Reports Abound

“So, everything is alright between you two?”  Zeus asked his son as he appeared again, and Arkonel nodded.

“She is okay with all of it, all things considered.”

“Takes a pretty dedicated and trusting being to have their entire belief system altered in such a short period of time.  Gives a hint of her character.”

“She’s a wonderful person.  And her mother is wise beyond her years.”

“Well, be careful.  Your brother is not one to take disappointments and failure lightly.”

“Understood.”  Arkonel said.  “Am I free?”

“Until tomorrow.”  Zeus said.  The words were barely out of his lips before his youngest had disappeared back to the mortal earth.  Zeus sighed and shook his head.  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that he would want to be a mortal more.”

Arkonel returned to the earth just as Ari was getting ready to crawl into bed.  He materialized just behind the door and then knocked.

“Come on in.  I was wondering if your father had taken you off of my job and put you on another.”  Ari said as she climbed onto her bed and sat, just like a child, legs crossed, back straight.  “I think I want another round of bed time stories.”

“Well, what would you like to hear?”  Arkonel asked.  Ari climbed underneath her sheets, and shrugged.

“I’m not really sure.  How about more with your adventures?  Not your sexual conquests – the funny stuff you’ve managed to get yourself into?”

“Not all of it has been pretty.  Like the roller skates – that was hilarious.”  Arkonel admitted.  “But most of it has revolved around me interfering with mortal lives.”

“Well, what about on the immortal side?  This isn’t obviously the first time your brother and you have fought.”

“I don’t like my brother.  I can tell you about my childhood, if you’d like.”  Arkonel suggested.

“That’s fine.”  Ari said.  “You can sit, you know.  You don’t have to stand there.”

“Okay.”  Arkonel agreed, sitting on the bed.  “Are you sure you’re okay with me being this close to you?”  He asked.

“Yeah.  Its not like I exactly melt whenever you’re around.”  Ari laughed, and Arkonel resisted the urge to make Ari horny enough that she’d beg him to take her right then and there.

“You could.  I could make you.”  Arkonel warned her.  “_Any_way.  I grew up around my father for the first few years.  But as I grew up, and got older and developed the ability to speak, etc, he started…leasing me out…to the other gods in Olympus.  It’s a huge, beautiful island.  Its hard to describe – its in a different realm, which is set up much like this world.  Things that are solid there are transparent and invisible here.  Things that are solid here are easily manipulated by us Olympians.

“Anyway, my father would give me to the others for them to babysit.  A baby or child in Olympus, even in the prime of my father’s sexual prowess reign, was rare.  It is a very important change in life patterns for a goddess or a god to bear a child or even raise one in Olympus.  With each child, they must eventually be given some sort of title – it is the rite of passage.  Even though I’m over four hundred, I am still considered a child in the eyes of the other immortals because I have no special mastery.  The mastery can be of a piece of land, of an emotion, of a race, of an animal, of a piece of technology.  Anything that does not have a master.

“So after the first few years, I was lent out and taught a little of each god’s craft.  From Hephaestus, I learned the art of blacksmithing, and also the energy of metal itself – how to speak to it, encourage it to heat or cool, mold or stay rigid.  From Athena, I learned the beauty of weaving and how to use weaving to influence both mortals and immortals alike.  I also learned from her the concept of honor – of defending one’s home and property against intruders.

“I learned about respect from Eros, mostly.  He is ‘cupid’, in modern times, but he taught me the most important thing about intimacy and any relationship – it must be done with respect.  I learned from Apollo the art of truth, why it is important, and why, mortals value their mythology, which is not always correct, over even their own lives.

“I learned about fun and mischief from my favorite uncle, Dionysus.  He taught me the beauty of wine, and also of the power of the human psyche to achieve anything.  He showed me how to override those things called morals in any being, by feeding on their fears, and their desires, to create a person whom they would otherwise despise.

“From Persephone and Hades, I learned that love comes from strange places.  One of the only immortal couples to find true love, I learned that even love has its costs and downsides.  Also from that happy couple, I learned of the sacredness and validity of all life, and the equal importance of death.

“The point of detailing these lessons briefly to you is that, just like any child, I made mistakes.  Hephaestus’ teachings are just one example.  He attempted to teach me the energy of metal, and I picked it up quickly.  Too quickly, in fact.  The next day, when I visited my father in his study, he asked me to show him what I learned.  Next he knew, the palace was half melted and he had to call Hephaestus in to fix the damage I had caused.  I have never exactly learned the art of balance.  It tends to be all or nothing.

