#like 'ah if we anger Poseidon our ships will sink.'

[featherymainffins]

Some of you are never beating the Christian culture allegations

[nikkywrites]

Fool, King of Sea (Ocean's Heart Side Story)

Summary: Amphitrite has never seen a divine fool enough face constant rejection for a domain they do not seem to like. Poseidon is, though, the greatest fool she's ever met. And Calypso is a great friend, when she's not being irritating.

*****

One thing that is of short supply in the ocean is good fun.

It can be made, of course, games built around redirecting ships to wrong ports, seeing who can sneak unaided by divinity into captain's quarters, who can race from Crete to Corinth the quickest. Games that are not made for one.

Calypso is good fun when she wants to play, is a challenge Amphitrite loves to play with. They toss their wins back and forth, banter in barbs they only laugh at. Calypso is a great companion, when she is around.

But there are times when she is not.

Alone, Amphitrite gets bored all too quickly, aimlessly searching through the water. She'll rest with her creatures some days, care for them like the pets they all are, but some days she wants excitement and no one is around to deliver.

Then comes something rarer than excitement -- a divine looking to be king.

It is obvious at a glance that this man does not belong. He is tall with thin hips and too much rage boiling in his bones. He must be some sort of new, thinking he can demand ocean to let him rule. It chooses who it will.

Watching this godling try to force himself upon her home is amusing. It remains cold, rejecting and rejecting him. What a fool, to keep trying.

He slinks away eventually, face pinched and muscles coiled tight. There's a rage boiling in his blood, rage the water rejected without hesitation. Amphitrite laughs at his retreat. It is little wonder her domain does not want him. He is entirely too hot for the cold waters. He will boil her home to steam or it will shatter him.

Ah. Well, it was nice while it lasted. Divines did not handle rejection. He would not face the humiliation again, however amusing it would have been to watch. She feels Calypso's call below, from the deep that is more home to her than Amphitrite, the deep that even she finds too chilling. She watches the point of shore the young god had been standing on and turns to go find Calypso. The call is purposefully untraced and it is a call to find her before she rises to air.

The young god's defilement of her home slips from her mind.

-----

Calypso can look awfully disappointed when she wishes to, can arrange her features in a way that niggles even at her. There is something about the arch of her brow and the curve of her frown and the angle of her eyes that stabs at Amphitrite in a way it shouldn't. It is a look of too much divinity towards something that cannot bear it, but Amphitrite can bear Calypso's divinity just fine. It is a trick.

"What?" she asks eventually, a bite to her words that would make a mortal faint.

Calypso turns her gaze elsewhere, to the seaweed curled up beside them, curled above in a little bubble as the water outside churns them away somewhere else. She stares at the weaving. "Nothing," she says in a too-friendly, too-simple tone.

Amphitrite narrows her eyes. Calypso has her ways of haggling for everything she wishes, from whoever she wishes it from. She recalls the moment she'd learned how Calypso had earned her tentacle-swarmed form. Calypso has never hungered for something she did not get and that nettles at her.

It was not fair.

"Don't play your games with me," Amphitrite warns. "I do not hold patience for them today."

Calypso lifts a cool shoulder. The move is infuriating. "Alright."

The silence burns.

Nothing should be burning under the water, in the deep cold of the sea. There is not allowed any warmth. Certainly not heat.

Amphitrite's glare burns hotter. "You are playing," she says.

Calypso's gaze slides over. Her body language is all relaxation and distance. She is at ease but there is something in her expression, something churning in her mind. "How so?"

That was the question. Then, the answer comes.

"You are trying to nettle me," she says, feeling the answer is right but not knowing why. What reason could there be for Calypso to want her angry?

"Maybe you shouldn't be so easily nettled, then."

Amphitrite's lip curls at the accusation. "What ill is in you today?" she asks. "You're being sour."

Calypso seems to consider the words, rubbing her lips together, She shrugs. "I am not sure." Her eyes flick over nothing. "A passing mood, I think. I want to stir trouble but it's too dreary a day for mortals to be out."

She snorts delicately. "Right. Warning, next time. I warn you."

Calypso's smile looks empty. There is nothing wrong with its shape but it looks false. "Sure. Apologies for wounding your ego."

"As if."

The smile shifts, looks more real, more like a smile that belongs on Calypso's face. "You may barb me back," she says, "if that would ease the sting of your pride."

Remaining bits of Amphitrite's anger fall away. She laughs and Calypso joins in.

