Hi! I just wanted to say that I’m absolutely blown away by your gods & monsters series. I’ve loved Greek myths for a long time, and I’m really impressed by how you include details of the original stories in your version. After loving her as a kid, I was really bummed to learn that Athena acted as the primary upholder of the patriarchy – if you’re taking prompts, would you consider writing something about her? Either way, thanks for writing such an amazing series and sharing it with us!

shanastoryteller:

She believes that she was
born without the ability to feel love, that she is destined by the
circumstances of her birth to be cold and emotionless and alone.

Bursting from the skull
of Zeus, she was borne neither from passion nor love. Neither conceived her and
so she can conceive neither. Pallas Athena is born fully grown, steel-eyed and
iron strong. Athena is born, and no one weeps.

~

She has little patience
and little love for the rest of her family. Those she is not constantly
exasperated by – such as the exuberant twins, Apollo and Artemis’s smiles
bright enough to blind – she cannot bear to be around.

Hermes is wise, but
greedy, and she won’t stand his avarice. Hephaestus – he’s different, he
doesn’t smile often but he has kindness in his eyes and cleverness in his
hands. Athena sits beside him in his forge, and he does not avoid her or grow
tired of her constant corrections. He takes her criticisms of his work
silently, either taking them and reforming his works or ignoring them without
giving any sort of explanation. She likes his silences, his large dark eyes,
likes the way he built himself better legs instead of trying to get new ones
fashioned for him. Zeus could have done it, as could his brothers, but
Hephaestus did not ask.

Aphrodite is born as she
was, and for a moment Athena thought she would no longer be alone, that she
would have a sister of her heart. But Aphrodite is the personification of love
and passion, and does not struggle with their absence as Athena does.

Her new sister’s coming
is a double blow. The goddess is beloved by all, coveted by all, pursued by all
– including Hephaestus. Athena doesn’t believe the loveliest woman in existence
will choose a malformed god that does not even have a throne on Olympus, but
she is wrong.

The gods compete for her,
offer her castles and servants and all manner of extravagant gifts. Ares
campaigns the most aggressively for her hand, promising all sorts of things
that no sane man would barter.

Hephaestus offers a
single copper rose fashioned from his own two hands.

Aphrodite goes home with
him. Her throne on Olympus, empty more often than not, becomes adorned with
simple copper flowers.

Athena tells herself she
did not want him anyway, and forces what’s left of her heart to turn to stone.

~

Medusa is a simple
village girl. She has thick black hair she wears in braids, dark skin, and
startlingly green eyes. Many call her beautiful, but she does her best to hide
it, wearing simple grey dresses and letting no makeup adorn her face, allows
not a single glittering necklace around her neck.

She is clever. Her father
is a farmer, her mother a midwife, but she thinks she could be more. She
becomes a priestess of the goddess Athena where she’s educated by the other
priestesses, her now-sisters, Stheno and Euryale.

Her attempts to be plain
are not successful for long. She catches the eye of Poseidon, a god so
tremendously powerful that her knees shake whenever he looks at her. Medusa
does not leave the temple often, terror clutching her heart whenever she
catches sight of Poseidon waiting for her at the edge of the village.

She does not go to him.
She hopes he will stop waiting.

One day a messenger comes
to the temple, sweat soaked and eyes wide. “Priestess Medusa!” he gasps,
“please, come with me! My wife – she’s having a difficult birth, the midwife
said to come to you. You must help us!”

Medusa wavers. She is not
a disciple of Artemis, but her mother trained her well. Theirs is not a large
village – if she refuses to help, if she places her fear over this
almost-mother’s needs, she is not fit to call herself the priestess of any
goddess. “Lead the way,” she says, swallowing down her fear and lifting her
skirts to follow the man out of the safety of the temple and into the village.

The birth is long, and
hard, and she and the midwife are only partially successful. The mother is
saved, but of the two children who grew in her womb only one still breathes.
The father thanks her even as he touches the cheek of the babe they could not
save, and Medusa tries not to wonder if they would have both lived if she had
not hesitated. She does not think so, but knows the possibility will haunter
her regardless.

