Rachel Alexander's Blog, page 270
February 21, 2019
annabellioncourt:
pri0r:
Movies or TV Shows That Need to...
Movies or TV Shows That Need to Happen → Receiver of Many
“Can the sun find its match in anything but the moon? Can the heavens lose interest in the earth?” Hades pulled away from her and stroked her cheek. "Can death exist without life?“(x)
CAN THIS BE THE FANFICTION THAT’S MADE INTO A MULTIMILLION DOLLAR SEXY ROMANCE INSTEAD OF FIFTY SHADES?
Dude I'm so surprised Hera left Zeus put a finger there.
It clearly wasn’t the first time.
The Good Counselor Chapter 5
Here it is! The long-awaited Hera/Zeus chapter!
I know I took an absence last week and sadly that was unplanned due to illness. However, I do have to take another absence, this time planned, because I will be recovering from surgery. The next chapter debuts on MARCH 13 at the regular time.
Thank you so much for following The Good Counselor with as much fervor as you followed Receiver of Many when I initially posted it!
See you on the 13th.
Free previews published weekly every Wednesday night at Midnight, Pacific Standard Time.
The Good CounselorSeventy years have passed since Elysion was created, and Persephone’s efforts to conceive a child with Hades have been in vain. But a secret rite on Samothrace might bend the Fates and give her all that they have dreamed of, or pave a path of untold suffering.
Chapter 5Her chest heaved, her throat burned. But she refused to let tears fall. Hera wondered yet again, like so many other times in her long life, if this was the way mortals felt when their hearts broke and ceased to beat, and they passed from the living world.
Whores were one thing. That impulse that came not from his heart, but from that other part between his legs that relentlessly craved the embrace of new flesh. It happened, it ended, and she had deadened herself to that hurt long, long ago. Love was different. After their nuptials, after their hieros gamos, Hera had been blessed and cursed by their inextricable link. She could feel deep within her when he loved another. It was a pit in her heart— a hollow, like the well of the clay cup she gripped in her hand. The clay turned warm against her angry palm.
Tears fell onto its unvarnished surface.
This was betrayal more potent than anything she’d ever felt— more than even the early days, when he had deeply loved and lain with Leto and begat the twins on her. She had been furious, their marriage still so new and fragile, and his duplicity and denial so deep.
That hardly compared.
Everyone knew but her. Demeter; Hermes, who had told Poseidon, and likely others; and of course Apollo. How many had been laughing and pointing at her back all this time?
Zeus had promised Aidoneus and Persephone the only thing that should never, could never, be given away: their children’s birthright. It was the lowest mockery of their marriage and the one untouchable truth that set her apart from all others— that her children were legitimate, and the rest of his spawn were bastards.
Emoji spoilers with no context:
pri0r:
Based on the groundbreaking works of Rachel Alexander,...
Based on the groundbreaking works of Rachel Alexander, PAWNS OF OLYMPUS follows the story of Hades and Persephone as they face the trials of fate, the gods, and new love. Together, they must navigate their cosmic roles as their marriage blossoms. But the balance of the universe is thrown into chaos as Demeter unleashes a powerful winter, determined to do whatever it takes to get her daughter back.
For more details, visit pawnsofolympus.com, and follow @therkalexander and @summerhelene on Tumblr and Twitter!
Random but has Hera ever been on top?
They been married for 40,000 years so I’m guessing at least once. I bet it was fairly recent after Zeus unchained her from the sky.
Will we ever meet Rhea?
Truth be told? This is one of those things I’m still up in the air about as the story progresses.
a-gnosis:
Going through my heaps of paper reveals more...
Going through my heaps of paper reveals more forgotten sketches: Zeus and Hera from that scene in the Iliad when Hera seduces Zeus with the help of Aphrodite’s magical belt.
It’s one of my favorite scenes from the Iliad. Plato condemned it because he thought it set a bad example for young people.
The Good Counselor Chapter 5
Here it is! The long-awaited Hera/Zeus chapter!
I know I took an absence last week and sadly that was unplanned due to illness. However, I do have to take another absence, this time planned, because I will be recovering from surgery. The next chapter debuts on MARCH 13 at the regular time.
Thank you so much for following The Good Counselor with as much fervor as you followed Receiver of Many when I initially posted it!
