CAST

Natalie Dormer as Sonja Durin

Samira Wiley as Gigi  'Aphrodite' Jones

with a guest appearance by

Antonia Thomas as Erin 'Eros' Ross

*

Sonja Durin has always known that gods walk among us. She did not know they walked into her bookstore and drank her coffee.

*

"Ah, I don't think so!"

Sonja ducked the arm that came swinging wildly at the back of her head and dodged left and then right to avoid further unprovoked attacks. "What the hell?"

Bezoar Book Place regular and Sonja's best friend, Gigi Jones, was holding a gleaming gold arrow suspended mid-air and she looked guilty. "This looks bad, right?"

Sonja put a display table between the two of them and crossed her arms. "Yeah, it's look a bit terrible. Were you trying to stab me with an arrow? That's not how arrows even work! Where's your bow?" The situation was surreal, too surreal for a Wednesday morning. Positively tragic on Valentine's Day.

Gigi waved the arrow and shrugged. "It's...complicated. It's really complicated. Maybe don't ask?" Her tone was wheedling, as if she were asking to split the last cheese danish in the box instead of trying to get out of explaining why she'd almost put Sonja's cerebellum on skewer.

"You tried to stab me in the skull with an arrow. I'm going to need an explanation. This isn't like when Dionne made wine out of water and we didn't talk about it. This needs to be discussed." Strange things tended to happen around Sonja's bookstore. She chose not to speak of it often. Not today, though. This required discussion.

She jabbed a finger at one of the comfy overstuffed couches filling the reading nook of her little occult bookstore and didn't stop pointing till Gigi sat down, her guilty arrow shining invitingly on her lap. Sonja sat near enough to touch it if she wanted to--not that she wanted to. She wanted nothing to do with that arrow; she just wanted to be close to Gigi. She had for years. 

"Talk."

"I wasn't trying to stab you. Somebody-" Gigi glared at the rafters. "-was playing a prank and I caught them in time."

"What kind of prank includes a golden arrow pointed at my head?" Sonja followed her eye line and glared at nothing. "Whoever you are, you little punk, come down here and try that face to face. Let's see how brave you are when I snap your bow!" Sonja always had a temper on her; she had the arrest record to back it up.

"Er, maybe tone it down a little."

"I won't. I could have been killed."

Gigi sucked her teeth. "I wouldn't have let that happen."

"Like you could have stopped it."

"Don't underestimate me. I'm pretty powerful."

The arrow fairly vibrated on her lap. Sonja felt it trembling, its innate rumble resounding through Gigi's thighs and through the couch's worn stuffing up Sonja's long bones. She wanted to touch it and see what it was. Some kind of new Apple thing, maybe. A Smart Arrow? Probably as useful as a Smart Watch, she thought. Probably as useless. She'd sold hers on EBay the day after her ex left. A gift she'd never wanted out of a relationship she wanted too much. A relic of the past.

"What is that anyway?" It really wasn't like any arrow she'd seen in her life. Not that she was some kind of archery scholar but one did tend to see things in her line of work. Books usually included pictures.

"Nothing." Gigi stuffed the arrow in the crevice between the cushion and the armrest, out of Sonja's sight. Abruptly as a clearly phrased post-hypnotic cue, Sonja's interest in it waned. Most likely a toy from some idiot kid trying to play Cupid on Valentine's Day for the chronic singleton. It was nonsense right out of a Bridget Jones book or its likely  superior cinematic adaptation. Yes, all right, Sonja had read every book--even the sad one where Mark Darcy carked it and Bridget became a midlife mess. She didn't acknowledge that one.

"So...plans tonight?" Gigi inquired to fill the silence. She'd scooted over to sit shoulder to shoulder with Sonja. She knew she was already forgiven. Gigi scarcely remained in Sonja's bad books for long. Being hopelessly in love made it hard to hold a grudge.

Sonja grunted. "You know I don't celebrate Valentine's Day. Besides, nobody's asked me. Which you also know." Sonja glared toward the rafters a second time.  "Erin's involved in this somehow." Erin Ross, another store regular, had the face of an angel, the mouth of a sailor, and the heart of an arguably untethered romantic. She'd think nothing of pointing a deadly weapon at Sonja's person to make Gigi ride to her rescue.

