ALSO I’d appreciate it if you’d give your thoughts about Dionysus and Ariadne.

notbecauseofvictories:

The god sat beside her on the hill, and his mouth was sour with old wine and the leavings of richer, sweeter things. Dates, and the sweet persimmon of other women. He would have to give them up, he supposed, if he was to be a bridegroom. But at least she was pretty, this girl left like an offering on a hill on Naxos; and inexplicably, he felt pity for her. (He had never felt pity before, it was a novel sort of experience.)

“I could marry you,” the god said, after a while. They were watching the birds wheel overhead, and in the brightening morning he could see where the paint on her face had smeared. She was made up like a bride already, her hair cropped around her ears and wet with dew, like a loutra offered by his great-grandmother, the earth, who made the world so fair.

The girl, on his hill, on Naxos, was at least so fair.

“I—” the girl said, and she fell silent again. Finally, after a long silence, she said, “I would like that.”

The god blinked. It had been a long time since he was surprised.

“Are you sure?” he asked. She was very pretty, the girl on a hill, made up like a bride and watching her first-intended bridegroom disappear over the horizon.

“Yes,” the girl said, and this time, she sounded sure.

“I could make him turn back,” the god said, surprised even as he said it. “I could make him come back to you. I could make him lovesick, mad with it, like a cow stung by a fly. He would have no choice.”

“He had a choice,” the girl said. She reached up and delicately, carefully wiped her eyes, only smearing a little the black kohl there. She had kind eyes, the god thought. “He chose. Would you truly marry me?”

“I could make him suffer,” the god offered instead. “I could make him a goat for slaughter, cooked for his kinsmen to devour. I could make him a wind that blew only on your skin. I could make him wine to be drunk and yet turned to vinegar, or music unheard. In madness and suffering, he would wander in search of—”

“No,” the girl on the hill said. “I do not want him to suffer. Would you truly marry me?”

“Yes,” the god answered honestly, for she had been left on his hill, dressed in a bride’s chiton, and her hair cropped and wet around her ears. He had never had a wife, but—he mouth tasted of old wine, and longing. 

“What do you offer,” she asked, “in bride-price?”

“I am a god,” he said, and she quirked an amused and yet distinctly unimpressed smile in his direction. When she made no reply, he added, “I am not cruel, or cold. I will not abandon you. My court is—half-mad, drunk, but it will look to you in joy and merriment. And,” he said, “sister to a monster and almost-wife of a hero, that is a princess I would welcome into such a motley band as follow me.”

She looked at him, the dark and lovely girl on the hill; thoughtfully and then cannily. “You know my brother.”

The god has never been in the habit of lying, even when madness carried the day. “All of the world knows your brother. If not now, then when the story is told on distant shores and in times other than these. Labyrinth-queen and Giver-of-thread. You will be queen, thereafter, and beside me—with me.

“This,” the god said, after a moment of silence, “is my bride-price.”

For a long and silent moment, the girl said nothing, and the god thought that perhaps she would refuse. Like this, he was only a man—curls slicked to his forehead with wine-sweat, clutching his sandals and a certain bleary look, puffy in his face. Perhaps he should have taken his cousin’s counsel, and come to her as a bull instead, let her see his power. Or brought her gifts, as Apollo had suggested; tree boughs and spices and hymns.

Instead, he was just himself, sitting beside her on a hill on Naxos. (Uncertainty was a novel experience too.)

“Yes,” the girl on the hill said finally. “Let us be wed.”

Her hand was cold, still cold from the night, when she held it out to him. The god took it, and pressed his mouth to her dark fingers. “Thank you,” he said, and then, more formally, “So mote it be.”

The girl, with her kohl smeared a little, just at the corner of her left eye, and the dew wet on her hair, her cheek, her hand—said with the dignity befitting a goddess, “May it be, according to your will.”

(That night the god took her to his bed, which was a soft place of grape leaves and dirt, kicked up from the dancing. She let him put hands on her, and tilted her face up to him, a plea—not a bride, the god thought then with pleasure, as he suckled at her throat. A goddess, expecting an offering.)