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There is a breeze; mountains with slopes all laurel and cypress unroll gentle into valleys swaying with grain. A river meanders silver back and forth from one side to the other. When the air is very, very clear, the sea’s gleam is visible.
It is not that clear today; a mist has rolled in, turning the air sparkling, instead.
There is a breeze; it catches on curls. It ruffles the feathers of a wing--one, singular.
“Wow,” Hypnos says, unmoved by the breeze except how it tugs his hair, catches on clothes, ruffles feathers. He floats, looking back the way they’ve come, down at a valley sprawled wide with a silver river, a valley that remembers only sometimes that seasons are meant to turn, a valley scattered with stands of laurels and cypresses and fields of hyacinths a sea all memory.
“Mm,” Ares hums. “Don’t let Apollo hear that.”
“Why not?” Hypnos asks, hand shielding his eyes from the evening sun, looking down the way they’ve come. “It’s beautiful.”
“He already boasts enough,” Ares says drily.
Hypnos laughs, a high spill of water silver as the river so far below. The breeze catches that, too.
It’s good, here.
“We’ll be late,” Ares says without stirring from where he waits, leaned against a rock. It is a difficult climb; it is one Ares still enjoys making. A climb fit for goats and gods all breeze; a climb fit for those who have lost the last of their fear.
“Isn’t that fashionable now, being late?” Hypnos asks. “Lady Aphrodite was telling me how important it is the other day, and Lord Dionysus, you know. I hear it’s the done thing. I hear, even, that sometimes Lord Apollo is late, too, though I’m not sure I believe it!”
“Then I suppose,” Ares says, “we should be late.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” Hypnos agrees, sparing Ares a smile before he looks back the way they came, a view that not very many people who live here ever pause to consider.
Someone ought to appreciate it, the looking back.
Ares certainly does.
***
“Good morning! Or—it’s evening now, actually, but Lord Apollo doesn’t dare leave Ilion during the day, so evening will have to do.”
Sleep smiles, radiant, glow of him the only light at all. Soft.
“He’ll be here soon, don’t you worry,” he adds, smoothing a pillow. “I did my best, but I’m really not much a healer, to tell the truth! Hopefully I didn’t do too badly.”
***
There is a scar on Ares’ ribs in the shape of a star. It might be the oddest scar he has. Most scars are not nearly so elegant in their shape; most scars do not look so intentional.
He’s very fond of it.
***
“Wow,” Hypnos says, which Ares will allow is a very appropriate reaction to Apollo’s favourite home.
Ares likes these halls. They are bright; they are vibrant. They are the warmth of very early summer, a warmth full of all the promise of the harvest ready to be reaped. A gold sort of warmth, that, like the fields rippling far below.
They are also, as suits Apollo, quite rich. Ares would not say tastefully so, but that is mostly because he would prefer not to incur the wrath that would invite from multiple parties.
There are some fights not even Ares particularly enjoys.
There is music; there is nearly always music here with the high ceilings shaped to catch the breeze and sing his songs for all to hear. At the balcony, the wind chimes, crystal refracting a thousand sunsets across a sheepskin rug, not once discordant with the halls singing his songs.
No one loves a summer breeze more than Apollo except, perhaps...
“Get comfortable,” Ares says, “I’ll go tell Apollo we’re here.”
“Oh, I should probably come, too." Hypnos reaches up, touching hair all mussed, wing flicking, settling again.
“I'd prefer if you check he’s not left any knives in the bed,” Ares says.
“...Pardon?”
“He did that once,” Ares says.
“He didn’t.”
“Oh yes,” Ares says, grinning wide. “I nearly lost a hand, as I wasn’t expecting it. He was quite cross about something or other.”
The sun is nearly set and it was a very difficult climb, even for a god who floats. They are both of them quite mussed, between the wind and the rocks and the very long day.
“...maybe I should check,” Hypnos says, eyeing the bed.
“That would be wise,” Ares agrees. “I’ll give him your regards, and we’ll worry ourselves with proper welcomes come dawn. He’s always in a better mood then, anyway.”
