My love is like a red, red rose
So, I was challenged by my friend during these lock-down times to write a story based on “You declared your unrequited crush is more beautiful than Aphrodite. Aphrodite disagrees.” I didn’t really know what else to do with this now it’s written, so, uh, enjoy I hope?
“More beautiful than Aphrodite.” The woman’s voice was musing, silky and dangerous, with an accent that was difficult to exactly place. “More beautiful than Aphrodite. How interesting that you should think so!”
Ingrid whipped around with a yelp. Her phone clattered to the floor. Her bedroom had been empty only seconds ago, the door was closed, the front door was locked. It should have been impossible for anyone to be there at all. But, there she was.
The woman was – beautiful seemed too small a word, too ordinary, too limiting. There needed to be a word for beauty beyond beauty, beauty before compare. She was unlike anything that Ingrid had ever seen before.
“The word that you’re looking for,” the woman said, as if she could read Ingrid’s mind. “1s my name.”
“Your…” Ingrid fumbled to get her brain into gear, to do something other than helplessly stare. “Your name? I don’t…” She didn’t know the woman’s name. She didn’t even know how the woman had got into her house!
“Tell me,” she said. She prowled closer and Ingrid’s legs felt rooted to the spot. “How exactly is this sweet love of yours more beautiful than me?”
It should have been funny, it should have been absurd because Ingrid didn’t even believe in the gods, and yet….
“Aphrodite.” She felt dazed. “You’re Aphrodite.”
The goddess stopped before her.
Several more realisations swiftly followed: Aphrodite was in her bedroom, she was the most exquisite being Ingrid had ever seen, Ingrid meanwhile was dressed in nothing but underwear and an ugly old t-shirt to sleep in and, oh yes, she’d just insulted a wrathful goddess. She scrambled to remember her mythology and came up with ‘oh, shit.’
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean—”
“—but you said it.” Aphrodite’s head tilted, mockingly curious. “Indeed, you went so far as to declare it to your companions.”
“Clearly.” The softness of Aphrodite’s voice vanished and instead cracked through the room with the sharpness of a whip.
Ingrid drew in an unsteady breath.
“I – I meant no disrespect.”
It felt useless to apologise again. She continued to stare up at the goddess, wide-eyed, and thought this must be exactly how all of those deer caught in car headlights felt.
Ingrid dropped like a stone, before the command had even fully registered.
“You will have to be punished, of course.” Aphrodite murmured. “For your insolence.” Her voice had turned silken once more. “But what would be fitting…that mortal girl who has so beguiled you does not even love you, so I hardly need to turn her heart from you.” She traced her nails along Ingrid’s skin, over her shoulder and down her back, circling her slowly. She laughed, such a laugh that sirens would envy its music. “Perhaps I should have you fall madly in love with a pig. You seem to draw little difference between heaven and earth so it shouldn’t make much difference to the pleasures of your eye.”
“Please, don’t.” Ingrid’s insides twisted with fear. “I – it was a stupid thing to say, I realise that now, seeing you. I’m sure you can…can appreciate the blind idiocy and the madness of those in love. You are the goddess of that too, as well as beauty.”
Aphrodite paused behind her. She seized a fistful of Ingrid’s hair and dragged her head back roughly, so that Ingrid was looking up at the goddess once more. She studied Ingrid’s expression, perhaps assessing her sincerity. Ingrid meant it. Whatever stories she had once read about Aphrodite’s beauty was nothing compared to the sight of her. She eclipsed everything – even Leila. The silence stretched between them.
Aphrodite wound her fingers tighter into Ingrid’s hair. She tugged her head back even further until Ingrid gasped, shifting on her knees, her back arching to accommodate. She held Aphrodite’s gaze, and wasn’t sure if it was challenge or supplication that she didn’t try and struggle. Damningly, a bolt of heat coiled in the pit of her stomach, an electric current fizzing in her veins. It was, frankly, entirely the wrong reaction to the situation. Yet, Aphrodite’s answering smile was cruel and amused all at once; certainly less furious than the earlier chill of her expression.
“And would you still love her now,” Aphrodite asked, “instead of worshipping me?”
“N-no.” She didn’t know if that was exactly true, only that it wasn’t exactly a lie either.
Ingrid had never believed in gods or goddesses, but that didn’t mean she’d never wanted to believe in a higher power, something beyond and greater than herself. It was merely difficult to wrap her head around all of the gods that she was supposed to believe in. They all seemed to perfect, too far removed from anything human to be understood, for it to feel possible that they could have created humanity with all of its bright complicated mess.
“You are a foolish thing.” The goddess loosened the grip on her hair, petting her head. “But, perhaps, you are not entirely incapable of learning your place.”