"Shall we travel for a mortal?" Amphitrite offers. She is all too aware of these moods of Calypso's, times where she is reaching for something that does not quite exist. She had murmured the word chaos once, describing it.

With all the things she represents, all she is and the price of it -- Amphitrite does not think it worth it. There is an emptiness to Calypso sometimes, like the bottomless abyss that leads to the Underworld, that only knows to soundlessly call. That wrongness. It must be her price, for being the face of too many things.

In her rare moments of softness, Amphitrite worries over how it will cause her trouble one day.

"No, this is fine."

Fine. Because nothing can please her now.

It's her curse. The burden of being all the ocean is.

Amphitrite is grateful that the burden is not hers. The deep is enough for her, the cold and the creatures. She could not imagine more.

The seaweed begins to part. They both gain a sense of being in a different section of ocean, placed anew by a combination of both their powers ordered to drift them away.

Amphitrite looks over at Calypso. Her eyes are terrifying, sometimes. They look as if they can see through all. Laying secrets to the sun.

"You should take a mortal," she suggests. "I know how highly you think of them, but having one is quite fun."

Calypso's eyes churn. She gazes out at the water. "Mortals bear much misfortune by our hands," she says. "I see no reason one needs to bear the misfortune of me."

Amphitrite sighs. "Ready, then?" One day, she would convince Calypso to get a mortal. She didn't understand Calypso's protection over them. She spoke for them when opportunity drifted by, but when she wears her other shape, she swallows them like a fish. No remorse. No guilt. No regret. How can she advocate for them so and have their blood dripping in her soul?

It was not right. Many things weren't with her. It was why she was so fun.

"Am I ever not?"

Amphitrite grins. "Go, then."

They race, power folded under their skin, to find the place they had started at.

-----

The god fool returns.

Amphitrite does not seek his appearance, but the backsplash of his untethered divinity beating against the water reaches her. She comes not from the boredom, this time, but the fun she knows will be there.

The god -- Poseidon, the ocean hisses at her as she travels, one of Cronus' rebelling children -- is just as entertaining as she remembers.

He thrusts his sad excuse of divinity over top the water, steps his foot into the splash of shore, growls his place like it is something he can demand. "I am Poseidon," he says, putting too much force in each syllable, "god of the sea."

Amphitrite's laugh is a soft thing her domain swallows. How foolish.

"I will," he speaks with bared teeth like a roaring beast, "be king of you."

Her laugh bursts. The waves splash with it.

Poseidon -- the fool king -- pulls his head back like he's insulted and a tantruming child. "I am son of Cronus and Rhea," he tells her, unknowing she is there. "You will obey my will."

Amphitrite rises. "I think it will not," she informs him, lips pulled in an effortless grin. To him, it probably appears smug and demeaning. It's not her fault he's made it so easy to humiliate him. "The ocean listens not to those it does not care to. You're best finding a domain somewhere else, little god."

He glares at her. It should be some degree of terrifying, since he aided in the capture and downfall of the Titans, of Cronus, but he is unclaimed and she is in her home.

His glare is about as scary as a baby jellyfish.

"I will be king of the sea," he says.

She sighs. "We have many monarchs already. What need is there for you to be another?" Her eyes rake over him, judging. "This is not where you belong. Go tie yourself somewhere you fit."

His lips lift into a sneer. "I will take this for my domain whatever I must do."

Amphitrite lifts her brows and starts to sink under. "Your lost time, little god." She goes back to her depths. What impudence in that one. The world would not bend to his wiles just because he ended an era of tyranny. He would have to come across a place to store his divinity somewhere else. The ocean would not bend to him. Others have tried.

None succeeded. Becoming patron of the sea is as easy as being accepted by it. If you are not, you will never be.

Simple as that.

-----

"Fool," she scoffs at a whale, running her hand over its flesh. "Why must all new gods think themselves kings of things already claimed? There are plenty of other things they could tie their divinity to."

The whale echoes a call. Amphitrite rubs it soothingly.

"I know." She flicks her gaze to where the fool had been. "Impudence. May the Primordials never let his name be known."

Her hand flexes.

"It is undeserved."

-----

Poseidon is apparently stubborn, alongside his foolishness. Perhaps when this doesn't pan out, he will be god of screeching fools. It suits him much better than the sea and was unclaimed, waiting for him.

He's also screaming for her.

