Eleutherios Ch. 03: Poseidon

Author Note: This is the third part of a six-part story retelling the myth of the greek god Dionysus's birth and growth (the previous two, from the perspectives of Zeus and Hestia, are listed among my submissions). It is told from six perspectives: those of the children of Kronos and Rhea (in order presented here: Zeus, Hestia, Poseidon, Demeter, Hades, and Hera). In addition to being the story of Dionysus, it is also the story of the six storytellers. The six children of Rhea fought a war against the gods that came before them; here, they lay down their weapons and turn their attention to the future. What follows is a collection of attempts at characterizing the new era. This is not a pornographic text, though it deals with mature themes. I like to think I'm improving my craft, so any ratings and comments--even anonymous--are more than welcome. Thank you for reading this. I love you.

3. Eleutherios Armed

Or, the Abdication of Poseidon

I was there when Leto birthed Apollon and Artemis. Leto's sister Asteria suffered from insomnia in those days, so full were her nights with oneiromancy, and I'd taken to rocking her to sleep in the afternoons. In the form of a floating isle, Asteria would snooze in my embrace. Humans called Asteria "Delos", and Delos is where Leto delivered Zeus's greatest child.

Apollon emerged from Leto fully-formed, glowing golden. I asked Asteria, later, if Leto's other children were so magnificent. Asteria insisted Leto had no children besides the twins.

"Sweet friend, she is Zeus's wife."

This struck me as insufficient explanation: my own Amphitrite had as many children as there were flavors of fish roaming the streams of Okeanos, almost none of them by me, and I had countless children of my own, few of them by Amphitrite. Asteria tried again:

"They are not like you up in Oulympos."

This much was true.

I pondered these differences as I lapped against Attica to the rhythm of Selene's chariot. We'd drawn lots after the war. Zeus got the heavens; Haides got the Underworld--both far removed from the mortal world. While my brethren lived in the firmament, I played upon Gaia's dimples. Iapetus's clay grandchildren, the creations of Prometheus and Epimetheus, fished and bathed and fucked within my waters. People and animals touched me in ways they could not touch Zeus or Haides without dying. Of course we were more promiscuous, in the mortal realm.

"But what about Zeus?" I asked Asteria, later.

My brother had children with everyone who was anyone, it seemed: his sisters, his cousins, even human princesses. If everyone in Oulympos was so proper, what of Zeus's ubiquitously-sown seed?

"What about him?" Asteria asked, darkly. She was the sole Titan of our generation who had avoided both the war and Zeus's embrace. She never forgave her daughter Hekate for siding with Oulympos, and she spat on my brother's name. I found brooding Asteria charming, especially as an island, in those days before she turned her grandchildren against the gods.

My conversation with Asteria was never resolved: my attention was captured in a contest of creation. I went up against my niece Athena to win the favor of a fledgling human city, and I lost. When the matter of Athens was settled and I'd finished sulking, Delos had disappeared from the sea.

I searched, of course. Hekate asked me to look, out of filial duty. But I believe I would have looked even without the request. I wanted to find Asteria more than Hekate did. To me, perhaps alone among Rhea's progeny, Asteria was a friend. But I didn't find her. I scoured my edges and plumbed my depths, hoping to find her in a divinatory trance somewhere. I even approached Okeanos, thinking wishfully that Asteria had simply floated off into the world's rivers, but when our waters mixed--my salt, his fresh--he rejected my probe.

Years I searched, between my other duties, though Asteria might have simply returned to her place in the sky.

"You are a fool," Amphitrite told me one day as she lay in my arms, naked and beautiful, swollen, as usual, with some sea creature's child. "If Asteria wanted to be found, she would be found."

I nodded slowly. She slapped me, then massaged my cheek and played with my beard. I blinked.

"It's affecting you, love. You haven't made life since Athens."

Amphitrite knew that Athens was a sore spot. My horses were a widely-ridiculed failure. After Athens, they had gleefully lost themselves in the mortal world, just another animal among millions.

"If only they'd had wings," I grumbled. "All the best life has wings."

Hera's peacocks. Athena's owls. Leto's Apollon. Who hadn't seen those radiant pinions? Or, at the very least, heard Leto boast of them?

