Emily was still lying naked on her living room floor when Hermes woke her from her dreams of the past and future colliding. In her half-waking state, she thought he was part of the dream, the Greek messenger God who carried her off to an ancient land full of ancient Gods. He was wearing clothes this time...a simple pair of jeans and a tee shirt...but the sandals remained the same. Of course they did. They helped him travel between the worlds as few Gods in the universe could do. “I’m very sorry to wake you. We have a bit of a situation with Sekhmet and Ptah.”
Thinking back to Hera and Zeus, Emily sat up, grabbing a blanket from the couch to cover her body, and she assumed aloud, “Let me guess...he repressed her in every way possible to make himself feel more powerful?”
At this Hermes laughed outright. “You spoke with Sekhmet, did you not? Do you honestly believe She would let anyone repress her? Come now! You are wiser than that, Doctor Lieberman. I’ve heard stories about the miracles you are working with my family. Do not tell me that is what you took from your introduction to one of the most powerful Goddesses on the planet? No, if anything she won’t let him close enough to even love her, let alone repress her. They were married once for a very long time. Then when the tide started turning and the standard for being a good wife became the overly-devoted Isis, she divorced him. She moved to her temple and she left him in his own. But she continued to love him and he still loves her. I think he wants you to persuade her to re-marry him before the world ends. And I wish you all of the luck in the world with that. But we must go…”
“I have to have some coffee. I’ll make it quickly and take it with me but if you have woken me up to do couple’s counseling at four in the morning for two ancient and powerful deities...well...you cannot possibly expect me to be efficient without the coffee.”
“I hope it’s the instant stuff. Sekhmet is already angry that Ptah has demanded this in the first place so I doubt she’ll be thrilled if you keep her waiting …”
A few moments passed before Emily found herself sitting at the energetic doppelganger of her desk with her coffee in her hand waiting for Sekhmet and Ptah to start speaking. Hermes sat beside of her so he could gossip about the session with the other Gods. She offered to toss him out, citing those ethics he helped to create, but the “clients” agreed to let him stay, although Ptah did not seem thrilled about it. In fact, he did not seem to care for the charming Hermes at all. But it seemed that Sekhmet always had the final say and this was no different.
“I thank you much for coming, physician of the mind. When word spread that Sekhmet met with you to tell her story, I saw it as a wonderful opportunity to discuss the status of our own relationship. As you may know, we were married once for a very long time and she bore me two children, beautiful children, I adore them completely. However, sometimes it was Hathor who controlled the body they share and she also had consorts and bore children...my nephews. It was difficult when Sekhmet was gone, almost like having your wife die and return again and again. But I knew what I was getting when we wed. All was well until the system of marriage and the expectations changed…”
“I divorced him. He now says I am afraid of commitment. What he does not understand, because he gained quite a bit from the shift in power that Ra orchestrated, including the honor of being called the first God excluding our dear Mother altogether, is that I do not fear commitment. I simply refuse to be the perfect wife. I am not that woman...and neither is Hathor. Yes, I bore our children. And yes, I nurtured them and I love them and I am glad to have them. And I love you, Ptah. I am glad to have you as well. I simply am not who Ra wants a wife to be.”
“It is a good thing then that Ra is not your consort! Never mind what Ra wants! I never expected you to conform in that way. When other Gods started treating their Goddesses differently, I did not. When they teased me about the power you have in our relationship, I ignored them. I do not expect you to travel all over Egypt looking for pieces of my body and then to put me back together again...but I must say, I do sometimes wonder if you would. If you thought me gone forever, do you love me enough to try to bring me back?”
“Damn it, Ptah, this is what I am speaking about! I am NOT Isis! Our dear little sister was an obsessive lover from the start. She fell in love over night and then Osiris became her only focus in this world. She neglected all else to make him happy. This only helped Ra with his campaign for power. And here you sit asking me if I would become that foolish girl for you? If I thought you gone from my life forever, would I try to bring you back to me? Is that what you really want to know? Of course I would. My first sight of you I fell in love...I did! It was you that needed persuasion back then. It was you that hurt me, Ptah! You are the only man I have ever loved and you broke my heart into a million pieces but still I married you. I used to be the standard of a good wife. I tended to our children and I was good to you but I also did the jobs I needed to do, assisting those who deserved healing and punishing those who intentionally hurt others. But when the standard of a good wife became Isis…? When Ra twisted the beauty of declaring your love for one another and promising yourselves to each other as long as love shall last into a way to make women property? I am no one’s goddamned property, Ptah! You allowed Ra to tell the people we have no Mother, taking Her glory from Her, She Who Birthed Us From the Void! And as if that were not bad enough, you never went out and told the people that Ra had no part in the birth of Hathor and me, that we were actually the first deities in our world. You took the power we earned! Do you know the hell we live in sharing this body? Do you know how badly we miss the world when it is time to hibernate? How we miss our lovers and our children? We go centuries with only one another to talk to, visiting the children and lovers of our sister so the one in hibernation can catch a glimpse of what she cannot touch or speak to...do you think that is easy? It is not! But that was the price we paid for being the first Goddesses born from the void! And YOU took that from us. So no, it is no stretch to think you would also start treating me as Ra wanted you to! But yes, Ptah, as your lover who goes sometimes thousands of years without you, I would do exactly what Isis did with Osiris if you died. Would you do that for me?”
