The goddess cowered in her own temple. Deserted, silent, forsaken. The crumbling marble surrounding her offered little defense against the unyielding, thundering rain. It brought a cold, which wouldn’t have troubled her a few years ago. Shivering that she had never understood, never experienced for herself, only observed in the weak mortals. A rumbling in her empty stomach she couldn’t recall plaguing her before.
There were cracks in the columns that manifested themselves as rivers of wrinkles marring her once-perfect face. The columns, that she remembered being crafted by calloused hands. Men in togas with tawny arms and damp brows and tenacious faith that only now could she truly appreciate. When their etchings of epic battles and legends of beauty and wonder withered, weathered by storms. Centuries of power eroded by a nature they had once commanded.
There are no men in togas now. No women praying with sing-song voices. No bloodied offerings in a warm hearth accompanied a plead for prosperity.
Now, the goddess lays in a heap of dirtied silks. Valuable beyond belief to any mortal who dares to look beyond the soot. Who dares to wonder beyond appearance. Now, she barely survives.
Because of two honey blonde eyes and matted fur that lays at her feet. The mutt may not have calloused hands, but somehow, he believes.
Man’s best friend made friends with a goddess, and now he is a wavering lifeline she clings to with emaciated hands. He is her companion through all of the storms and all of the stories. And he will know more legends than any mortal will ever tell, more than any has ever told.
He hears of the little things. His one tattered ear perks up when she spins a tale with spoken threads of gold. A tapestry she hopes he can see, but she doesn’t know if he understands. Legends of women she met. Women she misses.
Her voice smooth as wine and warm as smoldering coal, she laments on what the world she once ruled has come to.
“The other one, they burned her too. She wasn’t even a god… do you know what she did wrong?” Her eyes burned at the thought, “She was born a woman. So they burned her alive.”
Once the queen of a mortal world, once the queen of the gods.
The goddess, Hera, waits for her lifeline to run out.
Shivering, in a cold that once hadn’t bothered her, she waits for the final drop of faith to dry.