The origin of the boy god was a domain no one dared question. Aphrodite, the sole witness known as his mother, had thoroughly buried it in silence.
The gods of Olympus grew swiftly. There were male gods who sprang up and ran before day and night could cross, and goddesses whose breasts swelled before the dawn earth grew damp from the rain that fell through the night.
“Mother, when will I become an adult?”
Each time, Aphrodite pressed her lips against her lovely son’s cheek and said,
“Perhaps when you come to know love.”
“Then do you mean I must shoot an arrow into my own chest?”
“So isn’t that something that simply cannot be? My beloved son, with the power you possess, you can do anything. Why ever must you become an adult? Would it not be far more joyous to live forever playing in your mother’s arms with things that fit in your hand? Think of those who suffered because of your arrows. Love ripens the flesh, but it will destroy your pure soul forever.”
Eros sat before the two springs and pondered. There was no land on earth beyond the reach of the gods’ authority. Humans were beings who, even while pointing swords at one another in war, would fall in love and lose their lives.
The boy god gazed at the two flowing springs before him. The white spring water that filled all things, and the black spring water that withered and destroyed all things.
He took out an iron rod hammered by Hephaestus with divine might and dipped it into the white spring. A brilliant golden arrow, shining like the radiance of Phoebus, was completed. He took out another iron rod and dipped it into the black spring. A chilling lead arrow, like the minerals of the underworld, was completed.
Eros held the two arrows in his hand and let out a deep sigh. How boring. He wanted to do something fun.
Just then, the goddess returned with her cheek burning red as scorched charcoal, feeling scorned. Aphrodite’s feet trampled the clouds in fury.
“How insolent and infuriating! I cannot endure it!”
Surprised, Eros spread his white wings, flew to her, and embraced his mother’s waist.
“Mother, what is wrong? Who dares anger the mistress of Cyprus?”
“My son, look there! How can this be? My altar, once filled with flowers and wine and offerings, has been reduced to such desolation. All the honor and worship meant for me is being drawn to a mere mortal human. How can I endure this insult and humiliation?”
Eros glanced down below the clouds, white as cotton. He saw the altar dedicated to Aphrodite abandoned and cold. Only ashes spilled from the brazier and extinguished torches rolled about wretchedly.
“Please calm your wrath, Mother. I shall go punish that impudent human, so sit here and drink sweet honey wine. Soon you will be able to see an amusing sight.”
Aphrodite wore a satisfied smile. My lovely son, how tedious my life would have been without your mischief.
“That insolent creature is called Psyche. She dares receive all manner of adulation while I, the living goddess of beauty, am treated so.”
Eros gathered the arrows he had just sharpened at the springs and placed them in his quiver.
And so the boy god flew diligently and arrived at a kingdom whose fires had gone dark. She who had insulted Aphrodite was the king’s youngest daughter, the third in line after the wise eldest and the sociable second, a girl of outstanding talent and beauty.
By the window where hardened candle wax had dripped, the scent of the maiden who had finished her bath permeated like hot breath.
Eros, perching on the windowsill, took a golden arrow from the quiver on his shoulder. He always thought it, but the arrows made from iron rods were too large and heavy for his small hands. No wonder the gods of Olympus looked down on him.
“Such weapons are not fitting for a child like you. You should know how to heat a woman’s body, at least, to be worthy of being called the god of love. Do you even know what Anteros is? The feast of sensuality and pleasure achieved by mingling breaths? Ah, is that too cruel a tale for young you?”
He recalled the day when Phoebus10) had raised his wine cup and sneered.
While the gods gathered at Olympus drank and chatted in a great banquet hall, Eros had gone outside, sat his plump bottom on the ground, and played by throwing dice between his folded knees. But even the boy god who had not fully grown knew what shame was.
A woman’s body.
Eros pouted his small lips and approached the sleeping Psyche’s bedside. What was so mysterious and great about it?
The moment he looked down at Psyche’s face with such scorn, Eros gasped in surprise. His carelessness caused him to drop the bow he had held as naturally as his own limbs, if only for a moment.
“Ah.”
His finger stung. Red droplets of blood formed and trickled down from his thumb, pricked by the glittering golden arrow.
He stared at Psyche in bewilderment. Oh no, he shouldn’t look. But the moment he thought it, his heart began to pound.
Ah, Psyche….
He touched his throat where his Adam’s apple protruded and took a deep breath. His body was wrapped in divinity and flashed.
