Twins of Egypt

Chapter 21: Gemini || Part 2

[[Helios | July 12 B.C.E]]

I sat it the atrium gazing up at the clear blue sky while the nurses stood at the marble columns and allowed me to spend time with my children who frolicked in the shallow pools of the fountain beds at the heart of the room.

"Papa," Gormlaith ran over to me oblivious of the mess and splashes of water. She pulled my hand and pointed towards the triclinium where a refined old woman of nearly sixty marched with grandeur into the atrium, followed by very heinous creatures, and a dog.

"Dog!" Lysander leaped and pointed at the dog, splashing water back and forth playfully; however, my mother expelled extremely discerning opinions firstly evident on her face.

"I imagined that you would do a better job raising children Helios," Drusilla the Cuckold - no one would ever call her by that hilarious nickname - bitterly antagonized as she waltz into her room by her short and weak of stature young sons, Eros and Magnus. My father fashioned them as the 'Twins of Quisquiliae' (Twins of the Garbage). My father never told me the real story behind the cruel nickname - all he said was that Drusilla birthed them in a place full of garbage. The man she left father for must have lived in an area in the suburbia.

I smiled at my mother and looked down at her with a fake smile on my face. I lowered my head to look at Eros and Magnus who at seventeen were shorter than one and half a meter. They were not pretty; their faces scarred with warts and pimples as their teeth festered yellow as urine. They were atrocious - so very ugly - I wondered how my mother could have borne the idea of lugging them around the city. I personally would have lugged donkeys through the Roman forum; at least some people would have admired them.

"Salve mater," I leaned forward to peck her on the cheek, squeezing her body gently.

She hugged me back as falsely as I hugged her. She knew I was not her children, everyone knew - or partially knew - 'who' I was, apart from the world.

"Gemini," I narrowed my eyes at her unsightly sons.

They nodded their greetings and sternly split away from their mother finding other things to amuse themselves - perhaps my slaves. I rolled my eyes at them and turned to my mother who watched my children behind me wreak havoc in Helena's villa.

"So mother," I captured her attention, "why did you come today, of all days?"

"Well you just arrived and I wanted to make sure that everything was well suited on behalf of Helena." She looked around impassively avoiding my green gaze.

"I never needed you to look after me."

"Look you ungrateful bastard," she stared at me venomously immediately after saying the two words she hated the most. "I do not need you to explain who needs me or when I am needed. I will go as I please, and I certainly did not come for you, you murderous bastard. I came to make sure your filthy hands do not touch what my daughter has earned and labored. She is my only beautiful child, and the only one left worth protecting from your bloody hands." She pushed me back and I did nothing but relent. "So do not tell me what I can and cannot do."

Anger raced through my veins. This ungrateful woman has taken me for granted ever since I met her, and there was a limitation. She would have probably had to observe it to learn her place.

"For the final time: I did not kill Lysander, he chose to die when he joined Hades. As for Helena, you are lucky I love her, for if I did not, how could you ever meet a match like Petros. You are too insignificant a noble; the best she could have done with you was marrying her to a man like the man who cuckolded father. Your precious Gemini and those other dumb ones have ravaged a toll on your body, one that is inescapable. Therefore, what could you have offered her? This home? No. This life? Neither. This could have not been possible without me. That is possibly what Lysander and father had thought even Helena when they learned to love me. But love is not gained from the riches one can provide another; love is in the heart - a feeling that happens because you trust and admire another - all of which you will and never had learned. I am sick of you. Leave Helena's home."