She paced quietly across the massive groove. It had been decided on as a meeting ground by the nature Gods, the least eager to spark a war that would see their beautiful creations burned. Thus, they were the most likely to enforce peace. Aggressively so.
Hestia enjoyed a little aggressive enthusiasm. She rather had to for all the morons that tried to court her. Only one in modern day understood what loving her as a goddess meant. It was not a romantic love for the goddess felt no such love. It was a deep and platonic connection. A trust. Her dear priest had named the word after a departed friend he had lost at war, torn apart before their time.
Bonded. To hold a deeper tie of the soul. It was a love that humanity still did not truly see collectively, though pockets understood. Her priest understood. He was a man who marched to war, truly believing he was fighting with his brothers, sisters, and kin for the safety and the betterment of all others. It was a young and foolish idea, but even as his third decade creeped in, Hestia watched him grip to that belief even as his home became a palace to conquest. He was her single hope to stop this ideology marching on and burning so much of the world. It had already begun, and she could not have found him at a better time.
"Hestia." A deep voice called from above. She turned slowly into the growing sunlight, battling her own illumination among the formerly unlit Grove. Her heavy, coarse, auburn hair hung down under the scarf of a homemaker. Her face covered in the marks of the day to day life. A small cut from a kitchen knife on the lip. A subtle oil burn on the side of her neck. Her left ear was notched at the top from some unknown fall into bushes. All events she never lived and yet felt. Every pain and burden eased by taking on just a little of the weight for them. Her deeply tan skin sagged slightly with the weariness of age, yet still shone with a radiance befitting a goddess. She always kept herself dressed modestly and was simply draped today in the wrapping of a Greek peasant wife. A thick, warm dress with soft colors of brown and orange.
Her eyes, however, stood out the grandest. Living wells of flame that crackled differently to any who witnessed them. To most, they burned and smolder with hostility, seeming like the mouths of a musket ever repeating in the moment it was fired. To the soft and gentle who knew her, they resembled the warm den of a hearth. They felt like the soothing fire of home long away, yet brought here before them again.
Her fellow God was more... flamboyant. Odin always preferred the awe of a flashy entrance. He came down on a flock of Ravens and leaned back as each wore a small bell that rang with a strange holy light that only annoyed the hearth maker. He was broad with the greed of Asgard in the belly but scrawny otherwise. Wrinkled and mottled face with liverspots and thinning hair, the death of his worship was quite evident. Yet...
Her focus was torn as he leaped down and landed on the flowerbeds with the heavy thump of himself and his thick black and blue robes. The Ravens flowed with a mass of shrieks into a tall staff, topped by a larger, singular silver bell. "Surprised to see you here first."
She chose to just ignore him, turning away to look at a flower or two. She had dealt with the old wicked bastard before and knew the best way to avoid his games was to just ignore him entirely. He started shouting in moments, but just as soon, he got bored and went to lean against one of the edgeline trees.
The next to arrive was her own brother Poseidon. He treaded in slowly, visibly annoyed to be even this far from the water. He walked with his trident in a way that seemed strong, but she knew well that visible weakness in his stride. His powerful, broad, and sculpted body, covered in a rich brown of the sunnier hellenic islands, was normally slick and made the many scars in his torso from a certain hero seem more intimidating. Dry, it just looked sickly. His seaweed colored hair was tied back for once, kept in a small bun where normally it flowed to his feet. He fidgeted slightly as he noticed her and her gaze fixated on him.
"Sister."
"Brother."
That was all the words they would share before the meeting.
Soon after, they could hear the more nature focused gods constructing safeguards just outside the treeline before someone strode in that made Poseidon even more nervous.
She was vast, even in their modest forms. As tall as two barrels stacked upon each other, with a complexion befitting the old but loved side of an ancient vessel at sea. She was round and soft in her beauty, her robes falling down around her shoulders like the stretching arms of the deep abyss itself, shrouding her in the ocean's unseen beauties as they flow like shadows along fabric. Skulls on chains of slaver ships adorn her waist like trophies, marked with their hjdeous names across the forehead, and she wore the name of each that chose her waters instead of enslavement across her body. Every single one in the language of their people, whether they hailed from her home or not. She opened beautiful eyes that stormed with the rage of the sea itself and befit her slightly shrouded navy blue hair. It was heavy, curled, and thick beneath her shroud and seemed to arc occasionally like lightning between a massive cloud.
"Lady Inkosazana. This is a surprise." Hestia turned to her. "I had not been expecting you."
"We are witnessing the turning of an age where my people are the next to wear the chains and noises of hate, Hestia. You have seen what will come if we do not act. If we allow this... Pretender from Israel to continue this march." She spoke quietly even as her words held such weight on the others present. Hestia was among few thay had considered this a risk already.
