Hermes chuckles softly at Achilles' joke before taking the offered cup of wine, sitting down at the table and nodding his head to invite Achilles to sit with him.
"Me? I was lucky. I already had a little cosmic power in me when I was born, so it wasn't so dramatic." Hermes wiggles his fingers at the word 'power', like he's casting a spell. "Invented the lyre day one, convinced a herd of cows to walk backwards day two. No surprise Olympus accepted me so fast."
Hermes sips the wine before setting it down. "But when you get more powerful... it's easy to be clumsy. You just don't know your own strength at first." Hermes grimaces at his wine. "I found a mortal woman I was fond of, and I put curiosity in her head. Much more curiosity than she could take. She was so curious that she unearthed and opened a box a local healer had buried, and it turned out he was disposing of clothes worn by plague victims. Disease was still on the clothes and the whole town got sick."
Hermes rubs the bridge of his nose. This is his version of a not dramatic coming of age. "I found all the souls of the dead and brought them to the Underworld because I felt so bad about the whole thing. That's how we realized I could be a psychopomp too. Now all these years later, they keep telling some warped version of the story, and the poor woman is called the mother of misfortune."
Hermes sighs, shaking his head. "But I still had it pretty good, all considered. Athena killed her best friend by accident. Dionysus got so angry at his mortal side of the family that he drove his aunts mad and they ripped his cousin apart with their bare hands and wore his skin like a pelt."
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"Me? I was lucky. I already had a little cosmic power in me when I was born, so it wasn't so dramatic." Hermes wiggles his fingers at the word 'power', like he's casting a spell. "Invented the lyre day one, convinced a herd of cows to walk backwards day two. No surprise Olympus accepted me so fast."
Hermes sips the wine before setting it down. "But when you get more powerful... it's easy to be clumsy. You just don't know your own strength at first." Hermes grimaces at his wine. "I found a mortal woman I was fond of, and I put curiosity in her head. Much more curiosity than she could take. She was so curious that she unearthed and opened a box a local healer had buried, and it turned out he was disposing of clothes worn by plague victims. Disease was still on the clothes and the whole town got sick."
Hermes rubs the bridge of his nose. This is his version of a not dramatic coming of age. "I found all the souls of the dead and brought them to the Underworld because I felt so bad about the whole thing. That's how we realized I could be a psychopomp too. Now all these years later, they keep telling some warped version of the story, and the poor woman is called the mother of misfortune."
Hermes sighs, shaking his head. "But I still had it pretty good, all considered. Athena killed her best friend by accident. Dionysus got so angry at his mortal side of the family that he drove his aunts mad and they ripped his cousin apart with their bare hands and wore his skin like a pelt."