goddess alights

Without fanfare – without plume of smoke, clap of thunder, or blinding bolt of light – goddess Athena made landfall in a town in the Mid-Atlantic region of the republic of America. She looked into homes, offices, and shops, but found little to hold her attention. Cloaked in the guise of a world-weary old man, she tried to buy a drink from a store with a red-and-green-striped sign.

Broke and hung-over from a friend's bachelor party, the store clerk stared at the thick gold disc the old bum had just given him, palming it as he dropped three Sacajawea coins onto the rest of the change. Pallas Athena, she who blesses the labors of artist and warrior alike, feeling spited and ill-received, stood her ground – she threw back the worthless tender and demanded the return of her golden coin. After a while, the police arrived, summoned by a silent alarm. Before they could arrest the strange old man, however, he escaped into the store's cramped rear storage-quarters, from which, strangely, no door leads to the outside.

Brave and majestic Athena, she who lifts the hearts of flagging friends, having made herself invisible so as to escape the clutches of what she could tell were bad people bent on doing her harm, had already folded the Gorgon's head to the fore of her Aegis breastplate when mercy stayed her hand; one last turn of the endlessly shifting cloth and that dreadful weapon would have peeked forth. Instead of turning her assailants to stone, however, the goddess relented. She erased the police officers' memories and cursed the clerk to a pitiful life of abject wage-slavery devoid of pleasure, in which direction she figured he was heading, anyway.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