Emily’s heart was breaking for them both as she listened to their exchange. It was easy to do such counselling when dealing with couples that should not be married. It was much harder when she had to help two people who truly loved each other come back together. Sekhmet’s tears were just another example of the heartbreak she was expressing. Yes, she wanted to be his wife. The problem was her definition of what a wife was expected to be. He stole her very identity. Whatever else he might’ve done to break her heart, Emily suspected that to both Sekhmet and Hathor, that was the grounds for divorce that led Sekhmet to become the only Egyptian deity to marry and then leave the marriage. Emily was about to chime in with a question when, to her surprise, Ptah got up from his throne and he went to Sekhmet, holding her while she wept tears that looked quite a bit like lava. Emily’s surprise only deepened when they began singing to each other in a language no longer spoken on the earth she called home. No one in the Egypt of the present would understand the words but in that moment, in that incredible place that was not a place much like the circle she cast to do her spells and rituals in, she understood every word. They were actually singing two different songs, her’s to him and his to her...like a musical conversation. And it was a beautiful moment. Looking over at Hermes she saw that he was looking at her with a soft smile on his face.
The songs to one another stopped but Ptah continued to hold her as he pled with her, “The world may end, my love. This may be our end at last. I will never ask you to be our little sister. Their marriage works well for them but we are not them. It would not work well for us. I just do not want to die without having you as my wife once more. I don’t want to spend another night in my bed alone. And should we live, once you are done with your mission, it will be Hathor for years and years and I’ll have no contact with you at all. It hurts me too when you have to go away. I love Hathor but I do not love her in the way that I love you. She is my sister and nothing more. I’ll miss you every day that you are gone, my love. Either way, I will be without you. I will swear to you here before this human and your Hermes that I will never ask more of you than you are willing to give me. I will never ever treat you as property. You are not my property. You are the love of my life, the strongest woman I’ve ever known. You...well...you are Sekhmet! I know who you are. I love you for it all. Why would I ever want to change you?”
Emily felt like she did very little work but much was accomplished. She and Hermes were both invited to the wedding that Ptah and Sekhmet planned to have in June. The couple were busy moving his things into her temple when they left them. But the moment Hermes and Emily witnessed together made her wonder if she did the wrong thing by rejecting the advances Hermes offered her. Ptah had a point, after all. It was possible that the world would soon end. With that in the back of her mind, she sat on her couch beside of this God and she asked, “What is it that you want from me? What were you looking for when you asked me to go out with you? If it’s just sex you want you don’t have to take me…”
When he took her hand, there was that jolt down her spine that his touch always caused. It was enough to distract her from what he was saying. “If all I wanted was to go to bed with you, I would’ve said so. I am not shy on such matters and I suspect you are not shy on them either. I want to know you, Emily. I am fascinated with you and I want to find out why. I want you to tell me things you’ve never told another, about your pain and your joy and everything in between. I have never been married though I have had many lovers. I do share a daughter with Aphrodite but Aphrodite and I were both looking for one thing and it was not love. I care about those I bed but I have never truly felt as if I were in love. Yet there is something about you that leads me to think I could love you. I do not know how our life together would be lived but we have time to figure that out. However, I know humans like to move a bit slower than Gods. That is why I asked you to dine with me. Unlike the rest of my family, I do have a concept of time so I’ll even make it to the date.”
She grinned at him knowing he won her over. He was right. There was something between them that was out of the ordinary. She, too, wanted to know what it was. “I don’t know...You have a daughter with the Goddess of love and beauty. That’s a hell of an act to follow.”
He continued to hold her hand as he laughed. “She did do this thing with her tongue…”
Emily could feel her face turn red as her mind went straight back to the end of their last encounter. Suddenly she realized that the thought that made her run home to touch herself was put there by Hermes. If he would do that, what else might he do, her suspicious mind wondered? His father was a serial rapist. Was he one for raping women as well? She couldn’t remember any stories but that didn’t mean it never happened… “I am not my father! I am nothing like my father! He felt entitled to anything he wanted and he took whatever he pleased. If a woman does not want me, why would I want to lie with her? It is not my nature to rape women! But if that is what you think of me perhaps we shouldn’t…” He tried to walk away from her and she knew that if she let him, this chance would never come again. If she left things like this between them, it would be strictly business from that point forward.
“I’m sorry. Please don’t go. I would love to ‘dine with you’ too.”
His smile was positively brilliant as he sat back down beside of her and wrapped his strong arms around her. She didn’t mean to fall asleep but something felt so right about being in his arms. He waited until she was deep in her dreams before he left, writing her a sweet message on his way out so she didn’t feel so alone when she awoke. Gods and humans were not meant to love one another. They were free to bed each other, sure. But to love? That was too far a step to go. However, Hermes was not one for listening to rules unless they were his own. If Emily Lieberman was the woman his heart desired, he would be with her come whatever may. Like his dear friend (and one time lover) Sekhmet and her soon-to-be-husband-again Ptah, he was interested only in what worked for him and the woman he happened to love. If it went that way, he would work it out. He had a knack for that…
Moral of the Story?: “The love you make is equal to the love you take…”
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