My Own Little World

Emotional Labor: What It Is and How To Do It

I don’t usually share a whole lot but THIS IS INCREDIBLE 

Once, Apollo had considered going to Daedalus.  Someone else who’d known Icarus. Mortals felt so much stronger.  Surely a father’s grief would match, maybe even surpass, his own.

But there was the sun.  Always the sun.  He could not leave the chariot, and to pull Daedalus up would be to subject him to the same fate as his son.  Nights were spent sleeping on marble steps, cold hard-pressed into his bones, guarding the world against the furious heat of an unforgiving star.

Sometimes he dreamed of those waves.

Sometimes, he wished a god could die.

—

Icarus laughed and Apollo lit up.  More than his curls, more than his knife-sharp wit, even more than his sun-kissed shoulders, it was his laugh that Apollo loved, so he smiled and pressed his lips to Icarus’ grin.

Artemis huffed from where she sat in the tree above.  Likely she didn’t approve; probably she had something to say about the duties of a god.  Apollo couldn’t care less.  She was skipping their father’s court too, anyway.

In that moment – his love laughing and warm and there, his sister disapproving but there, the ground solid underneath – Apollo was happy.

—

Artemis worried, but she had her hunts, and still there was the sun.  On the now-rare days when Apollo still burned as bright as his burden, leaving his shadow to hold the reins, he avoided her.  His other family, too.  They knew him.  They would know all the ways he was broken, cracked and shattered into a gross facsimile of divinity.

So he was alone.  There was Apollo.  There was the sun.  There was the memory of Icarus.

—

All he felt was anger.  Apollo flew, faster than the wind, faster than his sun, the world tumbling past his feet as he searched.  Eventually – it took far too long – he found Icarus.  He was being held by the Minoan king, he and his father, and Apollo wanted so badly to burn the entire palace in his path, but-  

But the king wanted Daedalus to build him a labyrinth for a monster that reeked of Zeus’ meddling, and Apollo couldn’t lift a finger against his father.

He told Icarus as much, but the mortal just wouldn’t listen.

“You’re every bit as trapped by your father as I am by mine,” Icarus spat.  "It’s pathetic.  You’re a god!  You can make a common woman prophesy, you can be by the side of every man on the isle, you can drive the sun, and yet you can’t disobey your father.“

Apollo left him there, in the maze his father built around them, without a word.

—

Until there was the Python, and the boy whose mother would never wake up even if he killed the snake, and there were people crowding him, tugging at his clothes, begging begging begging, and there was anger, and blood, and his gleaming arrows stained red, red and then.  And then there was no Python.  He’d killed it.  The remaining people were safe.  The mortal mother was still dead.

Instead, there was punishment.  He stood before his father, and the other Olympians, maybe – it was all so blurred – as he told Apollo that what he’d done was wrong.  His eyes, grey, storms inside marbles, were perhaps a little softer.  Gentle rain instead of typhoons.

His voice, though, was still that of the cold, cold, winds from the north.

“Apollo.”  He paused.  "My son.  You knew very well that we do not interfere with the mortals, and yet you acted.  Why?“

Apollo’s tongue burned.  Hypocrite.  He swallowed it down and steadied himself before he spoke.  "The boy asked.  I could not watch as more of them died.”

Zeus watched him for an eternity, or maybe a moment.  They were much the same to a god.

“If you care for the mortals so much, then perhaps more time among them will do you some good.  Perhaps you will remember how quickly they die.”  He nodded, once, to himself.  "Yes.  You will go to the plains south of Delphi, and there find a farmer.  His name is Admetus.  You will remain with him for a year, and tend to his herd.“

“And the sun?”  Apollo asked weakly.  At this, Zeus’ eyes became frenzied hurricanes, lashing outward with abandon.

“Are you so like them that you cannot even manage a duplicity?” he sneered.  "You’ve let yourself become weak.  Either you will manage the sun and the task before you, or the chariot will falter, and fall, and the lot will perish anyway.“

And it was decided.  Apollo stepped onto the windswept earth with no fanfare or pomp, only a squeeze of his arm from his sister before she, too, slipped away.  The man who stood before him watched her go before turning back to the god.

"So,” he started, feigning calm.  "You’re the god Apollo.“

"I am.”

“And you’re to serve me for a year.”

“So I was told.”

Admetus looked him over warily, then sighed and turned towards the buildings just visible in the distance.  He began to wade through the undulating grasses.  "We’d best get started then.  Would I be wrong to assume gods don’t generally spend much time on farms?“

Apollo started after him, saying quickly, "No, unless you’re Demeter.  Or perhaps the Horae.  I do know cattle, though, and I am a god.”

“All gods are skilled cowherds, then?”  Apollo almost thought the man was teasing him, but no mortal would dare.  Icarus had, but-

“No, but surely it counts for something.  If it comes to it, I could simply make the animals do what I wanted.”

“Handy,” Admetus said, humming.  "We’ll see if we can’t avoid that, though.“

The man was strange.  He was hesitant, slow to give orders, which Apollo supposed made sense given that he was only bound here for a year; afterwards he was free to dole out any punishment he saw fit.  Still, many others would have jumped at the chance to command a god.  Icarus would have had Apollo abusing his powers within hours.  That was likely why he was dead, and Admetus was not.

Thoughts like that had stopped hurting so much, over time.  For all it was supposed to make him hate the mortal world, the work was soothing, too.  Apollo spent most of his time gazing out across the plains, watching the green waves roll slowly outward, the sun tracking light across the sky.  Often he nearly dozed off.  And if a few would-be cow thieves startled him and got burnt, well, it wasn’t as though Zeus would care.  Admetus didn’t either.  He waved it off as fair punishment for trying to steal from a god.

"It’d be one thing if they weren’t caught,” he explained over a meal, mouth full of stew.  "Someone who takes from a god and gets away with it is someone to be respected.  They were caught, though, and the cows aren’t even holy.  I have no pity for fools like that.“

Apollo accepted that and went back to his food.

He got used to eating, over the languid months.  It was habitual.  Admetus always offered him a place at his table, when he rose and found the god waiting, and again when Apollo returned behind the cows.

Admetus was everything Icarus hadn’t been.  He was careful, slow to anger, considerate.  He asked nothing of Apollo that wasn’t offered, although once, after a particularly long day, Admetus took Apollo’s hand and held it until the fire burned itself out.

If this punishment was meant to make him still again, to freeze his heart back into its glacial quiet, then his father was going to be furious.

The Sound of Silence is probably one of my favorite songs ever. When speaking of the “true” Simon and Garfunkel version (as opposed to the version where they added background music to in post to make it more “pop radio”), it’s a song that gives me chills.

Disturbed is not a band that I really enjoy. I remember in college, my (now) wife gave me a copy of a Disturbed CD, because she had two for some reason. I tried to listen to it, I really did. Didn’t do anything for me.

But this? Holy fuck, this is stunning. This is amazing.

Yuukoku no Moriarty (Moriarty the Patriot)

A reimagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 19th century England through the eyes of Professor James Moriarty, unraveling his motives for aiming to become the greatest criminal the country has ever witnessed.

Brought to you by Takeuchi Ryousuke (writer of the manga adaptation of All You Need Is Kill, the novel of which became the basis of the Tom Cruise/Emily Blunt film Edge of Tomorrow) and Miyoshi Hikaru (artist of Kanshikan Tsunemori Akane).

Manga is still ongoing and currently has seven volumes. If you’re a fan of the world of Holmes and his greatest rival, you might want to give this a try (｀・∀・´)

— Francesca Coppa, “Introduction to The Dwarf’s Tale,” The Fanfiction Reader (via francescacoppa)