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She couldn’t tell you her name or what her domains had once been. She was a fragment of what she once was, she floated around, hair crowned with poppy seeds, dressed as a Minoan goddess. Small statues of her still remained, just enough to spark curiosity and faint belief from those who saw them.
She was Minoan. Perhaps sleep…or perhaps eternal sleep. Of that she knew. It was all she knew though. She persisted and she almost felt it would be much kinder to fade that this existence of nothing. She see’s fellow gods drifting about their homeland from time to time. One she feels she should know, snakes held in her hands or entwining themselves about her arms.
Genii flit here and there in anxious groups. They served the gods…but the knowledge of who they served is long lost now…all they do is bring goblets of drinks to any of them every now and then. Sometimes one could end up with quite the pile…
Then she met them. Two young demigods, children of the Helens and the even further in the future from her people the Romans. One is the Pontifex Maximus, and she feels the pull of him from the ruins of Crete where she drifts. She appears before him, one of her statues before him as he prays over it, calling to the very essence of her.
They blush when she becomes visible to them. Modern dress, she knows doesn’t call for fully exposed breasts. They don’t mention it though so she doesn’t either. They do tell her their efforts to aide minor deities or forgotten ones, the unfaded to have something again.
The other is a father. The mark of parentage stamped on him, he is so close to embracing his full divinity yet she can see the tethers that bind him to humanity. He will be a father god, she knows, when he ascends…
At this moment he has not, and he is in many ways…an offering of sorts. She trembles as the Priest speaks their offer. A child…a living legacy for whatever may be left of her… a cabin for her with the Greek demigods…
It makes her weep. She flings her arms around the future-god, gratefulness suffusing her being. She will live a little longer, have perhaps a slightly stronger hold…mayhap with a living child gain a foothold to have new thoughts and beliefs made of her, if not her old ones.
Poppy Memory Jackson is born hale and healthy and the poppy goddess weeps as Percy, her one-day-god-lover, names her. She places a copy of her crown upon the child’s belly; one day when she is older she may wear it, and know her mother loves her.