"I hear rumor of a beautiful winged daemon," Amphitrite murmured. "She serves in Athena's shrine. You could mate with her."

I found the idea of desecrating my uppity niece's shrine moderately appealing, and I cocked an eyebrow.

"She has long purple hair," my wife continued. "Eyes that can turn a man to stone. Tits to rival Gaia's, it's said, and massive wings of pure alabaster. You might make someone spectacular together."

In another time, I might have acted. But Amphitrite had it right: Athens was affecting me. And it wasn't the only thing affecting me. Athens didn't want my horses, sure, but Asteria didn't want my friendship, either. Why would this daemon want my seed? I eased myself out of bed and wordlessly slipped into my robe.

"You've GOT to fuck SOMEONE," Amphitrite yelled after me as I fled our chambers.

I thought of Leto, happily pushing out Apollon and Artemis. She'd fucked someone.

I didn't return to my home for an age. I shimmered lazily beneath Helios and Selene and simply allowed the world to pass around, over, and through me. I ignored prayers and curses alike, and refused to intervene in human affairs. I didn't fuck anyone, and I also didn't look for Asteria. It was an era of calm seas, of ship-building and pleasure cruises.

And because it was an era of calm seas, ship-building, and pleasure cruises, it was also, of course, an era of piracy.

"Uncle!"

I was jolted from my state of near-oblivion. None of my divine relatives had bothered with me since my fight with Amphitrite. Who now invoked family? I turned an eye to the source of the voice: a young man, it seemed, on a pleasure barge. He was surrounded by bodies. Naked humans lay scattered about, dead or dying, bleeding onto the deck. The entire ship was covered in strange vines. A small monoreme adorned with piratic colors drifted some distance away from the barge, unoccupied.

The moans of the dying were mixed with a strange shrill chirping. I looked closer, and saw a school of sleek gray aquatic creatures fleeing the boat. They were unlike any fish I'd known Amphitrite to make, and I wondered briefly how busy she'd been in my absence.

"Uncle," the young man repeated. I saw he has been crying. "Poseidon. Please. I need your help."

I rose on a mighty crest before the ship, my hippokampi carrying my chariot a good ten meters above the barge. I did not recognize the man.

"Who are you?" I bellowed.

"I am Dionysos," said the man. "Son of Zeus. My crew is dead and I am stranded."

I didn't recognize the name, either. Humans often claim divine ancestry in their ploys. I also thought immediately of Apollon, who had sprung from Leto's womb more fully-formed than this youth.

"Any son of Zeus may simply fly home," I said, brandishing my trident. Storm clouds gathered overhead. "I ask again: who are you?"

"I'm afraid I cannot fly," the young man said. "Perhaps you know me by my given name, Eleutherios? My mother was Semele, a human, but Zeus is my father, and I was born on Oulympos."

The tale became less and less believable. No mortal woman had ever given birth on Oulympos. I knocked the butt of my trident against my knee. The ripples in my body shook the barge, and the sky cracked.

My warning did not phase this Dionysos. He glared at me through his tears, and warned me right back:

"If Zeus learns you did not protect me, what do you think he will do to you?"

I hated to give ground, but he had a point. Better safe than sorry when it came to my lightning-wielding brother.

Wordlessly, I scooped up the barge and carried it to Thessaly. As we went, the young man explained what had happened. His cult--humans, "drunk" on his blood--had been worshipping him with their bodies aboard his boat when pirates struck. A god of "wine" and lust, Dionysos claimed he had no power to save his followers from the pirates' harpes.

I wondered at how the world had changed during my absence. I had never heard of this "wine," which Dionysos explained was made from the berry on the vines strangling his barge.

"And what of the pirates?" I asked, when I'd deposited Dionysos. "What happened to them?"

"I changed their clay," he shrugged. "Exchanging the gifts of Prometheus and Epimetheus, I condemned them to a life as animals."

I remembered the bizarre chirping creatures I'd seen in the waters.

"I fear their kind will ever seek human mates," Dionysos said, with a rueful grin. "Anyway. You may name them, Uncle, as thanks for the rescue. Now I must be off, to replace my dead followers."

Certain I had just indulged a canny liar, I returned home. There I learned that I had not, in fact, been conned.