He offers to walk her
back, but she declines, unwilling to separate him from his new family, and
makes the long walk to the temple alone.

She’s almost there when a
man appears, easily walking besides her. His eyes are sea-storm blue and his
skinned tan, tall and thick with rippling muscles. “I’ve been waiting for you,”
he says, mouth tilted up that the corner.

Medusa stares, heart in
her throat, and can think of nothing to say. So she runs.

She’s on the steps of the
temple when a thick arm catches her around the waist. “Not so fast,” Poseidon
murmurs, lips dragging against her neck. “We’ve hardly had the opportunity to
become acquainted.”

“We can’t,” she says
desperately, unwilling to struggle and risk angering him. “We are at a temple
of the virgin Athena!”

“Only the steps,” he
reaches beneath her skirt, “she won’t mind. It’s all right, isn’t it? You’re
such a pretty thing.”

She bites her lips to
keep from crying. Poseidon is the god of the sea, and she is merely a mortal
woman. “No,” she whispers, sending up one last plea to her patron goddess. “No,
I don’t mind.”

~

Athena is furious. She has no patience for
Poseidon’s misdeeds on the best of days, but her priestess, in her temple
– she has not the power to kill the god, but she’s eager to teach him a lesson.

She goes storming into
his palace, and all his servants go scurrying when they see her.

“Lady Athena,” a soft,
amused voice greets, “what a pleasant surprise.”

She turns and glares at
the smiling Amphitrite. She never knows what to make of this woman. She’s the
personification of the sea itself and is closer to a being like the great
Mother Gaia than she is to a goddess. Yet she’s content to be the wife of
Poseidon, to be the sea he commands.

“Do you know where your
husband is?” she demands.

“Always,” she responds,
still with that same pleasant smile, and Athena feels a chill she can’t explain
go down her back. “How might I help you, Lady Goddess?”

“He owes me recompense,”
she snaps, “He’s raped one of me priestesses in my temple. I demand
satisfaction.”

Amphitrite smiles, and Athena
is reminded all at once that she’s in the middle of the sea, in the middle of
Amphitrite’s domain. This is not the place to cross her. “If it is satisfaction
you seek, it is not my husband you should be looking for.” Athena opens her
mouth, but Amphitrite cuts her off, “Tend to your priestess, Lady Goddess.
Nothing you seek is here to find.”

Athena is too wise to
fight a battle already lost. She leaves the palace empty handed.

~

Medusa sits in a hot spring,
legs pulled to her chest and her chin resting on her knees. She has not told
Stheno and Euryale of the events of last night. How can she, when they will
surely toss her out if she reveals she’s no longer fit to serve in a temple of Athena
the Virgin.

“Did you bleed?”

Her head snaps up, and
she’s staring into cool grey eyes. “My lady!” she gasps, and hurries to press
her forehead to the rock, prostrating herself as best she can in the hot
spring.

“I asked you a question,”
Pallas Athena says.

Tears gathers in her
eyes, and Medusa blinks them away. “No, my lady. He was gentle.”

The words feel sour in
her throat, but they are true. He was not rough with her, did not bruise her as
the tales say he likes to do, did not leave her bleeding, only with a vague
soreness that would be easy to ignore if it had any other cause.

“Don’t be ridiculous,”
Athena says harshly, grabbing her chin and forcing Medusa to look at her. “There
is nothing gentle about what he did. Be still. I will make it so that neither he
nor any other man will ever touch you again.”

Dread settles in the pit
of her stomach. Medusa had not liked Poseidon’s hands on her – much of her skin
is rubbed raw from where she tried to scrub away the phantom sensation of his
touch. But she had not planned to remain a priestess forever. She had one day
wanted a husband and children of her own, and that desire was not something
Poseidon’s actions had managed to change.

But Athena is a goddess,
and she is merely a mortal woman.

“Thank you, my lady,” she
says, and closes her eyes.

Whatever she does, Medusa
hopes it will at least not hurt.

~

Athena is in one of great
libraries when Aphrodite settle besides her. She forces down the instinctual
swell of bitterness at the sight of the goddess and says, “Aphrodite. You
should have told me you were coming.”

