Ridiculust Ch. 16

Chapter 16

When Aphrodite awoke, she instinctively felt that it was at sunset on the Summer Solstice. She was lying on her back on grass, looking up at a sky half-filled with clouds coloured varying shades of orange, red, and purple that was quite lovely. A gentle breeze was blowing and she could hear the sound of it in the trees that surrounded her. Memories of the last terrible days of the Olympians flooded through her mind as she stared up into the darkening sky. For all she knew, she was alone and might not see the others again.

It had been only a month ago that they had all started feeling the power beginning to wane. Mount Olympus had been on an extraordinary node of strong Air, Fire, Earth, and Water-aspected lines, as well as weaker Solar and Lunar lines, which had enabled the Olympians to be as powerful as they had been. The decline was gradual at first, but after a few days it had become clear that there was a serious problem. The magic holding the palaces together had weakened to the point where pieces were falling off, and Hermes, Aphrodite, Demeter, and even Zeus had had close calls with falling stone blocks. At a tense conference on the fourth day, they discussed their options, which seemed to be few. Hades suggested hibernation like the bears in cold climates, where they reduced the amount of energy they needed in the hopes that they would be able to wake up when the magic returned. Hera said that they'd have to find a way to store the magical energy that they would need, and after a few moments of thought, Hephaestus suggested something called a "flywheel" that they could spin up as fast as possible with available magic and use it to sustain them. Zeus agreed to it, but added that they would have to scatter themselves far and wide so that they could drain as much of the remaining power as possible.

So, they had. She and Ares had fled far to the west across the great ocean to a land that they had never bothered to explore. They found strong nodes not too far from each other, with him choosing the one with Earth and Fire lines, and her with Air and Water lines, but the Earth line from Ares' node passed not too far away. Ares, as usual, was in a foul temper as they magically excavated deep into the rich soil of the forest and constructed their shelters with local stone. At least he had chased off the local wandering tribes of copper-skinned peoples, which was a small blessing. Aphrodite had been able to maintain her composure, pushing aside the increasing panic and fear as the magic continued to weaken, and had created, installed, and started spinning up twelve heavy flywheels in a circle around her shelter while maintaining enough energy in her node to keep her alive.

He, on the other hand, had been careless because destruction and chaos had been his forte, not building. Two days before they were due to hibernate, she suddenly ceased to feel his presence. She found his body in the remains of his collapsed shelter with nearly all of the energy drained from his node and stored in his flywheels. It took a dangerous amount of effort for her to channel the energy towards her shelter through the Earth line and from there to her flywheels, making them spin so fast that she could barely hear them hum. It was only when she'd settled down into her bed and covered the shelter with earth that in her fading consciousness, she could feel the taint of rage and despair in the magic she'd taken from him. All she could do was hope that it was enough to keep her alive and not kill her.

After lying there for a few minutes, she sat up to look around and see the new world into which she had awoken. She was in the centre of a circle of twelve immense trees, each of a different variety of which she recognized a few. A young couple, the man black and the woman white, were walking with arms around each other's waists and were almost upon her. She screamed in surprise and fright, but they walked right through her, oblivious to her presence.

"That felt strange," she said with a shiver, not in English of course, but in the ancient Greek that was spoken by the Olympians at the time they'd placed themselves into hibernation. She noticed that the couple was wearing clothing that was completely unfamiliar to her, short pants that would have been quite indecent in her time, patterned short-sleeved tops, and socks and shoes of unfamiliar design. Then she stood up and looked down at herself, seeing that she appeared to look much like she did before, except that she had a faint blue-white glow. She tried to summon a hand mirror, but nothing happened. As she walked towards the edge of the clearing for a look outside it, she could feel the strength of the magical field weakening rapidly and herself along with it, so she quickly retreated back to where she had woken up and sat down to recover. Between the trunks of the trees she could see that she was in some sort of city park with a river to the north next to a willow tree.