Gigi stretched ludicrously obviously and wrapped an arm around Sonja's shoulders. "I don't know about that." She was full of it. She was also gorgeously distracting. It wasn't fair.

"I do!" Erin was the only person alive who knew how Sonja felt about Gigi. Texting drunk had saved her from an untimely confession this time last year and earned her an unwanted confidante in the much younger woman. Now here Erin was playing Cupid and nearly committing negligent homicide in the process. "She's meddling."

"What's to meddle in?"

Sonja shrugged. "This and that. She thinks--" Sonja blanched at her near slip of the tongue. "You know how she is, she likes to see everyone all paired up."

"Nothing wrong with romance." Gigi was always loved up with some fresh-faced girl fawning over her. Gigi was easy to lov.

Sonja harrumphed, tried to keep her sullen mood in the face of Gigi's smile and was forced to admit defeat. Gigi cleared the air in her dusty corner of the universe. It smelt richly sweet as honeysuckle when she appeared and all the world was more golden.  Sonja loved her, her mind, her laughter, her tenderness.  She had loved her right away, but she had never said it and now it felt too late.

"It's not for me," admitted Sonja, forlorn.

"That doesn't mean you have to be alone."

Sonja grunted. "You're getting as bad as Erin."

"Do you ever look at two people and know they're meant to fall in love?"

"I don't think it can be that simple. Love is complicated and people are complicated. All you can do is guess and hope."

"What if you could do more?" Her long fingers played chords against Sonja's skin. No one had ever touched Sonja like Gigi did.

"Meaning what?"

"Just try to imagine what it would be like."

"I couldn't. I wouldn't. Gigi, it's bizarre. Matchmaking is a hobby, it's not real life."

"You have all this." Gigi indicated her store with its book stacks and countless tomes devoted to gods of every pantheon, to mythology and mysticism, to spirituality and magic. "You have all this and love is what you don't believe in."

"What are you asking me?"

"What if it's real?"

"Which part?" Part of what had brought Sonja to begin the Bezoar was a search for meaning. If Gigi believed that any of it had a basis in fact, she'd consider it.  Her best friend would be the last to lead her wrong.

"Any part. Are you just holding all these artifacts for true believers or do they mean something?"

Sonja rubbed her eyes. She hated when Gigi got philosophical; it happened every couple of years when she first began patronizing the Bezoar and now recurred every few months. "Just say what you want to say. This day's been weird enough and Mark Darcy's calling my name." She'd shut the door and hang the Closed sign before the heartbroken and the lonely came calling in search of love spells and potions that amounted to nothing but broken dreams and tainted love. Sonja believed in magic, she had the crystals and talismans to prove it; it was true love she doubted.

"Do you believe in Aphrodite?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"She believes in you."

"Don't be ridiculous. Aphrodite, if she's out there, has better things to do than think of me. You and Erin have a weird way of wishing me a happy Valentine's Day."

Gigi grabbed her arm to keep her from storming off. She wouldn't speak to her for days if she got away. For a day. All right, for hours. Gigi lived under her skin.

"The awkward thing about being a goddess on Earth is you can't show it. You will things and they happen, and that's it." 

Sonja was nonplussed. Some days Gigi was weird. Today was one of those days, Sonja decided.

Gigi bit her lip. She had the most gorgeous lips Sonja hadn't ever got to kiss. "Remember Jane and Suki?"

"...Yes." Two more store regulars who'd come as singles and left as a pair. People fell in love like dominos at the Bezoar. Everyone but Sonja.

"I set them up. Well, Erin tried and when she messed up, she asked for my help. They've been together three years."

Sonja scoffed, "I told you you're as bad as her."

"I'm worse. Goddess of love and fertility. You should see how many babies exist because of me." Gigi wrinkled her nose. "That sounded way cooler when I thought it."

Sonja cut her a sharp side-eye. "Are you saying you're some earthbound Aphrodite or something?"

