The Death of Time

Rosemary and...

At the end of solitude…

Climbing down off of a mountain with a team of experts, a modernized Greek god and a voice inside her head, Ananke had to admit that today didn’t go quite as she expected. It occurred to her that she should be exhausted, her day was creeping into the 32 hour mark, but she felt strangely energized still. It was likely a side effect of having a secondary soul in her body, though since she still wasn’t sure this was real Ananke couldn’t rule out the fact that she might be more exhausted than is showing just yet. Over the last year ‘nake had visited a few of the most interesting geographical places on the earth and left her little painted stone as the only marker of her accomplishments, and in that time her body had met and surpassed the boundaries of 'normal' limitations. So far she had only managed to set out a half dozen of those little stones or so, but she was prepared to spend the rest of her life laying them out, granted that her body could keep up.

Until this latest strangeness came into her life Ananke figured she would spend the rest of her life alone and withdrawing from her concerned but hopeless family. Her father was more than willing to dole out guilt money to fund these excursions and the only caveat that had been placed on her was that she had to have semi regular call ins to her therapist Dr Callan. Beyond that her parents seemed to know that she found being around them as painful as they found having her around to be and everyone was happier with Ananke off wandering.

Ashes. Chronos’ deep voice murmured inside Ananke’s head and she waited for an explanation. Whatever emotion you felt for a moment tasted like ashes. Chronos wasn’t saying this to express his sympathies, instead the edges of their souls still overlapped and Ananke was fully aware of the fact that he felt her brief emotional flare to have been petty, selfish and weak. What did a mortal like Ananke have to feel like that over? He was the one exiled from his own flesh and forced to take a dependant role to a woman. As far as he was concerned, her entire focus needed to be on the task at hand and everything else was superfluous.

Not getting bothered by Chronos' quarrelsome attitude, Ananke probed at the numb part of her heart that had once held emotions to see if it would emit another flare. Like the sun with it's wisps of nuclear fusion, there was no response to her prodding, it would give off flares if and when it wanted to it seemed. It was probably a good sign, that she was getting even erratic emotional moments like that, but it just left 'nake feeling unsettled, slightly off. A year with an emotional scab the size of North America had accustomed Ananke to living without the hassles of this sort and she suspected that Chronos' emotional state wasn't exactly normal either.

A small quirk twitched on Ananke's lips as she realized that no matter what, she needed therapy. If the voice in her head was insanity, she'd need one kind of treatment; but even worse, if this was all real, how could Ananke ever expect to feel normal again? Where in the world she'd known last year would the presence of actual Greek gods and the ability of seeing Destiny ever fit in, and how could she hope to reconcile these two castly differing views of the world?

Ananke's hand dropped to her pocket and she fingered the smooth shape of another rock in her pocket. It already had the name Aeon painted on it, this time in a rather spectacular shade of Tigger orange and the presence of her purpose helped reestablish her sense of being. There was no sense for herto be ruminating over how badly things would be in the future, if she didn't focus on the here and now, she would never survive to see it anyways. The climb up a mountain was never the most dangerous part. No, that occured now as they were descending and surrounded by a team of experts. This was when most climbers got sloppy, when they felt that they could relax their vigiliance.

In her old job, Ananke had rescued many a fool from craigs, crevasses, outcropping rock and even an iceberg all because they had suffered hubris. She refused to be one of those statistics now, especially since she had finally gotten involved in something outside her own tasks once again. Ananake mused over that, wondering what exactly it was that Hades and Chronos thought that she would be able to do to help. Not you, me. I am supposed to be in control of the body. I am supposed to be the mind commanding this task. You are not supposed to be in my way. Chronos fumed some more, sounding just as petulant now as Hades has in her vision hours ago. I AM NOT PETULANT! He shouted in Ananke's mind, his anger once againt burning between them. Physically Ananke stumbled, which on normal ground wouldn't have been a big deal. However, since they were on the side of a mountain, the entire team responded to her little stumble as if she tried to pole vault off the cliff face.