The sound of clothes ripping apart was heard. Pain was felt in his hardened back and broad shoulders. Skin split and bones creaked as they grew. Knobby hands grew larger, and his facial features sharpened into an intellectual sculpture like that of a certain young god.
Eros glanced at his wings, now grown so huge they touched the ceiling. He caressed his now straight forehead and elongated nose bridge. He thought of Apollo’s self-satisfied face. Now he would be able to look down upon that arrogant, insufferable male god.
“Perhaps when you come to know love.”
He looked down at his own firm, muscular naked body, then gazed at the soundly sleeping Psyche as if entranced. Eros pressed his soft lips to her forehead.
My bride, I shall come for you soon.
“So? Did Psyche really become Eros’s bride?”
“In the myths, yes. Aphrodite opposed it fiercely, but in the end, unable to overcome Eros’s pleas, Zeus allowed the two to wed. What could Aphrodite do? The King of the Gods commanded it. Psyche and Eros held their wedding on Olympus, and Psyche, having eaten ambrosia, became immortal and ascended to the ranks of the gods—that is how it concluded.”
“The more I hear, the more it sounds like… Asteril’s story? Actually, the real Psyche’s end was quite bitter, wasn’t it?”
The chill dawn air gathered on the girl’s lips and became white breath. The old man smiled as he tossed a dry stick into the campfire.
“Myths always don plausible packaging. There is always someone’s intention hidden within them.”
Just then, the young man who had gone to the storehouse was coming down the mountain slope. From afar, he shouted in a loud voice for them to listen.
“Hey, up there, there’s a tree standing that looks like a split pear. It was fascinating, strange, yet eerie, so I looked at it for a while.”
“Split like a pear?”
“Yeah, it was gaping wide open as if something had come out from inside, you know?”
“Come out? What would come out. It probably just grew that way.”
“I’m telling you, that’s not it. It really looks like a split pear. Like a torn sack, hollow inside….”
The old man stood up and straightened his ash-gray robe. With his back to the moonlight, the wrinkles around his mouth vanished, transforming into the lips of a charming middle-aged man.
When he raised his arm, a flash of lightning streaked across the sky. The face inside the robe returned to that of the old man. Baring his teeth in a smile, he walked toward the shaded woods.
The young man beside him, who had been watching with his mouth open, made an expression of utter creeped-out horror.
“If he carried a scythe too, he’d really be a sight for sore eyes.”
“That’s why he doesn’t carry one.”
“He probably doesn’t because it doesn’t fit the times. He must have carried one in the old days.”
The girl paid no mind and tidied around the campfire.
“By the way, what on earth were you two talking about for so long?”
“Hmm… The story of Chaos endlessly searching for Gaia?”
“What?”
“Gaia will continue to be reborn through her daughters and their daughters…. Chaos will rummage through the crevices of Erebus and set out on another journey to find Gaia. He said he would watch over her and her daughters for countless ages, as promised.”
The girl smiled faintly, and the man made an expression of not understanding what was being said.
Immortality could not exist by mere being alone. Just as something old could not be immortal. Just as history could not be immortal. Just as earth and sand could not be immortal.
Immortality was essence. An origin that could not be replaced or destroyed, eternal yet unique, recorded but not history, able to be left behind yet unable to be erased.
“Oracle! Oracle!”
She was smiling brightly, shaking a ladybug she had found in the sacred earth. Look at this. The ladybug is alive, it was alive. The oracle’s child will not die.
Pwoo-pwoo.
From afar, the sound of a horn announcing the start of the harvest festival was heard. She, who had come down the slope, hesitated and looked back toward the temple.
“Hurry and go.”
The old man muttered with his hands behind his back. A black eagle flew in and alighted softly on his shoulder, setting down its talons.
“To where your destiny must go….”
The lingering shadow of the ruined Cocytus drifted dimly. The girl’s laughter was heard as she ran barefoot playing with the west wind.
He would probably not forget for a while. Perhaps he would wander searching again for a very long time.
Gazing at the hill where only the site of the old temple remained, the old man smiled wistfully.
— Do you worship me? My male god?
Yes, incomparably so. I offer my heart and every breath.
— Do you love me?
If this emotion, which cannot be oxidized even by the breath of Erebus, is love… Yes. It is so, with not the slightest room for denial.
— How much?
