Poetry, Roses and Galaxies

By Safdar Inamdar

The gentle singing of Euterpe in the distance gently brought her to back to consciousness. Even after all these millennia of listening to her, it never got old. Hera opened her eyes and the sunlight blinded her for a second. Even immortal eyes take a second to adjust, you know. She turned around to find her husband gone.

Zeus only ever wakes up this early when he’s visiting earth. Hera pushed the thought away almost as soon as it appeared. She didn’t want to ruin her morning thinking about his sexcapades. Today was a special day after all.

With a wave of her hand, her bed head transformed into perfect curls and her pajamas into a regal outfit, befitting the queen of the gods. “Being a goddess does have its perks”, she thought to herself while a smile played on her face.

She opened the door of her mansion to step out on the street and was greeted with a godly sight. Both sides of the avenue were lined with golden trees. Their leaves were scattered all over, scattering the sunlight, creating a heavenly sight. So beautiful that one wouldn’t even notice the mansions of white marble lining the avenue behind the trees.

That spawn of Athena had done a decent job designing them, but they just couldn’t compete with the natural beauty of Olympus. Maybe she deserves a day with no cow dung in her path, some slight reprieve from being tortured for her insolence. These were some of the thoughts running through Hera’s mind as she wandered down the avenue, moving toward the elevator that would take her down to the city of New York.

The elevator was playing Uptown Funk. Apollo had suddenly had the brilliant idea to pick a random new piece of music from a mortal invention called ‘Spotify’. Initially, everyone had argued against it, but eventually, they all relented after listening to some of the songs. Even the muses said a few words of praise for them.

She was slowly getting lost in the songs, her hands were beginning to move on their own, and her body was starting to sway to the tunes. The elevator was empty, no one would see if she let down her hair for a few seconds.

Suddenly the elevator dinged, and the door started opening slowly. Hera’s mind came crashing down to earth, along with the elevator and she snapped back to her usual formal manner and stern face. The queen of the gods can’t be seen doing something so childish and unbefitting, after all.

She stepped out of the Empire State Building and was immediately greeted with the noise of the traffic. A stark contrast to the elevator music she was just listening to, but not something you would mind listening to.

The skyscrapers, a concrete jungle, so different from the regal mansions of Olympus, but beautiful in their own way. She started walking toward to café where she was supposed to meet a friend. She could’ve easily teleported there, but she wanted to enjoy and take in the sights along the way.

While walking, some of the mortals kept staring at her. It wasn’t their fault, her godly aura could only be suppressed so much. She paid no heed to them and continued on her way. There was something very relaxing about walking through this tiny forest in the middle of the city, something very calming and she wasn’t about to let anyone ruin it for her.

Suddenly someone bumped into her. Filled with indignation, not knowing that terrible things she was about to do, she turned around to find that it was a small child. She looked up to find his pregnant mother running towards them.

All the anger inside her disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared. When she reached them, the mother took a second to catch her breath while Hera smiled. “I’m so sorry about that. He was running wildly and must’ve tripped on something”, she started apologizing. Hera continued smiling and held up her hand to indicate that it was fine and that she didn’t mind. She pointed toward to belly and looked at the woman questioningly.

“Oh, my baby? I’m 5 weeks along. There have been some complications, but we are praying for a healthy baby. It’s all up to god now.”

“Goddess”, Hera corrected her.

The woman looked at her quizzically, wondering why she had suddenly told a complete stranger all these things. Hera just smiled and murmured something under her breath. The woman couldn’t quite make out what it was, but it didn’t seem like English.

“Take good care of the baby”, saying this, Hera continued walking towards her destination, leaving the woman completely confused as what had just happened.

Upon reaching the café, she looked around to find that her companion hadn’t arrived yet. She took a seat at an empty table and beckoned a waitress towards her. She ordered a cup of coffee and waited patiently for it to arrive, enjoying the traffic and the people moving around her.

In a while, the waitress arrived with her coffee and her companion chose that moment to make her appearance too. Hera stared at her as she jogged towards the café. She was dressed in her usual garb of blue jeans and black parka. Her face had her usual excited smile plastered over it. For a goddess of matured love, Pragma always seemed to take the form of a young adult.

“Sorry I’m late. I saw this old couple on my way here and they were so cute together that I just couldn’t resist talking to them”, she said, as she finally took her seat.

Hera just sighed. Only someone as innocent as her granddaughter would have the audacity to keep her waiting, and then smile about it.

“I’ve waited long enough, show them to me”, Hera said.

“Wait a minute, Grandmother. There are certain things I need to explain first. These guidelines were set by you after all, so you can stop glaring at me.”

Hera didn’t stop glaring.

Pragma beckoned to the waitress and ordered a coffee too.

“Okay, so while they bring my coffee, ill tell you everything you need to know before we start. You know some of this, but bear with me.

“This is something we do every ten years. The reason being that, after this period, the effects of the waters of Lethe slowly start to reverse and these memories start coming back to you in fragments. The first time that happened, we quickly realized why it’s a bad idea.

“Since then, we came up with this system wherein we would bring back those memories for a brief period of time before erasing them again, every 10 years. Why don’t we just erase the memories directly, you might ask? It was your wish that you never wanted to completely forget these memories, but constantly remembering them was too much for you. Hence this predicament of ours.”