“You melted Zeus’ palace?!”  Ari interrupted Arkonel, astounded.  “Wouldn’t he kill you for that?”

“No, but he was rather angry.  That’s when he sent me to Artemis to learn about animals only, with not one mention of her bow and its powers. Of course, when she was distracted by her brother, fighting, I removed her bow from her shoulder.  I had been watching her shoot it all day.  It was killing me, because my father had expressly forbid her to teach me the art of archery while I was standing there, waiting to be released into her hands.  Three dead trees in a mortal forest and one very petrified human teenager later, Artemis finally retrieved her bow and nearly shot me with it.”

“You must have been a handful.”  Ari laughed.  “You sound like me as a child, except magnified.  I tried to steal my parents’ car, and I was constantly getting into things I shouldn’t.  Spilled refrigerator items, a mix up with baby powder and my first completely black cat, Ginger are just a few of the incidents I had.”

“Yes, I’m sure I could look through your past and see what a handful you were.”  Arkonel agreed with Ari.  “But you didn’t steal the sun chariot and cause an eclipse that left the scientists of the day awe-filled.  Which in turn caused numerous droughts and floods simultaneously throughout the world, including a tsunami that ravaged the United States, now did you?”

“No, definitely not.”  Ari agreed with him.  “What’s the funniest thing you ever did?”

“That, unfortunately, involves my brother.  It was just after one of my many mishaps, and my father banned me for several years from learning anything else from the full grown immortals.  Of course, Hermes got past my father and took on the job of teaching me how to travel.”

“You aren’t born with the ability to travel to the mortal world and back?”  Ari asked, confused.

“We are, yes. But, just like you don’t know how to ride a bike when you’re born, we don’t know how to plane-travel on birth.  You know.”

“Okay, go on.”  Ari shifted one of her pillows underneath her head to hold it up more.

“Well, Hermes would take me on trips while my father was in his study and he thought that I was in the library, learning all I could about both human and immortal history.  He finally decided to show me how to leap to people, not places.  He told me to choose a person currently in the mortal world to work with.  I didn’t know any mortals, but I knew my brother had been gone for a few mortal days somewhere on earth, so I chose him as my subject.

“Next thing I know, I materialized, in the form I showed you before, wearing only a loincloth, in front of my brother who is too busy mating with a young girl, badly I may add, to notice my existence.  Before I could disappear, the scene got worse.  Hermes appeared seconds after me, tracing my whereabouts easily.  The girl’s face was towards us, and she did the only thing that could be expected: she screamed, loudly.

“It turns out my brother was not only fornicating with a woman, he was doing it with a royal princess, set to be married on the morrow.  Needless to say, after my brother stopped the hundreds of swordsmen trained on him, he made a beeline to my father to tattle on what I had been doing.  I hurried back to the library, and I barely made it in time.

“My father yelled, a lot.  There was some thunder, and it was happening in Olympus, not on earth.  My brother was satisfied that I was going to have a new ass torn, and he left the room.  The best part of that day was as soon as my brother left my father, Hermes and I alone, and my father stopped yelling almost immediately.  He smiled, shrugged, told me I had done a good job, and walked out of the room without another glance backwards.  Hermes and I both had a good laugh over that one.”

“Wow.  I feel so…left out?”  Ari said.  “I feel so young.  And proud of myself.  I have never gotten myself into a mess that deep.”

“Well, after that day is really when my brother started to hate me and I decided to make it a habit to fuck with him as often as possible.”  Arkonel admitted.  “I was not the nicest baby brother.  If my older brother could tell my father about things that I did, then certainly I could do the same.  Unlike my brother though, I never got in his way when he went about the world to earn his godship.”

“What godship is up for grabs?  Wow, that sounds weird.”

“My father has offered me ‘god of computers’ if I can finish this job correctly.”

“What does that entail?”

“Making sure you don’t hate me and send me away.”

“That’s a lot of responsibility for me, now that I know.”  Ari said, laying down and moving to turn off the light.  It flicked off before she could reach it, compliments of the god sitting on her bed.

“I know.  That’s why I tried not to tell you.”

“Oh.  Sorry.”
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