SHORT STORIES

              Prometheus

The scent of rain and damp earth rises like Delphic smoke, intoxicating freshness, Gia's amniotic wetness. Swaying grasses swish and sing their sweeping song with the breeze, harmonising in verdant tones for Zephyrus' honour. Looking up, eyes turned heavenwards, the clouds turn and stretch their rolling forms, racing across pale skies. Fallen petals chase each other between the trees, like lurcher and hare. They twist between branches and in the gently waving hair of something that waits between plant and divinity. Just beyond the trees, by a river that has slowed its course for the winding gentleness of flatter lands, a figure is hunched over. Broad shoulders, almost golden in colour with dark curling hair falling over them like ivy. The muscles twitch under the skin like fish kissing the surface of still ponds. Hands the size of bear paws and caked in umber clay are softly working the earth into his shape.
Prometheus exhales a smile. Dark eyes crinkling. His strong nose like rolling hills, lips pursed and wide in concentration.
The smell of the clay is clean and cold and the gently bubbling chorus of the river makes him think of the time when he was new. Learning the joys of the earth for the first time. A grey heron stood watching him, her long beak deadly like an arrow pulled taught in the bow. Prometheus saw her watching and thought of when herons were being made. Watching his brother carefully caress that long neck into existence, grinning at Prometheus' confused face.
"Its far too long!"
"Well, it has to have a long neck. Look how long its legs are, how would it drink?"

Epimetheus is funny like that. He had stroked the blue feathers and the warmth came into it and its long neck had unfurled and those unforgettable eyes had opened.
"Patient and wise"

Prometheus nodded his head to the heron and turned back to his work. The little ball of clay had become a marionette of himself, arms and legs and a torso that had dimples at the base of the spine. Beautiful. Prometheus looked at the figure and as he looked the earth came up to meet him, the river stretched out and the figure was now the same size as him. Prometheus put his hands on the face of the clay form. Stroking the smooth coolness, sliding his hands down the shoulders, fingers tracing the vertebrae, down to the dimples, across the angular hips and up to the chest again.
Prometheus could've wept and the creature was not even animated yet. He pressed his forehead to its and breathed in that riverbed smell, of water and plants and the scent of his own hands. The crack of undergrowth being disturbed sounded and Prometheus held the figure ins hands until it became the size of his palms again. The earth shrunk and the river contracted. The breeze lifted and the billowing silk brushed against Prometheus calves.
"Are you alone Athene?"
"Always" and Prometheus felt the warmth of her breath against his shoulder. He turned and her stern face gazed back, unblinking and motionless.
"Zeus said to meet him here. I see he has not joined us yet" She looked around then, her light eyes meeting with the herons.
"This is none of your business" She said to it and the heron slid its eyes from hers to Prometheus'. The bird knew as well as any that a gods will is set and unable to be changed by another. But Prometheus' apology was felt and the heron stretched out her large wings and jumped into the sky, gliding over the river in parallel to the clouds above her.
Athena looked now to the clay figures lined up on the sun' warmed stones by the water. Her starlight eyes widened and she knelt to look.
"O Prometheus, they are beautiful"
"I am glad you think so...I..I am quite enamoured by them. Zeus said not to animate them yet, but I so want to see them walk and smile and talk. They will be like us Athene"
"No they won't" said a voice behind them, and a shadow darkened the river.
Zeus came to stand by the kneeling two and cast his eyes upon Prometheus' creation. His face softened and he broke into a smile. Light eyes like Athena's almost closed by lifted cheeks. His white teeth shone from beneath his beard.
"You never fail me."