The waitress chose this moment to appear with Pragma’s coffee. She stopped talking, and started slowly sipping from her cup. Hera took this time to take in the new information.

Hera only had more questions now. What were these memories, that a goddess like her found overwhelming to remember? And why exactly would she create such an elaborate process for them? What was in them that was so important? These, and a hundred more questions just like these were swirling through her mind.

“So, are you ready?”, Pragma asked.

Hera nodded.

Pragma revealed a tiny pink vial from her pocket, opened it and motioned Hera to drink it. Hera took it in her hands and drank it.

Suddenly flashes of memory started appearing before her.

A mortal history professor was writing a thesis about her and had surprisingly managed to get a lot of the details right. So, she had decided to visit him as one of his grad students, just for the fun of it. He was one of the first mortals she had ever met that managed to segregate all the myths about her from the truth.

She came to appease her own vanity, but kept deciding to stay for a few more days because she really liked to hear him argue about how Hera was wronged by history and portrayed in a much more negative light by the patriarchal society, because she was supposed to represent the ideal woman, and was the goddess of the life of women.

Slowly, even without realizing it, she had started developing some feelings for him. But being the goddess of marriage, this put her in quite the dilemma. But she kept using the abysmal manner in which she bad been forced to marry Zeus as an excuse to justify these feelings.

Despite all her efforts to the contrary, the feelings kept growing, and she kept coming back. Zeus, who himself was mostly running around on earth, didn’t even notice.

For the first time in millennia, she was close to completely falling for a mortal. But instead of enjoying these new feelings, she was locked in a mental battle with herself about them and what their consequences would be.

Suddenly Hera felt a pain in her chest. The way it was constricting, she knew something was about to happen.

The flashes continued.

One day, the professor invited her to dinner, where he confessed his feelings for her. It took her a few seconds to recover from her initial surprise, but when she did, her dilemma was pushed to the dark recesses of her mind and she too professed her feelings for him. They were about to kiss when he suddenly got a call.

The professor’s sister had suddenly met with an accident and he had to fly out immediately because he and his sister shared a very rare blood type which wasn’t available easily, and he had to be available to donate it.

He kissed her on the cheek, promised to return immediately and ran out the door. Hera just sat there, thinking about how Apollo could heal her in moments. She calmly sat and finished her dinner. Once done, she got up and started walking towards to Empire State Building, intending to summon Apollo to heal the girl.

The next night, Apollo appeared before Hera, having completed her strange request, to inform her of the situation. The girl would make a full recovery without so much as a scratch. But her brother wasn’t there. The girl was on the brink of death, having lost too much blood and in immediate need of a transfusion. If Apollo hadn’t arrived when he did, the girl definitely would’ve died.

Hera found this puzzling. He should’ve been there at his sister’s side. She summoned Hermes to find out what had happened.

The plane that the professor had been flying in was a charter plane with a few other passengers. It had been hit by lightening while descending and had crashed. There were no survivors. Turns out, one of the passengers in the plane was an ex-lover of one of Zeus’s current flames and he shot the plane down just because he felt a twinge of jealousy.

The news shattered her. She was shut in her room for days. The pain was unbearable. The only thing stopping her from confronting Zeus about it was the life of the professor’s sister. Zeus would immediately slaughter her if he even got wind of what happened.

So, for the sake of the last remaining reminder of her love, she had to return to normal, lest Zeus become suspicious. That would just result in more pain.

But try as she might, she just couldn’t will herself to go back to normal. That’s when she had summoned Pragma and hatched this plan with her to erase her memories but eventually recall them because she didn’t want to forever forget the one mortal she had truly loved.

Hera snapped back to reality. Tears started streaming down her face. Her hard exterior started to crumble. The queen of gods was fast disappearing, and her place was being taken by just another broken person.

People around them were starting to give them stares, but Pragma kept motioning that it’s all fine.

She sat there patiently, while Hera broke down into sobs.

The waitress approached Pragma and offered her some tissues, while motioning towards Hera.

This seemed to bring her back to her senses somewhat. She straightened up and used the tissues to wipe her eyes.

“Alright, I’ve remembered everything. I’ve lived through it all again. I believe it is now time to wipe them again?”, Hera said.

“Yes, yes, it is.”

“Okay. I’m ready.”

Pragma brought out another vial from her pocket. This one was milky white. Water from the river Lethe. Powerful enough to make even the most powerful celestial beings forget everything, permanently. But with such a tiny amount, only recent memories would be wiped. Hera had really thought in through.

Pragma poured the water into Hera outstretched hands and Hera washed her face with it. Suddenly her eyes went blank and her face lost its expression. She looked a little confused and lost.

“Come grandmother, it is getting late. Time to head back home.”

Pragma held her hand, like she had done numerous times before and led her on. Upon reaching home, Hera would sleep like a baby and wake up a few hours later, with no recollection of what had just transpired.

And Pragma would have to tell her about all of this again. This had sort of become a routine for her. Despite this being her domain, she couldn’t really understand why a goddess like Hera still wept for a mortal. But then to be fair, she hadn’t even broken down to full crying this instance.

Time really does heal all wounds, even the ones we aren’t aware of.

By Safdar Inamdar