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She lit a fire at the feet of the statue of Athena and knelt before it to pray.
At your command, Athena, I have come to your temple. Bless my son with your good blessings.
Even as she thought those prayers, Lia wondered why... Why was she here? Why was she praying? Why was this happening?
She wasn’t married. She wasn’t pregnant. She was Lia Godwick, and she shouldn’t be here. She went and stood at the western-most end of the temple.
Water.
Not down below the cliffs where the water belonged. No. The water had risen ten...twenty...fifty feet high.
The tide was rising higher than she’d ever seen it rise before, and if it kept rising, soon it would make an island of the temple and then wash it away.
In terror she sank to her knees, offered a thousand wordless prayers to Athena and any god who would hear her. In the black sky, Zeus made himself known with bolt after bolt of jagged lightning. The temple slowly began to shake as if Hades, deep below the earth, were holding tight to the pillars that held the world steady and shaking them.
And still the water rose.
She ran to the northern edge of the temple.
Water.
She ran to the southern side.
Water.
She ran to flee from the eastern entrance where surely the water hadn’t risen yet.
Water.
Water.
Water.
Athena, she prayed silently.Is this the blessing you offered me? The blessing of death? Speak to Poseidon, beseech him on my behalf to be merciful. Tell him I carry a child who I will dedicate to his service if he will spare us death this night at his hands.
She spun in a circle, in a panic, helpless and desperate.
The temple trembled again.
Before warm air had escaped through the cracks and tickled her like the gentle hot breath of August’s kisses.
Now the cracks between the tiles steamed.
And there in the archway next to the altar of Athena where Lia had knelt to pray...stood a man.
But not a man, for no man she had ever seen looked like this man.
Lia’s eyes widened at the sight of him, looming in the arch, filling both its width and its height, though that meant the man had to be seven feet tall at least.
He stepped into the temple.
Water surged and steamed around his feet.
Lia saw it steam, saw the steam rise, watched it rise from his ankles to his mighty thighs, past his massive muscled stomach, huge broad chest and all the way to his head. Iron-colored hair down to his shoulders. A thick gray beard.
Eyes like the fathomless sea...
She stood rooted into place, frozen, unable to scream or speak or move. She could not blink. Her lips trembled. She could faint any moment.
