“Stop.” Nyx’s voice had dropped an octave, echoing with the timbre of her power. It sent a chill down Hecate’s spine. “It would be in your best interest to not finish that sentence.”
“You’ve never been through a break-up,” Hecate deadpanned, pursing her lips as she scoffed. “Do you know who prays to me? A lot of women going through break-ups. This might be the one thing I know more about than you, Nyx.” She was watching Nyx bury her emotions with an efficiency that terrified even her, and she had seen some of Greece’s worst break-ups. Nyx’s face flickered as she lost her grip on the cold stoicism she was holding onto.
“Do not lecture me,” Nyx hissed. “Erebus and I are no more. We’ve broken up. I may have overreacted…”
“Overreacted!” Hecate threw her hands up in the air and scoffed. “You’re judging your own emotions right now because you don’t like how vulnerable they make you feel. In case you weren’t aware.” She crossed her arms over her chest and stared Nyx down, who’s expression had gone from angry to blank.
“I said it would be in your best interest to not complete that sentence.” Nyx’s voice had taken on a grave severity that echoed throughout Hecate’s home and made the windows shatter. Hecate watched on as Nyx carefully put away each emotion, every fraction of her broken heart, as if she could stop experiencing them if she didn’t acknowledge it.
“Stay here as long as you’d like.” Hecate shook her head, her voice sounding tight. She paused once at the doorframe, not looking behind her as she spoke. “You can carry both the darkness and the night, but you are the essence. The rest. He is the action, the tangible expression of what you are.” The silence hung between the goddesses like tar before Nyx broke it.
“I don’t know what you want me to say to that.”
Hecate sighed, “If you need space or time, I understand. Don’t hurt yourself further by ignoring Erebus’s presence or pretending like he doesn’t exist. That action is a part of you, too.”
Nyx was stuck musing over Hecate’s words as she disappeared, her footfalls getting quieter as she retreated to her kitchen. Nyx laid down and curled her feet up, making herself as small as she could. Everything about her existence was so big, so powerful, so all-encompassing. There was something utterly freeing in having Erebus as the mechanism for which her power went out into the world. Her capabilities were vast, but there was truth to Hecate’s words. She wouldn’t be able to manage both the night and the darkness if she ignored who Erebus was completely; she would have to embody the parts of him that made them successful.
How am I expected to forget him if I need to think of him every time there’s nightfall?Nyx cursed, wrapping her arms around herself.Gaia had the right idea after all. Men and their foolish notions, their dreams of grandeur… He sacrificed everything we’d ever built the moment he was promised power. What’s a primordial like Erebus going to do with power lavished onto him bygods?They can’t compete…
Nyx’s thoughts were wild as she felt them spinning further and further out of control. She had trapped herself in her body, now unable to focus for more than a second to disseminate. There was a crawling feeling, a rushed anxiety, making her feel nauseous as if there were ants running under her skin. Her breathing was coming in hurried, labored gasps as she fought back tears with a strength that made her feel like her heart was going to pop. It would only take a moment to vanish into her power and lose herself into the night, but she couldn’t keep her mind still enough to accomplish it.
She rocked on the bed, keeping her voice muffled, somehow more embarrassed by the idea that Hecate would find her than the notion that she was having an anxiety attack. It was a new sensation to her, like loneliness, that had her pulling at the bedclothes for relief as sweat broke out on her brow. Her long, black hair was dulling, waves of white light dripping off the ends of it like water. The sight paralyzed Nyx as if she was losing her own power by the second. Her limbs trembled and hands shook, purple and black clouds appearing and reappearing in her vision. Time began to run together until Nyx was able to breathe and sat up slowly.
The light outside the window was dull, making Nyx curse under her breath and disappear into her immortal form. The sun had gone past the horizon, yet night hadn’t fallen, leaving the Underworld and the mortal realm in a confusing sense of dusk. Nyx spread out over the heavens, pulling darkness along with her and painting the sky with stars. The quiet peace of night trailed her as she blanketed the Underworld; Nyx was tempted to turn around and throw herself into her own shadow, chasing that sense of tranquility.
