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Nov. 3rd, 2005 07:29 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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nanowrimo_ljAnother piece of my writing ready for viewing. X-posted to my lj and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
2005nanowrimo
Zeus. Specifically, a very drunk, embittered Zeus. Zeus looked exactly as the paintings depicted him, but only if one subtracted any of the feelings of awe and fear one might contract from looking onto the visage of a lightning God. Replace all of that by imagining what emotions would creep through your body if you took a 60 year old aggressive, arrogant drunkard, slapped him into a toga, and made him weigh 240 pounds. Don’t forget the long gray beard and perpetual horniness, and you have Zeus. To have Zeus at Athena’s doorway, make him clutching a bottle of very hard wine, leaning all of his weight against the doorframe so as not to fall over himself, and ready to regurgitate yesterday’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner all over Athena’s clear glass floor.
“Zeus.” Athena said, biting into her lip to resist from kicking him in the jaw and letting him roll all the way back down the hilled entrance to her house.
“Heyaa, ‘Thena…what’s…whash…” Zeus’ eyes spinned and his head rolled, his arm almost giving way, now looking even closer to adding a cleaning chore to Athena’s To-Do list. Zeus couldn’t finish his sentence, but Athena gleamed what he was asking with little effort on the part of her brain.
“I’m going to Morocco to meet with Bast, Zeus.”
“Ohhh, thash the game, huh? Gonna go leave olym…Olympia…olympissh to go hang with all the ‘gyptians and valkyiresh, is tha’ it?” He responded, finding his balance and successfully keeping himself from puking.
“Zeus, I have to work with others. Part of the responsibility that comes with divine power – cooperation is needed.” She pushed him to the side, speedwalking out the door, hoping to lose Zeus on the way down. Zeus proved himself to be surprisingly nimble for a man who’s alcohol blood level once got up to 11.7.
“Ditchin’ olympish, thash wha’ all yas been doin’. Just ditchin’ the mountain.’ An’ for what? The ‘gyptians. We’re all s’posed to stick tagether, or din’ ya hear? Ditchin the mountain, unbelievable…”
At this, Athena stopped suddenly, taking two deep breaths, and then walking ahead faster. “We aren’t ‘ditching’ anything, Zeus. We’re doing our jobs.” She replied, hissing ‘jobs’ through closed teeth. “And our jobs mean we have to work with all the Gods and Goddesses of Earth. It doesn’t mean we’re abandoning Olympus.”
“You are hah-bandaning ‘lympush! You just won’t admit it, ya... ya cowahd!” Zeus followed after, pointing an accusing finger at her (The most common type of finger that Zeus used, it turns out). Athena stopped again, rolling her hands up into fists, waiting for Zeus to come in close enough, turning around and pushing a finger of her own into a roll of fat on his chest.
“NONE of the group is abandoning Olympus. And it is VERY hypocritical to hear that from a man who was fired from godhood!” Athena glared, her eyes narrowing into well-practiced spheres of fire that was sparking inside of her, begging to be released in the form of an elbow to the midsection of the former lightning god. He burbled, eyes narrowing into anger, widening up into confusion, and falling into flat blankness in the course of 2.3 seconds.
“Pffh. Fired? If I’m fired, then noh un’ gave me a mehmo.” Zeus spoke dismissively, trying to push her finger away, his hand flying a foot too low. Athena huffed, removing her finger and spinning 180 degrees back in her original direction. Zeus somehow regained enough conscience thought to follow her again.
“We gave you the memo centuries ago, Zeus. You were fired and kicked out for not only breaking a rule nearly once a week, but for doing it in the most disgusting way possible.”
“If I’m fired, then what ‘m I doing up here in heav…heav…’lympus.” Zeus spoke, regaining a small amount of his sobriety. He was still heavily in denial, but at the very least, he wasn’t slurring his complete inability to accept reality too much.