She crests with impatience, shooting him a look packed with all the cold of her domain. He has the sense (not a complete fool then) to fumble some of his confidence. "I told you the ocean would not be yours," she says, "and yet you returned."

"It must be mine," he replies. His eyes dart to the sky, something uneasy flashing across his face. "There is no choice."

She scoffs. "Hardly. There are a thousand unclaimed things you can leer your power over with hardly any struggle at all."

"I will take the sea or have nothing."

Amphitrite tips her chin up. "Enjoy the emptiness then, little god. Try not to let chaos swallow you. She loves the unclaimed."

"I am not unclaimed," he frowns at her. "I choose the ocean."

"Yet it has not chosen you. Take the rejection and find something else."

His lips part. His teeth are flat and unsuited for the blood of ocean living. "I will be patron of the sea no matter what it takes."

"Find a way for it to take you, then. Be a fool. It's amusing."

He strikes at her with divinity her ocean diverts for her. It has little patience for this imposter and his greed, is fed up with his demands. "I am no fool."

"You're demanding gifts like a petulant child." She looks down her nose at him, haughtily lifts her chin to look elsewhere. "I thought you fought in the war."

His chin flies up, features hardening. "I did."

Her lips curve up. "So where is your power? Tell me, great one, what domain is yours?"

His face flushes. She thinks that if she was on land, he'd tackle her. He's apparently not fool enough to dive in the water for her. Unfortunate. It would have been a fun sight. "What is your domain?" he redirects.

"I am Amphitrite," she tells him. Defeat causes his eyes to darken. He recognizes the name. "I am goddess of the deep and the creatures that dwell there."

"A sea patron," he clarifies, lip thrusted out.

One corner of her lip rises without consent. "Yes."

He wrinkles his nose at her reply, staring petulantly at the sand under his bare feet. He drags the ball of his foot against the sand. "So you mock me," he grumbles. "I am just searching for what you have."

Amphitrite laughs. "I belong to the sea," she says, waves lapping against the deep gills slashed on her throat, curling over her collarbones. She looks like her creatures, like a thing of the ocean. It is of no question that she belongs. It is of every question that he does. "You do not. It is as simple as that."

"That will change."

"And I will enjoy your attempt," she promises.

-----

Calypso frowns at her. "You are encouraging him," she accuses.

"What?" Amphitrite lifts her brows and doesn't let her movement to sit beside Calypso lag with the shock. She settles on the sea floor easily, a jellyfish coming to drift by her shoulder. She wraps one of its stinging tendrils around her finger. "I am doing no such thing."

"You are toying with him like a mortal." Calypso continues on unfettered. Little is capable of doing that, if anything is. Amphitrite has not seen anything that is. "Like you're planning on taking him."

Amphitrite shoots a cold look at the other goddess. What accusations. "It is harmless fun."

"He is a god with power yet unknown. It is not wise to taunt what may yet be stronger than you."

"He is a fool," Amphitrite waves her hand. It will not matter. He is determined to take the sea and he will not. He does not fit and does not have the making to force himself to. He seems bound to be a sea god and she thinks he is foolish enough to try until time's end. He may be a strong god, but unclaimed, she will always be more powerful. Such is how divinity works.

Calypso expels a short breath out her nose. "As are you."

"When are you ever wise?" she bites out, cutting the words into blades with her teeth. "You lurk in parts of the sea not yours. You claim to love the sailors you eat. What wisdom is that?"

"Lack of wisdom does not make me a fool," she replies, unbothered by Amphitrite's harshness. "And I am sea patron just as you are. There is no place not fitting me."

"I am queen of the deep." It is hers by her divinity.

Calypso flicks her gaze over. Her face is composed, unflushed, and she looks bored by the conversation. “You never go that deep. No one does. It borders the land of the dead. Do not try to lay your claim over things you do not want.” Her eyes slide away and her mouth purses with a slight twist. Anger? Disgust? Annoyance? “And where I dwell goes deeper than the deep. It is the abyss and you are not goddess of that.”

“It’s the principle of it.”

Calypso laughs. “As if you care for principle. We are both gods of something already claimed. Let details flutter where they must. They are not worth bickering for.”

Amphitrite clicks her tongue. Her sharp fingers dig into her flesh. “Yet bicker you do.”

“You are the one trying to claim what is not yours.”

Amphitrite’s face pinches. “You are irritating, today.” She pushes up, gliding away. “I do not wish to be in your presence.”