"I know, Lady Inkosazana." She said softly, turning and folding her hands gently.
"Whoever this is has bent the words of a kind man into malice and hate. How can these... these Barbarians claim to know the ways of the younh lamb, yet bark and bite at everyone who dare think others. He was still in the cradle of his divinity when they butchered him." She had clearly held this in for quite some time. Hestia suspected she had wanted to let this out at the full council itself, but something had dragged it out of her.
"Now, now." Odin chimed in, hobbling over on his staff. "Let's not be hasty."
"Do not talk to me like a child, Trickster. I know you bare the gift of foresight." Her eyes narrowed. "I know you have seen what is coming."
He stroked his beard as Poseidon approached, standing slightly behind Hestia. Inkosazana could dance between land and sea, but unless a volcano was nearby, Poseidon was more crippled. He also held far less authority. He was a sea god. She was an Ocean Goddess.
"I simply think it isn't right for us to intefere." He said a little whimsical as he stroked his beard. "If we choose to step in now, we will all fall back into old habits. Something it seems you already have been overstepping on, Lady Inko."
"It is Inkosazana to you, trickster." She came dangerously close to a snarl. "I protect my people from those that would hurt them when I am able. A task I have been finding harder with your fogs miring the view."
"My. I haven't the faintest clue what you mean." He gave a puzzled expression.
"Do not play coy. It could only be you and your ilk, struggling for some restored relevance among these pillagers. These raiders." She stepped closer. Her face was the picture of soft control and gentlness, save for her narrowed eyes. She still had not raised her voice above a soft tone, but the fury behind each word was maddening. Every sentence roiling the storm of her sight. "Four hundred years of chains. Of brutality and massacres that will see magic die in this world and see countless countries, continents, and eventually, this entire world stripped dry because of your people." She said with a grim finality. Even Odin had to briefly gulp and gather himself under the sheer weight of her gaze.
"Is it our place to say what is right and what is wrong? Would that not make us just as wicked as the pretender you so scorn?" He cackled lightly. "My, my. I never took you for a hypocrite, Lady Inko."
"Inkosazana."
"Mm, my apologies." He cackled lightly. He started again, but the restrained rage in her voice cracked his concentration like an egg.
"We... Must. Act." She spoke with a firm, controlled hate toward the one-eyed god, turning and marching to her own seating as many more divines began to file into the grove. Some looked angry. Others, annoyed. Few seemed pleased to have been called, fewer still eager.
It would be a very long meeting, and Hestia feared inaction more than ever. Especially each time she heard Odins hacking cough or gagging cackle.
The bickering and senseless backs and forth drove the homestead goddess rather displeased. This was senseless. No matter how Inkozasana and her allies, even those at war with her homeland in the eastern portion of Africa, stood by her. Few could see into the depths of time, but they all saw the march coming down. Humanity had grown arrogant and fat without the gods. No. Not humanity.
Europe.
Their gods were few, yet grand. Hestia felt ashamed to count herself among them, though a few stood above. Those still alive, thanks to the pretender.
The Celtics gods were entirely absent. They had almost entirely died to the hateful fires, and few remained. Fewer still with the might to stand as more than gentle whispers on the wind. Most just seen as old folklore or ancient children stories. No worse fate for a god. Not quite forgotten, yet never truly remembered. It was a worse fate than simply dying in her opinion.
The Greeks were furious and arguable at any intervention, save for the silent voices that sat beside her of Ares and, much to the hearth holder's shock, Aphrodite.
"This is proposterous." The goddess of love mused as she leaned on an oh so delicate hand. Pristine nails, finely polished to a perfect red sheen for Ares. She had her hair down today, long locks of brown and blond mingling in countless individualized strands, while her skin was the picture of porcelain. She wore only the toga of her people, seemingly as exhausted by this squabbling as much as Hestia. She was so lovely, even at the admittance of one who felt no such desire. Hestia was not above the admittance of beauty, and Aphrodite was the definition of gorgeous. At least, Mortal's idea of it.
Ever in flux without her control, her weight flowed so rapidly on a whim from heavier and curvy to thin and stylish with no measurable margine in between, only a spectrum of appetite. No matter her size, she wore it with such grace. Yet, Hestia could see the exhaustion in those dulled pink eyes that once glittered so magnificently pink. Once, as flighty and strange as she was to Hestia, her sister of blood was a ghost of herself. She had not even cared to do more than her lips and eyes when normally her face and hair would be the very main attraction of every meeting. Ares once long ago had to fend off suitors. She was drained ever since the passing of those early hellenic days when mortals still sang of her warlike grace, now barely a mimicry of that woman as mortals have sought to her only for the most vapid of graces. The blessing of mistresses for royals. Many thought she was a consumate cheat, but Haephestus was a god of many, many scars. He often let her be. Hestia knew it wasn't malice but a quiet kind of respect. He did love Aphrodite, so he did not become an obstacle to her own heart.