And with that Zeus instructed his daughter and friend in what to do next. Prometheus scooped up the little figure he had embraced and with particular delicacy, cradling the thing between his fingers, brought it up to Athena's lips. She leaned forward and touched her lips to the figure's, as tender as a kiss and breathed life into it. From the place where her life-giving air touched, the clay turned to skin, coming alive with the flow of blood, blushing and erasing the dead tones of earth. The chest swelled and the ribs expanded, first breath drawn from the lungs of the goddess. Our holy life, the soul created into this kiss, created in benevolence, the caress of divine fingers, the adoration of ancients. But this was not the part that Prometheus remembered. His face became wet with tears, swelling tides spilling out onto the earth below, creating blooms of flowers that erupted and died in a breath. The figures eyes went from matt clay and, with the filling of Athena, became shining and white, the pupils dark and reflecting the sky above. The first sight was seen and it was the shining sun and the bright day and the adoring smile of Prometheus.

The people were made. And they were learning to live. Prometheus spent every day with them, teaching them to eat and drink and love and talk. He would become their size as they were frightened of his large form. He would lie beside them at night and show them the glittering stars, telling them stories that are no longer known. One of these nights, in the pitch dark he told them of Kronos. The swallowing Titan who ate the gods and the people felt sorry for the Immortals and picked flowers and put them in a pile for them. They did not know what offerings were yet but they knew love. Prometheus' chest burned with adoration and pride, a deep pit of feeling knotting in his abdomen. When sleep tugged on their eyes they lay down and Prometheus discovered he did not want to leave them tonight. He lay down beside Agapetos, the first to have received Athena's breath. The warm body was only inches away from his own but Prometheus could feel him shivering. Skin tight with cold, brow furrowed into the hides that covered him. Prometheus's throat closed with pity and he found himself wrapping an arm around the human. The titan closed his eyes and slept with the heady smell of earth and sweat and that faint smell of his own hands.

The Gods were angry. Prometheus was damned. His wrists ached against the cold chains. His throat stung from screaming.

Zeus, please, you don't understand 

He had cried and pleaded, he had been unable to control himself. He watched night after night as the people could not bear the cold, they could not cook their meat, they could not see under Nyx's glittering cloak, for when Artemis' chariot was empty and the moon did not light the way, the people were scared of what lay under the shroud of lightless-ness. They would hear the rustling of snakes and the distant howls of wolves. He had not yet told them about wolves, about their sharp teeth and their eyes that glow by the light of the fire. The sting of tears was familiar to him now. They were as relentless as the vultures. Zeus's punishment was nothing to not being able to see the people again. There was no need for the bonds, the birds or the mountains. His body was numb, let them feast. Seeing them eat made him think of his brother. His breaking heart was pain like cracking whips and eyes plucked out with fingernails. Prometheus clawed his mind for all the things he had not taught mankind. The wind howled and dried the blood on his stomach as his wound sewed itself shut again. So fierce and blinding was his love for the people that he had defied the will of Zeus. The trick he had played with the sacrifice was because he saw how hard it had been for the people to learn to hunt. Why should they give the best of their food to the gods who have everything? They do not eat. They do not die like the people can die. Prometheus has seen them starving when the hunt has gone wrong. The way they hold their aching bellies and have barely the energy to awaken.

A tear dropped from his chin and he watched its path down to the base of the cliff. Standing there with palms up and pale as dove's wings was Pallas herself. Grey Goddess with shinning shield and spear. She catches the tear and looks up. She says noting but Prometheus hears her words.


You have doomed your creation to sin and suffering with the fire. Their own power is unpredictable now. But they will live because of you


A great scream came from Prometheus then, like the crash of destroying waves against chalky cliffs. His lungs emptied and all the was left was a sob. His shoulders shook and more tears fell to Athenas hands. The calls of vultures sounded and the whispering wingbeats neared. Prometheus craned his neck to rest his head against the rock face and closed his eyes. His mind rushed with all the things he would not see humanity do as he was chained to his eternal punishment. He wept for the deaths of the first people, for Agapetos and for their faces when they saw the fire. Twisting, dancing light that warmmed their hands with its amber glow. They played with their shadows against the wall of the cave and watched in awe as Prometheus showed them how to cook the hare they had caught that day.

His tears seemed to never cease and Prometheus hardly noticed the vultures as they dug through his skin and slid their beaks under his flesh to the warm, slippery liver beneath. What had he done.