-1Hestia is playing with fire. She draws three slender cords of flame, pinioning them gently between her fingers, coaxing them away from the only home they have ever known and into her grasp. They obey readily, eager for any sliver of her attention, and she twists one strand of flame around one another. Preserved like this, the steady glow of light will last longer, providing warm illumination without need for fuel.

Footsteps—tentative, nervous—approach.

Startled, Hestia jerks the braid in her hand, causing the woven flames to break free from its mother, and whirls about, ready to react at a moments notice. The twisted fire in her hand is already lengthening, shifting to create a straight-limbed bow—her weapon of choice. There is no such thing as too cautious. It has been a long war, and they have all learned that the hard way.

She relaxes when she recognizes the sandal-shod footfalls are familiar, but it is not until she sees her youngest sister that she permits the tension to leave her shoulders. Still, required safety procedure is required safety procedure. Especially since it was my idea. “Tell me a memory,” she insists. “Something only you and I—”

She stops short.

Her sister’s hair is falling in loose waves down her back, rumpled and mussed, and she is clutching her emerald robe closed with her right hand. The pretty silk sash, stitched with flowering vines, dangles from the slack fingers of her right, trailing on the ground.

Hestia has Demeter as a sister: headstrong, independent Demeter who spread her loves and her passions with whomever she pleases. She knows what a woman who has enjoyed a man’s attentions looks like after the fact, is familiar with the flush and rumpled hair, but—

The look on Hera’s face is a foreign and unfamiliar as a star is on earth.