"I'm a shade!" she exclaimed. "My body didn't survive! Now what will I do?" There weren't many options at first, but the background magic field was slowly strengthening even as the magic that she had stored was running out and she found that she could move further and further away from the grove of trees and for longer periods of time, albeit not too far from the lines. The Water line roughly followed a small river that formed the northern and western boundaries of the park, while the Air line struck from northwest to southeast. At least she hadn't lost her sense of direction, she noted wryly to herself. Her body had no needs and she only needed to sleep to rest her mind and absorb what she had observed during the day. Her biggest challenge was the local language and figuring out how to learn it. She even tried putting her head into the heads of people who were sitting on benches, but their thought processes were jumbled and mixed up with concepts she'd never heard of and generally very hard to follow. Clearly, she had been asleep for a very long time.

Aphrodite tried her best to counter the loneliness and empty feeling of homesickness that she felt by feeling grateful that she was alive at all. Had she not been able to transfer Ares' stored magic into her flywheels, she would have perished long ago. Unless some of the others had been able do to something similar, she was the only one of them left. Which wasn't so bad, she reflected, sitting under the willow by the river bank, watching the ducks, geese, and swans paddling around. The gods had been assholes to varying degrees, and the other goddesses hadn't been much better. Of course, her record had been far from spotless either, being part of the reason for that damned Trojan War and everything that had happened because of it. She idly wondered if the stories had survived.

On the third day, couples of all combinations of genders, shapes, ages, and sizes had started appearing in her grove from out of nowhere, engaging in sex for varying lengths of time, and then fading away after they were done. This was happening mostly at night, which led her to wonder if the people were asleep, dreaming, and somehow finding their way here. She saw nothing that she hadn't seen (or participated in) during her Olympian years, but was surprised to find that despite lacking the need to eat, excrete, or even breathe, she could still get horny. Lust and the slaking thereof, had gotten her into all sorts of trouble over the years, with that Adonis scandal being one of the more notorious. Even now she felt a twinge in her loins when she remembered him.

Watching one particularly enthusiastic and well-endowed couple going at it, oblivious to her presence, caused her to sit and check to see if what was between her legs still functioned. A black woman was riding on the cock of a white man and dangling her large breasts with their jet-black nipples over his face for him to suck and lick, making her groan with pleasure. Aphrodite pulled up the ankle-length white dress to expose her pussy to the air and gently touched the sensitive nub of her clitoris, which sent an electric thrill through her body. Two fingers plunged into her vagina, seeking and finding the sensitive spot at its top while the fingers of her other hand stroked and gently pulled her clitoris as the man was frantically pounding the woman into a screaming orgasm that was quickly and powerfully matched by her own. The couple faded away and she felt her magic stirring.

"At last," she said out loud. It was weak and she couldn't do much, but it was better than nothing. "Now I can finally start learning where and when I am!"

"I think I can help with the when, but not the where," said a man's voice quietly from behind her. She screamed and whirled around, instinctively falling into a defensive posture, but the man was several paces away at the foot of the large pine tree where the Air line passed out of the clearing, looking up into its branches, then out past it towards the main street of the town, which was quiet at this hour of the night. "It's strange," he continued, "I know that I'm dreaming, but this seems so real." A large dragonfly hunting the abundant mosquitoes that infested the park at night, but didn't sense her, flew by, turned around and alighted on the back of his outstretched hand. "Oh, hello there," he said to it, and then looked at Aphrodite. "There is magic here. I can feel it. It soothes and energizes my soul."

"Wait, I can understand what you're saying!" she replied excitedly, walking up to him. "You are the first person I have been able to understand since I awoke a few days ago!" One of the first things that she had noticed was that she was no longer taller than the humans. Back in her day, five-foot-seven (in our measurements) was significantly taller than most of them, but now it seemed that she was somewhat below average for a woman and well below average for men. This man was four or five inches taller than she was, rather thin except for a small pot belly, and was wearing shorts and a T-shirt of a colour made indiscernible by the gentle blue glow of the spirit of the sleeping. He was clean-shaven, something that she still hadn't gotten used to, had glass lenses perched on his nose, and seemed to have rather hairy arms and legs.

