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“Second souls are always so interesting,” said Demeter. “They never remember anything really, the Lethe washes it all away, of course, but I think I see an imprint sometimes with some lovers.”
“Which lovers?” Apollo asked, his eyes focused on stringing a brand new lyre, only slightly annoyed that she’d accosted him in private.
She sat down next to him, “Well, always a few, I suppose. But the one most recently that I could speak of would have been Philip.”
He put down the lyre slowly, sure now why she had come to him about this, “Phillip McCaffrey? Meg’s father.”
“Yes, my daughter’s father.” Some part of him wanted to roll his eyes at any idea of Demeter really being Meg’s mother other than the obvious, but he kept his silence. “He was a botanist, and loved all plants, which is what I suppose gave it away. Like I said, the Lethe usually washes all away, but an exception can be if one was changed at the moment of death.”
A feeling of dread built in his stomach. “And he was scared of a plant?” he prompted.
“Not scared,” she pulled three strands of wheat from nowhere and started pleating them together. “Strange though. Imprints were left on his soul. He never liked hyacinths as well as I always thought he ought.”
Apollo was gone before she even finished speaking.
Hyacinthus. Ὑάκινθος. Lost to him for so many years. More than he ever could have recalled as Lester. He had looked like his mother, the Muse Clio, with the same purple eyes that he always remembered when he looked at the blooms of the flower he made from him, and the same curling dark hair she favoured also, like how he made the plant too.
He’d come back. Been reincarnated, washed through the Lethe, and had fallen in love again. But not with Apollo or even Zephyrus. Demeter. Born into a family she favoured. And had a daughter with her.
And he’d been killed for years before Apollo had even known that he’d been back.
He might have had a child with Hyacinthus in the old days, if he had lived that long. But in some immortal folly, he’d thought that they had had all the time in the world, not a mere couple of years.
But if he had had a daughter with him, maybe they would have looked like Meg. Her hair was less dark than his had been, at least before, but something like her could have been theirs in another life.
Even if he had discovered him again in this life, he would have taken in Meg too without a moment’s notice.
Gods , Meg.
How would he tell her? How ought he tell her? Should he tell her at all? Was it cruel to do that, to suggest another life they could have had. He’d once thought she could have been like a daughter he might have had with Daphne, but he’d never voiced that either. And she was more his sister these days, short and annoying, like his other most beloved sister.
But she deserved to know. And it was up to him to tell her.
She took the news quietly, only taking off her glasses to clean them and replace them on her nose, all very collected.
“Meg?” he asked. “I know this is all very,” he made a vague gesture, somewhere between milking a cow badly and whatever the fuck this is , “Yeah. But nothing’s going to change.” I’m not sure how much it means, if it means anything at all.
“Thanks for telling me,” she said quietly. “I watched my father die and now I get to hear how he died again. How do I find that guy, Zach?”
“Zephyrus? He’s in the service of Eros these days,” he sneered involuntarily. “Must be a great pair.”
“Ah yeah,” she said. “Because of the thing.”
“The thing being the time Cupid shot me with an arrow of desire, and Daphne with an arrow of hatred?”
“That thing. He sounds-” he covered her mouth before she could continue. “Meg, thanks for the support, but he did that because I laughed at him. Don’t make the same mistake I did- EURGH did you just lick my hand?” He cleaned it off on his shirt, “Gross.”
“Could have bitten it.”
“I bet you were a biter as a kid.”
“Past tense?”
Apollo changed the subject away from him getting bitten by a sometimes feral teenager, “Well, do you feel okay about it?”
“Okay is relative,” she said. Her hair had grown out in the past year and was currently sitting in twin pleats at the back of her head. She kept playing with the very end of one of them. “I mean, knowing this isn’t going to like… explode the world in the next twenty minutes or try to kill us personally, which is nice. Don’t get that too often. But it’s weird. I mean you slept with my dad. That’s weird.”
He didn’t blush, but probably only because he was a god and could control embarrassing reactions like that, “I mean, not recently.”
“Still .”
“You get to make three jokes about this and then I’m going to start rolling my eyes.”
“Okay.” She shrugged.
“So..?”
“If I get three jokes, Apollo, I’m going to save them for later.”
“Of course you are. But you’re… okay?”
“I’m okay, I think.” She peered up at him, “Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure, Meg. But reincarnation is strange. Even for gods.”
“More like especially for gods. Mortals don’t remember which life they’re on but you could be around for each one and never know,” she pointed out.
He knew he’d probably spend a lot of his life glancing in this direction and that, wondering if this one was Koronis or that one Hyacinthus, or those two Cassandra and Lucrezia. And for the most part he’d never be quite sure. Never know for certain if he’d known this person or that lover in another life.
And that would be something he’d just have to cope with forever apparently.
Meg tapped him on the shoulder, “Come on, dummy. You said you were taking me bowling.”