“You’d know best, really,” Hypnos says, smiling with his hair all mussed and feathers all out of sorts, radiant.
***
Ares has, in a box gifted him for the purpose by Hermes, letters. Hermes has a particular talent for finding exactly the right box; he always has. Ares appreciates he sometimes spares the talent for Ares.
They are quite old, the letters; they crack at the folds and their edges are worn soft. The ink has not faded, but then, Ares has never read them by light of day.
Ilion took a very long time to fall.
Mother's very unhappy, which I suppose makes sense! She's always wanted to keep things with Olympus on the up and up, so it seems like our sister Nemesis is going to be helping Thanatos with the dead there while I stay very out of King Zeus' sight. She's not my first pick, to be honest, but between me and Eris, why, I think we've got everyone mad, haven't we?
How is Queen Hera, by the by? Well, I hope?
***
"I'm out here," Hypnos calls from the balcony when Ares returns. "There's food, even, arrived just after you left. Are you sure he's ever been late?"
"Yes," Ares says, pushing aside linen woven so fine as to be sheer and taking in a table heaped with bread and olives, fruit, with very fine goat and, of course, all manner of cheeses.
Hypnos is sitting, a leg dangling off the bench and a kylix from his fingers.
"I waited," Hypnos says, "but couldn't help helping myself to a drink."
The edge of the horizon is warm; above, the night has unfolded stars that have, of late, been quite cold.
"You did not need to wait," Ares says, and joins him on the bench, moving him only so much as to draw the leg not dangling across Ares' lap. He helps himself, first, to slathering cheese on bread--no one has better cheese than that from Apollo's home, a fact even Hestia acknowledges.
"But I did," Hypnos says. "It wasn't any trouble!"
There is a scar that arcs long down Hypnos' calf; Ares rests a hand on it, rubs his thumb along the raised skin, glassy to the touch.
"Try this," Ares says, offering bread smeared with cheese so fresh it must have been made today. And, "Thank you."
***
It wasn't because she's a queen or anything, though it must look that way, mustn't it? But...
That last dot bleeds thick on the paper.
I just thought someone ought to.
***
"May I?" Ares asks.
It is dark; the songs the halls sing are quieter, slower, sleep songs because the breeze loves to lull the one who gave him voice.
"Yes," Hypnos says, sighing into a yawn against Ares' chest. "For someone who doesn't have them, you're pretty good."
"Practice," Ares says, careful smoothing along feathers with his thumb, careful the way they lie.
Overhead, the sky is dark and cold stars; below, the valley ripples a sea and gleaming silver ribbon.
Between sits a mountain with halls always warm as the very first breath of summer and all its promise.
***
One letter is newer than the rest by many months, though that is difficult to tell any longer. It is far more worn than the others; it is the only whose ink is faded, edges torn.
He carried it with him a very long time.
Please don't blame her. I'd do it again. It was my choice. Don't blame her for that.
I should have been a little faster, huh?
Ares does not regret many things.
"I am sorry I stopped writing."
He regrets this.
***
There is a god with a smile that lights lightless places, with a wing--one wing, singular--that often hides in misting curls.
He is sitting on the bed, looking out the window thrown open. The dawn outlines him; it casts his edges even softer than they already are, dulls the stars that speckle his shoulders white. The breeze tugs his hair; it musses the feathers of his wing, singular.
On the other side, where once a second wing would flick and stretch, a scar starts. The god's curls hide how his hair has grown back in new directions around the scar; they do not hide the glassy skin, darker and redder than the rest of him, as it twists down his neck, over his shoulder, his ribs. Clothes do that except, this dawn, he is sitting nude on a bed, watching the sun rise on a mountain with the most singular view of dawn, and so there is a scar that arcs from crown to toe, smaller chains of lighting branching off.
It suits him. It is, Ares thinks, a far more beautiful scar than even the star he gifted Ares.
"Good morning," Ares says, still sleep rough, and rests his hand on Hypnos' hip, thumb tracing skin all light.