Like this awkward feeling of the corners of my mouth loosening whenever I think of your curved eyes, your slightly parted lips, your secret dimples, your chattering whispers, your playful laughter, your hunched back—everything related to you…. If an exclusivity and possessiveness of a depth I have never reached surge faster than the speed at which the goddess of fate weaves her loom, would you understand?
— ….
It means I think of nothing but you all day, like a madman.
— Ah, that’s much simpler. Since when?
To be frank, it was so from the star palace of Lethe.
— You’ve become somewhat more honest. Time is indeed the cure.
Even though because of you I have become a Keton who kneels so easily?
— You only kneel for me.
Yes, I begged the sub-gods before the eyes of my entire clan. Now nothing is shameful. Yet despite going this far… how long will you be so cruel to me?
Laughter rang out. No, it seemed to. Once again, it was a terribly lovely dream. Nothing more than an intangible illusion.
His chest began to crumble like a beehive whose sweet honey had all been sucked out and discarded. His tattered flesh had grown accustomed to hurting in anticipation of the agony to come.
The whirling petals of Himeros vanished. In the white empty space, only his own shadow remained, sprawled in solitude.
Already… gone?
Now tears would not flow either. All moisture had been squeezed from his body, leaving no wetness to come forth. He did not even know what sorrow was. Such emotions had all grown distant like smoke from an altar.
Consciousness gradually blurred as if sinking into a lake. Even her auditory hallucination sounded muffled, like light beyond thick fog.
Was this what it meant for one’s body to become a withered tree? All emotions tangled like spiderwebs in lethargy and desolation, feeling trapped forever in a cocoon hardened like a coffin.
It seemed he would become one body with her like this. That was not so bad in itself.
If only like that….
If only he could entwine with her branches like a love vine and touch her scent through the flowing sap. If only they could become a tree with eyes gently closed, embracing each other for eternity.
Such a life would not be bad either.
Ψ
The hill was covered in white flowers like powdered salt, vibrating with a sweet fragrance.
Bees flew between the flower stalks unable to hide their ecstasy, and the young spirits sleeping soundly in the earth could not hide the smiles at their lips, as if the sweet scent vibrated even in their dreams.
“Isn’t he sleeping too long?”
— Indeed.
“Should we wake him?”
— That’s the question you’ve been asking for a hundred years. The next time you ask, won’t there be a more magnificent structure built beneath that mountain?
Asteril untied the dress wrapped around her calves, arranged it fluidly like flowing water, and stood up.
Fabric dampened with the Milky Way white as milk, and a wreath coated with Helios’s dazzling radiance. Boreas had presented them, saying they were garments befitting a Despoina, and went so far as to apply perfumed oil made from centuries-aged Cyprian rose water and frankincense beautifully upon her neck and limbs.
Her movements were goddess-like in elegance yet had a cool aspect. Boreas found this unfamiliar yet satisfying.
Asteril walked toward the sacred tree standing tall at the site of the old temple. Between the piles of stones, the enormous roots of the ancient tree tangled in curls like hair buried in the earth.
She stood on tiptoe and tilted her head back, pressing her finger firmly against his body seated upon a thick branch.
“Kal….”
With a voice filled with sparkling light, as if it contained only the shining powder of stars illuminating the dawn sky.
The male god’s face with lowered eyes was somewhat gaunt, but had grown more beautiful over the passing ages.
Tears pooled in his two eyes and trickled down his cheeks. Asteril’s expression darkened.
“He must be dreaming again.”
Boreas sighed as if pained.
— If one gathered all the tears our lord has shed over the past thousand years, would it not fill even Pontus and have some left over?
Asteril reached out and wiped the tears flowing down his cheek. Upon which, transparent moisture fell in droplets again.
“I think he dreams of me.”
“Sometimes in his sleep he calls Despoina’s name too.”
Even in a voice choked with tears. Or while pleading…. Boreas trailed off with a sad face. Unable to bear saying more, he closed his mouth. The noble lord of Lethe. To him, Callian had been an altar as eternal and unshakeable as the torch of Olympus.
“How on earth do we wake him?”
“You woke him before.”
“That time, I simply called his name and jumped into the barrier?”
Asteril, who had been crouching and thinking before the tree with the split trunk, sprang to her feet.
She picked up a sharp stone from somewhere and cut her own wrist. Boreas rushed over in shock.