See you on the 13th.
Free previews published weekly every Wednesday night at Midnight, Pacific Standard Time.
Seventy years have passed since Elysion was created, and Persephone’s efforts to conceive a child with Hades have been in vain. But a secret rite on Samothrace might bend the Fates and give her all that they have dreamed of, or pave a path of untold suffering.
Her chest heaved, her throat burned. But she refused to let tears fall. Hera wondered yet again, like so many other times in her long life, if this was the way mortals felt when their hearts broke and ceased to beat, and they passed from the living world.
Whores were one thing. That impulse that came not from his heart, but from that other part between his legs that relentlessly craved the embrace of new flesh. It happened, it ended, and she had deadened herself to that hurt long, long ago. Love was different. After their nuptials, after their hieros gamos, Hera had been blessed and cursed by their inextricable link. She could feel deep within her when he loved another. It was a pit in her heart— a hollow, like the well of the clay cup she gripped in her hand. The clay turned warm against her angry palm.
Tears fell onto its unvarnished surface.
This was betrayal more potent than anything she’d ever felt— more than even the early days, when he had deeply loved and lain with Leto and begat the twins on her. She had been furious, their marriage still so new and fragile, and his duplicity and denial so deep.
That hardly compared.
Everyone knew but her. Demeter; Hermes, who had told Poseidon, and likely others; and of course Apollo. How many had been laughing and pointing at her back all this time?
Zeus had promised Aidoneus and Persephone the only thing that should never, could never, be given away: their children’s birthright. It was the lowest mockery of their marriage and the one untouchable truth that set her apart from all others— that her children were legitimate, and the rest of his spawn were bastards.
Did he not realize that by giving them that, he was going back on his word to her , and passing the line of succession through his first born? Through Demeter’s child? Even if growing Hades’s seed was impossible, it was the gravity of such a thing. It was a Stygian oath made by the King of the Gods! Unbreakable, and beyond egregious, tempting the Fates into the unimaginable…
Hera could feel Zeus drawing closer to the room and stood, her hands tensing around the cup, nearly cracking it. His sandals thudded against the marble floors. As his shadow appeared around the corner, she cocked her arm.
The cup exploded against the wall and Zeus ducked beyond the doorway.
“What in Tartarus was that for?!”
“How could you?”
“How could I…” He leaned around the corner, and entered the room once he saw that her hands were both empty. Hera balled her fists and stood tense, her shoulders tight. Zeus approached her, and she trembled but didn’t move. He scratched the back of his neck and chuckled at her. “Woman, if you want to spend an evening with me, there’s better ways to get my attention. You needn't—”
“I have half a mind to never lie with you again!”
“Be serious.”
“I am!”
“You’ve caught me on a night where I’m alone for once; I’ve said not a word I’ve done nothing to cause you to act out like this, so I’ll ask you again. What daimones possessed you to throw that at me?”
“Persephone!”
“Truly? She never seemed fiendish to me. From what I heard, you were having a pleasant enough time with her and Amphitrite. You were the one who invited her, for Fate’s sake.” He sighed and folded his arms. “You didn’t let Poseidon’s sea witch get under your skin again, did you?”
“Amphitrite is nothing! This is about what you promised Aidoneus the day the Pomegranate Agreement was struck!”
Zeus knit his brow, perplexed. Then it dawned on him. He lowered his arms to his sides and took a step back. Hera watched him grit his teeth. He was painfully easy to read. That was the expression he’d made when she confronted him about Europa. And Danae.
“How could you make a promise like that?!”
“You trouble yourself over nothing, woman,” Zeus said, pacing about his room. “It will come to nothing. They know that. You know that. So why pester me?”
“You have no respect for me. It is not enough that you fornicate with every woman who crosses your path? Now you give away my son’s birthright to another?”
Zeus laughed. “ What other?”
“To Persephone’s first child!”
“Ha!” He scoffed, loud enough for it to echo and her to flinch. “This is why I cannot take your mood to heart and you shouldn’t those words heart either. I might as well have sworn to Poseidon that the seas would boil. Hades and Persephone will have no children.”
“Not Aidoneus, no, but—”
“And neither will she. Persephone sealed her fate when she ate those damned pomegranate seeds.”
“You don’t know that! She’s the Goddess of Spring .”
