With my Shield, or On It. - Chapter 4 - Healing Can Happen

 Lady Hippolyta didn’t explain her intentions after she took me away from the temple. Daphne and I locked gazes as I was dragged away. I could not say if she blamed me for the embarrassment, but I do not expect her to be fair about this.

 

She bade me sit behind her on her motorcycle and hold firm round her waist. It felt a little awkward because I’m taller, but when I felt how strong she was despite the difference I realized it wouldn’t matter at all. 

 

Riding with the Chosen of Ares is exhilarating the way I imagine a long fall to be. The first acceleration and turn unsettles, but after a few minutes I calm down and start to enjoy myself even if Lady Hippolyta’s hair is stinging my face a bit.

 

I badly want to ask her why me, but I also think that asking her anything right now feels a little silly, and not only because I’d have to shout to be heard. It’s only been a few days since she lost her wife. In my duties I’ve tended to grief many times, even though I’m a novice, I’ve become accustomed to the way that people act very differently from each other after a loss. Sometimes bizarrely. 

 

We stop at a busy intersection. People notice her immediately and try their best to appear as if they aren’t gaping. If a reporter were here I imagine they would be tripping over themselves to get a recording of this: the Champion of War out and about only days after the loss of her beloved wife Herakles, with a lowly acolyte of Lord Hades in tow!

 

I’m very glad that none are around.

 

“My lady,” I say hesitantly, “where are we going?”

 

At first I am not certain that I am heard, but eventually Hippolyta does turn her head slightly so that I can see her face in profile. Her shades obscure her eyes.

 

“The beach” she replies rather plainly, “I want to go somewhere, soft, gentle.” It’s an incredibly matter of fact reply and I am taken aback by her lack of formality with me.

 

“As you wish Lady Hippolyta,” I say, regretting immediately that I maintained formality despite her speaking so casually.

 

I don’t get a chance to say anything else before we take off again. I don’t know which beach she intends but any of them require that we go up several levels from the Underworld. I’ve become a little too comfortable being down there all the time, so it’s blinding for me when we arrive at the surface. I miss losing myself in watching the world go by because I can only lower my face and keep my eyes closed. I really do need to get out more, and not just out in the Underworld.

 

My eyes have just begun to adjust completely when we arrive. There isn’t anyone else around, and I don’t know exactly where we are. It occurs that a person of such renown as Lady Hippolyta would have access to places that someone like myself wouldn’t know about. I’m tempted to seek the network, but decide against it.

 

I don’t complain about the ache in my butt and thighs as we dismount, but I’m sure Lady Hippolyta can tell I’m sore.The beach is the very definition of clean and soft. The sand is such a consistent pale yellow and so thoroughly devoid of detritus or anything resembling the work of shoremen that there must be some divine process that maintains it. There’s a shale formation, I think, on both sides giving the place solitude.

 

“Lady-” I stop speaking and look Lady Hippolyta over, “may I call you Hippolyta? If I am not too forward in asking, I suspect that you-you”, I clear my throat, “weren’t looking for our time together to be so distantly formal.”

 

She turns to face me slowly and forms an incredibly warm smile on her lips as she takes a step forward and places a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Of course you can, Mada” she adds, stifling a light giggle. “As I said, understanding, not experience.”  I see for a moment, in her face, that trademark optimism and kindness she’s so well known for. It strikes me suddenly that I have seen her before.

 

I say, “Thank you Hippolyta, I realize now that I’ve seen you before. You were with our Lady Persephone some weeks ago, emerging from a boutique. I was so surprised by the presence of my Lord Hades pilot that I only realized just now that you were there as well.”

 

She cants one hip to the side and crosses her arms, “Why do you think I asked for you?” The reply is just, so very matter of fact, a pattern with her in just these last few moments of conversation. “Hard to miss that” she adds, motioning  with her eyes at my hair. It dawned on me in that moment, that, yes… she had asked for me directly. 

 

She’d noticed me? The Champion of War had noticed me? 

 

Our Lady Persephone noticed my hair too. I regret mentioning that moment as the awfulness of that day aches anew. I do my best to maintain my poise. I am a priestess of Hades.

 

I don’t have it in me to smile so I cast my gaze to the shore, “It will feel nice to be barefoot in the sand, would you join me?” my words sound a little too much like I want to change the subject but I proceed. I am a priestess of Hades and this is my duty.

