) Much of the plumbing was foreign to her, but that didn't matter in the moment.

She took the linens from the bedroom, washing them in the nearby river. There was a stone she could use to beat the sheets with, but this needed someone else to help her lay out the linens against larger stones. She scanned the path, curious and hesitant. Still, being shy and hanging her head would do her no good now. Summoning that same courage her powers had given her before, she called out to a passing mortal. "Could you come help me?" Not a demand, that was where the gods would mock her. "I need another set of hands if I hope to get these dry before the sun goes down."

The Forest

Her second day in the village was to clean her home, the third was to rebuild the garden that she had left behind in Aiaiai. She hadn't taken the time to explore the woods after she arrived, wanting to rest and let everything sink in (though she still had no answers). Most of the plants in the village gardens and fields were familiar to her, as hundreds of cultivating them allowed. But there were different flowers and vines in the forest that she didn't recognize. They didn't sing to her as her garden had, another unfriendly reminder of the magic she had lost. The creatures were different as well. There were no boars or wolves to keep her company, only strange amalgamations of two different types of animals. It left her questioning whether this was Zeus' personal playground, the place where his monsters could grow, but that seemed unlikely.

There were hostile creatures and others that were hesitant, but a few friendlier animals approached her. By the time of late afternoon, she had found a small collection of beasts to take back with her. Something that was pink and resembled a type of sheep, an animal that jumped as high as a goat but looked close to an elk, a weird crocodile/dog mesh and a cat with peacock feathers. They regarded her in different terms, but they were enticed enough to follow, both by treats, kind words and simply curiosity.

With a full basket, she was nearing the forest's edge, animals in tow. It was only the sudden snapping of a branch that nearly made them all disperse and run back into the wild. "No, don't be afraid!" She turned, dropping her basket as she knelt to try and lure them back towards her. "It's only a mortal. There's nothing to fear. They won't hurt you." She looked over her shoulder towards the figure. "Stay still. They don't know to trust you yet."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"You are a king?" It shouldn't have surprised her. Given his temperament and manner, she had assumed he had lived a hard life, not only in terms of difficulty but also the toil he must have endured. If he was a king, he didn't live in finery and indulgence. "Were you born a king or became a king?" That was always the difference.

That was a different sort of bond than she had, but clearly still steeped in magic. He was no pharmakis, but it was possible that he had been touched by the gods in some way. Great men often were. "Sleep and dreams are more novelty for my kind. It doesn't have the same meaning as it does with mortals. But my lion is loyal and powerful, as are many of the animals on my island."

"Became a king," Jon said quickly, not wanting her to have any impression to the contrary. He'd been crowned after a battle, not by birth, and he knew that the crown he had meant nothing here. He didn't know how kings born to the throne would feel about that but that's how he felt.

"Crowned on a battlefield. Wait...you don't sleep, then? Witches don't need to sleep?"

That fit with the man that she was coming to know. He wasn't anything like Minos or other kings she had heard of. Instead, he was chosen by his people rather than the gods. Perhaps the Fates were kind to him, allowing him to pursue his greatness without much adversity, but the sisters were harsh and would have their way with him. If he hadn't earned his standing in myth and song, he would soon.

"Should I call you king then?" She smiled, teasing him in a soft voice. Ah, he came to the point. She looked between him and towards the sky, still uncertain whether or not her family would appear. Could her father hear her now? Would he laugh about it later with her mother? It seemed unlikely. She could see his chariot, but it was nothing more than a burning orb in the sky. Was it still him?

"Gods don't need to sleep. My father is a god."

"Gods, no, don't call me king. Just call me Jon," Jon said, shaking his head. When she mentioned that her father was a god, he paused for a moment. He'd seen a great many strange things in his life - dragons, direwolves, this village - but he'd never met the daughter of a god.

"My lady, forgive me. I didn't know. If I had, I would have afforded you more respect."

"What about 'King Jon?'" She was enjoying this. His humility was refreshing after near an eternity with gods that recounted the same stories over and over again. Their pompous manner and decadence had been tedious even when she was young, now she couldn't imagine being around such people. She preferred men like Jon, someone that earned what he gained and was happy for the toil. His hands showed his difficulties, a story mapped before her.

It was almost like Glaucus again. She shook her head, pushing back against that notion before it could go any further. "No, none of that please. I'm a disgraced goddess, exiled by my kind and viewed with disdain. I have no powers as they do and don't want an altar." It only struck her then that they had something in common. Neither wanted the honors that their titles afforded.