“Why you’re here is beyond me. What you’re doing here is unknown to me, and you probably don’t remember either. How you got here is the same goddamn answer every time: You got hammered with Dionysus, and then because you’re a drunk savant, you somehow breach the barrier between the mortal world and ours, and spend all your time on Olympus.” Athena kept down the steep, winding trail off her part of the mountain, paved with a conspicuous amount of grass and soft dirty. Not too far ahead was the city below, an eclectic mix of architecture styles (Due to an old Pantheon unanimous vote that they were all tired of having only boring pillars and the same model buildings stacked over them), with long streets leading off to anywhere that could be needed: The main offices of Heaven, the other realms of the Gods, that experimental boring stretch of existence that was just fluffy clouds and blue skies, and an even steeper hill leading down into the mortal world. Certainly, Athena could just summon herself onto the plane of mortals, but she insisted on walking, even when Zeus was right behind her with no end in sight to his drunken ramblings – not that there was really any other kind for him.
“Yeah, Dionysus, he’s the only one that’s fun anymore. Everyone else is so goddamn uptight, uptight like you, ‘Thena.”
“I’m professional. Some think that makes me stuck up. But the majority of them, unlike you, still have a job.”
“Ooooh, they still have jobs! Tell you what, I don’t even want a job, if it means working with buttkissers like you. All hail God! All hail the all high and mighty god! Pffftt. Buncha pussies everyone turned into.”
“For starters,” Athena began, her left eye working into a tighter, more focused version of her patented death glare “God not only happens to be our boss, but he is the highest and most powerful. He created absolutely everything. Secondly, he’s not an arrogant bastard about it, like you were when you still had Lightning to throw down at people. I swear to god, someone didn’t sacrifice the animal you wanted that day, you would fry a field of crops…”
Zeus countered with another ‘Ooooh’, following Athena down into the city. Feeling what he considered to be a flow of wittiness exuding from every inch of his body, he said ‘Ooooh’ again, more sarcastically this time, and finished of with a wiggling of his fingers. All of which would have had far more effect if Athena wasn’t already looking to punch him in the throat simply for showing at her doorstep.
“Thirdly, none of us are ‘pussies’. I compete with Artemis each season for hunting trophies, and only barely beat her out most of the time. And no one else in the pantheon is any weakling either. Pan has hooves that could knock down barns.” The soft yellow ground beneath Athena’s feet gave way to a sharp incline. It would not be a long or difficult task to reach the mortal world, however. The escalator installed just to the side of the road allowed for a relaxing trip into the realm of flesh and blood. Athena stepped on, the back heel of her dress shoes making a soft clank against the metal. Zeus’ large meaty feet made a sound akin to slapping a wet salmon against a steel countertop. Not pleasant, but to its credit, it was a sound that awakened the senses more effectively than snorting black coffee. Athena took more deep breaths to keep her from throwing the ex-God down the escalator, forcing him to keep on falling down stairs till he was sober enough to get all of his balance back. The silver, shining escalator kept a quiet hum as it carried Zeus, Athena, and a very aggressive atmosphere down.
“Yeah, right. If everyone wasn’t such a pussy, I wouldn’t have been firrreed.” Zeus cut in, recovering more of his speaking skill. “They couldn’t just handle me. Couldn’t handle big bad ZEUS!”
“Zeus, please shut up and go back to Seattle…”
“Oh they fire me, they kick me out, they take away my lightning, all because they just can’t handle a tough guy like me…but I never broke no rules…”
“That…that is the most blatant denial I’ve ever heard…”
“Oh, really? Then tell me, what rules did I break? All I did was give tough love, and I don’t remember that breaking the rules.” Zeus spat out, with a shit-eating grin plastered over his face, one hand plastered on his hip, another gripped around his bottle of wine and slung over the side of the railing.
“You. Had sex. With a mortal.”
“And?”