He knew she was the definition of an uncontainable heart, and she would admit the stories of this trio did often warm her. He had grown into a kinder, gentler man since the days of ancient stories, and the weight of those days still soured his shoulders in the heat of the forge. Time had worn down the arrogance of his father and given him time to restore the damage once he had done, even if the bellows and blistering heat were still the only places he called home.
Ares was an ever-present tenderness, at least for Aphrodite. He sat beside them, leaned back silently in his armor. He wore the bold steel breastplate over a captain's uniform with his treasured sword shaped like a cutlass on his hip. He wore a helmet whenever they were in public, nowadays disguised as a dark red hood that mysteriously hid almost all of his features. His eyes could never be hidden, however. Deep and rich pools of red light, like tiny red stars resting in each socket. They glowed more or less intensely based on many things, and Hestia would say they seemed to be quite dim today compared to what she would expect.
Many had begun to shout and scream at one another by this point. Hours wasted in little more than shouting.
"This is a fucking disgrace." Ares started to stand. "A DISGRACE!" He bellowed once as the council grew silent for a moment.
"You pathetic dishonorable cowards! You sycophants mob of desperate bastards! Is this really the coming war you want?! Is conquest through chains and fire what you THINK war should be?!" He stepped more into the groove as eyes fixated on him. "Is this the glory you so sought, Asgard?" He turned and pointed at Odin in particular. Millenia at Aphrodite's side had changed Ares. He would have leaped at this idea in the days of ancient Sparta. Now, it sickened him. He was honorable, and honor changed with maturity and time. Even for the gods.
Odin only smirked in response as he stood, walking slowly toward the far more muscular god. "My. All this talk of a coming war," he lightly scratched under his chin, "but so little proof."
Aphrodite stood up on a huff. "That is horseshit!" Many gasped. "We are the GODS! Time and Destiny are as threads in our looms and tapestries on our walls! How can you claim as a diviner, a seer in your own way, Odin, that there is no proof?! I have gone to the oracles myself. I wished it wasn't true."
"Prophecy and future telling are a dangerous gambit, Lady Venus." He smirked with perfectly golden teeth.
"It... is Aphrodite." She grit her teeth, knuckles so tight you could hear the air igniting between her fingers. "I will not be named for that... abomination the Romans made me into. Their blood still stains even my newest gowns. I was a war goddess, but what these men do is not war."
"It is genocide." Ares said, no small amount of shame in his own voice at what it took for those harsh realities to be revealed to him. Perhaps Aphrodite had not lost all of her old heat, and Ares had been very receptive to her ideas over the ages. She herself had grown weary, but she had managed to still share herself with him.
Hestia could have heard a pin drop on a flower at that moment, however. Still and quiet with her words, many gods' honor felt slighted. The African gods held their heads high with a dignified yet well-deserved smugness.
Odin began a retort when the treading of a horse entering into the grove cut the silence. A figure very few of them recognized, but could easily feel she held the Divine blood.
She rode a beautiful stallion with a rich, healthy brown coat. He held a feeding pouch full of cornmeal around his neck. Upon his back sat a quiet figure in a cloak of rich green, only the hint of a rich reddish brown complexion beneath the hood as she approached.
"W-w a-are you?" Odin nuttered, like he was witnessing a ghost.
"The cost of your inaction." Her voice boomed like a thousand children crying at once, yet held at a tone like a simple conversation. It rang in every ear all the same as she slowly dropped a single bloody doll made from a corn stalk and black bear fur. It had been burned, the blood dried so long ago that one could not see where it started, and dirt ended.
Each took a quiet moment to stare at the doll before looking up. She was already gone. She had left them with a price.
So why did Hestia see so many still begin their bickerings, even in the view of that horrid display as Aphrodite shakily knelt down to touch the doll. Her eyes flashed with visions Hestia could not detect, but the horror and tears steadily falling across her pale skin told her everything she had to know. It took mere minutes after Ares took Aphrodite into his arms and pulled her away to her seat, crying hysterically as she clutched the little doll, for them to resume their shouting match.
He dared not touch it himself, and neither did Hestia. They both shared a quiet glance, knowing neither could withhold their rage if they saw what made her sister and his love such maddening break apart. Hestia simply helped settle her in, removing her scarf and expanding it to a blanket as she rested it over the love goddess' shoulders, letting her clutch to Ares for a moment as her focus fell back on the screaming horde, already forgetting the grim warning. It had slipped through their ears like a wet and silent worm, in one ear and out the other.
She had heard, though. The hearth would not abandon any home, no matter what.