Thanatos pulled in a deep and long sniff of the wonderful bitter brew as the steam caressed the sensitive skin of his lips. Placing the hot tiny cup down on the small table, he idly wondered how he lived so many centuries without trying the dark sinful liquid. The morning sun shone brightly in the pink and orange sky as it rose to chase away the crisp chill of the early spring air. It might be a cliché he admitted, but he always loved Athens or as much as he could love anything and always found his way back to Greece. They all found their way back here, he thought with a slight grin.
Though, he was no longer the God of Death by his own actions, he didn’t fight the urge to come to the place of their birth in this reality. The healing burn on his tongue was the biggest reminder of what he had become not ten days before. As he chanced a timid sip of the dangerous liquid, a slim hand came to rest on his shoulder.
“Thanatos,” A silky female voice greeted as the tall lean woman with long blonde hair stepped around him to sit in the chair across from him. He schooled his angler features to show nothing of the anger that suddenly curled through his middle like a waiting beast and was acutely aware of all the eyes that were glancing toward them.
The woman was breathtaking with her almost angelic face and luscious lips with the creamiest skin ever to grace the human plane, but she was no human. If only the men that started to outright ogle her knew how they were playing with their very lives. After taking a small sip of the expresso, the tinkle of the porcelain cup seemed to ring through the morning as the light brightened a bit more of the skyline.
“Zeus,” He greeted and resisted the urge to straighten a bit more in the chair, scanning crowd for any eavesdroppers. Luckily, the crowd wasn’t more than four or five in the tiny café. Though, that would change in little more than half an hour. The waitress hurried over.
“Can I get you anything, ma’am?” The waitress asked as she pulled out her note pad.
“Oh, sweetie, I don’t think you have what I desire this time around.” Zeus answered without breaking eye contact with Thanatos. The girl didn’t blink an eye to her credit and turned to Thanatos.
“Another expresso sir?”
“Yes, please.”
She nodded and glanced at the woman with the barest hint of irritation in her eye before turning to walk back into the café. So the little lady had a spine, Thanatos thought, but suppressed the grin. Once again, he wondered on the small reactions and flares of emotions flowing through him. It was a true gift humans had to control so many facets of this mortal existence. He frowned at the spark of pride that came to life in his middle, but he worked hard to keep all this off his face.
“The mornings here were always so beautiful.” Zeus said absently, but her gaze was intense. “But, it doesn’t explain why you sit here when I gave you a particular job.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Why don’t you explain to me, my beauty?” She asked with an indifferent tone, though her blue eyes kept their intense.
The waitress set down another expresso without a word and rushed to another couple that just sat down across the long patio. The breeze blew cool along his skin as he stared right back at Zeus, letting his coffee sit for a moment. He found that the great King of the Gods had made a grave mistake and the sudden realization bought a satisfaction that he never felt before, but he couldn’t let it show.
“I didn’t see the rush.” He answered and picked up the new tiny cup to take a sip.
“Rush…no rush. Just thought this little venture of Artemis’s would be entertaining, but it seems to have fallen flat and I want to just have it done and over.” She swiped at the air as if to erase the whole idea and finally broke eye contact and sat back in her chair.
“You are bound by the agreement that you both stuck.” He took that chance to look at the rising sun. “The Goddess has three more days. I know she’ll take the three days no matter what you or I try to do.”
“No, but if you convince her to save her so much pain. You were always so good at that, my beauty.”
“Convince her?”
“This quest of hers proves nothing and she is only wasting her talents and her Last Wish over this ridiculous theory.”
“Theory?”
“Coy isn’t a good color on you, my beauty.”
“I’m not being coy…I just don’t think it’s about the belief she holds that’s all. And I don’t believe I’ll convince her to give up either.” A dangerous gleam came into Zeus’s eye at his words and a stone seemed to drop in his stomach.
“That’s right. You two know each other pretty well.”
“We all know each other.” He replied in a bland tone and swallowed the rest of his expresso and met her eyes once again, keeping the nerves and anger he felt off his face.
What he said was true, but Artemis was the closest he had to a friend in this reality. He just didn’t know it until Zeus turned him into a human to fully connect him to the mortal plane. Now, Thanatos could get Artemis through the Vail, instead of losing her to the Ether of the next plane. Zeus carried no charity in her heart. She didn’t like to lose. The battle over the Cosmos was a long running game and Artemis knew the Gods were losing and fading from all existence. Thanatos never cared either way until eleven days ago.
“Yes, but you and her have been on many adventures together if I remember correctly.”
“Now, who’s playing coy?”
“Is this going to a problem?” She asked. Her tone suddenly icy and very serious, but it didn’t stop him from staring at her with his own icy expression, not bothering to fill the silence.
“Then I suggest you stop playing human…and do what I commissioned you to do.”
“Hello, beautiful.” A tall broad shouldered man dressed in cargo pants and a white button up shirt wearing leather sandals stepped up to their table. “This paper pusher doesn’t seem to be doing it for you. I know I got what you need.”
Thanatos looked down at his tailored black suit and thought the man was right. He did look like a paper pusher. A very well dressed paper pusher, but still, not as fun as this tanned beach muscle man he mused. Zeus assessed the man with a slanted grin from feet to head.
“You might be right.” She stood in a smooth graceful motion and trailed a dainty hand down his torso. “You do have what I want.”
That was Thanatos’s cue that this little meeting was over. Zeus pulled the man in for a kiss with a wicked grin and Thanatos stood, buttoning his suit jacket. Although he could no longer feel the tingle of expended power, he knew this trick all too well to not know the power was there. The man released the dazed blonde after the intimate embrace and helped her to the chair.
