Free

Story By StormDancer

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I am overjoyed that such a glorious ruby as Aphrodite graces my house, and sometimes my dreary forges. She glitters as even I, the greatest smith any world has ever known, cannot make a gem emulate. She is the epitome of all jewels, glittering and sparkling and with nothing inside but that which reflects out on those to whom she sees. She is a prize to grace my house, yes, but I work to often with precious jewels. They no longer dazzle me with beauty or worth. I see my wife as she is without her glitter, a foolish girl who cannot focus on one thing, be it man or flower, and instead flitters from time to time, from lover to lover. And I am eternally grateful to those lovers whom she holds in her slender white fingers, distracting her and keeping her from my home, her desecrated shrine. She does not take her lovers to my house. The one time she did, I humiliated even her so horribly that now she refuses to approach my bed, only glaring at it with all the affronted dignity of a slighted cat. I dislike cats. But people say I sealed my fate that day, cemented my eternal doom as one who shall never know Laughing Aphrodite’s love. I did cement something that liberty. That bed is mine now, to share with no others. And by the Styx, so it shall remain!

The other gods laugh at me as the cuckolded husband of their lover, and pity me even as they ridicule. I have no need for their pity, or even sympathy. As they turn their backs to throw their derision at me where they think I am unaware, I smirk knowingly at their haughty backs. They think they know what I am missing. I know what they think they have. A foolish, flighty unfaithful girl. But for that same repulsive character I am glad. I do not love her. I will never even lust for her as all other gods do. She cannot seduce me into being one of her pet dogs, like the rest of her myriad of lovers. My jewels and metals are as beautiful as she, and more constant. With them I am content. I may never know the comfort and love the embrace of a wife is said to give. But by all that is holy, at least I am free!