Chapter II

The worst part of it all was I had no say in it. She was so clever, that she did it in such a way that I couldn't retaliate. She got dressed up in her most elegant outfit and decided to approach him when she held a feast in his honor, that turned out to be one of our fanciest ever. She made sure that the servants made everything perfect.

Let me explain that when the gods have feasts they really go all out. We have musicians, dancers, and singers. Our servants spend several days preparing fish, wine, cattle, sheep, lamb, deer and anything anyone might desire.

All the food at one of our feasts makes the grandest feast on earth seem like just an afternoon snack to us, because of course, gods and goddesses can hold as much food as they want without throwing up.

That is the unpleasant thing about mortal feasts, they always have to stop in the middle to throw up. Also, they have time limits. Up on Mount Olympus where we live there is no time, no one gets older, and everyone lives forever. There are literally about one hundred courses consisting of nothing but the best food on ordinary immortal feast days. So if you can imagine having something five times as good and big as that, then that's what we had that day.

Needless to say, the gods get pretty stuffed from all that food. So Hera waited until Zeus was drowsy and partially out of it until she talked to him. We were all lying down, half of us already having dozed off when she began to speak.

"Oh Zeus, dear, Aphrodite just told me the most exiting news yesterday!" she said in a honey-like voice as she sipped from a cup of wine.

"What's that?" he replied drowsily. He had just begun to nod off so he had to jerk his head back up to emit a response.

I thought it was rather bodacious of her to be doing this, but goodness, I figured, that's what she is already. I knew that I would never say anything to her willingly, except for an insult. I was both looking forward to hearing and dreading what she would say at the same time.

"Yes, I'm just dying to know what I said," I muttered under my breath.

She glared and me and mouthed the words "Shut your mouth!" She had an icy look in her eyes so I backed off. When she got those icy looks you knew she would do some thing frightful to you if you didn't cooperate with her.

"She told me that Hephaestus loves her very much and that he wants to marry her. According to her they have cherished each other for quite some time. All he needs is your permission for them to be happily married. If you ask me, and I am the goddess of marriage so I should know, they would be a perfect match!"

"You should know but you obviously don't you crone!" I mumbled sourly. She had so sappily emphasized so many words I could have just spat on her.

She poked me in the ribs, glaring at me furiously once again.

"Why do I have to be sitting next to her?" I thought. "Maybe I should throw up on her." Luckily, I thought better of it. Who knows what she would have done if I did?

You may be wondering why I was so against marrying Hephaestus. Well one reason was that he was the gods' blacksmith. (Zeus probably appointed him this because of his great stupidity.) Since he was a blacksmith, he was always dirty. He even showed up to the gods' weddings dirty. Secondly he was lame. Who wants to be around some lame dunce? Third, as I mentioned before he was the stupidest god (or man) on Zeus' green earth! (Or heaven!) Furthermore, I don't want to be married! I want to hang around with whom ever I choose!

One might think I objected to the wedding publicly then and there. Well, I didn't. I didn't have a choice in the matter since Hag Hera always gets her way. So I just married him and continued hanging around other men. Hey, I can be flexible! So that ends my brief history of myself.

Chapter III

I want to make it perfectly clear that I did try to remain faithful to Hephaestus. I attempted to get to know him better by asking him about his interests and hobbies, but when I did, he would just answer 'hmmm… or I don't know', if he ever did reply.

One day I went to his blacksmith shop with a beautiful selection of food that I had cooked myself, and suggested to him that we could go out to eat in one of my favorite spots in my vast garden. That's a big deal considering that gods and goddesses rarely do something that is considered work, (such as cooking!) However, he said he was too busy working and didn't want to be bothered. (Imagine! What's he going to do? Run out of time? We live in eternity for Zeus' sake!)

So, after being married to that loser Hephaestus for a while, I got bored with him, as, in my opinion is often prone to occur when living with an oaf. So I started looking around for another man to spend my time with. Hephaestus didn't care. He was too lamebrained to notice!

The favorite man of the several I found, was the handsome, debonair, and utterly adorable Ares. As the god of war he is muscular and strong, and as the goddess of love and beauty I should know whether he is good enough for me or not!

By Ares I had a son whom we named Eros, and of course I made sure that Aglaia, one of the Three Graces, who was in charge of bestowing (or not bestowing) beauty upon newborns, made him strikingly handsome, like his father. In an unselfish moment, (for once), Zeus made Eros the god of physical desire.

As Eros grew up I always made sure to find time to help and advise him in affairs in the love department. Since we were in charge of love, we had to make sure people fell in love with the people we wanted them to fall in love with. If they didn't want to fall in love with those people, too bad! This resulted in many funny pranks and jokes.

One of these was where we made an arrogant and pompous boy fall in love with his father's donkey. This boy had made fun of the gods and goddesses several times. His mother and father gave him many warnings of what the gods would do to him if he didn't stop, but he never heeded them. Finally, Zeus got fed up with all the complaints he was getting from other gods and, since I was the only one who volunteered, asked me to do something about it. So I got Eros to shoot one of his magical arrows into the boy who fell in love with the donkey and eventually pined away and died.

Eros and I thought the incident was hilarious and while we were laughing over how clever we were, the Always Critical Hera came along and stared at us menacingly.

"You're always making stupid jokes like this. You two are so immature. In fact, I bet you couldn't do anything worthwhile even if you tried!"

Talk about hypocrite, this goddess never does anything worthwhile!

"Yes we can!" we said coolly, anger in our eyes and voices.

"Then do it! Let's see you creative imagination at work!"

"All right, we'll do it!" replied Eros.