 

That grin, that infectious grin that she was so well known for, returns and without a single word of reply she turns and takes her shoes off. The next steps she takes are with her back to me as she raises a hand in the air and waves for me to follow, the other carrying her shoes. I guess that’s my answer.

 

I quicken my steps to catch up, only pausing to hook the heels of my slippers to slip them off and carry them as Hippolyta does her shoes. The hem of my vestment creates a smooth path in the sand behind me, it erases our steps.

 

“Thank you, for choosing me Hippolyta, it is an honor to tend to you,” I say when we come to a stop not far from the water’s edge.

 

I hear her chuckle lightly, though it mingles with the sounds of water as her back is still to me. She inhales and exhales deeply before placing her shoes on the sand as she sits.

 

So much strength radiates from Hippolyta that I can barely imagine how much she must be hiding her suffering. I watch as she buries her feet in the sand and brings her knees to her chest wrapping her arms around them. She takes a slight pause before leaning her head down to rest on her arms. She seems so small and vulnerable like this, that the image of the “Champion of War” all but fades away. Now, I  see a woman that is in unimaginable pain, a woman that needs me. 

 

“I imagine the honor will be mine” Her reply is so soft, so quiet, that I can tell instantly that she’s staring off into the distance and falling back into her grief. I take a moment to steel myself,I can’t help but feel something well up in me at her reply, before I sit down next to her and join her in gazing out into the sea..She said she wanted understanding, not just empty practiced words of support and I will give that to her as we sit in silence for some time, I just hope that the sheer pressure of her agony doesn’t overwhelm me. It actually might.

 

I watch the waves roll in and recede. What Hippolyta has lost I cannot really begin to understand, all of my training and knowledge of ceremony seems a poor balm in the face of this. I think of how she’d taken me by the hand to drag me from the temple, and how she smiled at me and touched my shoulder, so I gently placed one of my hands on top of Hippolyta’s wrist where it rests upon the opposite elbow of the cross-armed pillow she made for her head.

 

As I place my hand on her elbow I feel the droplets that signal a waterfall of tears streaming down her face. I lean forward ever so slightly and see it, the gritted teeth, the flushed face, the ruby red skin around her eyes with cerulean pools of pain welling up before cresting the dam of her eyelids.Those tears breach the dam and burst forth and seeing it, feeling it on my hands, I am lost for but a moment in what action to take next.

 

I think about what I would want and the answer is obvious. I turn toward the Champion and wrap my arms around her shoulders. She’s so small that my vestment can swallow her almost completely. I don’t shush her or tell her it’s alright. I simply hold on tightly.

 

I draw in a deep breath, as she plants her head, eyes cast downwards, back into the pillow of arm and elbow she made at the top of her knees.

 

She needed this, a chance to just let everything out. To scream out her pain with someone that could be there for her, and I gave it to her.

 

“Thank you, Mada,” the reply comes and I know, she means it. “Thank you, for coming here with me, for letting me take you from your temple, for letting me choose you.” I watch as she turns her head to look at me, and I see a smile. The warmth of it washes over me. At this moment, I see the Hippolyta the news and programs talk about.The incredible kindness and love she has for this city and its people.

 

I can’t help but form a smile in return, “Maybe, you should visit your family? I think they’d want to be there for you as well.” It’s a long shot, but maybe giving her something else to focus on will help

 

“Maybe I should Mada, maybe I should.” She inhales and exhales deeply and then slowly pulls away from my embrace as she stands. A few light pats with her hands to get the sand off and she reaches out a hand to help me up. Which I find rather funny, the height difference being what it is and all. Not that it matters, she’s incredibly strong, in more ways than one.

 

Once she and I are both standing, it’s obvious that she’s doing better, flushed cheeks and bloodshot eyes the only remaining sign of a woman that was, and perhaps still is, in incredible pain. But now, I see a woman who looks like she might be able to take the next steps forward and live again. It makes me incredibly happy to see.

 

“Can I” she hesitates for a moment, “Can I see you again?”

 

I blink several times, I can’t help but be taken aback. “I… ummm..you want to see” Mada! Just get it out! 

 

“You want to see me again?”

 

She nods and smiles brightly, wiping away some residual tears. “I do. I can always use more friends.”