After Seducing and Abandoning Apollo [Greek Mythology] - Chapter 9
Chapter 9
With her tension stretched to the absolute limit, Daphne felt nothing at all.
She even managed a smile: “I happened to notice a large patch of irises blooming here, and their color is simply gorgeous. Don’t you think so?”
Apollo looked at her empty hands in silence.
“Well,” she sighed, turning slightly sideways and gesturing toward the pile of stones, “I was indeed drawn by the irises, but I discovered Eros’s shrine here. And then…”
She bit her lower lip, her voice dropping lower: “I… couldn’t help praying to him.”
“What did you pray to Eros for?”
“I begged him to be merciful to me, to take back the golden arrow in my body, or simply give me a leaden arrow so that I might no longer love you.”
A warning was implicitly woven into Apollo’s stern demeanor: “I can tell whether you are lying.”
In other words, he could only discern whether she was being honest.
Apollo had not heard her conversation with Eros.
Daphne let her body shiver as if unable to bear the high pressure emitted by the deity.
After a moment of silence, she spoke: “I implored Eros to clear up my confusion. Though I know not why he chose me, matters having come to this, perhaps he was willing to lend me a hand—to make you feel a shred of pity and affection for me, and no longer pierce me with that attitude of a bitter winter north wind.”
The son of Leto possessed eyes that could peer into the future to sift out lies.
Her countermeasure was the same as before: cleverly playing with words, blurring time and cause-and-effect, stringing together falsehoods with scattered fragments of truth:
She had indeed just asked Eros to resolve her doubts; to this day she still did not know why the God of Love and Desire had chosen her among millions of otherworldly souls; and when discussing the plan earlier, Eros had indeed given her some advice.
What she revealed was by no means the full truth, yet she had not lied either.
The atmosphere surrounding Apollo softened slightly, though his expression remained cold: “Did Eros respond to you?”
Daphne looked back at the shrine and scoffed: “Your attitude toward me hasn’t changed in the slightest, so clearly he didn’t bother with me.”
“Do not pray to Eros in private again. If he attempts to contact you, report it to me immediately. Do not agree to anything of his on your own accord. Otherwise, all my previous promises to you are null and void.”
Apollo reeled off a long string of harsh commands.
The moment those words left his mouth, she knew this hurdle had been temporarily cleared.
She lowered her head submissively, concealing the involuntary relaxation of her spine: “As you will.”
After a long while, Daphne looked up and saw that Apollo was still there.
She cautiously asked, “Do you… have any other instructions?”
He raised an eyebrow, his tone somewhat displeased: “What else do you plan to do here?”
“I… I am just going to gather some irises and return!”
In the end, under Apollo’s supervision, Daphne earnestly plucked a large armful of beautiful blue irises and followed him back to the temple construction site.
After “escorting” her back, Apollo resumed his stance of detachment, not even bothering to say many words as he went straight to supervise the rock giants’ work.
The moment he turned his back, Daphne’s legs went abruptly weak, and she nearly failed to stand.
Her entire body was drained of strength, feeling almost as if she had just survived a life-or-death dash.
Yet she was gambling with her life anyway—a two-person game played with her second life as the stake.
Daphne clutched the irises and leaned against the boulder for a moment, then climbed back to her original spot and resumed weaving flower wreaths.
By dusk, the altar had begun to take initial shape, and two walls of the central sanctuary had also been erected.
Apollo had no intention of mercilessly overworking these mountain god servants, so he instructed them to return tomorrow morning after sunrise.
On the other side, as the rock giants finished their work for the moment, Daphne had accumulated over a dozen oversized wreaths by her side.
Seeing that the giants were about to clank away, she looped the wreaths over her arms and lightly hopped down to the ground: “Wait!”
She approached the lead rock giant, lifted the largest wreath, and asked looking up: “Would you be willing to accept this gift? Thank you for your hard work in helping build Apollo’s temple. Ah, of course, if you don’t like it, never mind.”
The rock giant’s reaction remained sluggish. After a long pause, it slowly lowered its torso, extending its two gigantic palms out before Daphne’s feet.
She immediately placed the wreath upon them.
Yet the giant remained motionless.
Daphne waited for a long while, looked in confusion at the rock giant’s emotionless face, and glanced back at Apollo.
“It wishes for you to stand upon its palm.”
She pointed to herself in surprise: “Me?”
After a delay of several beats, the giant slowly nodded.
Since Apollo didn’t stop her, nothing major should happen. Daphne immediately climbed onto the stone palm. The moment the stone fingers—thick as logs—curled slightly, she shivered in fright. With such a difference in scale, the rock giant could crush her to death with a casual flick.
But before lifting its hands, the giant merely used its knuckles to thoughtfully erect a barrier, preventing her from falling off her perch.
Saying she wasn’t afraid when facing a colossal monster face-to-face would be a lie, but Daphne’s slight dread quickly faded in the face of curiosity and excitement.
Though the mountain god’s servants appeared rough on the outside, their temperaments were extremely gentle.
Slowly and with utmost care, the rock giant raised her hands up to its forehead.
