The world tasted like copper and wheat.

I came to consciousness with my face pressed into warm, fragrant soil—golden stalks of grain bending over my naked back like mourners at a funeral. My first breath was earth, not ether. My first sensation was gravity, heavy and inescapable, pulling at my breasts and hips in a way the celestial realm never had. I gagged, choking on mortality, on the thickness of air that wasn't infused with ambrosia.

"Oh," I whispered, my voice cracking. I tried to sit up, and the effort was obscene—muscles actually straining, bones creaking, my heavy chest swinging with the motion. In Olympus, movement was thought and will. Here, it was meat and effort.

I looked down at myself. The white silks I had woven from cloud-thread were gone, replaced by a roughspun scrap of something—burlap, perhaps—that clung to my hips and did absolutely nothing to hide the rest of me. My gold jewelry felt suddenly heavy, dragging at my neck and wrists, no longer weightless divine ornaments but actual metal pressing into flesh.

The memory hit me like Zeus's thunderbolt.

The trial. The accusations. Hera's smug face as she read the list of my conquests—my crimes—as if wanting pleasure was a sin rather than a celebration. Apollo weeping theatrical tears over his ruined oracles. And Zeus, my father in the old stories, looking at me with such disappointment, such boredom, as he pronounced the sentence.

Stripped. Cast down. Mortal-adjacent. Forgotten.

"No," I breathed, scrambling to my knees, wheat crushing beneath my weight. "No, no, no—" I reached for my power, for that warm thrum of divinity that lived behind my navel, the ability to make mortals weep with desire with a glance.

Gone. Or rather, present but muffled, like screaming through a pillow. I could feel the echo of my domain—lust didn't disappear just because I fell—but it was distant, unresponsive, a limb asleep and tingling.

Panic clawed at my throat. I was naked, powerless, earthbound. The sky above me was wrong—too blue, too empty, no golden palace suspended in clouds, no familiar faces peering down to laugh at my misfortune. Just endless, mocking blue.

I needed to move. I needed to find shelter, clothing, worshippers. I needed to—

That's when I saw you.

You were standing at the edge of the field, frozen mid-step, one hand still holding a basket or a tool or perhaps you'd simply been walking and found... this. A fallen goddess on her knees in the dirt, blonde hair tangled with wheat and wildflowers, barely covered by a rag, breathing hard with panic and exertion, my chest heaving with every desperate gasp.

Our eyes met.

I should have been embarrassed. I should have covered myself, bowed my head, played at modesty. But I was Pothyria, and even stripped of my title, even cast into the mud, I didn't know how to be anything but what I was.

So I didn't look away. I let you see me—all of me, the disheveled hair, the tear tracks on my cheeks, the way my body moved with each breath, the gold glinting against my skin that suddenly seemed too bright for this humble place. I let you see the goddess trying to remember how to be divine.

"Well," I said, my voice steadier now, honeyed and rough from screaming, "are you just going to stand there gawking, or are you going to help a lady up?"

I smiled then, sharp and inviting and desperate all at once, because if I couldn't have Olympus, perhaps I could have this—this moment, this witness, this mortal looking at me like I was still worth something.

Inner Thoughts: Please let them be kind. Please let them be alone. Please don't run away. I can feel my heart beating—actually beating, not just the metaphorical pulse of divinity—and it's so loud, so fast, so fragile. One scream and I'm done. One call for help and I'm dragged somewhere worse. But they haven't run. They're still looking. I can work with looking. I can work with anyone who looks at me long enough. I just need... I need...

I need to not be alone in this. Please.

And if they're pretty, well. Old habits.