She feels Calypso lay back. “As you wish,” she says. “Do think before you flirt with the god. He is trouble.”

Amphitrite snorts as she calls a stream to carry her away. She was not flirting with the fool. She was toying with him. Laughing at his idiocy. In what domain was that flirting?

She was not looking for a husband. She was content with how things were. And even if she wasn’t — she doesn’t wish to wed a fool.

That would be foolish of her.

-----

“Amphitrite,” he calls her by name. She has felt his presence at shore for hours, but did not rise to tease him. Calypso’s words turn in her mind.

She was not looking to court this god. But did it appear that way? Despite the accusation, Calypso was clever. She had sharp eyes.

She would not speak untruths like that, but her honesty can grate. Who was she, to tell Amphitrite what her claim was? Did their domain blessing her with a second form fill her head over capacity? Amphitrite could make her own choices. She did not need a goddess, friend or not, telling her what her intentions were.

She did not need others telling her what she was.

She crests over the waves with her blood pounding hot in her veins. It makes her heart glow, a ruddy red that pierces through her translucent skin, pulsing with the beat of her heart. “Fool,” she spits out.

Poseidon lifts his brows. Something like concern passes over his face. It vanishes just as fast. “I require assistance,” he says. It looks like the words are difficult to say. They should be.

She barks a laugh. He flinches at the sound, like she’d flung a spear of divinity at his head. She throws her head back. She pulls in a breath with a grin that stretches her cheeks. “How does your pride taste?” she asks.

She’s being cruel, she knows, but Calypso thinks she was flirting. She thinks that there was enjoyment here. She wants to control Amphitrite? To tell her the reason she is doing things?

Let her see that she’s wrong. Let her see how her pride tastes when she takes it in her teeth and swallows it whole. Let her realize that sharp eyes and a clever head did not make her all-knowing.

The fool widens his stance, squares his shoulders in a vain attempt to look powerful. His divinity is but a babe in his chest, young and fluttering. “What?”

“You’re eating your pride.” She tilts her head. “Not all of it, apparently, but some. I asked how it tasted.”

“You—” he stabs a finger at her face. “You are rude.”

She chuckles, subdued. “And? What reason is there to be kind?” She rises to her feet and steps closer to the god, the ocean still thinly under her feet, tugging at her ankles. She tilts her head and looks up at him. “You are not anything to fear, little god. Not as you are now.” She steps closer.

The water bids her return. She ignores it. She is not flirting. She is not making an enemy, she is making a point.

Let Calypso see this.

“Anyways, you called me here. It is a blessing that I answered. Are you willing to let rudeness send me back without getting what you were hoping for, whatever it is?”

“No.” His hand makes to reach for her but freezes. His fingers twitch. He lowers his arm. “I— forgive me,” he grits, jaw tight with tension. Is he angry with her? Good.

She hums, not denying or accepting the apology. “What did you call me for?”

“Assistance.”

Amphitrite scoffs. “Of course. You have already said. What assistance do you seek?”

“I,” he takes a breath, “I wish to know how I could become a god of the sea.”

She stares at him, waiting for the joke, the laugh.

It does not come. Right. He is not like Calypso with her sharp humor that is often not humorous at all. He is being serious.

Truly, how did he expect to be a god worth fearing if he has to ask how to gain power?

She sighs, pressing the tips of cold nails to her cheek. “I’ve already told you.” She bends her fingers and presses the bend of them to her cheek. “The ocean must take you in turn. It is not a decision yours alone.”

“How do I… get it to take me, then?”

She considers his question.

“Please it or find a patron to take you instead. It will work as well as the domain taking you itself.”

His eyes spark and his hand lifts again.

“No.” She steps back in the surf. The water rushes in around her. “It takes much strength to take another god and farm their divinity. I have no reason to take that burden for you. Find another.”

“You are the only one I have met,” he explains, an undercurrent chopping his words too close together.

One corner of her lip pulls to the side. “Meet another, then. I will not do your dirty work for you.”

His eyes flash up at the sky as a boom rattles through the air. “I do not have time for that,” he tells her gently, eyes flicking between gray clouds and rust-green eyes.

She looks at the sky and shrugs. A storm. Why does that make him flinch? “That is not my bother.”

She turns on her heel. The ocean welcomes her back, tugging her close. It splashes Poseidon’s feet when he takes two strides after her. His fingers brush her shoulder. “What price would it take?”

Amphitrite rolls her shoulder out of his reach. “Pardon?”