"Maybe it's the magic," he replied. His lips and throat moved to produce unfamiliar syllables that her ears heard, but her mind heard words she could understand. "Maybe the magic takes a little while longer to wake up after your mind does." He looked at the dragonfly, whose wingspan was a bit less than his hand's width. "You're tired, my friend. Take some energy from this place." He focused and a turquoise glow briefly surrounded the insect. With a hum of wings, it launched itself, buzzed around them and left, holding its legs in a basket shape to catch its prey. "Good hunting!"

"Who are you?" Aphrodite asked, looking at him more closely, and then reaching out to hold the extended hand. It felt cool to the touch, but her extended senses could feel a great deal of power buried just below the surface. She also had the feeling of great age, sadness, and weariness. "Look in my eyes," she commanded, staring at him. "Let me learn about you." He did, but not because of her command, more from curiosity than anything else. "One of my lesser-known powers is to look into a person's soul to see their past lives. Are you willing? You have to be willing in order for it to work."

"My name is Roger. I am a man walking alone tonight. Occasionally my late wife comes with me and we make love under one of the trees. It seems to help them, as they are sick with something." He paused for a moment, looking into her eyes. "Yes, I am willing." Their gazes locked and she made a complex gesture with her left hand and fingers. The man froze in place as he felt like a lock was rotating in several dimensions inside his head, and suddenly memories came flooding forth. He was lifting Jeannie's wedding veil and her face was radiant with love, though he didn't remember her having a silver, gold, and white aura. He was a medic in an American army uniform crouched over a badly-wounded comrade trying to save his leg while others provided covering fire to protect them. He was a medic again, charging up a steep, muddy slope with bullets whizzing around him in the deafening bedlam of battle, hauling a heavy first-aid kit with a somehow familiar comrade beside him, shooting ahead while he looked for others who had been mown down but could still be saved. Aphrodite was also frozen in place, unable to break free from the tidal wave of memories and emotions that she had unwittingly loosed. He was a medicine woman in a village somewhere in Africa, healing the sick and injured with real magic. Christian missionaries were trying to poison the minds of the villagers into thinking she was a witch, but the villagers roughly expelled them. He was the loving companion of a woman with real power, glowing in colours of silver, gold, and white, with whom he had run from a bunch of religious zealots who had tried and failed to burn her at the stake, healing the sick and hurt Indians in the interior.

On and on it went, further and further back in time until it finally ended with a caveman closing the eyes of a tribe member who had been killed by the mammoth that they had finally brought down as a somewhat familiar warrior stood by in grief-stricken silence. They were alone in the grove with the half-moon shining down on them, with the gentle rustling of the wind in the trees and the sound of a passing car on the distant street to partly mask their ragged sobbing as they were holding each other.

"You ... you are the Healer Archetype," she said, wiping her eyes with a sleeve. "All through your lives you were crossing paths with other Archetypes: the Warrior, the Engineer, the Musician, and the General ... on and on. And your Jeannie - she is the Sorceress." She placed her hands on each side of his face. "I don't know if it was by accident or by design that two of the most powerful Archetypes would be mates in this time, but you two are the ones who can help me reenter the physical world."

"Jeannie died three and a half years ago," he replied, gently taking hold of her wrists and kissing her knuckles. "I think that I have been making love to her ghost for the past three years or so. Always in my dreams, and usually here for some reason. Something keeps pulling us here." He put his hand on the trunk of the pine tree. "The trees have power in them, but they're sick and it's slowly eating away at them from the inside. It's something to do with you, isn't it?" He brushed a lock of her hair over her ear.

"Before I put myself to sleep in a crypt down below us, I charged twelve reservoirs with as much magic as I could funnel into them. They are large, heavy, circular stones that rotate on an axis."