“Artemis might want to fight this out to the end.” The man said as he folded the blonde’s hands in her lap and turned to look at Thanatos with the eyes of a well-shaped middle aged man. “You remind her of the pain she will endure if she crosses the Vail and if you fail, my beauty, it is you that will feel pain beyond anything you have ever known.”
With no more than a slight nod, Thanatos turned away from Zeus to find his target and give the God exactly what he deserved.
Artemis stood on the short dock that led a few feet into the lake and looked over the still water. The silver of the moonlight glinted on the mirror-like surface of the water as she wished for a slight breeze to dance along her skin. Acceptance of what had happened and what would happen left her feeling disconnected, no longer herself. She craved a breeze which would carry the scent of the lake to her and bring her back to herself. She should fight the despair, but she chose to breathe in deeply to take in as much of the night air she was able.
“You’re not afraid,” a pleasantly deep voice said from close behind her.
“No, should I be?” she replied and made no attempt to hide more of her body. The compulsion to join the moon that night was so great she had only wrapped a purple sheet loosely around her naked form, leaving her shoulders and back bare.
“All are afraid of me. It only varies in degrees,” he stated without malice or arrogance, only truth rang in his tone.
“It is my fate,” she looked up at the moon. “My only regret will be no longer seeing the night in its full dark beauty ever again.”
“I’m not any one of the fates. They’re such vile creatures with a strange sense of humor,” he replied and she could feel him step dangerously close to her. “Is leaving such a night really your only regret?” he asked in a whisper and ran the back of his knuckles from the edge of her bare shoulder down and around the perfect pale skin of shoulder blade to the small of her back.
“Don’t you know all and see all?” she asked, sounding so much younger than her years and his laugh was as silk against her senses. It was something tangible and intoxicating, but she managed to suppress a shiver.
“You have been human too long to believe in rubbish like that,” he dropped his hand from her and she mourned its loss though, she would never admit it.
“No,” she whispered. “No, you’re wrong. It has not been long enough.”
“I hear no conviction in you.”
“On that, you’re right,” she agreed, still facing the water and missing it already. There was a touchable silence, not even the crickets sang through the night.
“He waits and you know he isn’t a patient man.”
“I have until sunrise,” she reminded Thanatos, the God of death.
“It won’t be pleasant, Artemis,” he said and stepped so close she could feel his body heat along the length of her bare back.
“We had an agreement. Even though I’m without the love he challenged me to obtain, I still have the promise of this night,” she said the first sign of anger touched her words. He bent his head down over that same shoulder he caressed not seconds before. His six foot frame crowding around her petite five foot four body.
“Why cause such pain to yourself when you can concede to his command?”
“I know this life must end, but it will on my terms,” she would finish her small speech, but his warm breath caressing her neck as he breathed distracted her. “Why are you here Thanatos?” He straightened suddenly and nerves tightened through her middle.
“To escort you home, of course,” he replied and she finally turned to look at him. Artemis almost gasped at his beauty. His skin glowed flawlessly under the silver light and his eyes sparkled with blue electricity as he gazed at her, but it wasn’t power or magic of old that did it this time.
His straight black hair was pulled back to the nape of his head, giving no distraction from his stare. She had seen him several times over the eons and he looked the same, but now life and a soul filled his being with an irresistible warmth and breathtaking beauty that the cold soulless power of The Gods could never give any to his like or hers.
“You had asked me if leaving the night was my only regret,” she reminded him. “But you already know the answer to that question.”
He opened his mouth and closed it again and she smiled at the uncertainty in the one movement. She reached up with a hand and cupped his warm cheek. He looked almost frightened, but eagerness lay just beneath it.
“How long have you been human?” she asked with a gentle smile.
“One half a moon’s cycle.”
“Have you found love, Thanatos?”
“I made no such deal as you did, Artemis. He picked an errand boy who was indifferent, without such unspeakable notions as yours.”
“We’re dying anyway, the great and mighty Zeus just doesn’t want to see it,” she said and pulled her hand away.
“Yes,” He agreed, but it was a hollow sounding word.
“Then if you desire it and you made no deal with him, you could stay. I know you enjoy this reality or you would have come to me two weeks ago to finish your errand.”
“I have said it will be painful, well that’s if I don’t intervene,” he reminded her, but there was a slight tremor in his tone she never heard in him before and it made her heart go out to him even more.
“If I can spare you from the slow death as a human then the pain will be worth it,” she said with a reassuring smile.
“But…”
“Enough, it’s too late for me but not for you, please just go,” she pleaded almost letting her tears fall as her heart clinched at the realization that she would never see him again.
Over the centuries, he had become more to her with every mission set to them, but without the soul granted to her by Zeus’s challenge, she never saw him or felt for him as she did in that very moment. The sweet pain of it sliced through her. She had found love as Zeus challenged her and she almost laughed at the situation, but the lump in her throat brought tears to her eyes instead.
“You think I became human just to see to your mortal death?”
As she tried to make sense of his words, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her full lips. Pulling away from her just enough to gaze at her, she opened her mouth to speak, but he kissed her again and she softened her body against his strong one. They enjoyed each other until they could breath anymore.
“I don’t need to be human to love you, Artemis. I need to be human to save you, if you’ll let me,” he confessed and she stood speechless.
Her regret was she never told him her true feelings because Death loved no one. How much had they missed because of her preconceived notions of him? She had no pretty words for him. She released the sheet covering her nakedness to kiss him the way she had always wanted.
He lifted her and twirled in circles with her as the wind started to blow with the promise of rain. They made love on the dock under the cover of rain and lightning.
“I believe Zeus is angry for being outwitted,” she surmised, laughing joyfully as she turned her face skyward. Thanatos rolled her, covering her small body with his larger frame.
“Shall we make him shake the heavens, my love?” He kissed her deep as thunder rolled and light streaked the sky.
Flights of Fantasy 