“For you to take me.” She turns to look at him. “What price would you accept?”

She purses her lips. “We would have to wed,” she warns. “We would bound unlike any other.”

His breath shakes. The set of his brow stiffens. “What would it take?” he repeats.

Amphitrite taps her fingers against her mouth. He is desperate enough for this? To bind himself to her for the rest of eternity? “It will not be able to be undone,” she says. “And I do not see you with anything worth paying that price.”

He looks at her, beseeching. “There is no time.”

“So you have said.” What a broken record he was. No time, he must be a sea patron. On and on. Why did she think him entertaining?

Because he humiliated himself and seemed blind to it? It was amusing to watch, at first, before he dredged her in, trying to make a prisoner of a settled goddess. For her to take him in a way that gives him hold over the sea, her own weakens. She loses while he gains.

What could he have to make that trade — that loss — worth it? She did not like him as a god or a man. She liked her domain and her creatures.

It was not worth it, to humor him and his fear.

He drops to his knees. The damp sand caves under the blow. He lowers his head to her. “Please,” he asks. “I will do whatever you require. Anything you ask. I need to be made king of the sea.”

Amphitrite settles, folding her legs beneath her. The water surges and recedes around her collarbone. She takes in a considering breath. He was a son of Cronus, a brother of Zeus. There were tales that they were building a place for gods and something like that would surely be quite powerful. If she aids in his endeavor to be the sea’s face there, perhaps she will be face, too. It could not hurt to have an ally among a leader god, a— what did Calypso tell her that one time? A throned god? There were to be twelve, she thinks and they were to be honored by mortals as no god has before. “Convince me.” She tilts her head and weighs his every twitch in her mind.

Desperate gods are not all that different from desperate mortals. Not if the god is a fool, which this one has proven to be.

He will sacrifice more than he is comfortable to pay if she makes him squirm enough. He will offer enough that the deal goes in her favor.

Amphitrite has always been good at making others uncomfortable.

-----

Calypso’s divinity is an easy thing to bear, when they are in the deep, where Amphitrite is most powerful. When they are closer to shore, it twinges something in her. It makes itself a burden difficult to shake.

Calypso’s fury is a tame thing. Her acts of wrath are not sunken ships and slain sailors. Those are calculated, are not done on whim, is not something she does out of anger.

The only thing her anger does is temper her words into silver blades. She is most eloquent when she is furious.

“You are a fool to be told,” she says, dismissing greeting. The cold bite in her voice sinks into Amphitrite’s chest. Her eyes — do not look furious. She does not look angry at all. Not like Amphitrite expected when she settled her deal with the Olympian and took back to her water.

She looks sad.

The cold thing Calypso placed in her chest pulses. “What do you mean?” She lifts her chin, trying to look unaffected. She does not want to have this conversation so close to the surface, where Calypso’s divinity slips in through her gills as easily as water.

It is too distracting. Too— too easy to succumb to, especially if it with sadness that Calypso confronts her and not anger.

“You struck a deal with the Olympian.” Her eyes drift lower, focused on the joint of her collarbone, the little divot where Calypso’s divinity always rests. “It was not a wise deal to strike.”

Amphitrite waves off the words with a scoff. “However do you mean? I know how to bargain things in my favor.”

Calypso purses her lips out. Her eyes lift. They are sadder, now, and Amphitrite glares to keep them from pulling her in. Calypso’s reasoning was always wise but not always wisest. There were other perspectives that occasionally offered wiser things. This was one of those times. Calypso did not know the deal she struck. How could she? Amphitrite shielded both of their words from sinking in the water and Calypso was not near enough to wriggle around it. “Do you.”

She does not say it like a question.

“Yes,” she affirms anyways, her eyes reshaping into a frosty glare.

Calypso’s brow lifts. “Right.” Her eyes sink towards the ocean floor.

Amphitrite propels herself back. She speaks with a lifted lip. “Do not patronize me,” she warns. “I know what I’ve done.”

Their eyes reconnect. Calypso’s gaze is like an anchor, dragging her down. “I doubt that,” she whispers. “I really do.”

“You don’t know,” Amphitrite says, a steep edge to her words. She doesn’t know. She can’t. But that gaze, that sadness — she clearly thinks she knows something. But what?

“For your sake, I hope I don’t.” She bows her head and does nothing as Amphitrite pushes herself forwards and sinks back to her domain. The water pulses with Calypso’s sorrow. It coats Amphitrite’s teeth until the cold of the deep freezes it out and even then, it lingers.