“You turned into a fucking SWAN and had SEX with a MORTAL. And go figure, that’s one of the FEW things the mortals got right.” Athena snapped off at him. No simile could enter her mind to explain the sheer bitterness and disgust behind her words, as she could not currently think of anything to equate with the fact that her former coworker had, indeed, pleasured mortals while in the form of a swan. Zeus did many other things, but Athena was consciously blocking herself from letting those memories reach her forebrain. Zeus grin continued to remain of the shit-eating brand, before opening his mouth once more.
“Yeah. Tell me how many people could get a mortal all hot ‘n bothered over a swan.”
“THAT’S NOT SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF!” Athena screamed back, coming off the last steps with Zeus, the escalator disappearing back into nowhere. She stormed ahead, stepping down the new path leading into Morocco. There was a tense silence between the two of them as she came closer, arcing herself forward, fists clenching and unclenching before turning to face Zeus once more, at the city’s entrance.
“I know what this is about, Zeus. I know why you keep getting hammered and coming up to us. Hera.”
“Oh, Hera! I’m going back to her soon as I’m done talking to y-“
“No, you’re not going back to Hera. Hera left you a long, long time ago. You kept screwing up, and cheating on her, and doing just about everything you could to screw up a marriage. And she put up with you up until…up until you got fired. That just sealed it. And you never even saw what she was doing for you, you poor bastard. None of us could put up with you. I definitely couldn’t stand you – and some people think I’m your daughter, God, they couldn’t be more wrong. No. Only Hera could not only put up with you, but love you. But you screwed it up. And the reason why is…hell, just look at yourself.”
Another long pause. Zeus considered saying something. Athena saw that thought process starting up again, and made sure to cut it short.
“Go back to Seattle, Zeus. Just…get out of here.” Athena threw out an open palm, and Zeus was removed from sight, out of Africa, in Washington. Athena inhaled sharply, and straightened her suit, turning her eyes onto the city once more. She spotted Bast’s dark hand waving about madly from a table. Her shoe’s heels dug into the ground, pushing her forward, smiling for the first time since she had breakfast. Her stomach now relaxed due to having no more bile and hatred pumped with it, she sat down comfortably across from Bast.
2005nanowrimoZeus. Specifically, a very drunk, embittered Zeus. Zeus looked exactly as the paintings depicted him, but only if one subtracted any of the feelings of awe and fear one might contract from looking onto the visage of a lightning God. Replace all of that by imagining what emotions would creep through your body if you took a 60 year old aggressive, arrogant drunkard, slapped him into a toga, and made him weigh 240 pounds. Don’t forget the long gray beard and perpetual horniness, and you have Zeus. To have Zeus at Athena’s doorway, make him clutching a bottle of very hard wine, leaning all of his weight against the doorframe so as not to fall over himself, and ready to regurgitate yesterday’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner all over Athena’s clear glass floor.
“Zeus.” Athena said, biting into her lip to resist from kicking him in the jaw and letting him roll all the way back down the hilled entrance to her house.
“Heyaa, ‘Thena…what’s…whash…” Zeus’ eyes spinned and his head rolled, his arm almost giving way, now looking even closer to adding a cleaning chore to Athena’s To-Do list. Zeus couldn’t finish his sentence, but Athena gleamed what he was asking with little effort on the part of her brain.
“I’m going to Morocco to meet with Bast, Zeus.”
“Ohhh, thash the game, huh? Gonna go leave olym…Olympia…olympissh to go hang with all the ‘gyptians and valkyiresh, is tha’ it?” He responded, finding his balance and successfully keeping himself from puking.
“Zeus, I have to work with others. Part of the responsibility that comes with divine power – cooperation is needed.” She pushed him to the side, speedwalking out the door, hoping to lose Zeus on the way down. Zeus proved himself to be surprisingly nimble for a man who’s alcohol blood level once got up to 11.7.
