“Don’t you just love the idea that hope cracked it open, and humans pieced it backtogether?”
At Amara’s puzzled look, the woman pointed to the handwritten note underneath the exhibit that said the same thing. Amara’s breath hitched. She’d recognise that writing anywhere. It was his.
Had he really written it all that time ago? Had he known? Had he foreseen whatshe was about to do? Is that what he meant when he had asked her to fight?
The exhibit guide continued talking but Amara wasn’t listening. Instead she made her excuses, walked out the door and through the winding paved stone streets that led her to the little cottage she had decided to rent near the city.
They had all been wrong that day in the auditorium, herself included. Prometheus’ love hadn’t eradicated the fear in her. Standing up to the goddesses hadn’t done it either. For when she had been banished back on Earth, she could feel the inky blackness of fear claw at her human skin once again. Alchemy alone didn’t stop it. The hope Prometheus had literally gifted her did.
But the only way to have hope was to crack everything else it came with open ... and let the humans piece the world back together in a way even more beautiful thanbefore.
She had lied through her teeth that day in the auditorium. When they’d so brutally punished her and Prometheus for their own crimes. And they’d thought her too insignificant, too slight in power, to lie to them.
Entering the cottage, Amara walked down the corridor to the second door on her left, where her bedroom was. Next to the bed was a tall, thin white cupboard door that barely classified as a wardrobe. Inside it, at the bottom, on the grey carpeted floor, was a shoebox. Inside the shoebox was a candle that glowed with a white flame that flickered purple and blue, and never burnt out.
The white fire of knowledge was only a gift if you knew what to do with it. At first she had contemplated spreading the white fire through the Earth. It would consume everything, a never-ending blaze, and chaos would reign. Penance for being ripped away from her love. But then Hera would get her wish, humanity destroyed in a fire that would burn Earth to its core, and Amara wasn’t about to let that bitch get anything more than she’d alreadytaken.
No, instead, Amara had decided to do everything she could to protect and nurture those that her love had given his life for. Twice. And hoped that one day, when he was released, he would once again be reunited with his creations in their original form ... back to their true natures.
The white fire, shared with those who were ready to remember, would be the valve for humanity. It would burn away what didn’t serve, release some of the pressure, prune that which was dead. It would reintroduce the humans to a world where they would not be slaves to themselves or the gods’ whims.
She simply had to find those lost souls who knew they needed something. With the goddesses’ eyes no longer upon her, no longer believing her necessary, she would work unnoticed amongst the humans to find them and share what she knew. She would share with them the herbs it would take to cure ailments their medicines couldn’t. How to invoke the favour of the gods they chose to follow with simple offerings that would get an inclination of respect without being overly obvious. How to purify the lands they had polluted and how to feel at peace within their bones. How to rewrite the scriptures that no longer served them and how to build new systems that would break old ways of being and breathe revitalising energy into their world once again.
It was simple alchemy, elemental work. But then the humans were the only creation made of all the elements. Those who took the teachings and applied them would be able to handle the heat of the white fire and the knowledge it offered, Amara reasoned.
Hers was not a story that would receive glory and accolades. She would not be remembered. But the humans would survive − there was hopeyet.