Daphne understood now. She walked to the edge of the palm base, stretched out her arm, and placed the extra-large wreath upon the giant’s head.
The size was a perfect fit; as long as it didn’t shake its head and thrash about wildly, it shouldn’t fall off.
She couldn’t help looking back at Apollo on the ground.
The young god stood somewhat away at the edge of the forest clearing, his golden hair glowing in the afternoon sunlight. It was too dazzling; she blinked before she could barely make out his expression. He was watching her with that same poker face where it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.
Their gazes met, but Apollo did not look away, as if he were merely admiring the scenery, and she happened to be a tree in that scenery swaying its branches toward him.
Being afraid to meet someone’s gaze was a good sign in a game of romantic tug-of-war, but he showed not the slightest trace of that direction.
Not to mention, because of what had just happened, he might harbor a few more layers of vigilance and resistance toward her.
Daphne felt a trace of disappointment, yet quickly rallied.
The attraction generated by the golden arrow was real, and the hope and loss awakened by yearning were real too. She didn’t need an out-of-body experience to help detach herself; the existence of these feelings did not hinder her from pondering her next step. Her strategy had always been to maximize the use of her feelings: bravely experiencing pain and joy, coldly analyzing and planning, honestly and appropriately revealing her emotions.
If Eros’s commission were compared to a project, the ultimate career goal was to make Apollo fall in love with her. The milestone goal was to make him break his word because of her, making an exception for her once—and then a second, third, and countless times.
The primary goal of the current stage was tentatively set as moving into Apollo’s temple. To reach that node, she had to elevate herself in Apollo’s mind to a presence slightly more worthy of attention than mere flowers and grass. Just a little bit would do. As for the specific action strategy…
She had to choose a more roundabout way to capture his attention.
Daphne already had an idea.
While she stood there dazed, the rock giant waited very patiently. She whispered an apology, turned around, and faced the rock giant again, but the other party didn’t let her down just yet.
Instead, it walked over to the giant construction crew and very considerately lifted her up one by one near the tops of its companions’ heads.
The giants also cooperatively lowered their heads slightly to make it easier for her to crown them one by one with wreaths.
The gratitude and affection of these lesser deities were written all over them, greatly comforting the disappointment brought by Apollo’s indifference.
The fairy-tale-like experience was wondrous yet brief. Daphne stepped back onto the earth and looked up. White, red, light yellow, purple—not a single color combination was repeated.
As she watched the rock giants crowned with various floral wreaths, a bizarre sense of satisfaction welled up in her heart.
Apollo’s gaze circled the giants’ floral crowns for a moment, and noticing something, he narrowed his eyes.
His expression quickly returned to calm: “You may leave.”
At those words, the rock giants turned silently and vanished into the mountain forest just as they had come. The leading big guy even carefully held down the floral crown on top of its head as it left, preventing it from getting caught and lost on high branches.
Daphne couldn’t help smiling at the sight. She carefully tucked her right arm behind her back, raised her left hand to smooth her hair, intending to say something casual to Apollo, only to collide head-on with his gaze.
He was staring fixedly at her raised left arm, which was bare and empty, devoid of the shadow of a single wreath.
Oh, and there was a tiny scrap of an iris petal stuck to the inside of her arm. She casually flicked her arm to shake off the bit of blue, and her left hand slipped back behind her as well.
Then, lifting her face, she explained with utmost seriousness: “I hope you don’t mind me giving gifts to the giants on my own accord. I had no intention of making a statement over your head, nor did I wish to establish any standing thereby. Since I am to linger in Delphi for some time and will inevitably benefit from their labor, I must do something.”
Apollo said coldly: “You don’t need to explain so much. I have no interest in meddling in trivial matters like flower wreaths.”
Despite saying that, his slightly tightened lip line betrayed the slightest trace of displeasure.
Daphne simply acted as though she hadn’t seen it, still smiling as she walked around to stand before him with her hands behind her back: “If you feel my wreaths are passable, I’d be more than happy to offer you a floral crown. It would certainly be prettier and more suited than those just now—”
“No need.” Apollo didn’t let her finish. He rejected it too quickly, making it somewhat suspicious.
As if he had anticipated her proposal just moments ago and decisively cut off the bud. With that, he turned expressionlessly and walked back toward the nascent temple.
Daphne stood in place for a moment of silence.
She rubbed her face with one hand, and said softly yet clearly: “I guessed you wouldn’t think much of it either.”
The knuckles of her hands behind her back unclasped, and the final wreath slipped down, brushing against the hem of her skirt.
It was indeed prettier than the crowns given to the giants; almost all the freshly plucked blue irises were gathered into this crown, because their intense color matched Leto’s son’s azure eyes.
Yet when it fell into the tall grass, it made almost no sound—almost none.
“I’m going to get some water.”
Raising her voice, Daphne walked toward the woods without looking back.
There was no reply from behind her.
The nymph’s somewhat hurried footsteps faded away, and after a moment, someone else walked over.
A hand radiating a faint glow reached into the grass, scooped with practiced precision, and picked up the abandoned iris wreath.