"Hermes came by to invite you to the birth, but you were Okeanos knows where," Amphitrite said. She was unimpressed with my absence, and let it be known with her tone. "Zeus bore this Eleutherios from his thigh, of all places. You'd think Athena bursting out of his head was enough of a statement."

"His thigh?"

Amphitrite rolled her eyes. "He has a womb there now, apparently. I don't know. He's also been missing for who knows how long, since the kid was born. Your heavenly family is ridiculous."

"Our heavenly family," I corrected her.

"No," she said. "I think not."

She stalked away without further explanation, and I followed her into our royal audience hall. My throne was gone, without a trace. Amphitrite took her seat, and instantly I felt her power. I was still the god of the sea, but she was its sole monarch.

"The sea is a progenitorial place," Amphitrite said, her voice booming throughout the hall. Sea creatures and oceanids of all statures watched with nervous curiosity from the alcoves. "The sea is a place of birth, of life. It must be ruled by one who makes life." Amphitrite smirked at me.

I saw, through her smirk, through this display, that she still loved me. And I of course loved her. But love was in wider supply than thrones.

"So we are divorced?" I asked Amphitrite.

"With Hera's blessing," she replied.

"And to you goes my lot in the world?"

Amphitrite nodded.

I supposed it was a kind of freedom--eleutherios--to be released from the duty to which I'd been bound at the end of the war. I could visit Oulympos at will, now, or even check on Haides at the edge of his chthonic realm. I could go anywhere, which meant--

"You're smiling," Amphitrite said. She seemed surprised, and a little pleased.

"I'm going to find Asteria," I said.

"No, you're not." The pleasure fled my ex-wife's face.

She did not explain that in my absence Asteria had stolen her granddaughters from Hekate, that she had taken their power of witchcraft and weaponized it against Oulympos. I wouldn't learn Asteria's fate until much later. But I knew, somehow, even without any explanation, that Amphitrite was not denying my competence when she said I would not find Asteria. What she meant was that Asteria was not to be found.

I felt my smile fade in turn. I had little else to say to Amphitrite. I turned to go.

"Poseidon," she called after me.

I paused.

"Visit, will you?" Her voice was tender for once. "We may not be married any longer, but, as you know, that's never stopped me."

"You want to fuck?" I asked.

"Always," she said.

The court cheered for their queen, and I indulged them. I took her on her throne to her subjects' delight. We made Benthesikyme that day, the last and perhaps most inspired of our children.

"Now go do that with Athena's daemon," Amphitrite urged, when we were done.

I rolled my eyes. We both laughed. I kissed my ex-wife fiercely, and then I walked away from her world.

I found Dionysos naked on a Naxian beach. He was squeezing grape juice into the mouths of rutting humans, while a band of nymphs with wild hair danced about, clawing at their own skin.

"Uncle!" Dionysos cried, rushing to embrace me. "What are you doing here?"

I looked down at my feet, firmly upon land for the first time since the war. The waters of which I had been metonym until recently lapped at the sand some meters away. What WAS I doing there? I drank of Dionysos's wine while I explained Amphitrite's coup.

"You just needed to make life?" Dionysos asked, wrinkling his nose. "You could have claimed credit for my pirates."

I shook my head, then changed the subject. "The wine does nothing for me."

"That's why the maenads dance," Dionysos said, gesturing to the nymphs. "My blood will kill animals and intoxicate humans, but it has no effect on the divine."

"Your blood?"

"Eh, you know." Dionysos shrugged. "It's just fermented grape juice, but you have to embellish a thing or two when you're making a cult."

I again shook my head, this time in disbelief. Dionysos looked mortal, indistinguishable from his human followers. Yet despite his humble appearance, he was more dedicated to building his power than I had ever been. This small cult of orgiastic drunkards was a larger domain than what I presently controlled.

"So what's next for you, Uncle?" he asked me.

"I'm not sure," I said. "I was hoping to find an old friend, but I gather she's hard to find."

Dionysos nodded sagely. "May we both find the women we're looking for."

I finished my drink.

"Here," I said, as I stood and threw my empty cup to the sand. I handed Dionysos my trident. "An apology for questioning you, when we met. I don't think I'll be needing it much longer, anyway. Next time pirates come for your followers, you know."

My nephew looked at the weapon with an obvious disdain, but accepted it without a word.