“Don’t be ridiculous. She’s part of the Land of the Dead. As much a Chthonios as her husband, no matter how much time she spends in the sunlight. She is as barren as their Fates-forsaken kingdom.”
“Her fertility might overpower it.” She leveled an accusing finger. “And I think you know that.”
Zeus rolled his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you’ll try to beget on her as you did on her mother.”
He blinked hard, then looked nauseous, and Hera froze. She’d only seen him this unsettled one other time… but it had affected him. She silently congratulated him on mustering a reaction stronger than lying or vague dismissal. Hera folded her arms and pressed on.
“Given your recent depravity I would not even put laying with your own daughter beneath you.”
“That is enough !” He advanced on her, trapping her between his body and the bed at the back of her knees. She faltered. His eyes narrowed. “And even if she were not my daughter… she looks too much like Rhea. Honestly, Hera. You wound me. Say what you will about the lovers I’ve taken, but for fatessake, my own children … For shame, Hera.”
He backed away, his lip curled in disgust. She seethed. He was blaming her . How many times had he always turned it back on her? “It didn’t stop you from bedding Alcmene.”
He rolled his eyes. “Not this again. I told you, it’s over between her and me. Her new husband was rutting in her well-traveled passage hardly a night after I rose from her.”
She stamped away from his bed. It was too dangerous to stay there. He’d cornered her during an argument there and ‘soothed’ her out of her protests too many times before. This was different. He had dishonored her. He had dishonored their children . “I cannot believe that it falls to me to know more about your harlots than you do.”
“What are you muttering about?”
“Alcmene is the daughter of Electryon. Who was the daughter of Perseus. Who was your own son! ”
“Perseus…” He chewed his lip.
“Oh, Fates save me for having such a forgetful husband!”
“If you would just let these pass, as I do, instead of holding on to your hate for generations you might be happier, Hera.”
“He slew the sea monster. Cetus. Took that Ethiopian girl, Andromeda, to wife.”
He cocked his head to the side and smirked in the unnerving way he always would when he found her anger amusing. She wanted to cry, or flail her fists against his chest. If she did it would give him an opportunity to comfort her. Or draw her close. All roads lead to his polluted bed. She stood her ground.
“His mother was Danae. Who you… appeared to… as a golden rain.”
“Ah! Now I remember!” His voice lightened, taunting her. “Her miserable father had locked her away. Trying to defy the Oracle, for fear that her offspring would kill him. And as luck would have it, Perseus did! Accidentally, mind you, but…” He guffawed.
“And so you sleep with your own great-granddaughter.”
“Please…”
“She has your blood running through her!”
“So does nearly every noble family in Hellas,” he chided. “And I’ve bedded half of them .”
“So does Persephone. Will you bed her too?!”
He lunged at her and she tried to twist away. Hera shrieked. Her wrists were trapped in his hands and her struggling only brought her closer against his chest. “Let me go!”
His breath teased the stray hairs on her forehead. “Listen to me.”
“No!”
“Hera,” he said, his voice soothing. “Hera, they cannot have children. Look at me.”
She kept her gaze firmly on his chest, not wanting him to see her crying.
“Wife, gynaika mou , look at me.”
She sniffled, and brought her deep brown eyes up to meet his sky blue. He let go of one wrist, and brushed a tear away from her face.
“I would never, ever , betray you like that. Persephone and Hades cannot have children. I said it to taunt him that day because of all the destruction and waste his selfish infatuation with her had caused. It was meant to put him in his place and drive a wedge between them. Nothing more.”
“What…” she swallowed, trying to keep from leaning into the fingers stroking her cheek. Her voice wavered. “What if they do conceive?”
“They won’t. I hear tell they’ve tried just about anything. So my empty oath to him did all it was supposed to do. It put Hades in his place. It will eventually drive them apart because Persephone, though she ate the seeds willingly, would never have done so if she’d known it would condemn her to an eternally barren marriage bed. In that way, he did trick her, as the mortals say. Even if there were a way they could, even if they found some dark sorcery that could give them a child, I would never make a spawn of theirs heir to Olympus. Never . Besides… if such a creature were even possible, it would be rooted to the Underworld the same as its dismal parents.”
“You promise?”
“I promise, Hera.” He kissed her cheek.
