Twilight of the Gods (Part 2)

Everyone tells me I’m the only god who hasn’t given up yet. 

I don’t know what they’re talking about. I wholeheartedly believe I have given up. 

Maybe I’ve done a better job of not showing it. 

Some gods have fallen even more into their roles.

Ares has gotten even more brash. 

Ihy has dived deeper into music than ever before.

Other gods have become much more tame.

Hera stopped torturing anyone Zeus slept with.

Zeus said that, due to this, it wasn’t fun anymore. He’s now going through a period of celibacy, which is something I never thought would happen.

Loki is taking his immortality the hardest, I believe. 

No one’s really had a conversation with him in the past decade or so, no god, at least. 

Humans have created many fascinating locations.

I personally have always gravitated more towards coffee shops, teahouses, and the like. 

I’ve never been to a club.

Not before today.

I didn’t want to come here. 

However, as much as I’m not the type to go to clubs, I’m even less the type to turn down an invitation.

“Hestia, come on, you have to dance!” 

Aphrodite had looked like a teenager for a while now. She’d gone through a huge depression a few decades ago and had responded by transforming into a more youthful state. 

I’d been a little surprised when she asked me to go to a club with her.  

Similarly to Loki, she hadn’t had a meaningful conversation with another god in a while. 

Maybe if I dance with her, I can get her to open up.

I don’t know how to dance like the teenagers do, but I’m going to try my best.

“Alright, sure.” I tell her.

She bounces over to the crowd of people. 

“Not a lot of these people are wearing masks, and they’re in awfully close proximity” I point out.

“We’re gods. We can’t catch it.” She remarks. 

“But do you really want to be around people who aren’t afraid to catch the disease?”

“Who cares if COVID’s in the air? So is love!”

I sigh. At least she’s talking. I make a mental note to go find Loki and talk to him. He also seems like he needs it. 

I pay attention to the music that is on. There’s a strong beat, and a woman is singing about a party she had. 

I walk over to Aphrodite and dance for a little bit. 

I notice her making several people fall in love with each other.

Great.

They can get COVID and die together. 

See, the old Hestia would never have had such a bleak outlook. 

And they say I haven’t given up. 

“You’re good at this!” Aphrodite exclaims. “Here, I’ll make that guy over there fall in love with you.” 

“Please don’t”

“What about that lady?”

“Can we just continue with the dancing?”

“Listen, if you’re not going to let me make someone fall in love with you, what was the point of even coming here?”

“To talk with you, Aphrodite! You’re not doing alright.”

“What do you mean?” 

“It’s great that you want to live in the moment, it really is, but you’ve been a teenager for decades. You've been acting irresponsibly for so long, and I think it has something to do with whatever you were dealing with forty years ago. Can you please just tell me what’s wrong?”

Aphrodite looks away from me.

“You want to know why this is your first time in almost a century someone has invited you somewhere?”

Aphrodite asks. I don’t really want to know, but something tells me she’s going to say it anyway.

“It’s because you always do this! You always try to solve our problems, be the guiding force in our lives. I don’t need a guiding force. I don’t want a guiding force! I just want a friend who won’t die like every mortal I’ve ever loved or leave me behind like Freya, and Ares, and even Hephestus did. I invited everyone else out, and none of them view me as a friend either! ‘That was fun, maybe we could do it again sometime in the next century?’ ‘I need to go back to my Hunters. Maybe if you take a vow of fucking celibacy we’ll let you join us.’ They all leave me. And they warned me. They warned me that if I took you with me, you’d try to get to the bottom of my issues. You’d have ulterior motives, you wouldn’t be my friend, but I didn’t listen! I decided to give you a chance. Look how well that worked out.” 

Aphrodite starts to turn even younger. She was 19, but she shrinks, 17, 15, until I’m left with a thirteen-year-old at a club. I pick her up and carry her out of there. 

“I’m sorry.” I say. “I just wanted to know if you were alright.”

Aphrodite looks up at me. 

“If you want, you can set me up with that guy, over there.”

She’s 15.

“If that’s not what you want to do, that’s fine.” She says.

She’s 17.

“We can’t go back into the club until you’re at least 18.” I say.

“Come on, please?”

“Okay fine, we can go back in.”

She’s 19 again.  

She gets a text. 

She looks at it.

She gasps.

She’s 30.

She whimpers. “Balder…Balder is dead.”

“What?”

“Loki, he killed Balder. The Twilight of the Gods is coming.”