“Ditchin’ olympish, thash wha’ all yas been doin’. Just ditchin’ the mountain.’ An’ for what? The ‘gyptians. We’re all s’posed to stick tagether, or din’ ya hear? Ditchin the mountain, unbelievable…”
At this, Athena stopped suddenly, taking two deep breaths, and then walking ahead faster. “We aren’t ‘ditching’ anything, Zeus. We’re doing our jobs.” She replied, hissing ‘jobs’ through closed teeth. “And our jobs mean we have to work with all the Gods and Goddesses of Earth. It doesn’t mean we’re abandoning Olympus.”
“You are hah-bandaning ‘lympush! You just won’t admit it, ya... ya cowahd!” Zeus followed after, pointing an accusing finger at her (The most common type of finger that Zeus used, it turns out). Athena stopped again, rolling her hands up into fists, waiting for Zeus to come in close enough, turning around and pushing a finger of her own into a roll of fat on his chest.
“NONE of the group is abandoning Olympus. And it is VERY hypocritical to hear that from a man who was fired from godhood!” Athena glared, her eyes narrowing into well-practiced spheres of fire that was sparking inside of her, begging to be released in the form of an elbow to the midsection of the former lightning god. He burbled, eyes narrowing into anger, widening up into confusion, and falling into flat blankness in the course of 2.3 seconds.
“Pffh. Fired? If I’m fired, then noh un’ gave me a mehmo.” Zeus spoke dismissively, trying to push her finger away, his hand flying a foot too low. Athena huffed, removing her finger and spinning 180 degrees back in her original direction. Zeus somehow regained enough conscience thought to follow her again.
“We gave you the memo centuries ago, Zeus. You were fired and kicked out for not only breaking a rule nearly once a week, but for doing it in the most disgusting way possible.”
“If I’m fired, then what ‘m I doing up here in heav…heav…’lympus.” Zeus spoke, regaining a small amount of his sobriety. He was still heavily in denial, but at the very least, he wasn’t slurring his complete inability to accept reality too much.
“Why you’re here is beyond me. What you’re doing here is unknown to me, and you probably don’t remember either. How you got here is the same goddamn answer every time: You got hammered with Dionysus, and then because you’re a drunk savant, you somehow breach the barrier between the mortal world and ours, and spend all your time on Olympus.” Athena kept down the steep, winding trail off her part of the mountain, paved with a conspicuous amount of grass and soft dirty. Not too far ahead was the city below, an eclectic mix of architecture styles (Due to an old Pantheon unanimous vote that they were all tired of having only boring pillars and the same model buildings stacked over them), with long streets leading off to anywhere that could be needed: The main offices of Heaven, the other realms of the Gods, that experimental boring stretch of existence that was just fluffy clouds and blue skies, and an even steeper hill leading down into the mortal world. Certainly, Athena could just summon herself onto the plane of mortals, but she insisted on walking, even when Zeus was right behind her with no end in sight to his drunken ramblings – not that there was really any other kind for him.
“Yeah, Dionysus, he’s the only one that’s fun anymore. Everyone else is so goddamn uptight, uptight like you, ‘Thena.”
“I’m professional. Some think that makes me stuck up. But the majority of them, unlike you, still have a job.”
“Ooooh, they still have jobs! Tell you what, I don’t even want a job, if it means working with buttkissers like you. All hail God! All hail the all high and mighty god! Pffftt. Buncha pussies everyone turned into.”
“For starters,” Athena began, her left eye working into a tighter, more focused version of her patented death glare “God not only happens to be our boss, but he is the highest and most powerful. He created absolutely everything. Secondly, he’s not an arrogant bastard about it, like you were when you still had Lightning to throw down at people. I swear to god, someone didn’t sacrifice the animal you wanted that day, you would fry a field of crops…”
Zeus countered with another ‘Ooooh’, following Athena down into the city. Feeling what he considered to be a flow of wittiness exuding from every inch of his body, he said ‘Ooooh’ again, more sarcastically this time, and finished of with a wiggling of his fingers. All of which would have had far more effect if Athena wasn’t already looking to punch him in the throat simply for showing at her doorstep.