“Then why didn’t you tell me at the time?”
“Because I thought it to be of no consequence then. Just as it is of no consequence now.”
She dipped her head.
“You see? Nothing to worry yourself over.”
She tensed. This was becoming too easy for him. “What about Alcmene?”
“I told you, it’s over.”
“Her sons— twins, Zeus…”
“It’s doubtful they are even mine. She slept with Amphitryon before the sun went down on the day I left her.”
“But their blood will be that much stronger if divine lineage is on both sides.”
“No they won’t. They’d be mortal hemitheoi at best. To amount to anything beyond their mortal years, they would need to drink ambrosia. And that won’t happen either.”
She nodded.
“Now,” he said, kissing her neck, “how can I make this up to you? How best should I apologize?”
She closed her eyes and leaned in. “Apologize?”
“Of course,” he said, his lips lingering on the juncture of her shoulder and neck. “I should have told you right away the thing I said to taunt Hades. Would you have been as distressed by what Persephone let slip if I had?”
“No,” she whispered back, feeling heat against her thigh through his himation and loincloth.
“You could have laughed her off, just as I do her husband.” Zeus teased his fingers along the small of her back and grazed his beard along her jaw.
“Amphitrite knew.”
“Amphitrite is a gossip.” He kissed her lips quickly. “And a hastily promoted nymph.” He kissed her earlobe. “And a shameless whore.”
Hera sucked in a breath as his tongue danced across the shell of her ear.
“And you are the queen.” He slipped a fibula free on her peplos, the fabric shifting and falling from her shoulder. He breathed against the skin he had freed. “You are my queen.”
***THIS PART HAS BEEN CUT DUE TO ITS EXPLICIT NATURE AND IN KEEPING WITH SITE GUIDELINES AND FOSTA-SESTA. PLEASE READ THE GOOD COUNSELOR ON AO3 FOR THE UNEDITED VERSION.***
She rose quietly by a sliver of moonlight, confident that Zeus wouldn’t wake up. After they lay together she rarely stayed. It was better for both of them. They weren’t newlyweds, and languishing in his arms would only mean inevitable heartache later. She was his queen, and above those childish wiles. Their love ran deeper than his affairs, and letting him pull at her heartstrings would only weaken her. She gathered her strewn clothes and pulled her peplos around her and, in a flash of iridescent peacock blue and green, journeyed through the ether back to her private chambers.
She felt so immodest every time she left his room wrapped in a peplos. But once alone in her room, she cast it to the floor and walked barefoot across the marble, feeling rejuvenated and free in her private sanctuary. Not even Iris was allowed in here.
Hestia was right. Hestia was always right. Perhaps the way Persephone conducted herself with her husband would set a good example for Zeus. Their relationship was strange… a perversion of the natural order, but it was certainly better than betrayal after betrayal followed by base lust and defilement. Persephone had left their gathering mirroring the same curtness that Hera had shown after she revealed the details of the Pomegranate Agreement and Zeus’s arrogant oath. Hera had been so angry she had barely said goodbye.
It might do to make amends, and then to bring Persephone into her circle. Persephone was a queen; a new queen, one that still needed to be taught— wrought and shaped into a true ruler. The Queen of the Underworld could be a powerful ally, especially with Elysion still new and largely unknown. She could use allies. And more still, a friend and equal. Hera could tell from Zeus’s reaction that Persephone would never be desired by her ever-wandering husband. What more, Persephone was clearly not one to be trifled with, even for one such as Zeus.
And there was that other matter to contend with.
Hera picked up the green fillet that had bound up her hair and stretched it out across the floor. Finding the center, she ripped the fabric into two pieces, equal in length, and held the torn pieces tightly in each hand.
With eyes shut, she breathed steadily, feeling the fabric thicken and writhe. The frayed strands flicked out in small forked tongues. When her eyes opened again, she released her hands from around the heads of two vipers, their scale patterns so reminiscent of the embroidery on her fillet.
They stared up at her, waiting.
“Go to Thebes,” she whispered to them. “Find any son of Zeus that sprung from the desecration of Alcmene’s marriage bed. Send them to Hades quickly and mercifully.”
The vipers turned and gracefully slithered out of her room, down the slopes of Olympus, bound for Thebes and the infant twins Alcides and Iphicles.