-----

“You are a fool to be told.”

“You struck a deal with the Olympian.”

“It was not a wise deal to strike.”

Calypso’s words have bad habit of festering in Amphitrite’s mind. She tries to brush them off, to leave them to float at the surface, but they sink right alongside her, anchored with steel to her throat. It is a chained collar of worry.

“Do you.”

“I doubt that.”

Patronization that is actually worry. Amphitrite has never known Calypso to needlessly worry.

The words she speaks are always anchored with truth. Weight. Her words never float because there is reason behind each syllable.

Her nails dig into her palms, seeping the water in divinity that will only be hers alone for precious little time. Was Calypso right to be concerned?

An eel skims over her shoulder, curling around to brush against her arm. Amphitrite strokes it with the hand not bloodied in divinity. “What do you think?” she asks. She lifts her other palm and stares at the dull gold. “Was it a mistake?”

The eel swims away.

Amphitrite’s ankle twitches. “What help,” she says. She closes her fingers over her palms, shoulder jolting with the pressure.

What help indeed. What mistake did Calypso see in the deal she made? What flaw was she being blind to?

The dark curls around her. The deep embraces her in its chill and its emptiness. No matter how poor a deal she made, it will still be here whenever she needs it. Her domain will not disappear because she’s abandoning it. It will not abandon her in equal turn.

That is not what it wishes to do.

It chose Amphitrite as a queen and it has little choice but to respect her decisions. If she wishes to deal herself to an Olympian, to bend herself in the way that bends her domain — then it has little option but to obey. Their queen has commanded.

It may be her last order.

-----

"Little king," Amphitrite greets, tilting her chin.

Poseidon’s eyes glint. He looks pleased in a way that worries her, now. Before, she had thought it was just satisfaction at getting what he had spent sun-turns cajoling for.

Had he played her? Had she stepped into his trap? Was he wise enough to set one?

Was she foolish enough to fall for it?

The concern must be showing on her face, because Poseidon’s mouth twists into a grin. Easy and proud, like a king’s.

She was making him king.

He was getting everything he’d asked for. What was he sacrificing to her, to even the field? A few promises a wise man could eventually wriggle his way out from? Some words that could be torn apart?

Words unsworn on the Styx?

Her chin dips as she swallows. Her eyes do not leave her future spouse. The companion she’s going to swear her future and her divinity to.

Calypso had her reason to worry, did she not?

No. Yes.

Poseidon may not be the fool she thought. That much is becoming true. But she is no less wise. The deal may be skewed, but it is not one-sided. It is not unfair.

Amphitrite would never swear herself to anything that could be turned upon her. She does not make a habit of underestimating an enemy enough that she bares her belly to them, that she leaves herself entirely at their mercy.

Poseidon thought her a fool, and struck his bargain on that option. Amphitrite thought him a fool, and struck a deal that could work even if he turned out to be wise.

She does not nest all of her creatures in the same section of sea.

-----

It is not painful.

It feels like it should be. Ripping one’s divinity from their blood should be an excruciating thing. But it is painless.

Her divinity slips from her body like her blood had earlier, when she cut her palm in her heightened emotional state.

It is simple, in other words. So very simple.

Her creatures lurk around them both in the ceremony, netted above them like an elaborate trap. As if either of them could decide to switch their mind now.

Deals have been made. Divinity should not turn back on their blatant word.

“Careful with your words, little god,” she warns, tilting her head as she examines him. He is nice looking, she supposes, though she doesn’t think him nice enough to warrant wedding him. But there are worse looking things she could tie herself to.

As if that was consolation, but it was nice. Her heirs, at least, would have chances to become more.

He lifts his chin at her before tucking it back into place. He is taller, technically, though Amphitrite keeps her feet off the floor so their eyes are level. The sea feels far more frigid than usual.

Is it her domain, mourning what she used to be? Is it mourning her choice to make this god it so obviously rejected its king?

Is it her almost-wedded, already controlling what is all around him?

No. Her domain would not grant him his gifts until it was due.

The vows, too, feel as if they should stick in her throat or come out bubbling in electrified acid. But they, too, are easy. They slip out like the fine silk donning them both, silks dyed matching shades of blue.

