Hermes's Den

My siblings can be harsh. I believe that it’s in their natures, but I feel that they can be unnecessarily cruel. Perhaps it’s in my nature to believe that, but of course, they would then argue that I’m just too passive. The way they spit it frames it as a weakness, but I’m not sure if it is. They think the only actions worth taking are active actions. How plain of them.

Just because I can be passive, doesn’t mean that I don’t have strength.

Ask the man in the ice.

When we were born, triplets as we are, we latched onto the different objects presented to us as gifts. My brother, fiery and proud as he is, reached for the sun with fingers darkening as they took it. His face grew bright and glinted gold in the high places. He’s hard to look directly at, and he is beautiful, but he is beautiful and harsh. Our middle sibling dipped their hands into the stars and watched the fluid drip down their arms. All of the points of light fit them well. Gender is too defined of a choice, and my darling prefers more than just two. They spread the stars across their body, and became as the light glinting over their collarbone and angles, gentle in most cases, but just as burning as our brother up close. I, coming last and waiting for my siblings to choose their gifts, received the moon in the same way, calmly, gently, and perhaps rightfully. The light it cast over me was soft, drowning, but clean as water. I felt the color wash out of me, leaving my hair a field of snow and pale electrum. I moved my arms slowly, felt the tides follow my fingers with each movement. 

After that, we were set to rule as we were supposed to. My brother would rule the day, citing his beauty as the reason why men should gaze on him the longest. “And your cruelty?” I asked, my lips pursed in a smile. 

He laughed full and heavy. “Cruelty is needed to rule.” My darling took the night, attempting to fill the sky with as much light as possible from as many places as possible. Their light was strong where there was no other source, and for that, they are a bit bitter. They claim they got the short end of the stick. My brother and I remind them that they chose the stars for their own before ruffling their hair. I took to sharing the night sky with them, splitting my time between managing the tides and shedding my light and watching over those with other lights. “Multitasking is not your skill, sister,” my siblings called as I grew slim and leaned my body against my brother, the heat from his skin pouring into my body foreignly and comfortably. 

I smiled and shook my head. “You rule the sky and the seas and see how you feel.”

My brother’s love, like the rest of him, is blinding and all encompassing. He returned once, tossing his gold threaded hair, and sighing, “Oh, love is beautiful.” He spoke of a man, high in the north, whose family was all dead and gone. He would spend his time ruling the North as I ruled the South ensuring that the land would grow gaudy with spring’s flowers and summer’s kiss to keep the man’s eyes filled with beauty and his stomach filled with food; letting his tears of joy fall steaming into the stream as the man bathed, to raise the water’s temperature and to leave behind glowing amber tokens for him to find after; warming the breeze to weave exultant through his hair. “Oh, how beautiful is my love.”

As my brother was beginning to pass the Crown of the North to me and I the South to him, he suggested, just as it was mine, that we all visit his beloved. “You’re a fool.” My darling smiled. 

“In love,” I modified. “A fool in love.” 

We followed my brother to the man’s home, a cozy abode with smoke clawing its way out of the chimney lazily. My brother knocked on the door, and waited for the man to appear, smiling all the while. His love had accepted too many of his gifts, it seems, growing lovely and cruel by way of affection. My brother and darling both flew into a rage, stealing not his life directly from him, but stealing rest and warmth instead. My brother forbade me from keeping watch of his former and snatched the Crowns of both the North and South. In solidarity, my darling blanketed their cold fires over the South alone. My brother withheld his flame from the North, plunging it into famine, and grew content with letting the man watch him skirt the horizon forever if need be.

Every time I suggested that maybe my brother soften his stance on the man, if only for the sake of the love he bore him before the minor offense (it really was a minor offense), my brother set his burning eyes and reminded me. “Cruelty is needed to rule.”

I bent around him, letting him have his vicious fun for as long a period as I felt necessary before I set to work against him. “My darling, it’s time our brother moved on, don’t you think?”

They scoffed. “And you think he will relent? Please, sister, you know him as well as I do. He will never do that.”

“But you agree he should move on, yes?”

“Well, of course, but—”

“Maybe you should shine over the North again? It’s been a bit since you’ve seen it.”

Longing for the North and its stone carved beauty crossed my darling’s face softly. The next night they were blanketing the North as they did an age and a half ago. “Brother,” I called as I rose to meet him low in the sky, “do you see how lovely our darling looks?”

He lifted his weary eyes and nodded slowly. “They do, sister,” he agreed, “but why are they here? They forgot this land an age ago.”

“Because you need rest,” I told him. “Your gold is losing its brilliance.”

He yawned and said, “That is cruel, sister. It doesn’t fit you.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I said, blocking him and watching the ice glow softly in the light of my darling and the auroras. The man’s breath shuddered and stopped, escaping his body as a woozy shaft of emerald and ruby light. “Close your eyes, brother. Cruelty isn’t always needed to rule.”