"Ah, flywheels. Keep them floating on something with very low friction and they can store as much energy as you can pump into them." Somehow, they had started dancing, drifting across the lawn in the grove, bodies pressed together and effortlessly moving as one, to music that seemed to come from the rustling leaves and the water in the river. In the real world, Roger couldn't dance to save his soul, but here was different.

"The magic that gave us life is returning, but too late to save my body. Trees must have lived and died here over the centuries, but they would have always been growing here. I took magic that Ares had stored because he managed to kill himself building his shelter. I felt the taint of his rage and despair, but was unable to clean it before I lost consciousness. It must have gotten into these trees, and probably all of their predecessors as well." A mother fox and four kits were practicing hunting along the edge of the grove. As they swirled past, Roger saw one of the kits look up and stare at them briefly before resuming its play.

"My flesh and blood body has picked up some magical ability from what we call the Magic Plague," he replied. "I can approach birds and animals without having them run away or attack me." His cock had come to life as they danced, and there was no question that she had noticed. He had seen her expression taking on a sultrier appearance.

"You have desire for me," she murmured as they dipped and swayed.

"You are the goddess of love and desire. How could I not?" he replied, good humouredly.

"Then you will make love to your goddess, knowing that you seduced her," she replied huskily, stepping back far enough to pull her dress over her head and drop it on the grass beside her. "Only a few mortal men have raised true desire in me, though I must say that your situation is unique." His clothes somehow disappeared, leaving his erection rampant in front of her. She had a relatively modest waist and hips with just the right amount of curve. Her breasts were about D sized, he estimated, but full and firm, with relatively small areolas and large, hard nipples that looked like they desperately needed to be licked and sucked. Instead, as she put her left arm on his right shoulder and stroked his cock with her right hand, he used both hands to gently stroke her breasts and nipples, eliciting gasps and hisses as he somehow made a body that wasn't there feel like little charges of electricity were coming from his fingers into it. A hand made a sinuous trail down her body to caress the curls of her bush and, when she quickly shifted her feet apart, to stroke her hot pussy and tease the hard nub of her clitoris.

"How does my goddess wish me to make love to her?" he murmured into an ear, teasing the lobe with his tongue.

"Right now!" she demanded, lying down and pulling him onto her. "Hard and - OH! As fast as you can!" He had thrust into her to the hilt with a grunt while looking into her eyes. "Can the dream spirit of a man pound the shade of a goddess into total ruin?" Aphrodite asked with a wide smile.

"We are about to find out," Roger replied, starting to pump slowly as their bodies synchronized. Goddess or no, she was a woman and if his experience with Jeannie was an accurate measuring stick, the hot clamp on his cock was a sure sign that she was going to cum quickly. He obeyed her instructions and began thrusting deep and fast, unconstrained by the limitations of a physical body, making sure that he was pushing up to stimulate her clitoris. It had its desired effect, as her eyes and mouth were wide with shock as her whole body seemed to feel fire radiating from her pussy that the hard, thick cock was taxing to its limit.

His power felt like the solidity of the earth, the peace of a great forest with a gentle breeze running through it, and the warmth and comfort of a fire on a chilly night, and it seemed to wrap itself around her like a warm winter cloak even as his manhood thrust deep into her. The glass things on his nose had vanished along with his clothes and she could see his eyes that somehow conveyed compassion, respect, and ages-old wisdom. His colours were the warming yellow of the sun, deep green of the forest, and rich turquoise of the healing pools of the hot springs.

"Were you ever truly loved?" he asked quietly, slowing down his thrusting, staring into her brilliant blue eyes and gently kissing her nose. "Were you ever able to trust anyone enough to let down your guard and truly give yourself to him - or her?" he added as an afterthought.

"No," she replied breathlessly as her clitoris continued to send charges throughout her nervous system. "It was always every god or goddess for him or herself. The petty jealousies, bickering, infidelities, and betrayals meant that nobody could be trusted. And you were always being watched, even with the mortals. Nobody could be trusted not to stab you in the back for anything that you did."