The color suits her well. It offsets her hair. It does not suit him. It is not ill-suiting, but it does not suit him as well as the color of the domain he’s to control should. The color should, when worn, appear as if it is the only color that would do him justice. It should be the only thing that fits the divinity humming under his skin.

On him, it is just a color.

A nice color and nothing more.

It was not what it should be. He was a false king. His divinity was not made to churn the tides and her domain was not made to crash under his order. She was not made to be bound like this and he was not made to be bound to her.

After, when her divinity is raw in her chest, glowing heart pulsing weakly behind glass ribs, she takes his hand. “I hope you find this worth it,” she says, looking at him through her lashes.

He squeezes her hand and pulls his back. “Of course it was,” he replies.

She wonders if he can feel the strings wrapped around his joints. If he can feel the pull over him she has knotted in his chest. He made her swear to him the rights of her divinity, the capability of making ocean obey his command.

She made him swear his devotion to her will.

Can he feel that? Does he know the depth of that vow? That they were more than words and that as her divinity is bound to him, his is bound to her similarly?

It was, as Calypso said, an unfair deal. But it was unfair for them both. Painful like stabs and broken bone. Like horse and cow. Weak comparability.

They were both losers. That was unquestionable.

It was silly of Calypso, though, to think that Amphitrite did not know what she was doing.

She was no stranger to making deals.

-----

“So it is done.” Calypso is lying on the floor, observing the sharp points of nails she isn’t bothering to blunt. She doesn’t like to bother with shedding all the features of the predator she is, especially right after she’s taken a ship to sate her appetite.

Amphitrite never bothers to look mortal. It is not the form that is natural, like it is (more or less) for most of the divine. She is queen of the sea and she looks the part. She is of the sea and one could tell at a glance. “Yes,” she replies, digging up sand with her fingers.

Hers are sharper, technically, as Calypso’s aren’t really nails. They’re more akin to the suckers that line her arms when she is Kraken, just lengthened and enlarged to fit the rough anatomy of human fingers. If she gets them in something, there is no getting them out.

They are dangerous in a different way.

“Have the effects settled yet?” Calypso lifts her chin and the movement allows Amphitrite to see the thick bob of a swallow. As if she was uncertain. Concerned.

Amphitrite thought they were done with that. The deal is done. Calypso does not know better.

“What effects?” she asks, though her bones throb with the fragility of her lessened divinity. She’s been weak, since she wed the fool king, but it is strengthening slowly. She will be back to normal. It may take some decades to be back completely, but that is nothing to her.

Calypso’s breath bubbles up. “Of gifting away your divinity.” She tilts her head and slides her gaze over. “How fares your hold on your domain?”

“It is fine,” Amphitrite defends instantly. She pauses. Is it? Usually, she is approached and surrounded by the wildlife she rules over but that has been absent. It is an effect of her weak divinity. When that is back, so will they.

The sailor goddess hums, noncommittal. “I would be wary of each irregularity.”

“There has been none.”

Calypso’s eyes roam the empty water around them. It looks casual enough, but this is Calypso. She is making a show of looking, turning her head when there is no need. “Right,” she says. “Still. Do not say I did not try to warn you of the danger you enrolled for.”

“It was not dangerous.”

That, Calypso does not answer.

-----

Poseidon is building them a castle. He is insisting upon it. “What kind of rulers would we be,” he says, his hands clasped around her arms too tightly, “if we did not have a throne?”

Amphitrite pries her way out of his grip. “No rulers at all,” she replies. She looks at the construction, at the rising architecture of gems and coral. It is a beautiful thing, already, not even half built, but she is beginning to be aware of the dangers Calypso spoke of.

Her divinity is tied to her husband and he is, in turn, binding it to this castle. To the throne that will be hers. He has not admitted as such, but her divinity hums in the desire, the attempt. She would point it out, would fight, but there is little point to. She cannot undo what is done. She will have to live with her vow and attempt to find some other way out.

“It is beautiful,” she tells him, because he wants to hear it and it will do no harm to be on his good side.

He beams, watching the construction with pride. “Is it not?”

No, her domain whispers in her ear, monotone and sad at once. It does not have emotion like the living, but she can feel its mourning all the same. When it had accepted her as a patron, it was not for this. It is not.

Her domain sympathizes, in the only way it can. It does not offer help. It could, she believes, shatter their deal if it wished, but. The ocean takes after its namesake. Oceanus does not care for what happens in his home and body and neither does the ocean. They are, in fact, one in the same.