“Thirdly, none of us are ‘pussies’. I compete with Artemis each season for hunting trophies, and only barely beat her out most of the time. And no one else in the pantheon is any weakling either. Pan has hooves that could knock down barns.” The soft yellow ground beneath Athena’s feet gave way to a sharp incline. It would not be a long or difficult task to reach the mortal world, however. The escalator installed just to the side of the road allowed for a relaxing trip into the realm of flesh and blood. Athena stepped on, the back heel of her dress shoes making a soft clank against the metal. Zeus’ large meaty feet made a sound akin to slapping a wet salmon against a steel countertop. Not pleasant, but to its credit, it was a sound that awakened the senses more effectively than snorting black coffee. Athena took more deep breaths to keep her from throwing the ex-God down the escalator, forcing him to keep on falling down stairs till he was sober enough to get all of his balance back. The silver, shining escalator kept a quiet hum as it carried Zeus, Athena, and a very aggressive atmosphere down.
“Yeah, right. If everyone wasn’t such a pussy, I wouldn’t have been firrreed.” Zeus cut in, recovering more of his speaking skill. “They couldn’t just handle me. Couldn’t handle big bad ZEUS!”
“Zeus, please shut up and go back to Seattle…”
“Oh they fire me, they kick me out, they take away my lightning, all because they just can’t handle a tough guy like me…but I never broke no rules…”
“That…that is the most blatant denial I’ve ever heard…”
“Oh, really? Then tell me, what rules did I break? All I did was give tough love, and I don’t remember that breaking the rules.” Zeus spat out, with a shit-eating grin plastered over his face, one hand plastered on his hip, another gripped around his bottle of wine and slung over the side of the railing.
“You. Had sex. With a mortal.”
“And?”
“You turned into a fucking SWAN and had SEX with a MORTAL. And go figure, that’s one of the FEW things the mortals got right.” Athena snapped off at him. No simile could enter her mind to explain the sheer bitterness and disgust behind her words, as she could not currently think of anything to equate with the fact that her former coworker had, indeed, pleasured mortals while in the form of a swan. Zeus did many other things, but Athena was consciously blocking herself from letting those memories reach her forebrain. Zeus grin continued to remain of the shit-eating brand, before opening his mouth once more.
“Yeah. Tell me how many people could get a mortal all hot ‘n bothered over a swan.”
“THAT’S NOT SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF!” Athena screamed back, coming off the last steps with Zeus, the escalator disappearing back into nowhere. She stormed ahead, stepping down the new path leading into Morocco. There was a tense silence between the two of them as she came closer, arcing herself forward, fists clenching and unclenching before turning to face Zeus once more, at the city’s entrance.
“I know what this is about, Zeus. I know why you keep getting hammered and coming up to us. Hera.”
“Oh, Hera! I’m going back to her soon as I’m done talking to y-“
“No, you’re not going back to Hera. Hera left you a long, long time ago. You kept screwing up, and cheating on her, and doing just about everything you could to screw up a marriage. And she put up with you up until…up until you got fired. That just sealed it. And you never even saw what she was doing for you, you poor bastard. None of us could put up with you. I definitely couldn’t stand you – and some people think I’m your daughter, God, they couldn’t be more wrong. No. Only Hera could not only put up with you, but love you. But you screwed it up. And the reason why is…hell, just look at yourself.”
Another long pause. Zeus considered saying something. Athena saw that thought process starting up again, and made sure to cut it short.
“Go back to Seattle, Zeus. Just…get out of here.” Athena threw out an open palm, and Zeus was removed from sight, out of Africa, in Washington. Athena inhaled sharply, and straightened her suit, turning her eyes onto the city once more. She spotted Bast’s dark hand waving about madly from a table. Her shoe’s heels dug into the ground, pushing her forward, smiling for the first time since she had breakfast. Her stomach now relaxed due to having no more bile and hatred pumped with it, she sat down comfortably across from Bast.
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