“If I had, you wouldn’t
be here,” the other goddess retorts, and Athena keeps her face blank against
the entirely accurate accusation. “I know you have a temper, sister, but was
not your treatment of your priestess a little harsh? It’s hardly her own fault
that she caught the eye of Poseidon.”

It takes a moment for
Athena to realize who she’s talking about. “My transformation of Medusa was not
a punishment, but a gift.”

Aphrodite snorts, “Some
gift. I wouldn’t normally interfere with your affairs, but the girl has been
praying at my temple for months. Turn her back.”

“So that another man may
make prey of her?” Athena snaps, stung in way she refuses to show at Aphrodite’s
chastising. “I think not.”

“The way she is now, no
man will love her either,” she says, “Why
do you deny her her happiness?”

Athena slams the book
shut that she was trying to read, thoroughly incensed. “You stupid girl, why
would she ever want a man’s love after what Poseidon did to her?”

“Not everyone is you,
Pallas Athena,” Aphrodite says, something cruel in the curl of her mouth, “Not
all are so willing to turn all that is capable of causing them pain into stone.”

She knows. Athena
supposes it was inevitable, that the goddess of love would know what used to
lie in Athena’s heart, but her fists clench anyway. “Did you tell him?”

“My husband remains as
oblivious of all but his machines as ever,” she says. “Return Medusa to her
former form.”

Athena is not willing to
be pushed around by a flowery, half rate goddess who wages no wars and wins no victories.
“I refuse. I did right by my priestess.”

Aphrodite shakes her
head, but leaves her at long last.

~

Medusa doesn’t stop
praying to Aphrodite, no matter the long years that her prayers go unanswered.

She keeps her snakes
covered in a tight headwrap, and they sleep willingly on top of her head.

In the temple, her gaze
is of no concern, for her sisters were not men and therefore could not be
turned to stone. But every time someone came calling to the temple, she hid in
her room and refused to come out, terrified of turning some well-meaning
traveler to stone on accident.

A wounded man stays at
the temple – a hero, with the mark of the gods on him.

Stheno demands that
Medusa tends to him, says that she’s the best healer of the three of them. “He’s
out cold, and god-touched besides,” Stheno says impatiently, dragging Medusa
from her room. “You won’t turn this one to stone.”

Medusa gives in, tending
to his wounds, careful to keep her eyes downcast in case he awakens.

He’s a beautiful man, the
only one she’s seen in a long time. His skin is a rich bronze, his hair is
thick and black, and is cheekbones are high. His lips full and soft, as Medusa
discovers when she carefully skims her fingers over them. “His name is Perseus,”
Euryale tells her one.

“Perseus,” she repeats,
and flushes all over.

She goes to him in the
night and sits besides him. At first she only watches him, waiting for his
wounds to heal and for him to awaken and leave. But days pass, and he heals,
but slowly. She starts talking to him, describes her days as a child. She tells
him of her parents, of training to be a midwife, of how she eventually rejected
that training to become a priestess of Athena. Days pass to weeks, and she speaks
of Poseidon, of the gift (curse, her sisters say, when they think she cannot
hear the) Athena gave her, of the future she coveted and has now lost forever.

She holds his hand as she
talks, traces the lines of his hands and both dreads and hopes for the day that
he awakens.

The day comes. She hides
in her room and sits with her legs to her chest, just like on that day that
Athena came to her.

There’s footsteps and
then a knocking on her door. “Medusa?” a deep voice calls, “Are you in there?
It’s Perseus.”

She slowly uncurls and
walks to her door. She does not open it, but she presses her forehead against
it. She wishes she knew what his eyes looked like.

“If – if you’re in there,
I just – I just wanted. I – Thank you, Medusa. For tending to me. I would not
be alive if not for you. I can never repay you for your kindness.”

He stands there, waiting,
but she cannot bring herself to speak to him.

“Okay,” he says, softer
this time, “It’s okay, you don’t need to say anything. I hope we meet again,
Priestess Medusa.”

She hasn’t cried in a
long time. She’s not surprised to realize she’s crying now.

~

Days turns to weeks turn
to months. She does her best forget the man she never truly met.