Amphitrite holds her eyes shut a moment. “You can go to Olympus,” she tells him.

His head whips over, a fight brimming on his tongue.

“That construction is more important for you to oversee. I can handle this.”

He squints.

She laughs, tilting her head mischievously. “Do you not trust me, husband dear?”

His mouth parts and he bites the words back with a click. “No,” he says. But, all the same, he turns to join his brothers in the making of a place for gods.

She smiles at his retreat. It looks like silver.

The new husband is so hungry for recognition, he’ll want to spend his days on the throne that matters. There was no glory in being a sea king, if you were searching for masses of mortal worship. The ocean would not provide that.

So she had the mercy of knowing he would not be a constant fixture at her side. She could pretend everything was sparkling, in his absence. That her throne was hers alone.

Despite the horror it took to get it — she’s liking the idea of a palace. Of a throne. Of the comfort of knowing her place in mortal’s mind is secure. She can lounge, now, and still be remembered just the same.

Tension leaks from her shoulders.

She thinks she could learn to like this. She did, after all, gain more than she gave.

What was a little divinity, in the end, for a palace and memory steadfast?

-----

Calypso is… displeased is the kind way to put it but neither of them are kind. She is appalled in a wrathful, furious way. That still feels too kind. Calypso feels more Kraken than goddess.

“Pardon?” she asks, sharp teeth snapping around the word.

“You heard me,” Amphitrite says, leaning back against a wall of her new palace, rubies studded around her in a bloody halo. “Do not feign deafness.”

Calypso laughs. There’s a wildness in the gesture, a feral sort of energy to it that raises Amphitrite’s guard. “I must be going so,” she says. “Because surely I did not hear you right.”

“You did,” Amphitrite confirms.

Calypso looks at her like. Like she’d just admitted to relinquish her divinity for a mortal child. Like the very idea is too wild even for them. “What ill poisoned your mind?” she asks. Her arms gesture around to the glimmering castle. “This was not worth the price. It is a thing. You could have done this yourself if you wished.”

Amphitrite watches the outburst languidly. She has never seen Calypso so active. Even when they are racing and she is enjoying herself, there is a relaxed sort of grace to her movements, a backing of calm that permeates through anything else. Even when she is worked up, there is still sense about her. Amphitrite cannot find any now. “You wouldn’t understand. Not with your mind pried shut.”

“He fooled you.”

“He did no such thing. I am aware of the deal I made.”

Calypso scoffs. “Then you are the foolish one. You may not understand the gravity yet, but this choice will grow to haunt you.”

“Sure it will.” Amphitrite looks down her nose. “I fail, though, for the record, to see how this,” she wiggles her fingers outward, gesturing to the palace, “could ever be something I’d regret.”

Calypso’s mouth parts. She bites her words back with a tense jaw. “I suppose we will just see then,” she says, voice back to its typical distanced tone.

Amphitrite nods. “We will.”

Calypso nods back. She does not look pleased, still and that is not entirely a surprise. She is so rarely pleased, when things do not go the way she thinks is best. But she is not entirely displeased, either, which is an accomplishment alone, even if a miniscule one. She eyes the walls of coral and gems, mouth twisting down as she takes in the opulence of it.

It is about the reaction Amphitrite expected. Calypso’s tastes are simple and this is anything except. But that was fine. The palace was not for Calypso nor would she reside there. So it did not matter if she liked it. It was to Amphitrite’s taste and it was to be home.

A place easy to pin. There were perks to having a place to settle and Amphitrite fully intends to take advantage of them. Having mortals on hand was one. She’d always wanted to keep one long term. Her chance for that had come.

Calypso’s eyes drift back to Amphitrite. There is something in her gaze that tries to tug at Amphitrite’s divinity. It has weight that Amphitrite has never felt, not when she is this deep, in the heart of her domain. She swallows it down.

“So we will,” Calypso repeats.

Amphitrite knows she is right. This castle is to be a kind of prison for them both, her and her new husband. There was no worry in that. Calypso did not know details and she was assuming the worst. It was a sweet thought. Her fault for not believing in Amphitrite’s cruelness, however. She knew how to deal herself sweetness from a bitter fool.

Still, to be a good sport, she nods.

Time will prove one of them wrong.

*****

This is still all drippingmoon's fault. Hope you liked what I created.

Tags: @caffeinewitchcraft @super-writer-gal @drippingmoon @blindthewind @notwritinganyflufftoday @mel-writes-with-her-dragons