"I will view you only as Jon if you view me only as Circe, man and woman."

"Circe, then," Jon said, reiterating that he thought of her as a woman and not the daughter of a god. If he wasn't a king, she wasn't a goddess, and they could carry on just by their names.

"I'm terrible at titles anyway. I grew up a bastard so I was always with rough men and people who didn't care about titles; my lord father taught me, of course, but I was stubborn and didn't want to keep them all straight."

"Those rough men haven't seemed to have influenced you beyond your drive to earn what you receive." She wrapped her arms around her zalpaca, offering it comfort and reassurance until finally it relaxed in Jon's presence. If only the others were so easy, but they were at least creeping back to her side. "You are different than most kings I have seen."

She glanced up at him curiously, "A bastard? What's that?" It seemed to hold some meaning for him, a mark of some kind, but the word was foreign. He grew up as one, but that could mean many things.

"I imagine I'm different because I was raised as little better than a servant," Jon said. "A bastard is a nobleman's son born on the wrong side of the sheets. I always thought my father was Ned Stark, Warden of the North and Lord of Winterfell. Turns out, my mother was Lyanna Stark, Ned's sister, and my father was the Prince of Dragonstone - Rhaegar Targaryen."

It was something he still wasn't used to saying but at least with Circe, she hadn't known him as Ned Stark's bastard son first. "I was raised in Ned's household as his son but not as a trueborn one. It made for a rough life."

"I don't understand these words. Other side of the sheets? Do you mean out of marriage? Why should that matter?" Hermes had asked her several times to bear him a child, and while she had turned him down, it hadn't been out of any sense of shame for being unmarried. It was simply knowing who he was and the power he would have over her. "They treated you poorly for that?"

It was a strange tale, but no different than any other hero who had learned of his secret parentage. How many of Zeus' sons had experienced the same? "So you truly are a prince by birth? Do you know anything about your father? Was he a good man?" She could only hope that he was a better person than others. Glaucus' father beat him, her father had abandoned her, and Minos was willing to keep his adopted son in a labyrinth. "You never knew your parents?"

"No, not my true parents. My father died before I was born and my mother died giving birth to me," Jon explained. "And where I come from, it matters quite a lot that your parents aren't married when you're conceived. Bloodlines have to be traceable."

Jon shrugged a shoulder. "It matters less in this place, though. No one seems to care about it - and I don't care if no one else does. I only ever did because I didn't want to make a woman's life difficult. I'm honorable."

"I don't see why it should. The gods have many children outside of their marriages, many of them becoming great heroes of legend. It's a mark of honor." Though there was a difference between gods and mortals, but even still, it happened regularly that it didn't really matter. It was only inheritance that could cause dispute and bloodshed. "You were raised as one, but it seems that you aren't one at all. Your parents were married, yes?"

She quirked her head to the side, curious. "Why would you make a woman's life difficult? We were fashioned for love and pleasure. The gods indulge in it regularly." In fact, it was all they did. "Honor. That's a rare quality, no matter the world."

"My mother claims she married my father but considering he was already married to someone else, it wasn't exactly a valid marriage," Jon said, frowning a bit. "It doesn't matter here necessarily but just because I had different parents than I originally thought doesn't mean I'm not still a bastard."

He let out a long sigh. "I don't think anyone would care if a God fathered you, though. That's different than a regular man."

"Perhaps you should ask your mother about the circumstances of her marriage? Being a bastard may not matter here, but it seems to have played a large part in your life. Whether we say so or not, such humiliation can stay with us. I understand what it is to be made to feel inferior because of your birth. Ask her, you may learn more and find something you never thought."

There was a sweet smile on her face. "It depends on the man. The gods are feckless children who indulge in their own pleasures. It would be better to be born of a good man than to be one of thousands from the gods."

"I did ask her," Jon said, shrugging a bit. "But I cannot help but think that a man who would abandon his own wife and children to take another to wed, legal or not, isn't the sort of man I want to be like."

He frowned a bit and shook his head. "This isn't a topic for a lady, though, and I apologize. My mother is a good woman. This place is strange and time is fickle - she is younger than I am - but I have gotten to know her as part of my family."

"Marriage is a different concept where I am from. It is honored, but love and lust matter a great deal more. Children born from marriage or from simple passion are the same. Rules and conventions are constructions of men, not of gods." But she could respect his feeling. Not everyone had a choice where they came from and they didn't have to like it. Her parents were wed but they were feckless and callous creatures.