"You don't think I could be?" Sonja considered the outlandish idea.  Gigi was the most striking person to cross her path in forty years. She was made of love and loved everyone she met. She brought strangers together as if that was her sole purpose. Their friends had unerringly found partners in pairs and groups over the years since she'd joined their circle, a fact Sonja had simply attributed to everyone growing up and growing old. Could it be that there had been a mythical hand at work all the time?

"You...you really are Aphrodite." She narrowed her eyes fiercely. "Aphrodite has been drinking my coffee for free for six years!"

Gigi--Aphrodite--scratched at her close-cropped hair, sheepish. "I probably owe a few bucks for that. Sorry."

Sonja laughed, a touch hysterical at this turn of events. "You're such a liar. I can't believe you held out on me." No wonder she had been in love with Aphrodite.  Who wouldn't fall arse over tit for the goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation?  She felt foolish. Perhaps none of her feelings had been real and Aphrodite had known.

"I came to help you find someone and the longer I stayed, the more I wanted to stay, and the more I wanted to be the person you like so much. I wanted to be Gigi." She was contrite. She played all of Sonja's heartstrings as if it were made to suit her fingers.

"Gigi's great. She's just not real."  So much of Sonja's life had been a walking dream, the good and the bad of it. Gigi joined the growing pile of lies her eyes had told her.

"She's as real as me and she's crazy about you."

Sonja's bones throbbed with threatening disappointment while some spare light within her flared in hope.

"This really isn't a joke, is it?" She'd had her feelings played with before, by users and perpetual abusers. She didn't want to add Gigi to the list. Not with how much she loved her. God, she loved her. "Wait, wait, you and Erin matchmaking. Erin Ross." Her eyes widened, and she grabbed her friend's (her goddess's) thigh.  "Eros."

Erin was Eros, better known as Cupid, the little goddess of love. No wonder she was a meddler.

"You got it."  Aphrodite smiled. Sonja's heart flipped, same as every single time she had seen her. A change in identity had nothing to do with the affection burrowed in Sonja's heart. She loved her, nonetheless.

Sonja griped, "I'm a prize idiot." She should have seen. Anybody with three brain cells to rub together would have made the connection. Someone as extensively read in the goddess of love ought to have known.

"Nope. You're not supposed to notice. That's how it works."

"How what works?"

"Being among mortals means being invisible."

"You're not invisible to me."

"You're not just any mortal to me."

"But you never found me someone to love." She didn't mean to sound accusing, but she was. She could admit she'd been lonely despite her extensive social circle; she hadn't made any secret of it. Aphrodite had not heeded her many prayers for companionship. She had been forsaken.

"I found me someone to love and that made it difficult to do what you needed me to do."

There it was, the disappointment. She had been second to others before, a goddess was simply another person. 

"Why is everything a riddle with you?" The last person Sonja wanted to hear about was whatever person was outstanding enough to make the goddess of love fall in love.

"Immortal tongues cannot easily form mortal words; something's always lost in translation. I found you and there could never be anybody else for me." Gigi gazed at her as she always had. There was no difference in it. The look had always been the same. That was a look of love.

"Oh. Oh!" Sonja's throat closed. Remembering the loneliness was hardest, especially when its answer had a face and a name, never mind whether they were real. "I waited."

"You didn't have to. I was sort of hoping you'd make the first move."

Sonja crossed her arms. "A hint would have helped."

"I think that's what she was going for." They both glanced up. Erin coughed conspicuously from the rafters. It was rather dusty up there. Sonja had been meaning to clean.

"Thank her for me."

"Okay..."

"Later, though." Sonja tugged Aphrodite into her arms.  She was easy to hold for someone omnipotent and eternal. Her ethereal heart beat as fast as Sonja's in her chest. "I have a goddess to pay homage to."

"Took you long enough."

*

Erin Ross crept down from a rolling ladder in the section on Hellenism and tiptoed past the kissing couple toward the exit. Her golden arrows vibrated silently in the quiver strapped to her back. There were plenty of couples out there who could use a helping hand, or handy arrow, to get on their way, but these two would be fine. They'd only needed a catalyst.

+_+

Not an official entry for the Ethereal Valentine contest, but it seemed like a fun idea, so I went for it anyway.