338: Her Theory

Trigger warning: Australian swearing

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“You grunt a lot.”

Zoe slapped her hands onto the ground and closed her fingers around the godforsaken black sand that surrounded her. In one movement, she turned her hips and flung the sand back at the god of time, lost her balance and got a mouthful of it instead.

Chronos idly watched the sand drift mostly through him before fixating his gaze on Zoe, propping herself up on her elbows, knees bent and legs hinging open.

“You’re such a cunt.”

“Zoe!” He said, real shock on his face. “Would you kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“You know nothing about my mother.”

“I actually know everything about her.”

Zoe glared daggers at Chronos. Part of her wanted to continue the argument. Another part wanted to scream at him and blame him for everything bad that was happening. However it was a third, quite small part, barely a sliver in fact, that made her sheathe the daggers and lay them down.

She caught the look of surprise on his angular face: the slightest widening of his eyes, nothing more, but surprise nonetheless. She couldn’t help but smile seeing this; not succumbing to his obvious attempts at getting under her skin was a minor victory, but more importantly it was validation for a theory she had been forming whilst dragging herself up the mountain.

“So you’re an all-knowing god that’s in my head,” Zoe said. “Does that mean you know exactly what I’m thinking about right now?”

“Do you really want to know?”

Zoe rolled her eyes. “No. Because I know what I know. But humour me.”

“You’re wondering what I look like underneath my splendid outfit.”

Zoe cackled. Then she guffawed. The dam to her composure, cracked earlier from anger now fully broke as a deluge of laughter flooded out. Her baby bump slid this way and that as she rolled with mirth. Through teary eyes, his look of displeasure only fuelled her joy. To his credit though, he stood there, arms crossed, not even looking at his pocket watch, simply waiting for the dam to run dry.

“No Chronos,” Zoe giggles ebbing, “I wasn’t wondering what your body looked like underneath your splendid outfit. But thank you, I needed that laugh.”

“You’re welcome.” He walked on ahead of her, noticeably stiffer than before.

“Where are you going?”

“To scout ahead for you.”

Zoe smirked, allowing herself to savour these wins from minor skirmishes with the god of time. Of course he knew what she was thinking, he’s a god for God’s sake! He’s probably just feeling sorry for you. She shoved aside the negative, if pragmatic, voice in her mind telling her the god was just letting her have these inconsequential victories. She would accept his reactions as proof enough that there was an inner core of her mind that belonged to her and her only.

Within this inner core, she had been thinking about everything that had happened since the day in the hospital she was meant to Ascend. From turning the thoughts over and over in her mind, she birthed a theory, swaddling it in what-ifs. She had cooed and whispered to it, naming it ‘Plan B’. As Plan B’s were, it was always a long shot, but she had always believed in every possibility, no matter how far-fetched it seemed. After all, that was how she got together with Ever in the first place, leading her to the Cusp of goddesshood.

Ever; he was still her Plan A. She didn’t know why, but she just had a feeling that once she got to the top of this mountain, she would be able to communicate with him. With enough time left, he might still be able to stop the world from dying a long, slow, painful–

The ground shuddered. Zoe sat herself upright, straightening her spine.

“Chronos?”

He was sprinting back to her, a wave – or was it a wall? – of rock charging to the dull, grey sky, getting closer and closer to Zoe.

He skidded on the sand then turned in front of Zoe, throwing his arms open, as if to stop the tidal wave of rock with his bare hands.