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.
