Around You

Aphrodite had roamed the earth for barely a century, she had seen love in its many forms, between lovers, between friends, between mother and child, between enemies. She had seen it turn celibate men to lovers and lovers celibate. Yet she longed to feel that warmth spread from her heart to the tip of her fingers, she longed to feel her cheeks get hotter from just a glance from someone. She longed to have the blessing she bestows on others bestowed upon her.

Determined she decides to pay a visit to the three sisters who spin fate into silvered yarns, no matter mortal, immortal or dead. The journey was tiresome, even for a goddess, yet she persevered. She'd ask the fates to put a lover in her fate, one that she'd love with everything she had, after all who would refuse anything to Love embodied as a goddess.

The place the fates called home was a quaint house of plastered stone with no embellishments. The cliff on which it stood faced the sea, the familiar fragrance of sea salt in the air washing away the exhaustion from her bones. She walked to the doors, knocked and waited with the sweetest smile the earth had ever seen.

"Who is it?" A crone asked from inside, the rapping of her cane on the stone floor crawling ever closer to the wooden door.

"It is I, Aphrodite, the goddess of love." she called out, her tone pleasant. She was met with a moment of silence before the answer came.

"We have no need for love, return to whence you came from goddess." This time the voice was of a young woman, high and powerful, "give us no more trouble, go and do not return." The words of the fates stung but she would endure pain if it meant to love.

"I have come not to give you love but to plead for love." Aphrodite said, her voice quivering. "I have come to ask for someone to love."

"You could make any man, woman, god or goddess for in love with you with less than a wave of your hand," a child's voice said, "why ask for our help goddess?" The child asked it so simply as if she didn't know how many times she had tried and failed.

"But do I love the one I made love me?" She asks, her carefully crafted facade showing cracks, cracks she didn't want anybody to see. A muffled "No" was the last she heard from across the door that day, and the days after which she had spent sitting before it, her form of worship to the fates, her way to make them see her sincerity in her request.

The wooden doors opened after twelve days of Aphrodite sitting outside them tirelessly, not leaving for food nor for water. "Leave goddess, we cannot give you what you need without it being detrimental to you," a woman said sitting down besides the golden goddess.

"I shall do anything, anything at all if it gives me love, the same that I bless upon mortals." She said not looking at the woman.

With naught more than a dissatisfied breath the woman spins a cotton thread into golden yarn.