As night fell throughout the Underworld, slowly dripping into Greece, Nyx wrestled with bringing the darkness along with her. Her power was all-consuming, and she fought the urge to plunge the world into an apocalyptic blackness. Nyx struggled as she rolled over the sky, hanging the stars and shaking the constellations from her peplos, feeling tears fall from her face. They turned into shooting stars and dropped down towards earth, her breaking heart coloring the horizon with nighttime hues of blue and black. Then there was the darkness. The deepest part of her power fought with it, tempting to soothe her pain by destroying the world in it. There was no balance, only anger and power.
“I‘ll defy fate!” Nyx screamed, her voice covering the heavens and shaking the moon itself. She struggled with her power and the darkness, keeping them both in check, so that neither one got the upper hand. Finally, when she had spread out from one edge of the earth to the other, she dropped like a stone to the Underworld. Nyx was a bright, streaking light that fell beneath the earth’s surface, causing a streak of brilliance that stood out against the night sky across Greece.
When Nyx landed in the Underworld, she had come back to her body and fell on the grounds of Tartarus. It was quiet. Nyx was breathing rapidly, trying to slow her heart rate down as she laid there, unmoving. Her senses finally came back to her, and she sat up slowly, embracing the depth and its stillness.
Maybe it is time I slept.Nyx’s thoughts turned to Gaia below her. While her thoughts were off in the cosmos, there was a flicker of power that reached out to her. One that she knew anywhere.
“Thanatos.” A warm smile lit up her face as she sat up, the first genuine smile that she had in days. A thin veil of smoke appeared in front of her, and the God of death stepped out. He looked perpetually refreshed, like he lived somewhere in between perfectly asleep and freshly awake. His power had a calming effect that spread out in the air around them both.
“I heard you arrive,” Thanatos said quietly, but it crossed the silence between them. Nyx closed the gap and felt a gentle relief in being in the company of his stoicism.
“Did it sound like death?” Nyx asked only half-heartedly, struggling to keep her emotions bottled up. Thanatos said nothing, tilting his head to the side as he studied his mother. When he broke the silence, it was with a gentle question and a nonjudgmental, neutral expression on his face.
“What do you think death sounds like?”
Nyx took a step back in surprise, furrowing her brow as she tried to make sense of the question. She shook her head and refused to answer.
“Is this what you ask people when you collect them? When you show up to their bedside, is this what you say?” Her response had no effect on Thanatos, and he simply shrugged again, leaving space for her to respond.
“I don’t know, Thanatos. I can’t imagine what it sounds like.”
“Then why do you think you sounded like death?” His voice was clear as a bell, cutting through the silence and making Nyx’s jaw drop. She floundered for only a second, Thanatos being one of the few people who could cut to the quick of her.
“Maybe I feel like it.” Nyx sighed after a moment, turning away from the piercing gaze of the God of death. There was a calmness in him that at times unsettled even her.
“I know what death feels like.” Thanatos shrugged simply, readjusting the shoulder of his chiton. “You don’t feel like death.” Nyx fought the impulse to roll her eyes as she looked back at him, now feeling her anger well up in her once more. There was a conflicting tide of emotions within her, as though her body was intrinsically pulling her in two different directions. Part of her was hellbent on a cold rage, while the other half wanted to slip away into the darkness that was missing from her. Nyx knew who she was and was confident in her power; how strongly she reacted to her own heartbreak made her question her own identity.
How much can a heartbreak define you? What does strength mean if you are crippled by the loss of love?
“There’s no love lost between you.” Thanatos’s voice cut through Nyx’s reverie, and she realized that she had said the last part out loud. She sighed, looking out over the deep horizon of Tartarus. The shades in the distance moved about peacefully as if they were in constant stages of a deep meditation. It was an existence that Nyx found more and more alluring.
There’s an ache in my bones at the idea of keeping the ultimate balance of light and dark equal on my own. What does power mean if you struggle with it constantly?