Then he returns.

She’s sitting in the
library when Euryale comes for her, telling her she’s needed in the main room.

She barely catches sight
of him before she bolts, hurrying to leave before she accidentally kills him.
Euryale blocks her way, glaring. “You will not turn him to stone, Medusa. Go.”

“Priestess Medusa,” he
calls out with that same rich voice, “I’m wearing a blindfold. Our gazes will
not meet. Please, do not run from me.”

She takes a deep breath,
forcing her heart to calm and her limbs to stop trembling before she can make
herself turn and face him. She takes lead-laden steps until she stands in front
him. He has fresh scars from when she saw him last, and she aches to touch
them.

He holds out a small box
to her. “Please know these are yours no matter your answer, Priestess Medusa.
They are not bargaining chips. They are a gift.”

“Thank you,” she says automatically,
confused. “My answer to what?”

He smiles at her. His
lips look even nicer like that. “Lady Medusa, I heard you all those nights you
were by my side, all those long hours when your voice guided me back to the
mortal realm. I have traveled the world, and I have yet to meet a woman as
extraordinary as you. I would take you for my wife, Lady Medusa, if you are
willing.”

Her knees buckle, and his
hands wrap around her elbows, holding her upright. “I can’t,” she chokes out. “I
can’t, I’ll kill you.”

“The box in your hands
holds a pair of eyes,” he says softly. “Take off my blindfold.”

It can’t be. He can’t be
saying what she thinks he is. She raises a trembling hand and removes the
blindfold.

Where his eyes should be
there is only emptiness. There’s minimal scarring, meaning they were removed in
intentional precision. “If you take my eyes for you own, you will no longer
have to worry about turning people to stone. I doubt they are as lovely as
yours must be, but I wish for you to have them none the less. I wish for you to
have the choices they provide weather you are my wife or not.”

Medusa carefully
transfers the precious, precious box to one hand and grabs the back of Perseus’s
neck with the other, pulling him down and pressing their lips together. He
wraps a careful arm around her waist and pulls her flush against him. He’s warm
and solid, and his mouth is soft and pliant. He’s everything she ever hoped
being held by a man would be.

Her hair covering falls
off, and when they break apart he’s laughing. The snakes unbound are fully
grown now, and drape nearly to her waist. They reach out and brush against him.
“Friendly, aren’t they?” he asks, holding up a hand for their inspection. “Can
I take that as a yes, Lady Medusa?”

“Yes,” she says, and kisses him again, just because she can.

~

Athena sits high on a
roof, watching Medusa hang laundry in the baking summer sun. Perseus’s brown
eyes fit perfectly in her face, and Athena’s eyes are drawn to the swell of the
woman’s stomach.

There’s a shift in the
air besides her. “Come to rub my ignorance in my face?”

Aphrodite sighs and leans
so they’re shoulder to shoulder. “Dear sister, I would never.”

They sit in silence for a
moment, until Athena can take it no longer. “I know you must think me cold–”

Aphrodite bursts into
laughter, and Athena is startled into silence. “Your temper runs hot enough to
burn all of Olympus to ashes,” she says cheerfully. “Cold has never been a word
I would use to describe you. Stubborn, of course. Petty, most certainly. But
never cold.”

“I am the only goddess
without a lover,” she says blankly, because all know of Artemis and her women,
of how Hestia uses her vow of chastity to deter suitors and not much else.

“So?” Aphrodite asks, “I
do not see why that matters. Poseidon beds more people than any of us, and yet
he runs as cold as the ocean depths he lives in.”

Athena stares, wide eyed,
and admits something to her that she’s never admitted to anyone, “I don’t think
I was born with the capacity to love anyone.”

Her sister smiles, soft,
and says, “Often, love is sacrifice.” Neither of them look to where Medusa
takes her blind husband’s hand and places it against her stomach. His laughter
is bright and cuts across the air when he feels his child move. “That is an art
you know well, sister.”

For a single moment,
Aphrodite’s fingers tangle with hers and there’s warm lips pressed against her
forehead.

Then she is alone once
more.

gods and monsters series part viii