Page 53 of Prometheus' Priestess

Why was he here in the middle of the night if it wasn’t adream?

She watched his lips moving. The same lips that had kissed and sucked her tears away.

“I need you to look into the fire, Amara.”

“Why?” she muttered, unimpressed with this dream Theo. He was demanding, whereas hers was not.

He contined to stare at her, hard, before gripping hershoulders.

“I can’t tell you yet. I just need you to look. Can you do that forme?”

“Will you let me sleep if Ido?”

Prometheus sighed, regretfully. For when she looked in the fire, she would never truly be asleep again.

“Yes, you can sleep afterwards,” he lied.

“Ok then.” Amara sat up in her dazed state, somewhere between consciousness and dreams, and stared into the fire.

It continued to flicker white gold. Meanwhile, the clearer Amara’s vision got the more she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The gold and purple threads in the fire weren’t just dancing; they were interacting with each other. Like two dancers that had known each other a lifetime, they came together and withdrew to a drumbeat that matched the timing of Amara’s heartbeat.

She stood and walked closer to the fire, falling to her knees as she reached the hearth. Moving so he was behind her, one knee propped up and his weight leaning mainly on his left arm, Prometheus watched the fire with her.

As the threads entangled, Amara saw them become two figures. The purple thread was curvaceous, like a woman. The gold was upright, lean, like a man. It led the purple thread through the fire dance, and Amara got the distinct impression that she was watching the union of two people. At first she wondered if it was her and Theo, if he − the dream −was trying to tell her something. But then the threads of the flame began to tell a story without herprompting.

The purple thread lay horizontally across the fire while the gold thread covered her. Embers spat, causing Amara to jump. She shook her head, focused, and saw that the little embers had produced wisps of new threads. They were turquoise blue. Before Amara knew it,there were enough blue threads in the fire to weave together a scene.

“The birth of Earth,” a breathy whisper said. She realised it was hervoice.

The threads of the flame, as if they heard her, dispersed and began to weave together a new image. This time the golden thread took the shape of a bird and the purple the shape of a crown which then birthed twelve new threads. Not all of them, Amara noticed, came from the purple thread but all of them had a tie to the gold thread. Until it looked as though the gold thread sat on the top of a mountain. As if the other threads had placed it there.

“Zeus and his children,” Prometheus prompted, for the fire would only show Amara the knowledge she needed to know, no more, no less, of the history.

For some reason his words tugged deep in the recess of Amara’s mind. She knew he was right. She didn’t even turn to question him; she just kept watching.

The threads dispersed again and this time three purple threads appeared.

“What do you see?” he asked her.

“An owl, an arrow, and a woman.” Amara said slowly, as the images became clearer, sharper to her eye.

“Athena, Artemis, and Aphrodite,” he told her.

And then, a new thread appeared, crimson in colour. At first, it looked like a woman kneeling before all three goddesses before seeming to morph and become a small infinity symbol held in the goddesses’ arms almost like ... a swaddled baby.

A single tear rolled down Amara’s cheek as she watched the fire tell the story of her birth here on Earth. The lineage she had always wanted to know presented to her. It was a bittersweet gift, because with it came the realisation that she had been used for a task. Her life here on Earth held meaning, but not one that any human would wish on themselves.

She wasn’tdreaming.

The fire had opened that trap door at the back of her mind that had kept her firmly cut off from her soul, and the memories came flooding back. Walking the fields, laughing as Artemis’ hounds tried to catch butterflies in their teeth and brought her back dandelions instead. Tending to Athena’s owls in the aviary. Collecting the rose petals and drawing the baths that Aphrodite had loved so much. And going to the temple to give thanks for her life in Olympus with her sisters, the other priestesses.

They had promised her glory for her gifts, and instead she had beenused. Hounded. Discarded when the plan didn’t work. By those who had sworn to protect her. By those she had shown nothing but loyaltyto.

She remembered meeting Prometheus in Olympus. Even there he had been a man of legend. The one who had stood beside Zeus and fought with him in the Battle of the Titans. The elusive artist who had created humans but liked to keep himself to himself up in the mountains. To know him was to be invited to know him. There he had seemed older, wiser, more unreachable than any of the others. Yet here he was, his breath on the nape of her neck, his body so close to hers she could feel his body heat more intimately than the heat from the fire in front of her.

“Why?” she whispered.

He didn’t pretend not to understand her meaning.

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