Grace Wakeling ’21
“Okay, well get this,” Hephaestus states with the flick of his wrist as his other hand reaches for a second slice of bread.
“Oh please for the love of gods, Hephy, keep it short. I’ve heard you whine about this story too many times already.”
Hephaestus rolls his eyes at Aphrodite casually, but he carries along with his complaint nonetheless. Turning towards his mother, he takes a deep breath in while the girls make themselves a little more comfortable in their chairs as they’re clearly about to hear a long-winded anecdote.
“You guys know how I feel about Prometheus already, right?” He begins.
“Sure, hon-”
“Okay cool, well,” Hephaestus cuts off his mother’s attempt at condolence.
“The thing is, we all know that volcanoes are really my thing. But, basically, Prometheus got all big in the head after creating all of mankind thinking everyone on Olympus and Earth should be bowing at his feet.”
Hephaestus pauses shortly to roll his eyes again.
“That’s really the thing I can’t handle with him like he gets punished for years and years by Dad and then he just continues to mess with us. Like why? Ugh, I dunno, I just can’t even with him. You’d think getting your damn liver eaten out every day would teach you a little something, but nooo. Anyways, that’s not even my point. So, he sees this volcano, and (I don’t know how accurate all this is by the way because I got all my info from Apollo but) he makes the wise decisions to get rid of all the lava I have in there. Which, side note, I would like to say that it isn’t easy getting that stuff in or out. So he seriously went through all this trouble just to piss me off. But, he drains the lava (into the ocean!!) and he brings in some sea nymphs on rotation doing who knows what with them. I mean, we probably know what he was doing if you know what I mean… he doesn’t exactly hide his thing for nymphs. So now, we’ve got some little nymph-lava-demigod babies walking around. Of course, Prometheus doesn’t care. He doesn’t even plan on doing anything about it. But since they’re lava-related I feel like I’m obligated to fix it, right? What do I even do?”
“Turn em all into lizards”
“Hera, no!” Aphrodite squeaks out in an offended tone.
“What it’ll be fiiine. I mean, mankind doesn’t have a creation tale for these Komodo dragons yet.”
Hera states with a cruel glimmer in her eye.
“Guys, do I tell Pronoia though? Like I’d want somebody to tell me if Aphrodite was sneaking around with other people doing ungodly things. No married person should be getting away with this!”
Everyone looks around awkwardly…
“Anyways… so I should just turn them into Komodo dragons and call it a day, yes?”
“Yes.” Hera and Aphrodite echo a little too quickly.
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And this is how Komodo dragons were introduced to the world of mankind. A cheating scandal followed by a hot gossip session that ended a little too awkwardly. A very unique tale.
Note: This is completely fiction and not entirely accurate to Greek mythology.
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Photo Credit: www.sandyspringmuseum.org/tea-party