Ingrid released a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding. Her body trembled as she settled back down into a more comfortable position. A blindfold closed over her eyes without warning. The room plunged into darkness.
“We are back to our question now though, aren’t we?” Aphrodite’s footsteps moved around the room. “How should I punish you? Although they do say that all is fair in love and war, I feel the punishment must fit the crime in this instance. Don’t you?”
Ingrid’s heart thundered against her ribcage. She curled her fingers into fists in her lap, not moving off her knees – not sure if she was allowed to. It seemed, in this instance, far better to beg for permission than for forgiveness a second time, however amused Aphrodite now seemed.
“Sure,” she said. Anticipation coiled tight across her shoulders.
She felt something brush against her cheek; something fragile, delicate. A sweet floral scent filled her bedroom. Something wound around her throat, thin and sharp, prickly. It stretched down, looping around her remaining limbs faster, like the coils of a serpent. Ingrid’s breath hitched. She was pinned into place.
“I do love roses,” Aphrodite sighed. “How pretty you look, bound in their embrace. I do appreciate lovely things.”
A blush rose, unbidden, to Ingrid’s face to no doubt match the roses that had curled around her. Impossible roses. Impossible goddess. Ingrid bit down hard on her lip and thought, distantly, that her blood would match the roses too. A sound swished through the air, and she flinched. It made the thorns of the roses scrape against her, and so she flinched again.
“You’ve imagined….” the goddess murmured, “not quite this, but something similar. Longed for it. Don’t lie.”
“Yes.” Ingrid’s voice came shaky. It wasn’t something she’d ever told anyone. She didn’t know what it meant that Aphrodite knew, except that of course she would. The goddess of hearts would surely know their contents. It merely seemed unlikely that a wrathful goddess would give her something she wanted in anger.
Ingrid’s mind jumped back, then, to the smile on Aphrodite’s face when Ingrid had stared up at her – reverent, a little fearful, a lot mesmerised. Honest. If she didn’t believe in goddesses then she wondered when the last time anyone did was. When was the last time that someone looked at Aphrodite and saw her as more goddess than girl? Something powerful, something that they would build shrines and make sacrifices to. Aphrodite hadn’t seemed angry then, something had shifted.
“Tell me,” Aphrodite said next. “Which parts of her, when you spoke your heresy, did you envision were more beautiful than me?” She trailed something along Ingrid’s thigh. “Here?”
Ingrid swallowed. She could make a guess what came next, but she nodded all the same. Her mouth had gone dry.
Whatever the goddess held lashed down against her thigh. Even when she expected it she wasn’t prepared; the pain stung like a lick of flame. Aphrodite struck, again and again and again until Ingrid was writhing on the spot, breathing hard, a cry on her lips.
“Where else?” Aphrodite asked, then.
The same treatment followed. It was impossible to think of anything else – certainly, all thoughts of Leila were gone. Ingrid would not have been able to pick her out of a line up in that moment. Everything was Aphrodite. The fall of her footsteps, the wicked-clever twist of her hands, the sound of her voice as she asked; “and here?” and “what about here?”
When she said the goddess’s name, Ingrid wasn’t sure if she meant it as prayer or plea; more, or less.
Aphrodite’s fingers stroked into her hair again immediately. No other lashes came.
Ingrid leaned bonelessly into the touch. Her whole body felt alight but the pain faded to a dull ache in a matter of minutes. Her head reeled. She wasn’t sure how long she rested there, counting breaths, only vaguely tracking the hypnotic brush of the goddess’s caress, the bite of the roses.
“I’ll forgive you,” Aphrodite said. “This once. You have learnt your lesson, haven’t you?”
Ingrid managed a nod, a vague sound of agreement. She felt all floaty around the corners – not quite mortal.
“Will I see you again?” It was a stupid question, and it seemed to surprise Aphrodite as much as her that she asked it.
She undid the blindfold from Ingrid’s eyes, letting it fall to the ground in a flutter of deep red silk. She caught her chin between two fingers, more gently this time, to study her expression once more.
“I also imagined her lips,” Ingrid said. “You didn’t mention those. I could make a tribute to a mouth like hers.”
It was a risk. It startled another laugh out of Aphrodite’s throat and her fingers tightened a fraction once more.
“You truly are foolish,” the goddess murmured.
Then, their lips crushed together.
Aphrodite kissed her like the world was ending, like the stars would all come crashing down if she didn’t, like perhaps Ingrid could also be a little bit more goddess than girl. Something extraordinary.
When the kiss ended, the goddess was gone.
All that was left of her were the roses, and their thorns, scattered on the bedroom floor.
Ingrid touched her now free hand to a lips, and smiled.
Whenever she thought of beauty after that, she always thought of her.
stormborns
2087
gracieabrams
romaincrisis