— W-what are you doing! Why, huh? Despoina, don’t! If our lord finds out…. Ah, though the chances seem slim, but still, if he does, that day I will be smashed against that pillar and fly all the way to Tartarus. Or else be buried like a corpse in hard red mud with all sorts of excrement? You know well, Despoina, that my sense of smell is rivaled only by Argus’s11). Besides, I have dignity now. I cannot show such a disgraceful sight to the surrounding spirits!
Argus? No, I didn’t know…. By the way, do you know Argus’s fate when you speak like that? He ran to greet his master he hadn’t seen in twenty years, wagging his tail just once before dying.
“Boreas…. No one expects dignity from you.”
— How dare Despoina say such a thing.
“Your master.”12)
— ….
“And Callian wouldn’t do such a thing. So please, don’t get worked up beforehand.”
— He wouldn’t do such a thing…? Despoina, do you still not know our lord? Lord Callian is only kind to Despoina! He only favors Despoina! Why don’t you just admit it already?
“Is there something wrong with that?”
— No, it’s not wrong, but….
“Then be quiet.”
— Fine.
“Look, the wound has already healed.”
— Huh? So it has.
“When will you ever fix that mouth of yours… Never mind. You really never change, no matter how much time passes.”
— My greatest virtue is that I am always consistent. Even Olympus weathers away in the wind after a thousand years, but since I am the wind, that can never happen to me. Isn’t that amazing? The next time I meet a bard, I want to ask him to put that in my song.
Asteril sighed. As expected, talking with him for another hundred years is impossible. I can’t do it.
“Wake up, Kal.”
Her hand shaking his shoulder grew somewhat frantic. Had she shaken too hard? Asteril hesitated and withdrew her hand.
“Callian?”
It was the first time she had seen him furrowing his brow so tightly and gritting his teeth. Deep furrows like scars formed on his smooth forehead. He was even groaning as if in agony.
Asteril looked down at the blood on her wrist. Callian, as befitting a Keton, was sensitive to the smell of blood. So she had thought her own blood scent would be an appropriate stimulus. Perhaps he might wake up.
But it was a soft-hearted thought. He had witnessed her being wounded and shattered too many times. He had even had to endure her death. The sudden scent of blood might have instead turned his dreamscape into a more ferocious nightmare.
“I’m fine. So don’t cry.”
It was as if his soul had been trapped inside a beautiful statue. How much agony had been repeated beneath that peacefully sleeping face?
Asteril pressed her cheek against the back of his hand, soaked with tears.
“I’m right here….”
At first, she had intended to wait only for the night of Ahre. Because it seemed only fair that way.
But even when the night of Ahre came, even when the ninety-ninth night came, even when the next ninety-ninth night came, and the next, and the next after that, he did not wake.
Of course, according to Boreas, Callian had waited for her endlessly for a time longer than it would take to count every star in the universe.
Asteril gazed at the sunlight filtering through the interwoven branches like a net, with sad eyes.
Lush leaves were growing green on the dense branches surrounding them. Among them, red ripe fruits hung in clusters, boasting the blessing of the gods.
Ambrosia…. Why hadn’t she thought of it?
Asteril grabbed the tree trunk and stood up. She stretched her arm straight out and picked the plumpest and most fragrant among the fruits with glistening peels.
She bit into the fruit in her hand with a crunch. Pale yellow juice flowed moistly and collected on her lower lip. A taste both sour and sweet was felt.
She caressed his tightly closed lip line with her hand as if drawing it. Whispering an incantation filled with earnest desire. Then she lowered her head and overlapped her lips with his. As if imitating the way he had once cherished her so dearly.
The juice she held in her mouth seeped between his lips. It felt as though that alone was not enough. She held the fruit to his breath and squeezed it. As the juice fell in droplets around his mouth, she caught it with her finger and pushed it inside.
His thick throat bobbed with a gulp, swallowing something down.
Callian. She whispered as if summoning his soul. Holding his cheek, she kissed him earnestly. Now come back to me, my male god….
In that moment, his long eyelashes, lowered for distant ages, began to tremble faintly. Beneath his eyelids, his eyeballs could be seen moving slowly.
Startled, Asteril stepped back, lost her balance, and fell with a thud beneath the tree. Lifting her head from between the leaf bushes, she looked up blankly with her chest puffed out greatly.
Callian was leaning against the tree trunk, narrowing his eyes at the dazzling sunlight. His amethyst-colored eyes glanced downward and paused.