"Jon, I was born shortly after man harnessed fire for survival. You will find there are few topics that make me blush." Though if he wanted to catch her off guard, he managed to do that. "She is younger than you here?" She looked intent. "If she is here, it means that she is pulled from a different time. Whoever is responsible for this doesn't live constrained by time as mortals are. They aren't mortal, they may be gods."

"I assumed they were some sort of Gods," Jon agreed. "We worship the Old Gods in the North, where I am from, but there's the Gods of the Seven too and all sorts of queer gods across the Narrow Sea."

He shrugged a bit, unsure. "I don't know if any of those gods happen to be your gods but I assumed that no man could bring us here. They wouldn't be capable of that."

"I wonder about that. I see the sun," she pointed up towards it. "It's my father's chariot. He rides it across the sky each day and that is what we are seeing from here. But is that him in this sky? If he saw me here, wouldn't he..." she trailed off. No, he wouldn't. It didn't matter what the question was, her father wasn't about to protect her.

"Your gods. Tell me of them. Who are they?" She approached him, gesturing for him to follow her back towards her bungalow. The animals seemed more calm and would likely find their way to her yard. She had given them enough food to pacify them. "I saw you across the way from my home. I think we live next to each other."

Living near Circe was likely something that would prove to be beneficial. Jon already wanted to ensure he could help guard her in the woods (even though he could see she was well-versed in them all on her own) and living nearby made that more feasible. As to the gods? Well.

"The gods I worship don't have names. We just call them the old gods, the ones who watch and guard us from the forests. Now, in the South, they have different gods - they follow the Seven. That's...Mother, Maiden, Crone, Father, Smith, Warrior and Stranger. I don't know much about them other than what little I heard from my lord father's wife growing up."

She had heard of other gods before. There were the creatures from Egypt, many of them had animal heads and were shrouded in mystery. There were the lands of the East that her brother had traveled to, Persia where they raised demons. But this was different and strange to her. Gods without names while others seemed only to be descriptive. She wondered what they were like, certainly different than her family.

Not all gods need be the same.

"Were the gods you worshiped kind to you?"

"I don't know that they were anything," Jon said. "I kept faith because my father did, not because I ever saw them doing anything. Any success or failure I had was mine alone."

Perhaps the old gods were there and listened to his pleas but, for Jon, it felt more like it was the right thing to do to honor them than obtaining any benefit from it.

The sentiment impressed her. What she knew of the workings of the gods fell in line with his own, allowing worship before actually stepping in to help. But rather than be troubled by their silence, he moved forward and forged his own way. It was something she could appreciate and understand.

"I hope you have more success than failure." It was said softly. The village was becoming clearer through the treeline. In the distance, she could see the mill and the river. Everything seemed so calm and gentle, fitting for the company she had at her side.

"Sometimes it depends on who's swinging the sword that day," Jon admitted. "Because fate is fickle, and so is luck, and as good as you might be with a sword or bow you can still meet your end in an untimely way."

It was a bit melancholy, yes, but he'd died and come back to the living. Jon put little stock in the favors of gods after that.

"Here, though, I have little reason to fight. I keep this village safe but I don't have war to deal with."

"Mortality seems very fragile." Not only for him, but for her now. It seemed that if she simply took a deep breath, she could be blown out like a candle. The feel of her heart, the sound of her blood. All of it frightened her and made her feel like nothing more than a speck in the wind.

"Is it a relief to have that sort of quiet in your life?" She asked. She didn't know about wars, but she knew warriors. It wasn't something that simply happened to them, it was what fate decided for them. It was built into their very core.

"I should like to see you swing your sword. I have never seen a man in battle before."

"I'd much rather have a quiet life than ever pick up a sword again," Jon said, sighing a bit. "It's just that in my world, swords tend to be more important than words. Words don't hold a lot of weight and things often come to war."

There was a great war coming and he'd been on the precipice of it before coming to this place. He had no idea of the outcome - everyone had come here from before him. What he wouldn't give for someone from the future.

"I'm good at it but I don't want to be."

"I believe that is true in every world. The farmer is not as admired as the warrior. Even among the gods, they prefer to tell stories of the battles they faced and the blood they shed. Quiet and toil are beneath them." She shrugged her shoulders, stopping for a moment to pick a few of the wildflowers lining the road.

"Certainly this world allows you a bit more of that quiet? It doesn't seem as though there is a great army assembling or a war to wage?" Unless these Observers would eventually need to be dealt with in that manner, this place seemed rather calm and languid.

"There must be more that you are good at."

" I closed my eyes. If I had been a mortal, I would have heard the beating of my heart."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)