Sleepy Questions
“Arkonel, will you stay and talk with me a while? Since you don’t have to…go to your grandmother’s house and what not?” Ari asked Arkonel after the police had left. It was well past two in the morning and Ari was exhausted.
“Will you give me two minutes? I have to stop at my home – real home – and have a chat with my father.”
“Who is?” Ari asked, genuinely interested. She was either in shock or really open minded. He guessed it was the first.
“Zeus.”
“Mother?”
“A mortal. Analee. Renaissance England.”
“So you’re really young. For gods, I mean. How did you end up as a god and not as a mortal like us?” She asked him.
“Give me a few minutes to speak to my father, and I will come back and tell you all the stories you want. Just stay awake for me, okay?”
Ari nodded, and he leaned down to kiss her forehead, then strode out the door without a backwards glance. He was several hours late in terms of Olympus time, and his father had probably been expecting him for a while.
“I saw all of it.” Zeus’ words echoed through the otherwise empty hallway. “You’re free to go back and finish with Ari if you’d like. All things considered, you handled yourself very well, in all aspects.”
“You saw my interaction with Cadmus, the lying filthy piece of shit?” Arkonel asked.
“Yes. You’re really going to have to back off on the human slang terms though. I can’t always understand what you’re saying right away.”
“Sorry, father. You saw my interaction with Cadmus, the deceitful, dirty large fecal dropping?”
“Your brother has turned himself into fecal matter?” Zeus asked.
“No. Never mind.” Arkonel said. “Ooops. Forget I mentioned that. It was a comparison. I was comparing his worth to that of fecal matter.”
“But they reuse their fecal matter as fertilizer.”
“I know. But anyone other than a farm worker sees no value in it except as something dirty, to be disregarded.” Arkonel shook his head, another human attribute he had adopted. “I am angry with Cadmus. That’s all.”
“Go back to her, Arkonel. She’s about to fall asleep.”
“Are you still awake, peanut?” Arkonel asked the mostly-limp form in the bed.
“Did you just call me peanut?” Ari retorted, sitting up almost immediately. “Just because you’re a god or I’m hallucinating does not mean you can call me peanut.”
“You’re not hallucinating. So, what do you want to know?”
“Why me? And my mother? Why…everything? Here…just tell me a summarization of your life, and then of why you’re here.”
“That might take a while.” Arkonel said, sitting down next to her in the human form she was used to.
“Well, apparently we have my entire life. So get started, you old fart.”
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