In the shade where a rain of flowers poured down, she sat with glistening, moist eyes.
Warmth gradually settled into their mutual gaze.
He tried to say something but raised his throat. His vocal cords, sealed for a long time, struggled to produce sound properly.
Is this a dream?
His closed lips parted with the sound of breath. He let out a low, cracked and murky voice.
“Come here, you.”
White petals fluttered down and settled upon his slowly outstretched hand.
The two looked at each other stiffly. Callian’s eyes were tense too. He stared at her as if still hazy.
Another phantom in a dream? Seeing that his chest did not hurt yet, this dream seemed likely to be quite cruel. So terribly similar to her form in his memory….
His eyes paused and grew wide.
Her small lips were holding her breath tightly, making a tense expression. Pale and faded like the breath of Eos.
In that moment, a familiar pounding was heard. Broken breathing and a quick pulse. The beating of a heart that had raced frantically whenever it faced him. Her chest was pounding as if it would burst, just like the day they first met.
A faint tremor passed across his lips.
An invisible tapestry unfolded hugely between the two of them. The picture finally completed by the densely woven threads of fate was dazzlingly beautiful.
Only then did they share breaths of the same temperature, hearts beating at the same speed.
“My Anteros.”
He whispered tenderly.
“Come to your Anteros’s side.”
A sob like a bursting droplet escaped. Asteril ran to him with reddened eyes.
Asteril threw her arms around his neck and embraced him with all her might. Callian stepped down to the ground and lifted her high into the air. Snowflake-like petals scattered white, embroidering the reunion of the two lovers.
Asteril, whose lips overlapped with his, met his eyes in the silence where breath seemed swallowed.
Her eyes trembled in surprise. Callian was looking at her, swallowing a smile inside his mouth.
The bitter smile soon changed into a languid eye-smile. It felt as though breath would stop. How could even his smiling face be so arrogant and beautiful?
She could not tear her eyes away for a long while. The same was true for him. The two embraced as if they were one body.
Asteril rested her forehead against his chest and asked.
“What dream did you have so deeply?”
“A dream of you leaving me. A dream of you disappearing. A dream of you bleeding and collapsing. A dream of you dying before my eyes….”
It felt as if her heart were being cut with a knife. As if blood were gushing out before being crushed like an egg.
Asteril looked at Callian’s face. He appeared calm, as if accustomed to pain of this degree.
“In this world, you alone can shatter my heart like this and then stoke it again like a furnace.”
“….”
“But to be honest, if I were to lose you again, I… I don’t think I could endure it. I would likely become a madman like Nyx.”
“That won’t happen.”
Asteril used her fingers to pull the corner of Callian’s mouth sideways into a smile. Don’t worry.
His stretched lips twitched into a smile, and soon his eyes curved into narrow lines. It was rapturous just to behold.
“Look. You and me, this entire scenery right now… Isn’t it too perfect?”
Callian pulled away Asteril’s clothing like peeling off clouds. Well now… must one become intoxicated by a perfect scenery? I wish to drink my nectar. His lips whispered, mingling their breath, and headed toward her most private place.
“Here, it seems brimming full for me.”
Asteril burst into laughter and pushed his shoulder. But he was already burying his face between her legs, lifting them. He began to suck softly on the tender flesh. His fingers prodded inside as if savoring her interior. Wet sounds were heard. He wiped the arousal flowing around his mouth with the back of his hand and smiled in satisfaction.
Lewd Eros, my night, my lover.
The shadows embracing each other fell with a thud into the shade piled with flower petals. Becoming one with an arm as a pillow. Whenever his warm tongue touched her bared breasts, moans mixed with laughter escaped.
Asteril raised the tops of her feet and rubbed between his thighs. At her playful teasing, he laughed lowly. It was a baritone so pleasant that even Eos would blush.
From dusk until clouds crept across the dark blue dawn sky, the two lovers with overlapping naked bodies shared passion, breathing hot air.
Boreas, lying with his chin propped on the treetop, exchanged glances with two wind spirits who had approached beside him. Far away, Hestia was also flying over, crackling with embers.
They sat side by side on the branches and gazed at the stone temple standing alone in the darkness. For the time being, the hill of Cocytus seemed likely to waft with nothing but the fragrance of flowers in full bloom.
Boreas smiled contentedly.
Watching his own name carved on the temple pillars glitter like constellations embroidered in the sky.
— Daughter of Demeter, The End